You speak good English, and you know the vocab of your job. So why study “l’anglais professional” ? Shouldn’t you just brush up on your conversational skills, practice some small-talk and try to master the present perfect?

Well, there are a few reasons why “Berufsenglisch” might be more useful than you think.

1)    The language of your company may not be industry-standard. One of my students missed attending talks at a conference because he didn’t realise that they were relevant to his position (the old “company secretary” confusion). There will certainly be a slew of close synonyms that you need to explore (witness procurement / purchasing / sourcing / buying / acquisitions).

And that’s before we get into differences between UK and US English, and its many other variants.