1. How do I know what language level my team needs?
Start with a speaking assessment, not a written test. Semantics screens every participant free of charge before a course is quoted, and places them on a ten level scale rather than the CEFR's six.
Everything else follows from this.
A written or multiple choice test tells you what someone recognises, which is a real skill but a different one from producing language on the spot. A friendly chat without much structure gives you a sense of someone rather than a measurement.
What you want is an assessment that has people speaking, across the situations their job actually involves. That's what makes the resulting number mean something.
We use ten levels instead of six because the gap between CEFR bands is wide enough to plan two quite different courses around. The difference between someone at the bottom of B1 and someone at the top of it is roughly a year of work.
2. Can someone be two levels at once?
Yes, and it's more common than people expect. B2 at understanding and A2 at speaking is a normal result.
Plenty of people follow every word of a meeting and still find it hard to get into it.
Ask whether the assessment looks at those separately, because that gap is usually where the useful work is. We wrote about why it happens here: why you understand a language but still can't speak it.
3. Can we not just use an app, or AI?
For vocabulary, grammar and reading, often yes. For speaking under pressure, not yet.
Apps are good at the parts you can do on your own. If someone wants to build those up between sessions that's genuinely useful, and we encourage it.
What they don't do is the thing most teams are stuck on. Speaking in front of colleagues. Being interrupted. Losing your thread and getting back into it. Saying something difficult to a client without it landing badly. That needs another person in the room, reacting to you rather than following a script.
Ask any provider how they see it. One who tells you apps are useless isn't being straight with you. One who has no answer at all hasn't thought about it.
4. How many people are in the group, and how many of them talk?
Two different questions. Semantics runs two to three people for semi-individual courses and four to six for group courses.
In a bigger group there's simply less speaking time each, and the quieter people get less of what there is.
Ask how groups are put together, too. Similar level makes a real difference to how much everyone gets out of it.
5. What will my team be able to do that they can't do now?
Push for a situation rather than a level.
Fluent is the word that comes up most, and it's a feeling rather than a measurement, which makes it hard to build a course around.
Something observable works better. Not “B2 across the team” but “the account managers can run a client call without switching language halfway.” That's a goal you can design towards and recognise when you reach it.
6. What makes a sector course different from a general one?
Different situations, not just different vocabulary.
A course for hospital staff might practise explaining something frightening in plain words, then following a specialist at a conference two weeks later. Legal Dutch for lawyers and notaries sits inside contract language, arbitration and employment disputes. Public sector work in Brussels means press conferences, formal correspondence and meetings running across three languages.
The vocabulary matters, but it's the smaller half. Ask what the sessions actually rehearse.
Semantics builds sector courses for law, medicine, pharmaceuticals, banking and finance, real estate, telecom, IT, HR, automotive, cosmetics and the public sector, including the EU institutions. More on why that works in a surgeon and a banker walk into the same language course.
The Dutch sector courses are here.
7. What will it cost, and what changes the price?
Ask for the price per hour and for what sits inside it. Courses at Semantics run in packages of 30, 38 or 44 hours, and the screening beforehand is free.
Three things move the number more than anything else. Group size, because an individual hour and a group hour are different products. Where it happens, since a trainer travelling to your offices costs more than the same hour online. And whether the course is built around your sector, which takes preparation before anyone teaches anything.
What's easy to miss is what's included. Screening, materials, interim and final reports, a replacement trainer if someone falls ill, and what happens to a session cancelled at short notice. Two quotes with the same hourly rate can turn out to be very different once you read that far.
8. What will you tell me, and when?
Interim and final reports, and ask what's in them.
Training is easy to buy and harder to measure, which is why reporting matters more than it sounds.
A good report tells whoever signed the invoice what changed, not just who turned up.
Ask what you can see for yourself, too, rather than waiting for a report to land. At Semantics, HR and the relevant managers can be given access to the online planning system, so they can follow attendance as it happens and see the reporting for each participant.
9. Does the KMO-portefeuille cover language training?
For now, and only for companies established in the Flemish Region. The scheme is being scrapped, and everything has to be filed and agreed by 31 December 2026.
The KMO-portefeuille is a Flemish subsidy run by VLAIO. Small enterprises get 30% back and medium-sized enterprises 20%, up to €7,500 a year. Language training qualifies under the internationalisation theme when it helps the business work with new professional contacts, and the provider has to be registered.
Two things are worth knowing before you plan around it.
It follows the company, not the course. Eligibility depends on your business being established in the Flemish Region, so a company based in Brussels generally can't use it even if the training happens in Brussels.
And the Flemish Government has decided to stop the scheme. Applications are still open while the 2026 budget lasts, but every piece of paperwork has to be filed and the budget agreed by 31 December 2026. Even then it depends on what is left in the pot by the time you apply, so there are no guarantees.
If you were planning to lean on it for next year's training, that is weeks away rather than months.
Vlaams Opleidingsverlof is the other route people ask about. It changed in September 2026, so check the current conditions before you build a budget around it.
Alimento is worth asking about if you work in the food industry.
And the one worth starting with
What do you actually need these people to do?
Not what level. What situation.
Client calls. The monthly presentation. Negotiating with a supplier. Handovers on a ward.
Name the two or three moments that genuinely matter and everything else gets easier, including the conversation with whoever you end up working with.
About Semantics
Semantics is a corporate language training school in Brussels, working with companies, hospitals, law firms, public bodies and the EU institutions.
We teach Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese, from beginner through to advanced professional level.
Courses run online, at your offices, or at our school in Brussels, individually, semi-individually in groups of two to three, or in groups of four to six, in packages of 30, 38 or 44 hours. Every course opens with a free screening.
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