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business languageI’ve just started one-on-one lessons again after a really busy summer, when I admittedly did little in the way of language study (besides learning a few words essential to getting delicious treats on my European holiday). I’m lucky enough to have a personal tutor who is more than happy to focus on the things I need, rather than prescribing a course to me.

I decided to start formal lessons again because I am awful at motivating myself and, obviously, it’s great to have someone to correct my work and pronunciation in a live setting. I also really need to improve my language skills, because often none of my meetings are held in English, and I either have to struggle through them and rely on the presentations for information, or have someone translate for me. It’s especially frustrating that I can’t properly articulate myself (and I can be very opinionated sometimes).

So, I told my tutor that I wanted to focus on business language, but I really wanted it to be focused on one field, and predominantly so I can get by in meetings. Many business language courses focus on so many areas that aren’t useful for me (interviews, chairing meetings, foreign trade, HR issues), and my tutor is more than happy for me to just learn what I need.

In order to find out exactly what I need to learn, I’m going to gather my own materials in realia form – meeting minutes, documents, presentations, recordings from meetings. It’s a bit difficult to know exactly when you need to learn (especially since you obviously don’t know these things), but if I can eventually get to where I can understand all of my realia, I’ll be ready to move on to learning how to fire someone or something.

Where do you get your study materials?