global work and life abroad
Working with clients in Ohio, buyers in the Netherlands or a ward in Leeds asks for more than vocabulary: pace, phrasing, directness and the first ten seconds of a phone call. Pieces for people who work and live across borders.
Calls with other countries, moving abroad and being understood first time.
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moving abroad: phone calls, neighbours, doctors and a new workplace culture
You passed the tests, packed the pressure cooker and found a flat. Then the real exam starts: a bank's phone line, a doctor who asks quick questions, a neighbour who says "alright?" and walks on, and colleagues who call the director by her first name. Here is how to handle the everyday conversations of a new country.
Case studiesCase studythe nurse who moved to Leeds
Eight years of nursing in Kottayam and Kochi, a new job on a busy medical ward in Leeds, and a voice that kept getting lost in fast handovers, broad Yorkshire vowels and phone lines. What the coaching worked on, conversation by conversation.
English at work in IndiaIndian English phrases that confuse global teams, and what to say instead
Indian English is a full, legitimate variety of English, used every day by millions of people. But some of its everyday phrases mean nothing, or something different, to a colleague in London, Ohio or Dubai. This is not about correcting anyone. It is about choosing words that land first time.
Case studiesCase studythe business owner and the export client
A family business with an excellent product, a new buyer in the Netherlands, and an owner who could run a factory floor in Malayalam but went stiff the moment the video call opened. What the coaching worked on, call by call.
English at work in India"I understand English but I can't speak it": what is actually happening and how it changes
You follow the film. You read the documents. You write good emails. Then someone asks you a question out loud, and the words will not come. This is not a mystery, and it is not a lack of intelligence.
Landmark MomentsChicago, 11 September 1893five words to a hall of strangers: Vivekananda in Chicago, 1893
A young monk from India, by his own account unprepared and close to panic, stood up in a packed Chicago hall in 1893 and opened with a greeting. The hall erupted. More than a century later, the first line of that speech is still widely quoted in India. What happened, and what can a nervous speaker learn?
Landmark MomentsKerala, August 2018when the water rose: how Kerala communicated through the 2018 floods
In August 2018, Kerala had its worst floods in close to a century. Hundreds of people died and well over a million had to leave their homes. Alongside the soldiers, sailors and rescue teams, the response ran on words: official statements, volunteer websites, WhatsApp groups, fishermen calling to each other across flooded lanes, and a running fight against rumours.
The ExperimentsMixed evidencedo listeners trust accented speech less? what the accent and credibility studies really found
In 2010, two researchers in Chicago reported that listeners rated simple trivia statements as less likely to be true when they were read in a foreign accent. The finding spread fast. Since then, several careful attempts to repeat it have found no effect. Here is what the research says, and what it does not.
Thought StudiesEssaythe room where nobody speaks English as a first language
A Kochi engineer, a Brazilian product lead, a German buyer and a Japanese supplier get on a call. Nobody in it learned English at home. And quite often, it goes beautifully. We think there is something in that room worth studying, and something in it that native speakers could borrow.
Thought StudiesEssaysilence as a sentence
We coach people to speak. And yet some of the most important things our learners ever communicate are said with no words at all: the pause before a price, the question left hanging, the quiet that follows bad news. Silence is not the absence of a message. It is a sentence in its own right, and like any sentence, it can be clear or confusing.
Thought StudiesEssaytranslating yourself: thinking in one language, speaking in another
Millions of professionals in India and the Gulf do a quiet piece of work every day. They think in Malayalam, Tamil, Hindi or Arabic, and they speak in English. Something is lost in that crossing, and something, surprisingly, is gained. This essay is about both, and about the person who makes the crossing.
field notes
- the most reliable sentence in business: let me check and confirm by tomorrowA checked answer by a named time is more trustworthy than a quick yes.
- twelve ways to get round a word you can't findA missing word is a detour, not a dead end. Describe it, and keep going.
- your accent is not your problem: being understood first timeKeep your accent; fix stress, pace, word endings and numbers, so people understand you first time.
- the first ten seconds of a phone call in a new countryName, reason, what you need, slowly: the first ten seconds set up the whole call.
- email and chat tone at work: what to write instead of kindly do the needfulSay exactly what you need, by when, and why, in plain words: it reads as polite almost anywhere.
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practise this on your own situations
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