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EnglishOS
EnglishOS helps people use the English they already know to build trust and relationships through conversation. It is initially exploring a specific challenge for Chinese companies expanding overseas: many salespeople can explain their products in English, but may be much less confident using English to get to know overseas customers.
Key takeaway. Being able to explain a product in English is not the same as being able to build a relationship in English. EnglishOS focuses on the interpersonal conversation skills that help people move from answering questions to connecting, developing trust, and getting to know one another.
EnglishOS is being developed and tested as an implementation of ConversationOS. It complements conventional English and Business English training rather than replacing it.
EnglishOS
Helping people use the English they already know to build trust, relationships and better conversations.
Many Chinese professionals have spent years learning English.
They can introduce themselves. They can explain their company. They can describe their products. They can answer questions from overseas customers.
But there is another skill that traditional English training may not prepare them for:
using English to get to know people.
A salesperson may be perfectly capable of giving a product presentation in English, yet feel much less confident over dinner with a customer, during the twenty minutes before a meeting, while travelling together, or when the formal business discussion ends.
And those conversations matter.
Business relationships are not built only through specifications, prices and presentations. They are also built when people become comfortable with one another, discover things in common, develop trust and gradually get to know each other.
Product English is not relationship English
EnglishOS starts from a simple observation:
Many salespeople can already explain their products in English. But they may not be good at using English to build trust and relationships with overseas customers.
The problem is often not vocabulary or grammar.
It is knowing how to:
- give the other person something to respond to;
- ask a good second question;
- follow an interesting thread instead of constantly changing topics;
- show genuine curiosity;
- share enough about yourself to make the conversation reciprocal;
- recover when you do not understand something;
- and move naturally from small talk towards a real relationship.
These are conversation skills as much as language skills.
Use the English you already know
EnglishOS is therefore not primarily about learning more English.
It is about becoming much better at using the English you already have.
Traditional language learning gives us the ingredients: vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and useful expressions.
EnglishOS practises putting those ingredients together into complete conversations.
And, just as nobody learns to play the piano simply by reading about music, knowing what makes a good conversation is not enough. Conversation is a performance skill. The same important conversations need to be practised repeatedly until responding, asking, following up and recovering become increasingly natural.
Practise the conversations that build relationships
You do not need hundreds of conversation topics.
A relatively small number appear again and again when people are getting to know one another:
Where are you from? What do you do? Tell me about your family. What do you enjoy doing? Where have you travelled? What is the story behind your name?
The first answer is only the beginning.
EnglishOS focuses on what happens next.
Instead of practising:
"Where are you from?" "I'm from China."
we practise how that answer can become several minutes of genuine conversation — and how the conversation can open threads into hometowns, food, family, travel, childhood or shared experiences.
The objective is not simply to speak for longer.
It is to learn something meaningful about the other person — and allow them to learn something meaningful about you.
From conversation to relationship
EnglishOS is based on the broader ConversationOS framework being developed through GetToKnow.You.
The progression is simple:
Answer → Continue → Explore → Connect → Build trust
For people working internationally, that capability can complement conventional Business English.
For companies expanding overseas, it may help sales and customer-facing staff become more comfortable not only doing business in English, but building relationships in English.
EnglishOS in China
EnglishOS is currently being developed and tested, with a particular interest in Chinese companies expanding overseas.
We are speaking with companies, sales teams and educators about whether interpersonal-English training represents an unmet need and whether small pilot programmes would be useful.
Dr Raymond Young will be in China from 3 September to 22 October 2026, including Jiangsu during October, and is interested in meeting companies and educators who would be willing to discuss this problem or participate in a small pilot.
The initial question is deliberately simple:
Can focused, repeated interpersonal-English practice help Chinese professionals build better relationships with overseas customers?
EnglishOS is not intended to replace Business English training.
It is designed to address something that can easily be missed after the vocabulary, grammar and product presentation have already been learned:
What do you say next — and how do you turn that conversation into a relationship?