English for Travel, Work and Study

In the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway most people you meet answer in fluent English, and in Berlin, Hamburg, Munich or Vienna it covers the hotel, the restaurant and most shops. In India, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Kenya and Uganda English is part of public life: signs, newspapers, forms and business use it alongside local languages. In Dubai, Doha and the other Gulf cities it is the shared language of residents from many countries, and on the tourist circuits of Thailand, Bali, Egypt or Peru hotels and tour operators work in it.

It stops sooner than many visitors expect. Rural France, Spain and Italy, most of Latin America and Russia run in their own languages, and in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia the second language is French. Japan, China and South Korea put English on station signs and menus in the big cities, but a question at a ticket counter or a pharmacy often meets a polite silence; a translation app and a few local phrases help more than repeating the question louder.

In the countries where English is the first language, the difficulty is speed, not vocabulary. The English of London, Glasgow, Dublin, New York, Texas, Sydney and Mumbai is one language spoken very differently, and native speakers drop sounds, join words together and use local slang. Many learners find a conversation with another non-native speaker, in the plain “international English” of airports and conferences, easier than a native at full speed.

English has no formal “you”, so politeness lives in the verbs and in small softeners. “Could you…”, “Would you mind…” and “I'm afraid…” make a request or a refusal polite; “Give me a coffee” is correct grammar but sounds abrupt, while “Could I have a coffee, please?” is normal. “Please” and “thank you” come more often than in most languages, including to a bus driver or a cashier, and first names arrive quickly, especially in North America and Australia. “How are you?”, and the British “You all right?”, are greetings, not questions: the answer is “Fine, thanks, and you?”.

• Lift or elevator: British and American English name everyday things differently: lift and elevator, chips and fries, queue and line, holiday and vacation, petrol and gas, the bill and the check in a restaurant.
• Which floor: In Britain, Ireland and Australia the street level is the ground floor and the first floor is one flight up; in the US and Canada the street level is the first floor.
• Dates: Americans write the month first, so 03/04 is 3 April in London and March 4 in New York. On a booking or a form, writing the month as a word removes the doubt.
• False friends: “Actually” means in fact, not currently; “eventually” means in the end, not possibly; “sensible” means reasonable, not sensitive; a “library” lends books and a bookshop sells them; “sympathetic” means showing understanding, not pleasant.
• Quite: In Britain “quite good” means fairly good, a mild compliment; in America it usually means very good. “Quite right” and “quite sure” mean completely in both.

English is the working language of multinationals, international finance, software, science and most cross-border email, and aviation and shipping use it as their common radio language. London, New York, Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, Dublin, Toronto, Sydney and Bangalore run their offices in it, and so do the regional headquarters of global companies in Amsterdam, Frankfurt or Warsaw.

Local languages still rule many offices. In Japan, South Korea and China, in France, Italy and Spain, in Germany's family-owned companies and across Latin America, English may open the meeting, but the detail, the contract and the conversation in the corridor happen in the local language. A professional who speaks only English usually works inside an international team there.

Register causes more trouble than grammar. American emails move to first names from the first reply and say directly what they want. British English is more indirect: “Perhaps we could look at this again” is a request, and “I'm not sure that works” usually means no. A first email opens with “Dear Ms Smith”, later ones with “Hi John” once the other side has written that way, and they close with “Kind regards”, “Best” or “Thanks”. British and American meetings start with a few minutes of small talk about the weekend, the weather or the journey, while Dutch and German colleagues come to the point sooner.

Employers hiring into an English-speaking workplace usually expect at least B2, and C1 for client-facing or senior roles, roughly IELTS 6.5 to 7. The employer rarely asks for a certificate itself; the visa, a professional licence or a university is what demands one.

The UK, Ireland, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand teach in English at every level. Outside them, English-taught degrees are common in the Netherlands, where many bachelor's programmes run entirely in English, in the master's programmes of the Nordic countries, and in Germany, where many master's courses at public universities are taught in English but few bachelor's degrees are. In Asia, the universities of Singapore and Hong Kong teach in English, and Malaysia hosts branch campuses of British and Australian universities.

