BBC Interview

You're listening to Business Teaching Skills from the BBC World Service.

Let me go to Bruce Bradbury of kmp. Sprachenservice in Germany. Bruce, how do you feel that business English and general English are different?

First of all, I think one major area which really highlights the difference is the area of vocabulary. In contrast to general English, where people are going to need the language to go on holiday, to order meals in restaurants, to reserve hotels, to get round at the airport, we′re looking at a totally different area of vocabulary which is based around companies, business, commerce, finance, etc. etc.

The other difference, which is a partial difference, I think is the area of skills as well. When we′re talking about skills we′re talking about the typical day-to-day business skills that business people need to practise such as negotiating, presenting, going to meetings, telephone calls and effecting commercial correspondence.

Now obviously this is partially applicable to general English when it comes to things like telephoning and writing normal letters. But these are probably the two main fundamental areas where there′s a difference.

So Bruce in Germany is saying that the most important differences relate to specialist business vocabulary and special business communication skills.