What makes a professional language training relationship last for five years?
In October over five years ago, I had a phone call with a Barcelona based IVD company.
What began as an opportunity to help a highly specialised team make their daily use of English more manageable has developed into a long-term process of shared learning and professional growth.
The company operates in the highly specialised IVD sector, where communication in English is part of everyday professional life. Over time, the needs have evolved, and so has the focus of our work.
Looking back, I can see five stages that have shaped the journey so far.
1. Awareness
The first step was becoming more aware of existing habits, recurring patterns and gaps in English.
Many communication difficulties remain invisible until we start noticing them. A person may know what they want to say, but not necessarily recognise the patterns that make saying it more difficult.
Awareness creates the basis for change.
2. Control
Once these patterns become visible, the next step is learning how to manage them.
This is not simply about correcting mistakes. It is about developing practical tools that allow professionals to make different choices when they communicate.
3. Presence
From there, the focus can move beyond correctness.
How do you come across in English?
How does your voice, delivery, phrasing and overall way of communicating affect the way others experience you?
Professional communication is not only about whether something is linguistically correct. It is also about how you occupy the communication space.
4. Impact
The next question is what happens on the other side of the interaction.
How does your communication land with colleagues, clients, partners or other stakeholders?
At this stage, communication becomes less about the speaker alone and more about the interaction between speaker and listener.
5. Precision
Finally, there is the ongoing process of fine-tuning.
Once communication is functional and confident, there is still room to work on detail: language choices, pronunciation, rhythm, delivery and the small elements that can make professional communication more precise and effective.
Why five years matters
Five years of working with the same team provides something that short courses rarely can: continuity.
It allows patterns to emerge over time, needs to change naturally as professional responsibilities evolve, and training to respond to what people actually encounter in their working lives.
It also creates the opportunity to move beyond the question of whether someone has “improved their English”.
The more interesting question becomes:
What can they now do with their English that was more difficult before?
That is the kind of progress I find most meaningful.
Language training in a specialised professional environment cannot be separated from the reality in which the language is used. The work needs to respond to changing responsibilities, changing communication demands and the different pressures that professionals experience as they become more involved in international work.
Five years after that first phone call, the journey is still continuing. And that may be the most valuable part of it.
We are not trying to complete English. We are continuing to develop the ability to use it effectively as the team’s professional world grows.
Do you need help communicating clearly in English?
I help senior professionals who want to communicate with greater clarity and confidence in English.