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Improve your English on the job
This from Siemon:"I'm a sales man in an export company...
[ 2006-04-03 14:31 ]

Improve your English on the job

This from Siemon:
"I'm a sales man in an export company, my listening is so bad that i can't understand my customers, it's a big obstocal for me to do business.

"Our foctory specialized in Durable Medical Equipments, I need to explain our products, our factory to our customers and i must care about my customers' suggestion and complain. Some times i need to arrange our cutomers check in hotel , hold meeting ,company our customers to travel in the tour site ,and drink and eat!
I hope you can give me a help for my English lostening."

My comments:

First, a rewrite:
"I'm a salesman from an export company. I need help with my listening comprehension. My listening is so bad that I find it hard to understand my clients. It's becoming a big obstacle, to the point that it's beginning to hurt business.

"Our factory specializes in durable medical equipment. My jobs are to introduce products to clients and to respond to their suggestions and complaints when they have any. I sometimes double as a public relations officer receiving clients and keeping their company during their stay. I help them check into a hotel, go to meetings, go on tours, and of course eat and drink!

"In short, I hope you can help me with my English. Without improving my English, especially with my listening, I can not even enjoy all the wine and dine - all the good food and drinks are at the factory's expense and lately, I've not been able to enjoy it to the utmost without remorse."

As you can see, Seimon, I have taken (perhaps too many) liberties with that last bit of your letter, with the "eat and drink". That's one of the drawbacks of having somebody else write your letters for you.
I'm afraid you'll have to put up with me for the moment, before you could write your letters without asking for assistance. Make this an extra incentive to improve your English on the job.

And don't ignore the wining and dining part of your work either. The way I understand it, the most time you spend with any foreign clients is precisely when you're performing functions of a PR man or woman, meeting them at the airport, helping them settle at a hotel, going on tours with them and of course eating and drinking with them.

If the clients are good company, these can be grand times for fun, plus for picking up points and improving your English. Ideally, you should in the meantime be listening to some of the innumerous listening programs on sale at all book stores in everyplace. But I see no indications that you're currently doing anything of the sort. Therefore you must learn to make the most of your dealings with clients instead.

All these activities use everyday English. What you're looking for, you may protest, is improvement in business English.

You have a point. After all one can not be expected to talk competently about diabetes without knowing all the vocabularies such as insulin, glucose, cardiovascular, cataract, uremia and so forth.

These words are all fine and large, but they don't live on their own. You don't see any professionals speak jargons alone, no matter how much they would love to do so. Jargons are instead interspersed in everyday English. You don't have to know all of them to talk about the subject, either. A doctor, for example, will tell a diabetic that if they eat more often but less portions, exercise (by walking for instance) an hour or two after each meal, they'll probably be able to hold their blood sugar fluctuations to stable levels and thus avoid complications (that I'm not going to describe in terrific detail). In here, "complications" is probably the only jargon to pick up. And it's easy to pick it up if you have a reasonable command of everyday English to begin with.

As it appears that you're not reading or listening to any "business English" on your particular line of work, you must learn to take greater advantage of your clients, all in a good way, of course.

Make friends with your clients. Ask questions and learn from them. I know of one young man who used to tape-record all conversations with clients (with their knowledge and approval), so that he could listen to them a few more times later. You don't have to bug your clients' hotal rooms (that'll be considered espionage among global pharmaceutical competitors) or even try the tape recorder if you deem it less than handy. You need just be attentive, alert and ready while you are with those foreigners who speak better English than you do and who knows their business better than you do (The qualifying clauses are necessary because, I am sure you know what I am talking about, a lot of clients appear to be here only for the wine and dine).

I just hope that, for your sake, at least some of your clients are the real deal, that your factory may be able to cut lucrative business deals with them and that you can learn in the process.

As for listening to programs, they may not be needed if you can learn a thing or two daily at work.

However, if you want to try any, try them. For the moment, since you're not trying anything, anything will be good for you.

One day, when you're listening to two or three at the same time, you may start to be picky and choosey. All in good time.

Your starting point being a bit low, anywhere you go from here is up, which is to say you have a great future ahead of you.

Good luck.

 

About the author:
 

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for future use in this column.

 

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