Guide
French at work: e-mails, meetings and interviews
Professional French frightens people who speak good everyday French, and it should not. It is narrower than ordinary conversation, not wider: a few dozen fixed formulas do most of the work, and they can be learnt in a fortnight.
In short
- A French professional e-mail is a form with fixed slots: greeting, purpose, body, closing formula. Fill the slots and it reads correctly.
- The closing formula is long, ceremonial, and not optional. Ending an e-mail like an English one reads as abrupt.
- In meetings, the hard part is not speaking — it is taking the turn. Learn three phrases for interrupting politely.
- In an interview, fluency matters less than structure: a clear, imperfect answer beats a hesitant, correct one.
The e-mail is a form, not a composition
French professional writing is far more codified than English. That is good news for a learner: what is codified can be learnt. An e-mail has four slots — how you address the person, why you are writing, what you are asking, and how you sign off — and each slot has three or four standard fillings.
The closing formula is where English speakers give themselves away. French closes with a full ceremonial sentence, not a word. Ending with the equivalent of « Thanks » or « Best » reads as curt, and in a first exchange it reads as rude. Learn two — one neutral, one more formal — and use them without thinking.
Meetings: the problem is the turn, not the words
People who function well one-to-one often go silent in meetings, and conclude their French is not good enough. Usually it is fine. What is missing is the ability to enter a fast conversation between several people — which is a skill, not a level, and which French speakers themselves practise.
Three phrases solve most of it: one to signal that you want to speak, one to come back to a point that has moved on, and one to ask for a repeat without apologising for your French. Rehearsed out loud, they turn a silent participant into a normal one.
Interviews: structure beats fluency
An interview in a second language is won by preparation, not by vocabulary. The questions are largely predictable, and a prepared answer with a clear shape — situation, what you did, what came of it — sounds professional even with an accent and a few mistakes.
The one thing worth over-preparing is the opening: two minutes about yourself, said fluently, buy you goodwill for the rest of the conversation. It is also the part you can rehearse until it is automatic, which is exactly what removes the panic from the first thirty seconds.
What to work on, and in what order
- Ten e-mail formulas, learnt as blocks. Two weeks, and your written French stops sounding foreign.
- The vocabulary of your own trade — not general business vocabulary, yours. Two hundred words you will use every day beat two thousand you will not.
- Three meeting phrases, rehearsed out loud until they come without thinking.
- Your two-minute introduction, recorded and corrected. Everyone needs one, and almost nobody has one ready.
Usage varies by workplace
How formal an e-mail should be, whether colleagues use first names, how meetings run: all of this varies between a start-up and an administration, and between countries that share the language. The formulas below are the safe default — your colleagues are the ones who tell you how far to relax them.
A trade, not a level
Professional French is not a higher level of French — it is a set of habits. That is why someone at B1 can hold a meeting after a month of targeted work, while someone at B2 who has never rehearsed one stays silent in it. The work is specific, and it is short.
See also: what it costs · rates · all the guides