Business English conversation practice

Meetings are where many people go quiet, usually because the conversation moves faster than they can find a way in. Practise the moves rather than single words:

• Getting in: "Can I add something here?" or "Just to come in on that point..."
• Disagreeing without sounding rude: "I see it a bit differently." or "That works for now, but I’m worried about..."
• Checking you’ve understood: "So what we’re saying is..." or "Just so I’m clear, who’s taking that on?"
• Closing: "So the next steps are..."

Notice how soft most of these are. In many workplaces, especially in the UK, a direct "No, that’s wrong" lands harder than the speaker meant. A teacher can tell you how a phrase sounds to the person hearing it, which is hard to learn from a book.

Calls are harder than meetings in a room, because you lose most of the visual cues that tell you when to speak. Practise opening a call and getting to the point, keeping things moving when the line is bad, and summarising at the end so nobody leaves with a different idea of what was agreed.

If you work with clients, sell, or look after customers, the hardest conversations are rarely the technical ones. They’re explaining a price, saying no, handling a complaint and following up without sounding pushy. Practise them as role-plays: your teacher plays the client, and you try the conversation two or three different ways until one feels like you.

Freelancers and remote workers often need one more thing: small talk that builds a working relationship over video, with people they may never meet. Five minutes of easy conversation at the start of a call helps build the relationship a shared office used to.

Practise the update you give every week before you practise a big presentation. Short, clear spoken updates ("Here’s where we are, here’s what’s blocking us, here’s what I need") are what most jobs ask for most often. For longer presentations, rehearse the opening and the questions at the end. Those are the parts you can’t read from a slide.

1. Bring real material: next week’s agenda, an email thread, the slides for a presentation. Remove anything confidential first.
2. Tell your teacher which situation you want to practise and who the other people in it are.
3. Role-play it. Then ask your teacher for the two or three phrases that would have made it easier.
4. Do it again with those phrases.
5. Keep your own list of phrases from each lesson, and use them at work the same week.

If you have stepped up to manage people, add feedback conversations and chairing meetings to the list. If you are moving to work in another country, add the everyday talk of a new office: introductions, lunch, asking for help.

Every Nattive teacher holds a teaching certificate or a degree, and before you book you can see their intro video, the levels they take, where they’re from and their price for each lesson length. You don’t need a teacher from your industry. You bring the content, and they help with the English. If a profile mentions experience close to your work, treat it as a bonus.

Message a teacher first if you want to check how they would plan lessons around your job. You pay per lesson in GBP, with no subscription, so you can book a lesson before a big meeting and nothing in between. Our Learn English page has more about learning English on Nattive.

10% of the teacher’s lesson price, included in the one price you see, goes to Nattive Classroom. It’s pooled until there’s enough for the next course: 8 hours of free group English courses for a small group of up to five learners in developing countries, with a teacher paid for every hour. Places are for learners in the developing countries we select for the programme, subject to funding and places. We’re building the first course now, and we’ll publish what has been funded and taught as it happens. See how Classroom funding works on Our impact.