About once a month, someone leaves the same comment under a BA post: “I write requirements fine, but I’m afraid I’ll fail the interview in English.” Or the opposite: “My English is at Slack-chat level — is that enough?” Both questions are really the same one, just from different angles. And there’s no short answer like “you need C1” or “school-level English will do.” Three different kinds of English live inside one profession, and people constantly mix them up.
Three Kinds of English, Not One
English courses sell one skill — speaking. In practice, a BA needs at least three, and they don’t develop at the same pace.
The first is reading. API documentation, a spec from a foreign client, threads in Jira and Confluence. Here it’s enough to understand what’s written — you can reread a paragraph twice and check a dictionary, nobody’s rushing you.
The second is writing asynchronously. A user story, a ticket comment, an email to a stakeholder. Here precision of wording actually matters: a badly worded requirement costs the team an extra sprint, not just looks clumsy.
The third is speaking in real time. A call with the client, a standup, an interview. There’s no “give me ten seconds to think” pause — you have to parse an accent by ear, react instantly, and not lose the thread if you need to ask someone to repeat themselves. It’s the most demanding of the three skills, and almost always the real bottleneck.
A general English course builds the first two. The third only improves through practice close to real working conditions — mock calls and live conversations. A textbook won’t get you there.
In my experience, the weak spot is rarely grammar. It’s reaction speed, when the other person is already waiting for an answer.
The Level Depends on the Company, Not the Job Title
“What English level does a BA need” has no universal answer, because the level is set by the team structure you’re hired into, not the role itself.
A local product company, with no foreign clients and no English-speaking team, needs enough English to read technical documentation. Spoken English is rarely needed — at most as a formality in the interview.
Outstaffing or outsourcing for an EU or US client — here English becomes your main working tool, not a line on a resume. Standups, calls with the client, defending decisions — all out loud and in real time. Without confident spoken English, you won’t pass that interview.
An international remote-first product company is a similar situation, but a bit softer — there’s usually more written, asynchronous communication than calls.
Before asking “what level should I have,” it’s worth asking “which of these three kinds of company do I want to work for” — the answer to the first question follows from the answer to the second.
CEFR: A Shared Language for Describing Level, Not a Test
If a job posting says “English B2,” it’s referencing CEFR (the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), the pan-European scale of levels from A1 to C2 that the Council of Europe published in 2001. The scale doesn’t describe grammar — it describes what a person can actually do in the language, from “understands simple phrases” at A1 to “operates fluently with nuance and tone” at C2.
It’s not an official hiring standard, but a reference point that in practice maps onto the scenarios above: B1 is usually enough for reading documentation without constant dictionary pauses. A confident B2 is the minimum people actually pass interviews with for roles working directly with a foreign client. C1 is needed less often than it seems from the outside — usually for roles presenting to the client’s top management, not for day-to-day BA work.
How to Check Your Level Without a Certificate
In my experience, a formal test like IELTS or TOEFL is rarely required for a BA position — if it’s not explicitly mentioned in the job posting, you probably don’t need one. A self-check is more practical: arrange a trial 15-minute call in English with a practicing BA or a native speaker, and listen to yourself from the outside.
The real signal isn’t “do I know all the tenses” — it’s “can I react in time while the other person is waiting for an answer.” These are different things, and the second is far closer to the actual job than the first.
What If You Use AI — Will It Help?
A logical question in 2026: why bother improving your English at all if ChatGPT and Claude exist? The answer depends on which of the three kinds of English you’re asking about.
For asynchronous writing — yes, absolutely. A user story, an email to a stakeholder, a ticket comment — there’s time for a draft and a second pass. AI is great at smoothing out rough edges and suggesting tone: firmer in a status update, softer when asking for clarification. That’s a real boost, not a crutch.
For live conversation — no, and here the illusion is more dangerous than the help. You physically can’t use AI on an interview, standup, or client call — and even if you could, it doesn’t fix the actual pain point, the reaction speed we talked about above. The one honest way to apply AI to the speaking side isn’t as a live prompter, but as a trainer beforehand: run a role-play with it — “a difficult stakeholder” or “an interviewer asks an unexpected question.”
The main risk isn’t that AI won’t help — it’s that it will help too well. If your English is weaker than the AI’s, you can’t check its output — you can only trust it. It writes smoothly and confidently, and that creates an illusion of competence: the message reads a level above where you actually are. The gap surfaces exactly when someone asks “what did you mean here” — about a phrase you didn’t write, the model did.
AI doesn’t replace English — it raises the ceiling of your written text above the level at which you can explain it out loud. That’s the actual risk.
There’s a more down-to-earth reason for caution too: if actual requirement wording from Jira or a client’s correspondence goes into a prompt, that’s no longer a language question — it’s a client data confidentiality question.
The working rule is simpler than it sounds: use AI to check yourself, not to write for you. Write the draft yourself, ask “what’s wrong here and why,” and only then “make this more formal.” If the final text has a word you can’t explain in your own words, that’s a signal to stop and figure it out, not to send it as is.
What to Practice First
Not general English. The vocabulary of the job: a set of phrases you need in a stakeholder conversation almost every week — “do I understand correctly that…”, “could you clarify…”, “before we continue, I have one question”, “that doesn’t match what was said on the last call”, “let me confirm this in writing.” This isn’t complex grammar. It’s a set of phrases that stop the panic in the moment you don’t have the words to formulate a thought from scratch.
Want to test yourself on real questions?
A free Telegram bot with questions from actual Middle BA interviews
English for a BA isn’t an entry barrier to the profession — it’s one of three skills that develop separately, each at its own pace. Before investing six months in a general English course, it’s worth figuring out which of the three scenarios is yours, and working on that one specifically.
Frequently asked questions
What English level do you need to work as a BA?
It depends on the company, not the job title. For reading documentation at a local product company, B1 is usually enough. For calls with a foreign client on outstaffing, you need a confident B2 — the minimum you can actually pass an interview with.
Can you work as a BA without spoken English?
Yes, if the company and clients are local and all communication happens in your native language. English is then only needed for reading documentation and APIs — a separate skill that develops faster than speaking.
Do you need an IELTS or TOEFL certificate to get hired as a BA?
Usually not — most job postings check English in a live interview, not by certificate. A certificate makes sense only if it's explicitly listed in the posting, usually for roles working directly with a foreign client.
Where should you start if English is your weak spot?
Not with a general language course, but with speaking practice close to real working conditions — mock interviews, training calls. For most BAs, the weak spot isn't grammar, it's reaction speed in live conversation, and only practicing that actual conversation improves it.
