Employees at a company may have different levels of English, even though they perform the same job. For example, Trendy ELD’s customer support managers began their training at Solid with levels ranging from A1 to B1. The opposite also happens: people with similar English proficiency but different professional responsibilities study in the same group.
Proficiency levels help us form groups. Work tasks guide us in deciding what to cover in class.
What to Determine Before Starting
At Solid English School, corporate training begins with testing the participants. If the results require clarification, the student has an additional conversation with the instructor. After that, the academic team can divide people into groups where they’ll feel comfortable working at the same pace.
But group composition is only part of the solution. To develop the program, the school gathers three more types of information:
- Company request: what changes the manager expects to see in the team’s work.
- Work situations: where employees use English—in chat rooms, in emails, during meetings, or in presentations.
- Participants’ challenges: what exactly is holding them back right now—unfamiliar vocabulary, a client speaking too fast, difficulty explaining decisions, or a lack of confidence in conversation.
To this end, the school’s team communicates separately with managers and training participants. The manager sees the department’s common goal. An employee might point out a situation that repeats daily: for example, they understand a client’s request but take a long time to find the right words to respond. These details form the basis of practical exercises.
One profession, but different levels: the Trendy ELD support team
Trendy ELD provides software and technical solutions for drivers in the U.S. Its support managers communicate with clients both in writing and verbally: they help them figure out routes, track work hours, or configure software.
At the start of the training, employees were at levels A1 through B1, and their main challenge was that, when communicating with native speakers, the Ukrainian team sometimes had difficulty understanding slang and handling crisis communications.
The employees were grouped by proficiency level, but they all shared the same professional context. The school compiled typical scenarios from support work and incorporated vocabulary related to routes and technical issues into the lessons. They worked separately on the slang that appeared in drivers’ messages. You can’t always understand these just by looking up the words in a dictionary, especially when a customer needs a quick response.
For a beginner and a student at the B1 level, the difficulty of the exercises will vary. However, both will practice the conversations they encounter at work.
Over the course of a year of study, all Trendy ELD participants improved their English proficiency by two levels.
One participant noticed a change in how she handled messages from English-speaking drivers: “…I no longer need a translator, since I now understand most of the context of what they’re writing.”
Same Level, Different Roles
Another common scenario is a mixed-level group. A developer, a QA specialist, a business analyst, and a project manager may all be at the Pre-Intermediate level and study together. However, even during a single session, each of them fulfills a specific communicative role.
The developer explains why a particular technical solution was chosen. The QA specialist describes the problem and clarifies the conditions for reproducing it. The business analyst reviews the requirements, and the manager approves the next steps. Everyone needs English to discuss the project, but the set of typical conversations varies for each of them.
Therefore, the session can be structured around a common scenario—a stand-up meeting, a task discussion, or a client demo—and give everyone the opportunity to practice their role. Participants learn to understand one another and keep the conversation going. At the same time, everyone practices what they’ll need to say in a real meeting.
That’s exactly why, within a single company, training groups don’t necessarily follow an identical curriculum. They’re grouped by language proficiency level, while the examples and exercises depend on the group’s composition and the participants’ work.
When the goal is to communicate more independently with the client
At League Design Agency, designers had to present concepts and discuss revisions directly with clients. Previously, the team lead handled all these conversations. This created delays: when he couldn’t join a meeting, it was harder for the team to move the discussion forward.
The school developed a program for the designers based on their projects. It included professional vocabulary as well as soft skills frameworks. The sessions were conducted in a format similar to a client demo: participants presented a concept, answered questions, explained their decisions, and proposed alternatives to suggested changes. They practiced English along with the skill of conducting such conversations.
According to the school’s team, designers can now hold meetings with clients without a team lead. While this doesn’t replace a formal language proficiency assessment, it demonstrates another important outcome: people have begun to perform their work in English more independently.
How to Evaluate Learning Outcomes
Before the program begins, it’s important to define not only the desired level but also a specific action. For example: conducting a demo without a manager’s help, clearly clarifying a client’s request, or responding to a complex message without spending a long time searching for the right words.
Solid English School assesses proficiency at every stage of the program to track participants’ progress in real time:
- an entrance test at the start (assessment based on the CEFR: grammar, vocabulary, fluency, pronunciation, coherence)
- a progress test every 15 lessons
- a final assessment during the 45th lesson to summarize the program
After a few months of study, you can revisit this task. The test will show language progress. And the manager and employee will be able to assess what has changed in their day-to-day work: whether the person speaks up in meetings, communicates more confidently in writing, or relies less on colleagues when speaking with clients.
The corporate team needs both sets of results. The proficiency level determines who to train with. The practical task determines exactly what to practice.
Олена Болган