China232.com Blog

Add and I are working on making many useful bonus courses to help you guys in all areas of your English learning.

We’re going to keep doing the podcasts of course, we’re just going to add a lot to what we’ve been doing.  I have a lot of things that I can think of teaching you guys off the top of my head.  Here are 3 of them:

1.  How to negotiate to earn more money in your current job

2.  Modern and effective ways to look for a better job

3.  How to totally kill a job interview and make sure you get the great job you found.

Those 3 things above are about making more money and getting a higher paying and more interesting job.

I’d also like to make some bonus courses about lifestyle things like dating and relationships.  Add was thinking about making some cooking courses (possibly with video)  Add is a great chef.

Before we get too crazy with making this bonus material, we’d love to hear from you guys about what you’d like to see the most.  We can really make any kind of courses that you guys want.  It just makes sense to get your advice first before we go too wild.

We did already make a first course, however, on Email Writing for Business.  I think it’s an extremely important topic.  I haven’t seen any good information on this stuff either, so we decided to go ahead and make our first bonus course.  This is going to be the first of many to come.  Please help us out by saying what YOU would like to learn about and we’ll do our best to make what you want.

By the way, I love the comments you guys keep leaving on these blogs.  I hope that you keep leaving more.  It helps your writing, and it helps us see some common writing errors.  I’m considering making another course about correcting the top 50 common mistakes non-native speakers make when they write general comments.  What do you think about that?

Our entire goal is to improve all areas of your English to as close to the “native” level as possible.  I KNOW this really CAN happen.

Again, here is the first course:  Business Email Writing Course

Looking forward to your comments.  Thanks!

English writing is super important for business. I can really see it more now than ever before.

Aside from China232, Add and I do some online consulting work for international brands. We work from anywhere in the world on our computers and we communicate mostly via email.

Often these emails go to the CEO, Marketing Director, and several other important people in the companies. These people care much more about the quality of ideas than about good grammar or vocabulary.

Some of the people in these companies speak English as a second language. Their English is quite good too. Many people have their MBA and have lived in the USA, Canada, or England for a few years. They speak and write in English everyday at work. There is still a problem…

I hate to say it, but it’s really easy to see who is a native speaker and who isn’t from reading only a few sentences of one email. Often these very intelligent people get ignored by the top people in the company because of language. As I said, their English is still pretty good, it’s just not quite good enough to really get noticed and move higher in the company.

It’s sad but it’s the truth. I keep seeing these hard working people earning less money than they should just because of their English. It’s weird. The bosses are not trying to be unfair, it’s just the way it works. The only solution I can see is to get better at English writing and communication.

Most (I think over 99%) of English learners get up to a certain level in English and then they stop trying to improve. People can understand their main ideas and no one corrects their mistakes anymore. The problem is that this level usually isn’t good enough for the real business world. Once you are in a company, which university you went to means almost nothing. It’s mostly about the “office politics” and the relationships you can form with other “major players” in the company. This is true with both big and small companies. If you want to build a good relationship and get respected from these people, you need to make sure that your writing is clear enough to really make people think. This isn’t easy since you are going to compete with native speakers. It’s possible, it’s just going to take some work.

We’re including a VIP writing section here to help with this important part of English learning. It’s no extra cost, just included in the $37 USD VIP fee that the members pay once a year. We’ll be here to push you and help you improve. I’ll make interesting writing assignments for you guys. I’ll read what you write and point out common mistakes that people keep making. Often these mistakes are quite small and subtle. If you promise to try your best and learn from my personal and honest advice, I guarantee you will improve a lot. This will really make a huge difference in your current or future career.

I’d love to hear your experiences and opinions about this topic. Don’t worry about making mistakes either, just write first. There is nothing to be embarrassed about. Confident people lead better lives anyway. Just try your best and learn from your mistakes.