You’re in a meeting. A slide goes up: “We need the KPIs aligned with our OKRs before EOD, and let’s scope the MVP ASAP.” Everyone nods. So you nod too. Half of it you caught; the other half you’ll quietly look up after the call.

It’s not that your English is bad. You can hold a conversation, write an email, explain your work. But corporate English runs on a hidden layer of shorthand that no class ever taught you — initials standing in for whole ideas, dropped into sentences as though everyone was born knowing them.

Here’s the good news: there’s a core set you’ll hear in almost any office, and once you can not just decode them but use them naturally, meetings stop being a guessing game. Here are 12 to start with — and a faster way to make them yours than memorising a list.

The 12 You’ll Hear in Almost Any Office

Strategy and numbers

  • KPI — Key Performance Indicator: the metric your work is measured by. “Sign-ups are our main KPI this quarter.”
  • ROI — Return on Investment: was it worth the money or time? “What’s the ROI on running ads in Brazil?”
  • OKR — Objectives and Key Results: the goal-setting framework a lot of companies plan with. “This project maps to our Q3 OKRs.”
  • MVP — Minimum Viable Product: the simplest version you can ship to learn from. “Let’s launch an MVP first, then improve it.”
  • SLA — Service Level Agreement: the response time or quality you’ve promised a client. “Support has a 24-hour SLA.”

Time and status

  • EOD — End of Day: “I’ll send it by EOD.” (Close cousins: COB, Close of Business; EOW, End of Week.)
  • ASAP — As Soon As Possible: “Can you review this ASAP?”
  • ETA — Estimated Time of Arrival — when something will be ready: “What’s the ETA on the report?”
  • WIP — Work In Progress, not finished yet: “The deck is still a WIP.”
  • TBD — To Be Determined, not decided yet: “The budget is TBD.”

Email and message glue

  • FYI — For Your Information: “FYI, the client moved the call to Friday.”
  • OOO — Out of Office: “I’ll be OOO next week.”

Knowing What They Mean Is the Easy Part

A glossary gets you the definitions. It doesn’t get you the two things that actually matter at work.

First, the acronyms your field uses. Every industry has its own dialect. Finance throws around EBITDA, CAGR, and AUM. Marketing lives on CTR, CPC, CPA, and CRO. HR has PTO, FTE, and L&D. Software teams say CI/CD, PR, and QA all day. The 12 above are the shared vocabulary — but your team has fifty more, and those are the ones tripping you up in your meetings.

Second, using them without thinking. There’s a big gap between recognising “EOD” on a slide and casually saying “let me circle back on those KPIs by EOD” — at the right moment, with the right words around it. That kind of fluency doesn’t come from a list. It comes from hearing and using the words in real sentences until they’re automatic.

That’s the difference between surviving the meeting and contributing to it. Decoding acronyms keeps you afloat. Using them is how you sound like you belong — and how these little initials finally start working for you instead of against you.

A Faster Way: Learn Them in Context, in Your Own Language

This is where Studio Lingo fits. Instead of memorising a list, you describe the exact thing you’re dealing with, and you get a full lesson built around it — real example sentences, the way people actually say them out loud, with audio you can rehearse and everything explained in the language you already think in.

The trick is the seed idea — a short prompt describing what you want. You don’t need perfect wording. Just say what you’re facing. A few to try:

  • “Explain KPIs, ROI, and OKRs to me with examples I’d actually hear in a meeting.”
  • “Have a chat with me about our quarterly KPIs, like a teammate at a standup.”
  • “Teach me to write a short work email using FYI, EOD, and ASAP naturally.”
  • “I keep seeing ‘MVP’ and ‘SLA’ in my company’s docs — what do they mean and how do I use them?”
  • “Role-play a sprint planning meeting where the team talks about the MVP, the WIP, and the deadline.”
  • “Here’s my meeting agenda — teach me every acronym in it and how to respond.”

That last one is the real unlock: paste in the email, the agenda, or the chat thread that left you guessing, and turn it into a lesson on the spot.

