Business English

You want to ensure accurate and professional correspondence with your international business contacts. Our Business English course is designed to improve your or your employees’ practical language skills for the modern business world.


Target group

Our course is aimed at all those within your organization who communicate with international business contacts. They might include HR managers, policy staff, directors, international office staff, library staff, executive assistants and consultants. Have you recently taken on new staff? The courses offered by Taalcentrum-VU will ensure that they make a smooth and speedy transition into your organization’s culture with a good command of English.
We have already helped employees at organizations including the City of Utrecht, SNS REAAL and Statistics Netherlands to achieve this goal.

What will you learn?

The training course will enable you to brush up your written and spoken English, giving you greater confidence to communicate at a professional level with your English-speaking business contacts. After taking part in the course, you will have a greater awareness of your common mistakes in English and will be able to express yourself more fluently and assuredly.

Course content

We will design a course syllabus based on your personal learning needs. Below you can find examples of some of the subjects typically covered during such a training course.


Oral proficiency

  • General vocabulary and professional jargon
  • Pronunciation, stress and intonation
  • Role-play Telephone conversations and presentations
  • Customer-friendly communication skills
  • Talking to other non-native English speakers
  • Understanding the cultural differences (e.g. polite usage and indirect forms of communication)

Written proficiency

  • E-mails, letters and memos: structure
  • How to structure a text (word choice and techniques)
  • Standard phraseology

And if necessary, grammar (verb tenses, prepositions, word combinations and collocations).

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Types of training courses

The customized training course Business English can be given as an in-company training, and on an individual basis or in groups of two. You can also register for one of the open enrolment courses.
Check out our course dates and register online.

Contact us

Are you interested in registering for this writing course yourself or on behalf of others in your organization? Please fill in our contact form or call us on +31 (0)20 - 598 64 20. We’ll be happy to arrange an appointment to discuss the options.