This is one of the most common questions we get from new students, and the honest answer is: it depends less on your job title than most people expect. Here's how to think about it.
Choose General English if...
You're still building your core foundation — solid grammar, everyday vocabulary, and the confidence to hold a natural conversation. This matters even if your end goal is professional English: workplace communication is built on top of general fluency, not instead of it. If you regularly hesitate in everyday conversations, struggle with tenses, or find yourself avoiding speaking because you're not sure you'll be understood, General English is the right starting point — skipping ahead to specialized vocabulary before this foundation is solid tends to produce fluent-sounding phrases stacked on shaky grammar, which shows quickly in real conversation.
Choose Business English if...
Your everyday conversational English is already reasonably solid, and what's actually holding you back is a specific, work-shaped gap: writing emails that sound professional rather than translated, following meetings that move quickly between speakers, presenting ideas persuasively, or negotiating with confidence. Business English courses assume a working foundation and spend their time on the situations general courses don't cover in depth — formal register, meeting language, presentations, negotiation, and professional writing.
A quick way to check
Ask yourself: if a friend switched a casual conversation to a work topic right now, would you struggle with the English, or specifically with the professional version of it? If it's the English itself — you're reaching for words, restructuring sentences, losing the thread — that's a general fluency gap. If your English holds up fine casually but stiffens or gets less precise the moment the topic turns professional, that's a Business English gap specifically.
We sometimes see students push straight into Business English because it matches their job title, then find themselves frustrated that a general fluency gap keeps resurfacing underneath the professional vocabulary. Getting the foundation solid first almost always pays off faster in the long run.
Not sure which describes you?
That's exactly what our free placement test is for — it's not just a level number, it's a quick read on where your specific gaps are, which is usually enough to point you toward the right course. And if you're still unsure after that, message our team directly; we'd rather have a five-minute conversation upfront than have you start the wrong course and switch later.