For a degree, universities typically ask for IELTS 6.0 to 7.0 overall, often with a minimum in each skill, or a TOEFL iBT score of around 80 to 100 on its former scale; law, medicine and the humanities sit at the top of that range. Most also accept Cambridge C1 Advanced and PTE Academic, and many take the Duolingo English Test. Each university sets its own score, and a department may ask for more than the university's general minimum. A score half a band short is not the end: a pre-sessional English course of some weeks before the degree, or a foundation year, leads into the programme on a conditional offer.

Exchange students usually need B2, proven by a test or by their home university's own language assessment. Scholarships such as Chevening in the UK and Fulbright in the US do not waive the requirement: the host university's English threshold still applies.

An English course can itself be the reason for the stay. Australia's student visa lists “English language intensive courses (ELICOS)” among the programmes it covers, and the US F-1 student visa names language schools among its institutions. In the UK, visa-exempt nationals may take “short study of up to 6 months” with an Electronic Travel Authorisation instead of a student visa, which covers most English courses. In Europe, Ireland and Malta are the other main destinations for English language schools.

The conversions are approximate, and each institution publishes its own table. IELTS 6.5 sits around the border between B2 and C1 and 7.0 is usually read as C1; a TOEFL iBT score of about 95 on the former 0–120 scale corresponds to C1. ETS now reports TOEFL on a 1–6 scale built to mirror the CEFR, with the 0–120 score shown beside it during a transition period. Universities accept the widest range of tests; immigration authorities accept fewer, and each keeps its own list.

The UK takes only Secure English Language Tests from approved providers: IELTS for UKVI, PTE Academic UKVI, LanguageCert, Trinity College London inside the UK and Skills for English outside it. New Skilled Worker applicants need B2, as do students on degree courses; partners start lower, at A1, and step up at each extension; settlement needs at least B1 together with the Life in the UK test. An ordinary IELTS Academic without the UKVI label does not count.

Canada measures in Canadian Language Benchmarks: Express Entry accepts IELTS General Training, CELPIP-General and PTE Core, and the Federal Skilled Worker Program needs CLB 7 in each of the four skills, equal to IELTS 6 in each. Australia's skilled visas start at “Competent English”, IELTS 6 in each skill or an equivalent score in another accepted test. New Zealand's Skilled Migrant Category asks the principal applicant for IELTS 6.5 overall or an accepted equivalent. The US sets no English test for work visas; the formal test comes at naturalisation, where an officer checks reading, writing and speaking during the interview. Citizens of majority English-speaking countries are usually exempt, and the immigration authority's own page is the last word before booking a test.

Moving up one CEFR level takes roughly two hundred hours of guided study, so B1 to B2 means six months to a year at a few hours a week, or a few months in an intensive course abroad. IELTS sits at test centres in cities worldwide, on paper or computer; TOEFL iBT at test centres or at home under remote supervision; PTE on computer at Pearson centres; the Duolingo English Test online at home. Most institutions accept IELTS, TOEFL and PTE results for two years; Cambridge certificates do not expire, although a university may still ask for a recent result.

A learner dictionary does more than a bilingual one. The Oxford Learner's Dictionaries and the Cambridge Dictionary define words in simple English, play the British and American pronunciation, and mark which words are formal, informal or dated. Move each new word into Anki with the sentence you found it in. English Grammar in Use explains one grammar point per two-page unit, with exercises, and comes in a separate American edition.

Listening is where self-study pays most, because English spelling says little about sound. BBC Learning English gives graded listening with transcripts, and its short programmes such as “6 Minute English” fit a daily commute; YouGlish plays a word or phrase in real videos by speakers of different accents, which settles how it is actually said. For a test, work from the official material: the Cambridge sample papers and the official IELTS practice tests show the format and timing exactly.

What no tool does is keep you talking when you run out of words, or tell you that a correct email sounds cold to a British reader.

Many learners stop improving at B1 or B2: they read well and follow slow speech, but native speakers at full speed stay hard to follow and their own spoken mistakes stay fixed. A tutor works on exactly that gap, because it only closes by speaking with someone who listens and corrects.

Use the trial lesson to test the fit. Ask where the tutor is from and which accent they teach; how they correct you and whether they explain pronunciation; what they would cover in the first month for your goal; and, for an exam, how many candidates they have prepared for IELTS, TOEFL or Cambridge, which scores those candidates reached, and whether they practise with official papers.