Once we have the big ‘Why?’ question answered we're probably already part way to answering the second big question ‘Who?’ Who do you want to communicate with in English? You may have already identified that you need to communicate with suppliers, clients or international colleagues but it is a good idea to look a little more deeply and see what useful information you have about these people. Again, a mind mapping process is a useful way of recording your thoughts on paper. For example, for some people all three categories of supplier, client and colleague may apply giving three main branches to the mind map. There may be other categories too.

Once you have your main categories, see if you can name any specific people, companies and organisations that you want to communicate with and write these down. Next, write down the nationalities of these people and then what you believe their level of English to be. By level I don't mean B1, B2 etc., but think about what type of language they might use. This may depend not only on their knowledge of English but also on the type of job that they do. Think about the accent the other person has and how easy it is for you to understand.

You can continue and repeat this process any time a new contact comes into your circle and you need to communicate with them in English. Some examples from my clients include needing to speak with people in an international accounts department in Cardiff, Wales. The vocabulary and expressions needed would have been related to the topics of invoices, money and payments. If the person working there was a Welsh native speaker of English, there is a good chance that he or she had an unfamiliar accent, which may have made understanding more difficult. Having this information in advance helps us to plan accordingly for the conversations that we want to have and even to practice listening to people with the same or similar accent. This is a simple matter now that we have the internet. For example, the BBC has many regional television and radio channels which you can access from anywhere in the world just by logging on. Remember that English is spoken all around the world and native speakers include the English, Scots, Welsh, Irish, Australians, Americans, Canadians, Indians etc………………. and they're all a bit different.

With non-native speakers we are going to find more differences. As well as a wide variety of accents, many people have a tendency to think in their own language and then translate into English. It becomes a habit, creating expressions that sounds strange in English because they do not translate well from the other language. Therefore, if you hear or see something that you don't understand, it may be a direct translation, word for word, from another language - we have all done it at some time. I think that it is perfectly acceptable to say that you don’t understand and to try and help the communication process through clarifying in a polite way.
There will also be differences in the structures and styles used, especially things like phrasal verbs. A native speaker will probably use phrasal verbs quite often e.g. ‘go in’, but a non-native speaker much less and will prefer to use another verb, in this example ‘enter’.

All of this information can be very valuable when planning a learning programme because it helps you to think in detail about the language skills you're going to need for the different people that you want to communicate with. Now, who do you want to communicate with in English?