Communication Strategies at Work
20-hour 1:1 intensive advanced (C1) level course
Victoria Road's 20-hour Communication Strategies at Work course is designed for busy professionals at B2/C1 level of English who are willing to communicate effectively and confidently and build strong relationships at work.
The course covers all the essential communication strategies that help you sound professional, assertive, open and diplomatic. It builds the foundation for clear, professional and respectful communication at work.
The course is based on the communicative method of Cambridge CELTA, putting your speaking at the heart of learning. It allows you to apply effective communication strategies in a natural, professional, and confident way in a wide range of challenging contexts at work.
The course is based on some of the leading Oxford & Cambridge coursebooks for international Business English students (advanced C1 level).
Find out more about the course below!
Course Syllabus
communicate effectively, sound professional and diplomatic and build strong relationships with colleagues in English
The intensive 20-hour Communication Strategies course aims to equip you with the effective communication strategies to help you interact with confidence, solve problems diplomatically and build meaningful connections at work. It is based on Functional Language, allowing you to 'function' effectively in professional context introduce yourself in a meeting or conference, establish rapport, express your opinion, give and respond to feedback, and handle problems diplomatically.
With a major focus on Speaking, Listening and Pronunciation, the course teaches you to sound confident, professional and fluent to sound professional, diplomatic and assertive.
Function 1 - Introducing Yourself
Communicative strategy: Introducing yourself, your role and area of expertise, your team and company and your future goals.
OUTCOME: You will learn how to confidently introduce yourself and your role in a business meeting or presentation, how to speak about your company / organisation and how to talk about your future goals and objectives. You will also learn how to answer questions from the audience in a spontaneous and relevant way.
Function 2 - Establishing Rapport
Communicative strategy: Sharing knowledge about another person, recalling past events in common, asking follow-up questions to keep the conversation going, echoing, active listening and showing interest.
OUTCOME: You will learn how to establish rapport with a new colleague or someone you have met before, how to ask questions to show interest in another person and keep the conversation going, how to react naturally and fluently and how to exit a conversation politely.
Function 3 - Expressing and encouraging personal views
Communicative strategy: Expressing personal views, framework for giving opinion, encouraging someone to express personal views, showing and explaining why you understand, explaining why you understand, offering a practical solution.
OUTCOME: You will learn how to encourage your colleague to express their view, how to share your perspective in a confident way, show empathy and respond to your colleagues' problems and difficulties.
Function 4 - Getting your point across & Dealing with misunderstandings
Communicative strategy: Reformulating, clarifying what is meant, illustrating or offering to illustrate a point, summarizing, saying you haven't understood, responding to misunderstanding.
OUTCOME: You will learn how to make yourself understood if you were not clear, how to say clearly and politely that you haven't understood something and how to deal with a misunderstanding in a cooperative and effective way.
Function 5 - Giving and/or Responding to feedback
Communicative strategy: Responding to positive feedback, taking on board negative feedback, challenging negative feedback, softening your messaging, sounding less direct.
OUTCOME: You will learn to deal with feedback, both positive and negative, in a polite and professional way. You will learn how to soften your message, sound truly professional and keep your calm even when you feel like you are getting defensive.
Function 5 - Being Diplomatic and Using Vague Language
Communicative strategy: Handling a disagreement diplomatically, raising a difficult point, handling a conflict, using vague language to sound less direct and non-confrontational.
OUTCOME: You will learn how to deal with disagreements, how to remain polite and diplomatic yet assertive, how to avoid a potential confrontation using vague language and showing reservations and how to raise a difficult point politely.
Function 6 - Polite Requests
Communicative strategy: Making a polite request, using indirect questions in speaking and writing, responding to polite requests, international differences in politeness.
OUTCOME: You will learn how make polite requests in both formal and informal settings, how to respond to a request and how the notion of politeness varies across cultures.
