12 questions to ask a corporate language training provider
Short answer: The twelve questions below separate providers who sell outcomes from providers who sell hours. The most important four are: what do you measure before teaching starts, will you use the same instrument again, who exactly will teach my people, and what happens if there is no measurable progress. If a provider is vague on those four, the rest of the conversation will not save it.
I run one of these companies, so read this with that in mind. I have also sat on the other side of the table often enough to know which questions make a sales call go quiet.
Before the program
1. What do you measure before any teaching happens?
Good answer: a specific diagnostic, with named dimensions, completed by everyone in scope before session one.
Warning sign: "we do an informal level check in the first lesson." That produces a teacher's impression, not a baseline, and it cannot be compared to anything later.
2. Will you use the same instrument at every checkpoint?
Good answer: yes, unchanged, and here is the schedule.
Warning sign: enthusiasm about continuously improving the assessment. Improving it mid engagement destroys comparability. That is the whole value of the baseline.
3. Who, specifically, will teach my people?
Good answer: named mentors, with their background, and a matching logic you can interrogate.
Warning sign: "we have a pool of qualified trainers." A pool means allocation by availability. Someone teaching a compliance team should know what a compliance conversation sounds like.
4. What does the curriculum come from?
Good answer: the participant's own work, gathered at the start. Their meetings, their documents, their recurring situations.
Warning sign: a course book, a platform with 400 units, or a syllabus that arrives before anyone has spoken to the participants.
During the program
5. How much of a session does the participant spend speaking?
Good answer: a number, and a high one. We target above 70 percent.
Warning sign: no number. If nobody has measured it, it is low. The most common failure in corporate language teaching is a fluent teacher talking for most of an hour.
6. What happens when someone falls behind or stops attending?
Good answer: it shows up in reporting within the cycle, with a named person responsible for the conversation.
Warning sign: attendance reports sent to HR with no accompanying action. Attrition is normal. Unflagged attrition is a reporting failure.
7. What is the cycle length and what happens at the end of one?
Good answer: a fixed block with an opening diagnostic, a mid point, and a closing report. Ours run eight weeks.
Warning sign: open ended delivery billed monthly. Without a boundary there is no natural review point, and programs that are not reviewed are not corrected.
8. Can I see a report from a real engagement, with the client anonymised?
Good answer: yes, here is one.
Warning sign: a sample template with placeholder data. Everyone has a template. Not everyone has reporting they are willing to show.
Reporting and proof
9. What will I be able to tell my CFO in twelve months?
Good answer: per dimension movement against the baseline, by department, plus whichever business metrics you agreed at the start.
Warning sign: satisfaction scores and completion rates. Both measure the training, not the change. I have written more on this in how to measure ROI on corporate English training.
10. Which business metrics do you recommend we track, and will you help define them before we start?
Good answer: a short list tied to work the company already tracks, agreed in writing before session one.
Warning sign: treating this as something to figure out later. Later means never, because the baseline has already been missed.
11. Do you work with companies like ours, and can I speak to one?
Good answer: named sectors, real references, published work. Ours are on the case studies page and include a telecom operator, an M&A advisory, a precision metallurgy plant and an FMCG group.
Warning sign: logos with no detail. A logo means an invoice was raised, not that the program worked.
Commercials
12. What happens if there is no measurable progress?
Good answer: a stated position. A continuation, a remediation plan, or a commercial consequence.
Warning sign: "that has not happened." It has happened to everyone who has run enough programs. A provider who claims otherwise is either new or not being straight with you.
How to use this list
You do not need all twelve answered perfectly. You need the four on measurement, mentor matching, curriculum source and consequence answered without hedging, because those four determine whether the other eight can even be assessed at the end.
Take the list into the call. The questions a provider is uncomfortable with will tell you more than the ones they have a slide for.
