Let's explode the image of English in business.

[HamburgEnglish]

I have just replied to a student here and feel maybe my answer deserves its own thread for all the school-grammar-gurus to attack!

Nevertheless it should give a true and valuable indication of the goals a student should go for when learning English purely for an employment opportunity.

I now throw it to the grammar-Lions .... smile. ATTACK !!!

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Your level will be down to the perception of the person looking at your CV. Do you understand what I mean?

Check first whether the employer uses a system such as Cambridge or TOEIC and then go sit the exam. In this way you will get an internationally recognized and accepted perception rather than your own judgment.

If you want to check your English level, there is a very good system at www.englishplacement.com which is used at the moment by many for level placement purposes.

From what you have written you definitely have a few problems in some basic grammar areas and also a typical Russian language influence in the use of articles, because there are none in the Russian language.

However from what you have written I can also see that you are well past the basics in the use of the language, which suggests a higher level in your communication ability than that suggested by the grammatical errors you have made.

In your case a test such as the Cambridge test, may focus more on your grammatical errors and show your level much lower than your actual ability to communicate. The TOEIC on the other hand may prove more suitable as it is biased more towards communication ability.

However, what we must remember here is that your level will be dictated by the application, this means the need of the employer. You may find some employers are looking for communication ability and others looking for grammatical correctness.

So why is this? This is because certain job positions having maybe a focus on verbal communication skills in sales, negotiation, meetings ...etc will require a communication ability more so than grammatical correctness, whereas others for instance, advertising, administration, reporting ...etc, especially where official written documentation is concerned will focus more on grammatical correctness.

One must also realize that employer application will also be affected by a wish for a specific English form, British, American, Australian, or what is now growing up in the world called International English (people have the most imaginative ideas for creating things that sound wonderful, sadly perceived only for the purpose of sales.)

In our customer base we have all types of customer/employer. We train people for communication ability, grammatical correctness, fluency ... plus more depending on the application needed to be fulfilled by the employee.

And there you have the story. English in business is definitely not English in school!

Robert
Hamburg-English
www.hamburg-english.eu
www.onlineenglish.eu

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