Buying English training can look deceptively straightforward.
You have employees, students or members of an organisation who need better English. You establish the budget, find a provider, compare a few courses or platforms, enrol people and measure the results.
Except it rarely works quite like that. A hotel wanting reception staff to communicate more confidently with international guests has a very different requirement from a university supporting overseas students with academic English. An international business using English as its common working language may have another requirement altogethe
Yet all three can easily end up buying something broadly described as “English training”. Before comparing providers, teachers, content, technology, AI features or prices, there is a more important question: What are you actually trying to change?
Here are ten questions worth considering before you start looking for the answer.
1. Why do your people actually need English?
“Improve their English” isn’t really an objective.
What do people need to be able to do that they can’t do confidently or effectively enough now?
Deal with customers? Participate in meetings? Write emails? Understand technical information? Study successfully? Give presentations? Work more effectively with international colleagues?
The more clearly you can answer that question, the easier it becomes to understand what sort of support might actually be required. And don’t assume everyone in the organisation has the same answer.
2. Do they actually need an English course?
It’s worth asking. If somebody occasionally needs to understand a document written in English, technology may already provide a perfectly adequate solution.
If they regularly need to negotiate with customers, participate in meetings or build relationships with international colleagues, that’s very different.
Sometimes the answer will be a course. Sometimes it might be targeted coaching, conversation practice, self-study, technology or a combination of several things. And occasionally, more English training may not be the answer at all.
Understand the problem before choosing the solution.
3. What English do they actually need?
“Fluency” is frequently presented as the goal. But does everybody need it?
A hotel employee may need a relatively limited range of English but need to use it confidently and naturally every day. A postgraduate student may require a much higher level of academic English. A senior manager may already have excellent English but struggle when presenting or negotiating.
So knowing someone’s current level is useful. Knowing what they need to do with their English is considerably more useful.
4. Are you dealing with one learning need — or fifty?
This becomes particularly important when organisations buy training for groups.
People may have different starting levels, roles, objectives, confidence, ages, educational backgrounds and previous experiences of learning English.
Language and cultural background can matter too. Putting everybody onto the same programme may be administratively convenient.That doesn’t necessarily make it educationally effective.
One size rarely fits everyone. The larger and more diverse the group, the more important it becomes to understand what sits underneath the headline requirement for “English training”.
5. How are your people likely to learn?
Some learners thrive in a classroom. Some prefer one-to-one tuition. Some learn remarkably effectively through self-study. Some need a teacher, deadlines and structure simply to keep going. Others have developed their English through reading, films, work, travel, conversation or combinations of all of these.
Technology and AI are adding still more possibilities. There isn’t one universally “best” way to learn a language.
So when evaluating a solution, don’t just ask: Does this programme look impressive?
Also ask: Are our people realistically going to use it?
6. How much time can people genuinely give it?
This is easily underestimated. Learning a language takes time. Buying access to a platform doesn’t create that time. Neither does arranging a weekly lesson.
If employees are expected to learn outside working hours, will they? If learning takes place during working hours, have managers genuinely allowed for it? If students already have demanding academic workloads, how much additional study is realistic?
A programme can be excellent and still disappoint because nobody created the conditions in which people could properly engage with it. The organisation needs to be realistic about this before expecting the learner to be.
7. Does everyone understand their part in the process?
Responsibility for a successful learning programme doesn’t sit with only one party. The provider needs to deliver what was promised.
The organisation needs to provide the right environment, support and time. And the learner needs to engage, practise and persist.
None can completely compensate for the absence of the others.
Buying access to learning is not the same as buying the learning outcome. Being clear about that at the beginning can prevent considerable disappointment later.
8. How will you know whether it worked?
Completion rates are easy to measure. So are hours studied, lessons attended and test scores. They can all be useful. But they don’t necessarily tell you whether the original problem has been solved.
If the objective was greater confidence dealing with international customers, has that improved? If it was participation in meetings, are people participating more effectively? If it was supporting international students academically, are they coping better?
The most useful measures should relate back to the reason the programme existed in the first place — not simply to whatever data happens to be easiest to collect.
9. What happens when someone isn’t progressing?
Not everyone progresses at the same speed. Some learners will fly. Others may struggle despite genuine effort.
Some will disengage. And some may simply have been given the wrong kind of learning.
It’s worth asking providers what happens then. How is lack of progress identified? What support is available? Can the approach be changed? And who is responsible for noticing that something isn’t working?
A good solution shouldn’t only work for the easiest learners.
10. Are you choosing the right solution — or simply the right supplier?
Price matters. So do teacher quality, technology, content, reporting, administration and service. But comparing suppliers too early can create a problem.
You may end up choosing the best provider from your shortlist without having established whether you’re buying the right thing in the first place. Before asking: “Which provider should we choose?” ask: “What should the right solution for our people actually look like?”
Then the supplier conversation becomes much more useful.
A simple starting point: ask your people
Before committing to a programme, organisations can learn a surprising amount simply by talking to the people expected to participate. Five questions can start the conversation:
1. What do you most need to be able to do in English?
2. When do you currently find using English most difficult?
3. How have you learned English previously — and what worked or didn’t work for you?
4. How much time can you realistically give to improving your English each week?
5. What would make you feel, six months from now, that the programme had been worthwhile?
The answers won’t tell you everything you need to know. And they certainly won’t design the programme for you. But they may expose assumptions worth addressing before significant time and money are committed.
Start with the need, not the catalogue
There are more ways to learn English than ever before: teachers, classrooms, self-study, online platforms, AI, coaching, conversation practice and combinations of all of them. That’s good news.
But more choice doesn’t necessarily make choosing easier. At Opportunities Through English, we believe the starting point should be the organisation and its people — not the catalogue of courses available to buy.
What are you trying to achieve?
What do your people actually need to do in English?
What’s getting in the way now?
Only then does it make sense to ask: What kind of solution might genuinely help?
Those questions sound simple.
Answering them properly across an organisation can be rather less so.
