You know the feeling. You are practicing, but your speaking doesn’t seem to be getting better. You go through the same speaking exercises and work on the same phrases, but you still don’t feel great about your communication. This can be particularly tough when you’re a beginner. You feel like you are trying, but you’re just not getting the results anymore. In business English, plateaus are common when you’ve been practicing for a while, and your practice isn’t challenging anymore. The key is that you don’t necessarily need to push yourself harder. You just need to observe your communication more closely, and work on the parts that break down when you are under pressure.
One of the main things that will help you to break through a plateau is to recognize that your communication may be getting a free ride. You may have worked on sounding confident at the beginning of a message, but you struggle when you need to respond to questions in the middle. You may feel confident delivering a routine message, but struggle with a sensitive or urgent message. Instead of practicing a full message over and over again, try breaking your communication down into smaller parts, and practicing each part separately. Just practice your opening. Just practice the transition to your main point. Then just practice the closing sentence where you talk about next steps.
Once you isolate a piece of your communication, it will be easier to see where it needs work. A big danger for you when you are on a plateau is to assume that your communication is improving when it isn’t. You may practice a response, and it may sound great to you when you are alone in a room. But when you are actually in a conversation, it falls apart. That’s why it’s so important to refine your communication rather than just repeat it over and over again. If you’re used to practicing the same message, try modifying the scenario slightly while keeping the purpose of your communication the same. Turn a routine business update into a business update that you are late with. Turn a business request into a firm business request. Turn a prepared business explanation into responding to an unexpected business question.
This will help you to practice adapting your communication, which may be the thing that’s holding you back. Another exercise that can help is what I call “contrast practice.” Record yourself responding to the same business scenario in two different ways. The first time, respond the way you would normally. The second time, shorten your sentences as much as possible, and take out any soft language or transitions that you use. Then listen to both versions, and compare where your communication was stronger. This exercise can be really helpful because as a beginning business English learner, you may not be able to hear your own patterns until you contrast them with something else. You may realize that your typical style of communication uses too many words before you get to the point. Or you may realize that you sound weaker when you try to sound too polite. Contrasting your communication will help you see those patterns.
If you have 15 minutes, spend the first few minutes identifying a business communication scenario that you have found challenging. Spend the next few minutes practicing just one piece of the communication at a time. For example, practice the opening sentence. Then practice the key sentence. Then practice the closing sentence. Finally, spend the last few minutes putting the communication together, and practice the full response two times. Once slowly, and once at a more normal speed. This kind of practice is particularly helpful when you are on a plateau because it helps you to stop feeling frustrated and vague, and start to identify exactly what you need to work on.
Instead of saying to yourself, “I’m just not improving,” you say, “This is what I need to work on, and this is how I need to fix it.” Plateaus are normal in business English. They don’t mean you’ve stopped improving. They may just mean that you are starting to hear your own communication more clearly, and you are recognizing places where your communication falls down that you may not have noticed before. That can be uncomfortable, but it’s a good sign. Just keep practicing scenarios that are close to your real life, and try to narrow down exactly where your communication is breaking down. You may find that you break through your plateau quietly, without even realizing it. The next time you have a tough business English scenario, your response will sound better than you expected. Or you will find yourself in a meeting, and you will realize that it doesn’t feel so overwhelming anymore.