B1/B1+ Intermediate

Business skills

• Job applications and interviews
• Describing yourself and your work
• Short personal presentations
• Active listening at work
• Professional networking

Grammar

• Present simple: routines, facts and permanent situations
• Present continuous: current, temporary and changing situations
• State verbs in the present simple
• Frequency adverbs and present-time expressions
• Present continuous for future arrangements

Business skills

• Work-life balance and employee wellbeing
• Burnout, boundaries and workload
• Remote work and flexible working
• Talking about leisure and free time
• Agreeing and disagreeing professionally

Grammar

• -ing forms after prepositions
• -ing forms after verbs of saying/thinking
• -ing forms after verbs of likes and dislikes
• To-infinitive after plans, decisions and adjectives
• To-infinitive to express purpose

Business skills

• Project progress and status updates
• Project challenges and past experience
• Goal setting
• Updating tasks
• Delegating responsibilities

Grammar

• Past simple for specific finished past events
• Present perfect for experiences
• Present perfect for past events relevant now
• Present perfect for changes affecting the present
• Present perfect vs past simple in workplace questions

Business skills

• Comparing services and systems
• Evaluating service providers
• Explaining product/service features
• Explaining customer benefits
• Linking ideas in business communication

Grammar

• Comparative forms: short adjectives
• Comparative forms: long and irregular adjectives
• Less and not as ... as
• Modifiers for big differences: much/far/a lot
• Modifiers for small differences: a bit/slightly/a little

Business skills

• Customer service and customer experience
• Customer retention and satisfaction
• Apologizing to customers
• Making and changing arrangements
• Scheduling meetings, travel and client visits

Grammar

• Present simple for future schedules/timetables
• Present continuous for definite future arrangements
• Plan/hope/intend/expect + to-infinitive
• Be + free/available for future availability
• Choosing present tenses for future reference

Business skills

• Employee training and development
• Learning methods and skills development
• Teamwork and exchanging ideas
• Presenting plans
• Discussing development plans

Grammar

• A/an for singular countable nouns and first mention
• Zero article for plural/uncountable nouns in general
• Zero article with proper nouns
• The for specific or known nouns
• The with previous mention and superlatives

Business skills

• Growth mindset and professional success
• Workplace rules and expectations
• Learning from failure
• Business storytelling
• Videoconferencing

Grammar

• Must and have to for obligation
• Mustn't for prohibition
• Don't have to / don't need to for lack of necessity
• Can for permission
• Can't for prohibition or impossibility

Business skills

• Personal budgeting and cost of living
• Interpreting financial and market information
• Presenting visual information
• Future business and market predictions
• Clarifying and paraphrasing financial information

Grammar

• Will + certainty adverbs
• May/might/could for possibility
• Be going to for evidence-based prediction
• Positive and negative future predictions
• Degrees of certainty about the future

Business skills

• Stress and time management
• Taking on workplace challenges
• Changing habits and trying new approaches
• Delivering bad news professionally
• Interrupting and handling interruptions

Grammar

• Indirect questions for politeness
• Statement word order in indirect questions
• If in indirect yes/no questions
• Polite question starters and request frames
• Changing direct questions/commands into polite indirect forms

Business skills

• Competitive markets and business rivalry
• Brand and product competition
• Defending an idea
• Making suggestions and recommendations
• SWOT analysis and competitive strategy

Grammar

• Some vs any
• Many vs much
• A lot of
• A few vs a little
• Any in affirmative sentences meaning “it doesn't matter which”

Business skills

• Business decision-making
• Evaluating alternatives and consequences
• Financial decisions and risk
• Negotiating agreements
• Compromise and win-win solutions

Grammar

• First conditional: likely future situations
• Second conditional: imaginary or unlikely situations
• Present simple in first-conditional if-clauses
• Will vs would in conditional result clauses
• Choosing first vs second conditional for real/hypothetical decisions

Business skills

• Innovation and new business ideas
• Technology and digital transformation
• AI-enabled products and services
• Presenting new ideas
• Generalizing and being specific in business discussion

Grammar

• Superlatives with -est / most / least
• Ranking with second/third + superlative
• One of the + superlative
• Present perfect after a superlative
• Using superlatives to compare one item with a group

Business skills

• Breakdowns, faults and product defects
• Troubleshooting workplace problems
• Customer complaints, refunds and recalls
• Checking understanding
• Discussing and solving problems

Grammar

• Which/that for things
• Who/that for people
• Whose for possession
• When for time
• Where for place

Business skills

• Describing and explaining business processes
• Supply-chain and operational disruptions
• Workplace/hiring communication processes
• Dealing with questions after a presentation
• AI and process automation

Grammar

• Passive form: subject + be + past participle
• Passive to focus on the action/result
• By + agent in passive sentences
• Passive across present, past and perfect/continuous tenses
• Modal passives and passive process descriptions

Business skills

• Employee performance and KPIs
• Personal qualities at work
• Praise and constructive criticism
• Performance reviews
• Setting objectives and preventing disengagement/quiet quitting

Grammar

• Agreement with majority and percentages
• Every/each + singular verb
• A number of + plural verb
• All and none: singular/plural by context
• Neither...nor and indefinite pronouns in subject-verb agreement