What Italian Companies Need to Know
Italian companies make extraordinary things. They design, manufacture, craft, and export at a level that commands global respect. And yet, in the boardroom, on the video call, in the pitch meeting, something that should be straightforward too often becomes a liability: the spoken English of the professionals doing the representing.
This is not a question of intelligence or education. It is a structural problem, a product of how English has been taught in Italy for decades, and what that system was never designed to produce.
What the Italian Education System Built — and What It Didn’t
English instruction in Italian schools and universities has historically prioritised reading comprehension, written grammar, and translation. Students leave with a formal understanding of the language. They can read a contract, write a professional email, and parse an English-language document with reasonable accuracy.
What they were not trained to do is perform in real time.
Spontaneous spoken Business English, negotiating terms under pressure, presenting to an international client without a script, handling a difficult question on a live call, requires a completely different set of skills. It requires fluency that has been practised in context, not grammar that has been memorised from a textbook.
The result is a generation of highly capable Italian professionals who know far more English than they can actually use in the moments that matter.
What This Costs Italian Businesses
The consequences are not abstract. They show up in concrete, commercial ways.
A sales director who hesitates in a product pitch loses authority. An export manager who struggles to rephrase a misunderstood point loses trust. A team presenting to an international buyer who cannot field questions with confidence loses the room and sometimes, the contract.
The hidden cost of language barriers in Italian business is rarely measured because it is rarely visible. Deals that do not close, relationships that do not develop, opportunities that quietly disappear, these are not entered into a spreadsheet. But they accumulate.
Italy’s SME sector is the engine of the economy. It competes internationally across manufacturing, fashion, luxury goods, food and beverage, and design. English is the operating language of that competition. The question is not whether your professionals need to perform in English. The question is whether they currently can.
The Problem with Assuming the Answer
Most HR managers and Business owners assume they know where their teams stand on English. They have seen CVs listing B2 or C1 certifications. They have watched colleagues join calls and manage, more or less.
But written assessment and live performance are not the same thing. A certificate tells you what someone could produce in a controlled exam environment. It tells you very little about how that person performs in a high-stakes client conversation in their third hour of a working day, when the agenda shifts and they need to think on their feet.
The gap between the two is where Business English training has to start. And the only way to measure that gap accurately is through a proper spoken assessment, conducted by a real person, not software.
A Better Starting Point: The Oral Assessment
iTalkTerms tutors are currently offering a limited number of complimentary Business English oral assessments.
Each assessment is conducted live, one-to-one, with a native English-speaking tutor,not an automated system. It is designed to reflect real Business communication scenarios: responding to questions, explaining a position, handling ambiguity, presenting information under mild pressure.
After the session, the tutor provides a written report. This report identifies specific areas of strength and weakness, including fluency, vocabulary range, pronunciation clarity, structural confidence, and professional register.
Availability for complimentary assessments is limited. You can review the assessment details and register your interest here.
What Comes After the Assessment
For individuals who complete an assessment, the path forward is clear. iTalkTerms offers one-to-one Business English coaching with native-speaking tutors, built around real professional scenarios — not textbook exercises.
An introductory session is available for $6 (5 minute1s). Regular sessions are $25. Coaching is online, flexible, and designed around the professional’s actual working context.
For companies with three or more staff in training, course materials and certificates of completion are included at no additional cost. Teams of ten or more receive a further 10% discount.
If you are ready to explore training for your team, the next step is straightforward.
Before you allocate training budget, ask one question: do we actually know where our people stand in spoken Business English right now? If the honest answer is no, the oral assessment is where to begin.
Book a session or enquire about team training here.
iTalkTerms Business English Coaching for Professionals.
Online. Native. Effective.
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