Most Polish professionals score reasonably well on a written English test. They can draft a professional email, follow a project brief, and read a contract without difficulty.
But put them on a live video call with a client in London or a negotiation with a procurement team in Amsterdam and something different happens. Confidence drops. Precision disappears. The impression left behind is not the one intended.
This gap between perceived ability and real spoken performance is one of the most common and costly problems facing Polish companies operating internationally today.
Poland Has a Language Confidence Problem — and It Is Not What You Think
Poland has become one of Europe’s most important nearshoring hubs. Professionals across Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław, and beyond work daily with international clients from the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States. English is everywhere. Most Polish professionals have studied it for years.
And yet, the complaints from international clients are consistent: meetings lack clarity, key points get lost, and Polish counterparts sometimes struggle to assert their position under pressure in a live spoken exchange.
This is not a reflection of intelligence or effort. It is a reflection of how English is typically taught and tested. Written exams, grammar exercises, and language apps measure one set of skills. Speaking confidently in a high-stakes client meeting requires an entirely different set.
The danger is that most professionals, and the managers who oversee them, have no accurate picture of where the real gaps lie.
Written Tests Do Not Measure What Matters in Business
An app score tells you something. A grammar test tells you something. But neither tells you how someone performs when a client in Dublin asks a challenging question mid-presentation, or when a negotiation in English moves faster than expected and the stakes are high.
Spoken Business English is its own discipline. It involves fluency under pressure, precision in vocabulary, the ability to structure an argument clearly, and the confidence to hold ground politely but firmly. These skills are not assessed by any written test and they cannot be built by an app.
If your team is client-facing, presenting internationally, or representing your organisation in English-speaking environments, you need to know how they actually perform, not how they perform on paper.
The Smarter Starting Point: An Oral Assessment
Before investing in any training programme, the most valuable thing an individual or organisation can do is understand the real starting point.
iTalkTerms tutors are currently offering a limited number of complimentary Business English oral assessments. This is not an automated tool. It is not AI-generated feedback. It is a structured, spoken assessment conducted by a native English-speaking tutor, the same calibre of professional who delivers all iTalkTerms sessions.
After the assessment, the learner receives a written report identifying specific strengths, clear gaps, and priority areas for development.
This is the foundation any serious training should be built on.
Find out more and request your complimentary assessment
Availability is limited and assessments are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
What the Assessment Reveals
Many professionals are surprised by what a proper oral assessment surfaces. Common findings include:
Fluency Under Pressure
Many learners speak well in relaxed, prepared settings but lose structure and precision when conversations become unpredictable. Live client calls are rarely relaxed or predictable.
Vocabulary Gaps in Specific Contexts
A professional may have strong general English but limited vocabulary in the areas that matter most to their role, whether that be finance, project management, negotiation, or technical presentation. Generic language learning does not address this.
Confidence and Register
Knowing what to say and knowing how to say it at the right level of formality and with genuine authority are different things. Assessments reveal where confidence breaks down and why.
Listening and Response
In a real meeting, communication is not one-directional. The ability to understand fast, accented, or informal spoken English from a native speaker and respond clearly, is often where performance falls short.
## For HR Managers and L&D Teams
If you are responsible for the language development of a team, the oral assessment is a tool worth taking seriously. Rather than deploying a training programme based on assumptions or self-reported ability, you can build a programme based on actual evidence.
For organisations with three or more staff, iTalkTerms provides a structured Business English training programme for teams that includes course materials and certificates of completion at no additional cost. Teams of ten or more receive an additional ten percent discount.
Understanding what your team genuinely needs, before committing budget, is not just prudent. It is the professional standard.
How We Teach
Once gaps are identified, training at iTalkTerms is built around the learner’s real communication needs, not a generic syllabus. You can read more about how we teach and why the communicative approach consistently outperforms traditional classroom methods for professional development.
All tutors are native English speakers. Sessions are delivered online, one-to-one or in small groups, at times that work around your schedule.
An introductory one-to-one session is available for $6 (15 minutes). Regular sessions are $25 (45 minutes). Book a session directly here.
Do Not Wait for a Client Meeting to Find Out
The moment that reveals a spoken English gap is rarely a convenient one. It is a presentation that did not land. A negotiation that drifted. A client relationship that never quite recovered from a misunderstanding.
The oral assessment exists to find those gaps before they matter and to give individuals and organisations a clear, honest picture of where to focus.
If you are not sure where your team actually stands, this is the place to start.
Request your complimentary oral assessment here
iTalkTerms Business English Coaching for Professionals.
Online. Native. Effective.
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