B2/B2+ Upper Intermediate

Business skills

• Professional first impressions
• Online profiles and personal branding
• Brand image and reputation
• Arranging business meetings
• Contact details, work routines and plans

Grammar

• Present simple for facts, routines and permanent situations
• Present continuous for actions happening now
• Present continuous for changing/developing situations
• Present simple for timetables and schedules
• Present continuous for fixed future arrangements

Business skills

• Workplace motivation and demotivation
• Employee benefits, rewards and incentives
• Career development and job satisfaction
• Small talk and encouraging conversations
• Ending and leaving business conversations politely

Grammar

• Indirect questions
• Question tags
• Negative questions
• Auxiliaries and pronouns in question tags
• Polite question forms for professional conversations

Business skills

• Project life cycle and project phases
• Project scheduling, budgets, resources and risk
• Project-team communication and motivation
• Running project update meetings
• Progress reporting and questioning decisions

Grammar

• Present perfect for past actions with present results
• Past simple for finished past time
• Present perfect with since and for
• Present perfect for experiences and new information
• Time markers: already, yet, ago and last

Business skills

• Innovation and emerging technologies
• Technology adoption and workplace applications
• Generating and developing new ideas
• Presenting a product or service
• Explaining benefits and supporting ideas with evidence

Grammar

• Can / be able to for present ability
• Could for general past ability
• Managed to / succeeded in for specific achievements
• Will / may / might be able to for future ability
• Negative forms for inability across time

Business skills

• Business ethics and ethical marketing
• Corporate responsibility and sustainability
• Ethical sourcing and environmental impact
• Planning arrangements and responding to invitations
• Business decisions, plans and predictions

Grammar

• Present continuous for fixed future arrangements
• Will for spontaneous decisions and promises
• Present simple for timetables and schedules
• Going to for plans and intentions
• Will for predictions

Business skills

• Personality and decision-making styles
• Business decision-making processes
• Participating in decision-making meetings
• Evaluating options, resources and spending
• Social plans and team decisions

Grammar

• Countable vs. uncountable nouns
• Some and any
• Many, few and a few with countable nouns
• Much, little and a little with uncountable nouns
• A lot of with countable and uncountable nouns

Business skills

• Types of Outsourcing: Onshore, Offshore, Nearshore & Hybrid
• Benefits, Risks & Cost Savings of Outsourcing
• Selecting Outsourcing Partners & Deciding What to Outsource
• Presenting Outsourcing Data, Trends & Business Results
• Outsourcing, AI & the Future of Jobs

Grammar

• Indirect Questions for Polite Business Communication
• Word Order in Indirect Questions
• Passive Voice: Form (be + past participle)
• Passive Voice Across Tenses and with Modal Verbs
• Impersonal & Formal Reporting with Passive Structures

Business skills

• Employer–employee relations and employment
• Job conditions, career choices and job security
• Employee turnover, retention and burnout
• Negotiating with colleagues and making requests
• Bargaining, conditions and reaching agreement

Grammar

• First conditional for real future situations
• Second conditional for hypothetical situations
• If-clause and result-clause tense patterns
• Would / could in hypothetical results
• If I were you for advice and workplace choices

Business skills

• Starting and growing a new business
• Entrepreneurship, niches and business models
• Funding, investors and venture capital
• Networking and maintaining business contacts
• Business growth, competitors and results

Grammar

• Present perfect simple vs. continuous
• Present perfect continuous for duration and repeated activity
• Present perfect simple with state verbs
• Present perfect simple for completed results
• Since / for and quantity or frequency with the present perfect

Business skills

• Communication technology in business
• Information overload and communication strategies
• Handling information and problems on video calls
• Collaboration and access to information
• Effective communication in meetings

Grammar

• Intransitive phrasal verbs
• Transitive phrasal verbs
• Separable phrasal verbs
• Inseparable phrasal verbs
• Object placement and meaning in business phrasal verbs

Business skills

• Organizational change and rebranding
• Managing change and stakeholder concerns
• Presenting future business plans
• Giving balanced arguments
• Forecasting future activities and developments

Grammar

• Future continuous for actions in progress
• Future continuous for arranged future events and polite questions
• Future perfect for actions completed by a future time
• Probability expressions: likely, bound to, certain, doubtful
• Modal probability with may / might and degrees of certainty

Business skills

• Business data and analytics
• Data-driven decision-making and personalization
• Data privacy, ethics and algorithmic bias
• Discussing numbers, trends and performance
• Reporting survey and market findings

Grammar

• Reported speech and tense backshift
• Keeping the original tense when information is still true
• Reported questions and statement word order
• Reporting verbs beyond say and tell
• That-clauses and summarizing reported information

Business skills

• Cultural awareness in global business
• High-context and low-context communication
• Cross-cultural feedback, leadership and decision-making
• Business etiquette, formality and relationship-building
• Narrating cross-cultural business experiences

Grammar

• Past simple for main and consecutive past events
• Past continuous for background actions in progress
• Past perfect for earlier past events
• Combining narrative tenses in business stories
• Time linkers and sequencing past events

Business skills

• Staff appraisals and performance reviews
• Performance criteria, strengths and weaknesses
• Giving and receiving performance feedback
• Evaluating performance and raising issues
• Professional development, advice and goal-setting

Grammar

• Third conditional for unreal past situations
• Mixed conditionals for past causes and present results
• Could have / might have for unrealized past possibilities
• Should have / could have for regrets, criticism and advice
• If only + past perfect and formal conditional alternatives

Business skills

• Global mobility and international assignments
• Relocation policies and mobility logistics
• Career breaks and sabbaticals
• Secondments and international career development
• Presenting a case for relocation or time off

Grammar

• Remember + -ing vs. remember + infinitive
• Stop + -ing vs. stop + infinitive
• Go on + -ing vs. go on + infinitive
• Regret / try + -ing vs. infinitive
• Prefer / like + -ing vs. infinitive