It is surprising that half of all communication issues are caused by misunderstanding. In January, the participants of English lessons were not only breaking the language barrier, but also building “bridges” for effective communications. In Ulyanovsk, they discussed ecological communication with co-workers, in Moscow, they learned how to small talk and at the end of the month, all offices met on a webinar featuring a colleague from Great Britain.

A training session on Business English held on January, 22nd at VDA meeting room (in Ulyanovsk) can easily be named a short Conflictology course. Not only had Alena Trubetskova, a trainer, prepared useful vocabulary tasks but also the ones regarding conflict stages, ways of negotiating and even typology of people difficult to communicate with.

The participants practiced English enthusiastically. They tried on the roles of “difficult” co-workers or their dialogue partners who were to maintain a conversation.

– I liked Business English classes very much! – shared his impressions Alexander Karpukhin, Forward Planning Engineer, VDA. – Organization, the ways of information delivery and the environment – everything was great. Thanks a lot to everybody – the organizers and participants! I’m especially grateful to Alena!

– One of the best training sessions I have ever visited! – added Nailya Shigabutdinova, Leading IFRS&MA Specialist, VDA. – It was very busy, we enriched our vocabulary, concentrated on speaking. 2 hours passed so fast. Thanks to the trainer for the interesting way of topic discussion and paying attention to each participant!

In Moscow, the training session in Business English, which was held on January, 25th, dealt with Smart Talk, which is a chitchat that enables dialogue partners to take a closer look at each other and get ready for business conversation.

– The training session was interesting and educational. I liked the fact that there was a lot of time to discuss the issues, – said Vladislav Divak, Specialist, Special Cargo Transportation Management Unit, ABC.

– Such meetings are an excellent opportunity to practice speaking English, – added Anton Lobanov, Specialist, Special Cargo Transportation, ABC. – The most useful is to learn new words and collocations, discuss different topics in groups. It is also a great opportunity to get acquainted with your co-workers.

On January 26th, the third “Wanna Chat?” webinar with foreign co-workers was held. Do you know what the most frequent question people ask the organizers? “When is the next webinar?” Because webinars are a nice way to practice English and get acquainted with co-workers from other offices, countries and continents in an informal setting.
This time Bryony Murphy from Great Britain did not only share her opinion regarding rules of office communications, but also charmed her co-workers with her contagious cheerfulness:

– Amazing and productive (online) meetings with our co-workers from England, – said Mikhail Sanin, Maintenance Planner, AMTES. – Today was positive, informative, educational and humorous. Thanks for excellent organization of meetings and communication! I’m looking forward to new project and continuation of those which have already been started.

– It was really interesting and educational! – shared her impressions Svetlana Gorbanets, Senior Specialist, Tax Control, ABC. – I’d like to point out a good quality of audio and video, as well as excellent preparation of questions, which excluded pauses between discussions of different topics. Moreover, it was pleasant to get acquainted with Bryony, see her attitude toward work and life. I think that the present form of webinars completely justifies its existence and helps indicate your level of English, as well as motivates you to study English further.

The useful things that participants learned during the webinar:

• Office traditions in Russia and England: what the English should learn from the Russians;
• Polite ways of refusing a dessert and who food pushers are;
• The ways of paying a compliment to a co-worker and why the word “beautiful’ is not applicable in office communications.

Are you interested? You can watch it too here.

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