English Lessons

Business English is one of those areas where a lot of mid-level learners quietly stall. Your everyday English might be perfectly comfortable — you can chat about the weekend, order in a restaurant, tell a story — but the moment a meeting agenda lands in your inbox or a client asks about your turnover, things suddenly feel a lot trickier.

The good news is that business English isn’t really a separate language. It’s mostly a layer of vocabulary and a handful of set phrases sitting on top of the English you already know. Learn the right two or three hundred words, and an enormous part of professional conversation opens up.

In this lesson we’ll work through the core vocabulary you actually need: company structure, money, meetings, markets, useful verbs, the mistakes I hear most often, and a quick quiz at the end so you can check yourself. Grab a coffee and let’s get into it.

Company structure and roles

Before you can talk about a business, you need to be able to talk about the people in it. English uses a fairly consistent set of words for who does what.

  • The CEO (Chief Executive Officer) or MD (Managing Director) runs the whole company.
  • A manager is in charge of a team or a project; a supervisor typically oversees a smaller group day-to-day.
  • An employee is anyone who works for the company; your colleagues are the people you work alongside.
  • An intern is usually a student or recent graduate doing a short, often junior, placement.
  • The board (short for board of directors) makes the big strategic decisions; the shareholders are the people who own a piece of the company.
  • A department is a section of the business — Marketing, Finance, HR, and so on.
  • The headquarters (often HQ) is the main office; a branch is a smaller office somewhere else.

A small note on pronunciation: colleague is COLL-eeg, not coll-EEG, and employee stresses the last syllable: em-ploy-EE.

Money and finance terms

Money vocabulary is where I see learners hesitate the most, partly because several words sound similar but mean very different things.

  • Revenue (or turnover) is the total money coming into the business before any costs are taken out.
  • Profit is what’s left after you subtract costs from revenue. If costs are higher than revenue, the business makes a loss.
  • A budget is the amount of money planned for something — a project, a department, a campaign.
  • An invoice is the document you send a client asking them to pay.
  • An expense is money the business spends; a cost is similar, but tends to refer to the price of producing or running something.
  • The margin is the difference between what something costs you and what you sell it for, usually expressed as a percentage.

So you might say: Our turnover is up 12% this year, but rising costs are squeezing our margin, so the actual profit is roughly the same as last year. One sentence, six pieces of business vocabulary, and a real meaning behind it.

Meeting and email vocabulary

Meetings and emails are where business English really lives. Get comfortable with this set of words and you’ll sound noticeably more professional almost overnight.

  • The agenda is the list of topics for a meeting; the minutes are the written notes of what was decided.
  • To schedule a meeting is to arrange it for a specific time. To attend is to be there.
  • If you can’t make it, you might need to postpone (move it later) or reschedule (move it to a different time).
  • To follow up means to check back on something later. I’ll follow up with the client on Friday.
  • One of the most common email phrases is I’ll get back to you — meaning I’ll reply with an answer soon.
  • If you’re sending a document, you’d write please find attached or simply attached is…
  • And regarding is the slightly more formal way of saying about: I’m writing regarding your invoice from last week.

A polite, fluent-sounding email almost writes itself once you have these phrases ready: Hi Anna, just following up on our chat — please find attached the updated agenda. I’ll get back to you regarding the budget by Thursday.

Markets and selling

If your job touches sales, marketing, or strategy, you’ll need this next set of words.

  • Your target market is the type of customer you’re trying to reach; your customer base is the customers you already have.
  • A competitor is another business selling something similar.
  • To launch a product is to release it for the first time.
  • Your brand is the personality and reputation of your business — the logo, the tone of voice, the way customers feel about you.
  • B2B means business-to-business (you sell to other companies). B2C means business-to-consumer (you sell to ordinary people).
  • The supply chain is the whole journey of how a product is made and delivered, from raw materials to the customer’s hands.
  • Demand is how much customers want something; growth is how much your business is expanding.

So a typical sentence might be: We’re a B2B company, and our growth this year has been driven mainly by stronger demand from our European customer base.

Useful business verbs and phrases

A lot of business English is carried by a small group of high-frequency verbs. Make these automatic and your fluency in meetings will jump.

  • To hire someone is to give them a job. The opposite is to fire someone (for poor performance) or to lay them off (when the company simply doesn’t need the role anymore).
  • To recruit is the broader process of finding and bringing in new staff.
  • To negotiate is to discuss the terms of a deal until both sides agree.
  • When you close a deal, you finalise the agreement; when you sign a contract, you make it official on paper.
  • To deliver on something means to actually do what you promised. We need to deliver on our targets this quarter.
  • To scale up is to grow a successful idea into something bigger.
  • To restructure is to reorganise the company — often a polite way of saying that some jobs will change or disappear.

These verbs come up in news headlines, LinkedIn posts and internal emails every single day. The more you spot them in the wild, the faster they’ll stick.

Common mistakes to watch out for

Three quick traps that even strong learners fall into.

1. Boss vs employer. Your boss is the person you personally report to — the human being who tells you what to do. Your employer is the company that pays you. My boss is Anna, and my employer is Maltalingua — not the other way round.

2. Salary vs wage. A salary is a fixed annual amount, usually paid monthly to office workers. A wage is paid by the hour or day, often to manual or shift workers. So you’d say her salary is €40,000 a year but he earns a wage of €15 an hour.

3. "Make business" vs "do business". This is a classic. In English, you do business with someone; you don’t make business with them. We do business with companies in over twenty countries — never make business. If your first language uses a verb like fare, faire or machen here, train yourself to switch to do.

Mini quiz — 10 questions

Time to test yourself. Choose the best option for each sentence.

  1. The total money a company brings in before costs is called its (profit / revenue / margin).
  2. The written record of what was decided in a meeting is called the (agenda / minutes / schedule).
  3. People who own shares in a company are called (employees / shareholders / suppliers).
  4. The people you work alongside every day are your (colleagues / clients / competitors).
  5. If a meeting is moved to a later date, it has been (postponed / attended / launched).
  6. A company that sells something similar to yours is a (supplier / customer / competitor).
  7. When a company releases a new product, it (launches / hires / negotiates) it.
  8. If costs are higher than revenue, the business makes a (profit / loss / budget).
  9. The phrase "I’ll _____ to you on Friday" — what fits best? (get back / make business / lay off)
  10. The correct phrase is "We _____ business with clients across Europe." (make / do / take)

Answers

Here’s how you did.

  1. revenue
  2. minutes
  3. shareholders
  4. colleagues
  5. postponed
  6. competitor
  7. launches
  8. loss
  9. get back
  10. do

How many did you get right? If a few of these still feel shaky, the fastest way to lock in business vocabulary is to use it with a teacher who can correct you in real time and push you into role-plays — meetings, negotiations, phone calls, the lot. Get a quick quotation for an English course in Malta and you could be practising your boardroom English with a sea view before you know it.