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Business EnglishIntermediate

Business Email in English

Eleven lessons for people whose emails are correct but land wrong

Business Email in English

About this course

This course is for people who already write English at work. Your grammar is fine, nobody has ever complained, and yet something is off: you ask twice for the same thing, a polite request reads as a complaint, a refusal takes four paragraphs and the reader still does not understand that the answer is no. The problem is almost never grammar. It is what the words do to the person reading them.

Eleven lessons take apart the business email: the subject line, the first sentence, the one thing you are asking for, the sign-off. Then register and tone, and the difference between British indirectness and American directness. Then the emails everybody writes and few write well: a request, a chase for something overdue, a refusal, bad news, an apology, an introduction, a follow-up. Finally the hard ones: disagreeing with your manager, escalating, answering a rude email, writing to a room full of recipients, and writing the email that lawyers will read later.

Every English phrase and every sample email stays in English, in both language versions of the course. What gets translated is the explanation: why it is written that way, how the reader hears it, and what goes wrong. Over twenty complete emails are ready to copy and adapt. Level B1 to B2. Three lessons include a short recorded conversation. After each module there is a test, and a final test at the end.

Course curriculum

  1. The anatomy of a business email

    The subject line, the first sentence, one ask per email, the sign-off — and the phrases that arrive as something you did not mean to send.

    • 1.The subject line, and the email you should not send12 min
    • 2.The first line, one ask, and the sign-off14 min
    • 3.Phrases that arrive as something else15 min

  2. Register, tone and what the words really mean

    Formal, neutral and friendly; greetings, contractions, exclamation marks and emoji; British indirectness against American directness; and the sentences that arrive translated from Russian.

    • 1.Formal, neutral, friendly: picking a register14 min
    • 2.British indirectness, American directness, and phrases that mean the opposite16 min
    • 3.False friends and sentences translated word by word13 min

  3. The emails everybody writes

    Requests and replies, chasing what is overdue, refusals, bad news, apologies, introductions and follow-ups — with complete samples you can adapt.

    • 1.Asking, answering, and chasing what is overdue17 min
    • 2.Saying no, delivering bad news, apologising18 min
    • 3.Introducing yourself, following up, introducing two people15 min

  4. Difficult emails, many readers, and the record

    Disagreeing upwards, escalating, answering a rude email, writing to a room full of recipients, and the email that lawyers will read a year from now.

    • 1.Disagreeing upwards, escalating, and answering a rude email18 min
    • 2.Many recipients, cc and bcc, and the email lawyers will read17 min