Are you dreaming of making an impact in the workplace but struggling with communicating in English?
As a mining professional, you might feel that you spend way too much time trying to improve your English, only to continue to have trouble effectively and simply communicating in English.
You’ve watched countless videos, studied grammar books, and even spent money on courses promising better English in a short amount of time.
However, you're still not at the level you want to be at in your career.
The truth is that if you keep doing what you do, you're going to burn out before you ever reach the level of English proficiency you want.
The answer is much more simple.
Instead of continuing to learn everything, simply learn the skills required so that your colleagues and clients can understand you clearly when you speak in English. This will allow you to better express yourself and make an impact in your workplace.
Let me use an analogy to help you understand.
Let’s say your vitamin C level is low, and you want to fix it.
Instead of taking concentrated vitamin C pills, you decide to take multivitamin pills.
You know what’s going to happen next. You can take multivitamin pills every day, but your vitamin C level will not improve as much as you’d like because you are not focused on solving the problem.
It seems very straightforward, but this is exactly what has happened in your English learning journey.
You have tried to learn everything about English, but really, you only need to focus on learning the English that you need to communicate clearly in meetings and feel confident in presenting complex ideas in a simple way.
In order to improve your English to achieve these goals, you need to follow these three systematic steps.
1. Build your business English vocabulary
To clearly communicate in English, you will need to build your business English vocabulary (idioms, expressions, phrases). These are an important part of everyday English and they come up all the time in both written and spoken English. If you don’t have the basic business vocabulary skills, your English will not sound natural and there is a big risk of miscommunication.
Reviewing commonly used phrases and idioms in real life context (watching videos, being involved in role plays) will not only define their meanings, but provide context so you can use them in a natural way.
2. Improve your spoken communication effectiveness
By increasing your verbal communication effectiveness, you will overcome the current challenges of being clearly understood during conversations or when participating in meetings in English. Poor communication can significantly impact your confidence causing you to miss out on amazing workplace opportunities.
Building on the previous business vocabulary and reviewing videos of business meetings, presentations while being involved in role-play activities can really improve your spoken English skills and confidence.
3. Improve your business writing skills
Writing is often our first contact with colleagues and clients, so it is vital you get it right to deliver maximum impact. While it’s possible to review your English business writing skills, it’s hard to be truly objective unless you put your mind to it and follow a systematic approach.
Again, building on the business vocabulary framework in step 1, practising writing while reviewing some good examples (and poor examples) can really be effective in fine tuning your skills.
I have seen first-hand the impact that this approach has given to fellow colleagues and clients during my time working in mining in many international locations. By using a systematic approach to build on just the skills you need to address an immediate problem, you can quickly close the gaps in effective workplace English communication and reap the benefits.