Function 7 - Building rapport in writing
Communicative strategy: mirroring, establishing common ground, international writing etiquette
OUTCOME: You will learn how to build relationships through email communication, how to mirror the other person's cultural / professional style to build rapport and how to navigate intercultural issues in terms of formality / informality.
Review & Course Feedback
You will review the studied material in several speaking role-plays helping you revise the communication strategies you have learnt. You will get detailed individual feedback on your progress and set up a personalised Action Plan with the tutor helping you to sustain your progress after the course.
COURSE OUTCOME
By the end of the course, you will have started to communicate much more effectively in professional settings. With the sound knowledge of communication strategies, it would be easier for you to build more genuine and trustful relationships with the people you work with. With extensive work on your voice pitch and intonation, you will learn to sound more natural, expressive and fluent to make colleagues want to listen to you and what you have to say.
FREE BONUS
Get a free 30-min 1:1 session on a topic of your choice!
Would you like to learn more?
Study materials
You will learn with the material from the best modern Business English coursebooks from BBC, Pearson, Cambridge and Oxford University Press. Here are some of the examples of the coursebooks used in class.
Students enrolled in the course have FREE access to all the study materials.
Personalised Business English Classes
Do you have specific needs at work? Victoria Road also offers personalised classes appropriate for your level and based entirely on your work context, area of expertise and individual communication needs.
Personalised classes generally include weekly briefings by email relating to your work activities and current tasks. Based on the student's brief, each class prepares you for handling a specific situation at work, imitating very closely the real-life context you work in.
Alternatively, if you do not an urgent need to use English at work, we would work more generally on expanding your work-related vocabulary, practising grammar structures, and working on natural and clear pronunciation. This allows you to make gradual and consistent progress and quickly improve your confidence in using English at work.
Classes are held once or twice per week, during lunch break (12:00 CEST) or Saturday noon (CEST).
To discuss your specific goals and needs, you are welcome to book a free Coffee Chat with Victoria.
Fees
20-hour Communication Strategies at Work
€660
Payment can be made in 2 or 3 installments via bank transfer.
Student Policy
To ensure a smooth and professional learning experience for both students and teacher, please take a moment to read the following policy carefully.
By booking lessons, you agree to the terms below.
1. Booking and Payments
-
Starting from September 2025, intensive courses are booked in 20-hour packages.
-
Each package can be paid in full or in two installments (60% upfront and 40% halfway through the package).
-
Once we agree on the payment mode, an invoice is issued and must be paid by the due date stated on the invoice.
-
Payment confirms your booking and secures your lesson times in the schedule.
-
Unpaid invoices or delayed payments may result in the loss of your reserved lesson slot.
2. Cancellations and Rescheduling
-
A minimum of 24 hours’ notice is required to cancel or reschedule a lesson.
-
Lessons cancelled with less than 24 hours’ notice are charged in full unless the student has a valid reason (medical emergency or child's illness).
-
Repeated short-notice cancellations may result in loss of a regular time slot.
3. Course Withdrawal
-
If you wish to pause or end your course, a minimum of one month’s notice is required before the next billing cycle.
-
Invoices that have already been issued are still payable.
-
In exceptional circumstances (e.g., illness, family emergency), arrangements can be discussed on a case-by-case basis.
4. Attendance and Punctuality
-
Please be ready to start at the scheduled time.
-
Lessons will finish at the agreed time.
-
If the teacher needs to cancel a class, it will be rescheduled or credited.
5. Lesson Credits and Deposits
-
Any prepaid lessons or deposits can be kept as credit for up to 6 months.
-
Credits are non-refundable but transferable to future lessons.
6. Communication
-
Please communicate any changes or issues as early as possible.
-
All communication should be respectful and professional.
7. Teacher Commitments
-
I am committed to providing high-quality, personalised lessons tailored to your goals.
-
I will always communicate clearly about scheduling, materials, and feedback.
-
I am committed to maintaining the confidentiality of all communications and information shared during the lessons.
8. Agreement
By booking lessons, you confirm that you have read and agreed to these terms.