My name is Giovanni, and I grew up in southern Italy. For the past six years I have been happily working at an international construction firm. Part of my job involves daily email correspondence with clients, mostly in English – not a problem for me now.

But when I first started, I often had the impression that people weren’t reading or couldn’t understand my emails.

When learning ESL, using idioms is not only a great way of showing off your newly learned vocabulary, but it can also be a great way of expressing yourself in a much more natural way.  We have chosen a handful of common idioms that can be used in a business setting and we will be explaining what they mean and how they can be used.  This way, we can get you sounding native in no time!

“Ahead of the curve”

This popular idiom can be used to express ones progress, particularly when there is an average or a normal range involved.  It can also be used to explain where one stands with regards to normal trends.

My name is Monika and I am from Indonesia. Many international companies have representative here, and like many of them, the one I work at uses English as its business language. The thought of conducting a meeting in business English was daunting at first and my first experience was a complete disaster.

I thought I was prepared well enough, but one thing I didn’t take into account was the various accents people have when speaking English. It also didn’t help that my vocabulary wasn’t what it is today. For the life of me I just couldn’t understand what the others were saying some of the time. I felt stressed and completely forgot to consult the notes that I had, so everyone thought I hadn’t prepared at all. Eventually I had to request a short break and took a few moments to calm my nerves. After that, things went better but it was definitely an experience I will never forget.

Learning another language and culture can expand your professional horizons. See what career opportunities could be available to you if you know a foreign language.