English requirements for employers

All 4 skills in language learning are important: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. However, you can develop them competently, focusing on things that employers will like and make you stand out from the crowd of job seekers. It is important to understand that a foreign language is not a goal, but a means to an end. Your goal determines how you should learn a foreign language and what you should work hard at. In this article we will tell you how to develop the most important skills for your career.

What do employers say?

According to a survey conducted by Cambridge, most employers emphasize two skills in particular: reading and speaking. Modern specialists have to read a lot: these are letters from colleagues and clients, professional literature, requirements of technical specifications, additional information from the Internet, job and product reviews. To cope with everything, you need to be able to read any text and pick out the main things from them. For those who work with people, the task is even more difficult: sometimes you have to catch the mood and needs of the writer from the text. You have to develop emotional intelligence in parallel with reading in order to read between the lines.

How do you develop reading for work?

Developing the skill of reading for a career is difficult, but doable. First, you have to practice a lot. It is worth reading a variety of texts every day: news, posts on social networks, fiction books and professional literature. Try to look for legal and technical documentation in English that is relevant to your work. By learning to understand such papers in advance, you will save time and money.

Secondly, you need to constantly replenish your vocabulary, and at the expense of words that are difficult for you. It often happens that a person reads a text, understands 90% of it, and guesses about the rest. You need to do the opposite: take apart these remaining incomprehensible words, learn their translation and meaning, write them down in the dictionary and constantly repeat. Progress is only possible where you make an effort. Don't be lazy to learn new things when you encounter them. Your diligence will pay off a hundredfold when you have an easy job and your salary is higher than that of your colleagues.

Third, learn to emphasize the main points in texts. To begin with, you can do this directly on paper, writing down the author's main thoughts. Try to make sure that such notes are not a brief paraphrase, but a squeeze of meanings. For example, a fiction text may have many characters who do many things. A condensed retelling of events may take many pages. But the main idea of the work is usually one. That's what the book was written for. You must be able to extract such ideas.

It's also worth looking in texts for what's useful to you personally. Sometimes it can be strange: you read a detective novel, and the most useful to you is a recipe of a pie that was made by a minor character. It's easier to understand the usefulness of this activity when you read professional literature. For example, you read a news story about artificial intelligence. Think about what it means for your profession and your life. How will it affect them? Could something be useful to you, make your work more efficient and easier? This approach will help you find what you need in the messages and words addressed to your project team as a whole. A letter from your boss to your entire department may contain information that is useful to you personally.

What about speaking?

Speaking skills are closely related to reading. A lot of it progresses through vocabulary growth, but the job market demands more from you. Not only do you need to communicate your thoughts clearly and understandably, you need to persuade people and get them to like you.

First of all, you have to learn how to act in different language situations. You can imagine different scenarios where you would explain something to different people. For example, imagine that you need to tell about your work: to a child; to a colleague from the neighboring department with whom you only have a working relationship; to a close friend; to the head of a department who is more competent than you; to an elderly neighbor. In all of these situations, you would speak differently and use different words. It makes no sense to burden a child with things they can't yet understand. And to a more experienced head of department, you won't explain everything "on your fingers" like you would to a small child. In a conversation with a friend you can be emotional and use informal language, but you won't talk like that to a colleague who is not close to you. You should practice your behavior in different language situations often. Then you will be able to find the right words for everyone at work, too.

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Another good idea is to work with tone of voice and intonation. You've probably already noticed how speakers of your language speak in different tones. You can say the same words gently, threateningly, encouragingly, boringly, and lifelessly. For example, imagine a loving grandmother saying to a child: "Come here!". And how would a bully who wants to get into a fight pronounce those words? And the father, who was told at a parent-teacher conference that his child is getting only "D" grades?

Tones and intonations are important in English, too. Practice them in front of a mirror, trying to put different emotions into the same words. You can watch movies and imitate the tones of actors in different scenes. These people represent emotions professionally and will be great examples.

It's interesting, but complicated. Where can I get basic knowledge?

Don't forget about basic language learning. You can read difficult texts and experiment with speech only when you have a good command of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. For those who want to learn English effectively and quickly, we offer two teaching options at ILAC School: you can learn the language at a distance learning course, or by coming to Canada on a study visa. In the latter case you can not only learn English, but at the same time get a sought-after profession in the country, e.g. truck driver. Please contact our immigration specialists for consultation to apply for a study visa and to find out about the possibilities of studying in Canada.