Overview & Goals

MODULE 1 · FLUENT AT WORK — C1

High-Stakes Negotiation & Dealmaking

Where preparation beats performance, and every concession has a price tag.

Welcome to C1 — the mastery level. From here on, we assume you can already survive any meeting in English. The question is no longer can you say it, but does saying it get you the outcome. And nowhere is that gap more expensive than in a negotiation.

In this module you will learn to negotiate the way professionals do: mapping interests before positions, pricing every concession, using conditional language as armour, and treating deadlock as choreography rather than catastrophe. By the end, you will run a full contract-renewal negotiation against a deliberately difficult counterpart — and be judged not on fluency, but on what you traded and what you gave away for free.

As always, the whole skill is built around one real theme: an authentic article to think with, vocabulary and useful language you can reuse the same day, an authentic podcast to train your ear, and a roleplay with an AI counterpart — out loud or in writing, your choice. Grammar and pronunciation are practised inside these, not in isolation.

🤖 Your AI Tutor is part of this module. Ask it anything — a word, a phrase, “is this too direct?” It remembers you: the words you struggle with come back in your review, and the tutor picks up where you left off.

🎯 By the end of this module, you will be able to:

acknowledge the other side’s position without conceding a single point (“that may well be true, even so…”);
make every concession conditional — provided that, on the understanding that, should you be able to;
trade what is cheap for you and valuable to them — term, payment days, support tier — before touching price;
name your walk-away point once, clearly and calmly, when pushed past it;
recognise pressure tactics — the bluff, the silence, the deadline — and answer with choreography, not panic.

🔤 Grammar in this module. Modal verbs — advanced & nuanced uses (we might conceivably, that may well be true, we could well consider) and Concession & contrast (much as we’d like to, granted… but, even so, that said). In a negotiation these are not grammar points — they are the difference between an offer and a surrender. You’ll meet both in the dialogue, then practise them in four graded exercise sets.

📦 What’s inside this module

Reading — Inside a Real Surrender Plan — a hostage negotiator’s playbook, read as a masterclass in preparation (authentic article).
Vocabulary — the dealmaker’s words: hammer out, sweeten the deal, call someone’s bluff…
Useful Language — conditional offers and elegant pushback, with a full renewal negotiation to listen to.
Writing Practice — The Letter That Keeps the Deal Alive — a short professional text, corrected sentence by sentence by an AI coach.
Podcast — The Art of Negotiation — authentic listening on real-world dealmaking, with transcript and flashcards.
Roleplay — the renewal: 20% off or the contract goes to tender — out loud or in writing, your choice.
Final Quiz — everything from the module (you need 70% to pass).

At this level, negotiating well is not talking well — it is trading well. Prepare like it matters, concede like it costs, and let the other side win the story. Let’s begin. 🚀