It’s a mistake to believe that if you learn specific phrases in English for either negotiations, presentations or meetings you will be proficient and successful when participating in these activities.  There’s no escaping the fact that you have to work hard on increasing your level of English in general to allow you to be flexible and deal with whatever comes at you when faced with other English Speakers. Learning fundamental techniques and principles for negotiating and presenting coupled with solid English classes comes before learning specific negotiating and presenting phrases.

Having said that, there are some phrases which are good to practice and “have up your sleeve” to bring out at the appropriate moment.

I’m busy preparing a negotiations course for this week. The focus of the course is to learn and practice “principled negotiation” rather than “positional negotiation”, meaning we take a collaborative approach to reaching agreement (win-win) rather than a competitive approach (win-lose).

As part of the course, I’ve included some specific language practice for those more sensitive stages of negotiation, where the other side is reluctant to engage in principled negotiation. (more…)