Society is becoming more and more consumer orientated and with stiffer competition in all sectors, businesses really need to do what they can to ensure customer satisfaction and retention. However, when looking at strategies to deal with these issues, one area that is often overlooked is how a business communicates with its clients.
English is now the world’s third most common native language, and remains, for now the preferred language for world business. With many sectors now having employees who regularly converse in English, the requirement for learning English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is growing, even in countries where English is considered a native language.
It would be easy to imagine that the teaching of English to advanced learners is confined to those teaching English as a Foreign Language in non-English speaking countries like China and many others, but as Jeff Heasman, Dean of the Faculty of Law at Cavendish University explains below, this is far from the truth, and ESP (English for Specific Purposes) is a requirement in many parts of the world where English is an official language – including here in the UK.