Business English Labs
Small-group training targeted at English for business meetings, presentations, sales, and other specific workplace communication situations.
Sometimes employees need more than a one-day workshop, but they do not need a broad English course either.
They may already speak enough English to communicate in general, but struggle to communicate with impact in one particular part of their jobs: contributing to meetings, giving presentations, providing customer service, selling, negotiating, or another communication situation they face regularly.
This is why we provide “Business English Labs” for smaller groups of trainees.
English Labs provide focused, intensive communication skills training over 4-6 weeks. It is like a mix between a one-day intensive workshop and a multi-month long-term English course.
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Who Are ECSC’s English Labs For?
Again, the key is that English Labs are designed for small groups of employees who share similar communication needs.
They work particularly well when participants:
- Already have some English ability but need to use it more effectively
- Perform similar roles or responsibilities in the same team or department
- Communicate with the same types of customers, colleagues, or stakeholders
Ideally, an English Lab has two to six participants.
That is deliberate. With a small group, everyone gets substantial speaking time. The trainer can listen closely, provide individual feedback, and give participants repeated opportunities to try something again after receiving correction.
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What Can English Labs Focus On?
Each English Lab is customized and built around a defined communication need of your employees.
For example:
Business Meetings
Participants can practice giving updates, expressing opinions, asking follow-up questions, clarifying information, agreeing and disagreeing, and contributing more confidently to discussions.
Presentations
Training can focus on organizing information, introducing key points, explaining data, transitioning between ideas, speaking clearly, and responding to audience questions.
Sales & Negotiations
Participants can develop language for understanding customer needs, presenting solutions, explaining value, handling objections, negotiating terms, and advancing the conversation.
Other Labs can be developed around customer communication, internal collaboration, supplier relationships, or another recurring workplace situation.
The topic depends on what the participants actually need to do.
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Looking for Business English Training that enables higher performance? Send Us a Message
How Do English Labs Work?
English Labs are not built around a textbook syllabus.
Instead, the training develops over a series of sessions focused on the communication situation being developed.
Communication skills improve through repeated use. Participants do not just hear a useful phrase once and move on. They use the language, find out what works and what does not, and get another chance to communicate more effectively.
Over several weeks, that creates much more speaking practice than can fit into a single training day or even an extended course with a large number of trainees in the sessions.
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Why Keep English Labs Small?
Opportunities to practice speaking are reduced when too many people are put into one training group.
In a class of twelve employees, each person may spend much of the session listening to other people speak.
With two to six participants, everyone speaks.
Small groups also allow the trainer to respond to individual problems without losing the shared focus of the lesson. That’s because the training is highly customized for everyone in the room and feedback is almost always relevant to everyone.
So while it’s true that you may have to arrange more programs to accommodate all employees who need training, they get more out of the training.
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Want to explore Business English Labs for your teams? Give Us a Call
Workshops, English Labs, or Group Classes?
The right format depends on what your employees need.
A Workshop is for teams or departments that need focused practice around a particular communication skill, but it is a concentrated one-day program.
An English Lab works with a much smaller group over several weeks, allowing more individual attention, repetition, and development around a specific workplace situation.
And Group Classes are broader programs for beginner- and intermediate-level employees who need more general English communication development.
Keep in mind, all three could be useful for your organization, it just depends on what your employees need. Most of the companies we support benefit from more than one of our group-training formats.
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Why Does ECSC Customize English Labs?
Even if two different companies choose the same focus (meetings, presentations, negotiations, etc.), their employees may use English very differently within that situation.
A sales team dealing with overseas distributors does not have the same conversations as an engineering team reporting to regional management – yet they both have those conversations in meetings.
So, before training begins, ECSC Thailand looks at who the participants are, what they do, who they communicate with, and where communication problems occur during meetings.
The language and practice activities are then built around those precise situations.
This is part of our English Plus approach: real English combined with the actual communication skills people need to speak effectively at work.
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English Labs: Program Details
English Labs are normally delivered as:
- 15-hour programs
- Sessions twice per week
- 90-minute onsite sessions
- Typically 2-6 participants
Programs include pre-training alignment summary with your HR/Training decision makers, participant speaking assessments, and post-training certificates, feedback, and recommendations.
See pricing page for typical investment range.
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Focused Training. Repeated Practice.
English Labs do not try to teach employees everything. They are not general English courses.
Instead, they identify a communication situation that matters to your employees’ jobs and gives them focused, repeated opportunities to improve.
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Further Reading:
Looking for information on our other group-training services?
→ Explore our Workshops and Group Classes.
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Visit our Contact Us page to inquire about English communication skills training for professionals in Thailand. Or, schedule a discovery call with our Founder, Don Gorr.
