By Usama Hassan Last updated: March 12, 2024

English for Conferences: 5 Valuable Resources to Prepare for Success

Conferences can make anyone nervous.

Especially if you’re giving a presentation or organizing one of the events. But even if you’re just participating, you might feel stressed or overwhelmed.

In this post, I’ll show you how you can easily ace your next conference if English isn’t your first language.

We’ll start with the tips below, then show you some incredible courses, books and other materials to help you prepare your English for a successful conference.

And if you’re traveling for a conference, don’t forget to check out our vocabulary guide for business trips next!

Tips to Ace Your First Conference
1. Comprehensive Resources to Get You Started
2. Courses to Help You Research and Prepare for a Conference
- Writing Specialization from the University of California, Irvine
- Planning and Negotiating Course from the University of Washington

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Tips to Ace Your First Conference

Certain basic strategies will help you build confidence and effectively participate in any conference you’re invited to.

If you’re presenting a paper, proofread and re-check it several times. Members of the audience are sure to be experts, and you don’t want to be accused of plagiarism or of making mistakes.

If you’re speaking on a panel or at a meeting, organize your material. Sometimes you might get carried away and forget what you really wanted to say. So try to organize your thoughts into bullet points on a paper, so you can refer to it, if you need to.

Anticipate questions. Try to anticipate (guess/plan for) the kind of questions you might receive at the conference—whether you’re presenting on a topic, or just describing your work to people you meet. Try to cover all bases, so that you can be better prepared and more confident.

Ask questions, too. Don’t disappear after a presentation/speech is over. Follow protocol, listen to what other people are saying, and ask relevant questions.

Network! You’ll probably meet a lot of important industry professionals and other people with whom you’ll want to remain in contact. So don’t shy away from interactions.

Go up to them, introduce yourself, give them genuine compliments and offer them your business card. Take the initiative and speak up first.

The resources curated below will give you all the training you need to ace your next conference. However, if there are specific areas of weakness that you want to focus on (such as research or writing) you can pick the ones that you feel will be most useful.

I’ve also included a mixture of free and paid as well as offline and online resources to suit the different needs and budgets of business English learners.

1. Comprehensive Resources to Get You Started

“English for Presentations at International Conferences”

If you’ve never been to a conference before, or you’re finding it difficult to get used to workplace culture, you can try reading this incredibly helpful book. It was written specifically keeping in mind the needs of non-native English speakers and is available for purchase on Amazon.

You’ll learn exactly how a conference works and what to say at each stage of the conference. As the title suggests, it’s also invaluable if you’ll be presenting at your next conference. You’ll learn how to avoid common errors, address questions and keep your audience interested in what you have to say.

FluentU

Preparing yourself for a conference can be a difficult task, especially if it’s your first one. One effective way to prepare is to watch other people giving presentations. The FluentU language learning program lets you watch different types of authentic English videos, including several presentation-style videos like TED talks, news clips and more.

Each video comes with interactive subtitles so you can see what each word means. As you watch, you can learn different social and speaking cues from the native English speakers or even pick up new business words. If you come across unknown words, you can create personalized flashcards to practice with later.

Videos are categorized by skill level, format and topic to make it easier to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Each video is also followed by quizzes to test your understanding of the vocabulary used in the clip. Flashcard and video exercises include some fill-in-the-blank questions that let you type or speak your answer, to practice your pronunciation.

Business English Pod

If your work keeps you busy for long hours, you may not have the time for a full language course. But you can always use your traveling and even your free time for learning by listening to podcasts. Business English Pod is one of the best language learning podcasts out there and they have quite a few lessons on conferences.

This audio lesson “Opening Presentation” will be especially useful if you’ve been asked to host or deliver an opening speech at a conference. You’ll learn tips from actual native speakers at company conferences.

Similarly the lesson “Actively Participating” covers all you need to know about asking engaging questions, connecting with people and making the most of your time there. If you sign up to be a premium member you’ll also have access to mobile quizzes, study notes and extra material to further help you out.

2. Courses to Help You Research and Prepare for a Conference

Writing Specialization from the University of California, Irvine

Some of you may already be brilliant speakers, but writing in business English may seem like a terrifying task. Whether you’re speaking on an issue or actually presenting a paper at the conference, you’ll still need top-notch research and writing skills to succeed.

This series of courses on academic writing can be really useful, because you’ll learn U.S. academic and professional standards for research. You’ll also learn how to organize your ideas and opinions into a coherent essay, express your findings using the right terminology and cite your sources in the correct format.

If you’re concerned about your topic of presentation or you aren’t sure how to handle it, this course should guide you on every step. It’s offered through the popular online education platform Coursera, which means you’ll be working with top-quality instructors and you can even get a certificate to put on your resume when you’re done.

Planning and Negotiating Course from the University of Washington

Every conference includes a huge amount of planning and organizing. If you’re involved in a conference as one of the organizers, this course (another great one from Coursera) will provide some crucial information.

You’ll learn how to carefully plan and organize an event, write conference announcements and deal with unexpected problems.

Even if you’re not planning the conference, this course will be valuable. You’ll pick up tips related to negotiating with people and exchanging information, which will help you interact with guests at the conference and make worthwhile connections there.

In short, in order to ace your first conference, you need to prepare strategically. If you’re presenting a paper or delivering a speech, start preparing for it in advance, instead of leaving it to the last minute.

Give yourself enough time to cross-check and proofread, and keep polishing and practicing it. Once you’re there, make sure you network with people, ask questions and make important connections that may be useful later.

Above all, if it’s your first time, just treat it as a crucial learning experience and give it your best shot.