Blog

Professional Phone Etiquette Skills For ESL Employees

Professional phone etiquette refers to the specific set of skills required to maintain a phone conversation at work. Everything from active listening, to pronunciation fall under this umbrella term of professional language skills. In fact, it even includes things like being aware of how loud and quickly you speak. Because without facial expressions or body language, everything about your voice matters. Which is part of what makes professional phone conversations so intimidating, even for those who are fluent English speakers. It also contributes to overwhelming ESL employees (who speak English as a Second Language) just by mentioning the phone. This is where corporate language training comes in.
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Business English Training Is Critical For ESL Programmers

Business English training is one of the most powerful investments that any company can make, in any industry. But unless you hire computer programmers or are one yourself, understanding the English language might not have always been a top priority. Which is all particularly true for computer programming and web developers. For whom the jobs required an understanding of the inaccessible programming languages (like Python, C++ and Java for example) to carry out even the smallest requests. Meaning these jobs never actually needed employees to understand English. But rather, they just needed to read and write computer code. Which, for the most part, has been kept at an arms length from the general public.
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Limited English Employees & Improving Language Proficiency

Limited English employees is a phrase that refers to the working people, who have a limited understanding of the English language. This population might arrive from other countries to work in the United States. Either permanently, on a corporate sponsored visa, or to work in a flagship location overseas. There is a variety of companies, that operate in a variety of industries that are frequently looking to hire this population of workers. Those arriving at work with a Limited English Proficiency (LEP) might not be fully aware of- or forthcoming with- their true English proficiency level. So, what do your hiring managers do with this information?
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Employee ESL For Work & Developing A Language Support Plan

Employee ESL (or English as a Second Language) at work can be daunting. Both for your employees and for your leadership team, as well. Firstly, because people want to do well. ESL employees- who are already struggling to communicate- experience an increase in anxiety and a decrease in confidence. Their employers and leadership team most likely sees those struggles, but still need to see improvements. So how do you develop a language support system, that teaches ESL for work?
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