Mark Overton
Director of Language Training at PGLS
With global mergers and acquisitions (M&A) bouncing back in the second half of 2024, and global supply chains poised for significant growth in 2025, it is no surprise that the demand for corporate language training has continued to rise. Its numerous applications demonstrate the value of corporate language training, including the competitive advantage of increased workforce productivity.
Organizations leverage language training to build relationships with frontline employees. Executives rely on it to strengthen overseas partnerships. Specialty industries, such as healthcare and education, depend on it to communicate better with patients and students.
Learning a new language can seem daunting to those who haven’t dusted off their language skills in years—especially among those who have never learned a second language.
Here’s the good news: corporate language training is significantly different from high school or college language courses.
Business language training curricula are designed to meet learners where they are, prioritizing effective communication over perfection. Training content is also highly personalized to meet individual, workplace, and industry-specific needs, prioritizing the most important vocabulary and real-world use cases for participants.
Want to learn more about corporate language training? You’re in the right place. This blog post will explore why language training is an effective tool for productivity and employee engagement. We’ll also unpack some common misconceptions born from experiences in the university classroom.
What is Corporate Language Training?
Corporate language training helps participants gain a working language proficiency in a relatively compressed period. As a customizable service, language training addresses highly focused, industry-specific language needs, such as manufacturing, finance, healthcare, education, and others.
Borrowing from the military, studying language, regional expertise, and culture (LREC) maximizes personnel abilities to engage effectively with complex overseas assignments. That said, language training for companies is rather different, and examples (from a United States-oriented perspective) include:
- Plant supervisors learning the language(s) of their frontline staff
- Educators learning the language(s) their students speak at home
- Nurses and physicians learning their patients’ most commonly spoken languages
Commercial language training reflects real world trends, driven by industry growth, workforce changes, and immigration patterns. For example, a large contracting firm may train its site managers to become effective in construction Spanish. A startup incubator may put aspiring CTOs through Hindi language training to connect with software developer talent in India. Financial traders transferring to Hong Kong may enroll in accelerated Cantonese training with a special focus on professional culture and topics.
No matter the use case, endeavoring to learn a new language can be daunting. Corporate language trainers are attuned to professionals’ needs, many of whom have not been in a classroom for years. Trainers create a supportive environment and a focused curriculum, which reduce learner anxieties and increase learner outcomes.
Corporate Language Training vs. University Language Learning
One frequent inquiry about corporate language training is how it compares to academic language learning.
University-based language learning has a much broader scope to cover. In addition to linguistic training, professors engage students in the broader context of culture, etymology, history, geography, literature, and media. Students are graded on the perfection of their spelling, grammar, and syntax. Progress is measured in years.
On the other hand, corporate language training serves a more focused purpose. Language trainers are adept at creating curricula that address the immediate needs of their participants and their sponsoring organizations. The workflow is accelerated, and the goal is to help learners obtain a basic working proficiency as soon as possible.
Services Provided by Language Trainers
Corporate language training is an in-person or virtually conducted service for individuals, small groups and large groups. Trainers are responsible for the end-to-end learner experience, starting with proficiency testing and concluding with final assessment and reporting.
Step 1: Language Testing
Language testing helps trainers gain a baseline understanding of students’ current proficiency levels. It also helps them refine the sponsoring organization’s goals and requirements of the training, including desired timelines. This step may be optional in some cases, such as when all students start with zero proficiency.
Step 2: Curriculum Development
Based on the results of the language testing and input from the sponsoring organization, language trainers develop a custom curriculum. Ideally, trainers will use a range of kinesthetic, visual, and auditory learning modalities so participants can build their skills through their preferred learning styles.
Step 3: Measure Progress
At specific intervals, instructors measure individual student progress to ensure no one is lagging behind. The Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) scale standardizes eleven spoken proficiency levels from zero to five, where level one is an elementary proficiency and level three is a general working proficiency. The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines are another well-respected framework for measuring language abilities, with five main levels (novice, intermediate, advanced, superior, and distinguished) and three sublevels.
Instructors will use at least one of these systems to benchmark real-time student learnings against global standards of proficiency. This process helps identify the specific areas where students need additional support, such as vocabulary, comprehension, or complexity. Individual assignments and focused tutoring can help those students advance faster in the areas where help is needed most.
Step 4: Final Assessment and Reporting
The final assessment allows instructors to give a final report on each participant’s proficiency on the ILR scale. These reports are provided to the sponsoring organization.
While the format and structure tend to be similar, every curriculum can be uniquely tailored to industry use cases. As roles that frequently interface with diverse groups of people, some of the most common applications include language training for executives, healthcare professionals, and educators.
Executive Language Training
Business leaders working with overseas teams or moving to the United States from abroad can find great value in executive language training. The content is highly focused on business skills, management skills, local business customs, etiquette, and presenting to groups.
Even if a corporate leader is stationed in the United States, executive language training can be useful if overseas partners, clients, or satellite offices speak languages other than English. The effort to learn and communicate in a local language is a sign of respect, which can go a long way towards employee retention and client loyalty.
Language Training for Healthcare Professionals
Studies have proven that patients with limited English proficiency (LEP patients) experience worse outcomes on average, from longer hospital stays to higher rates of clinical error. Language training for healthcare workers can help close this equity gap by enabling better communication about symptoms, history, and pain between patients and providers.
Language Training for Educators
Language training for educators empower teachers and administrators to gain proficiency in the languages their students speak at home. Those languages are often Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, or Tagalog.
Understanding the community makeup and immigration patterns of school districts can help educators relate to their students, communicate with parents, and even connect families to critical services.
Book Corporate Language Training for Your Organization
Investing in language training also comes with fringe benefits. One study found that bilingual children are better multitaskers than monolingual children. Not only can language training encourage productivity and help foster a sense of higher purpose among your workforce, but employers who invest in continuing education enjoy higher employee retention rates.
When you’re ready to explore corporate language training for your organization, make sure you choose a provider who:
- Benchmarks learner progress against the ILR (or a comparable) standard
- Offers a welcoming yet rigorous environment for learners
- Creates tailored curricula for your specific industry needs and personnel requirements
PGLS is an industry-leading provider of language training. Contact us today to learn more.