Each seed idea becomes a lesson with the vocabulary in context, audio to practise until it sounds natural, and a PDF you can keep and review right before the meeting. Not a generic “business English” module that fits no one — the exact language of your job, your team, and the conversation you’re walking into.

It Works for Your Field, in Your Language

Whether you’re a marketer in São Paulo decoding CTR and CPA, an analyst learning to drop EBITDA into an English call without flinching, or a developer who needs CI/CD and PR to feel natural in standup — it’s the same move every time: describe the situation, get a lesson built around it, rehearse until the words are yours. Studio Lingo works in 17 languages, in any direction, so everything is explained in your native language while you learn the business English you’ll actually use.

The goal was never to memorise a pile of letters. It’s to walk into the meeting and have the shorthand work for you.

From Scattered Acronyms to Your Whole Workday

Learning a handful of acronyms is a great start. But the acronyms aren’t really the goal — they’re scattered pieces of something bigger: the actual language of doing your job, all day, in another language.

That’s what a Learning Path is for. Instead of one lesson at a time, you get a structured, step-by-step roadmap towards a specific goal — each step building on the last, so you always know where you are and what comes next.

Picture a financial analyst who works in English. She doesn’t just need KPI, ROI, and EBITDA in isolation — she needs them in the exact moments they come up. So she creates a Learning Path called “Daily Routine of a Financial Analyst,” and it sequences her whole day:

  • The morning standup, where she gives a quick status update
  • Reading and summarising an earnings report
  • The numbers vocabulary — EBITDA, CAGR, variance, forecast — used in real sentences, not as a glossary
  • Presenting findings to stakeholders without losing her footing when the questions come
  • Writing the follow-up email, with the right tone and the right acronyms

Each step is a lesson she can rehearse, with audio and a PDF to keep, building on the one before it. By the end of the path she hasn’t just memorised terms — she can move through an entire workday in English, from the standup to the sign-off. (Learning Paths are part of the Master plan.)

That’s the difference between knowing what EBITDA means and being the analyst people forget is working in a second language.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do the most common business acronyms mean? The ones you’ll hear in almost any office: KPI (Key Performance Indicator), ROI (Return on Investment), OKR (Objectives and Key Results), MVP (Minimum Viable Product), SLA (Service Level Agreement), EOD (End of Day), ASAP (As Soon As Possible), ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival), WIP (Work In Progress), TBD (To Be Determined), FYI (For Your Information), and OOO (Out of Office).

I understand business English but freeze on all the acronyms in meetings. Can this help? Yes — and that’s the most common version of the problem. The fix isn’t a longer glossary; it’s hearing and using the acronyms in real sentences until they’re automatic. Describe the kind of meeting you’re in, and Studio Lingo builds a lesson around it with audio you can rehearse.

Can Studio Lingo teach the acronyms specific to my industry? That’s exactly where it helps most. Because each lesson is created from what you describe, it covers the shorthand of your actual field — finance, marketing, HR, software — not a generic template. Type the acronyms you keep seeing, or paste the document they came from, and you get a lesson on those.

What’s a Learning Path, and how is it different from a single lesson? A single lesson covers one situation — say, the acronyms in your next meeting. A Learning Path is a structured, step-by-step roadmap towards a bigger goal, like moving confidently through your whole workday in another language. A financial analyst, for example, might build a path called “Daily Routine of a Financial Analyst” that runs from the morning standup to the earnings report to presenting results — each step building on the last. Learning Paths are part of the Master plan.

What’s a “seed idea” and what should I type? A seed idea is just a short description of what you want to learn — like “explain KPIs to me” or “have a chat about our team’s OKRs.” You don’t need it to be perfectly worded. You can even paste in a real email or meeting agenda and ask for a lesson on every acronym in it.

Do I need to be fluent to start? No. Studio Lingo teaches through the language you already speak. If you speak Portuguese and work in English, the lesson explains everything in Portuguese while teaching you the English acronyms and how to use them. You can create your first lessons free, no credit card.

The next time the agenda is half initials, you won’t be guessing. Type the acronyms — or paste the whole email — and get a lesson built around your work with Studio Lingo.