Need to pick up some bits of a foreign language for business purposes? While you can study it much the same way as other people do, it’s usually wiser to approach the process from a different angle, combining both general language training with business-specific learning.
Study Your Language Lessons
Are you using a language learning software for your lessons? Did you enroll in a class? Have you bought a book? Whatever method you’re employing to learn a language, keep doing that, completing the lessons and working on the exercises. General language training, for the most part, is intended to lay the groundwork for your overall facility in the vernacular and should benefit you accordingly.
Business-Specific Learning
The problem with general language training is encapsulated in the term itself: it’s general. That means, you’ll be learning things the way the average person will need to. It doesn’t cater to your specific requirements, namely being able to use it for business.
While there’s nothing wrong with learning how to find the subway and barter at shops in Spanish, they are likely things that you have no need for (basically, prolonging your usable development). As such, it is important to focus a good part of your language training strictly on business applications.
To do that, try to integrate the following things:
- Pick out business-specific exercises (either from your language learning material or other sources) and focus your practice on them.
- Subscribe to business and finance blogs on the language you are trying to learn, using them for your comprehension exercises.
- Contact the consulate (or other organizations for that matter) for the country of the language you are studying and ask them to give business-specific recommendations.
- Focus on business-specific vocabulary practice when you’re doing extra work.