Cruise lines usually hire people with a relevant professional background and a good command of the English language. Perhaps you have the experience, but is your English good enough?
English is the mandatory language on most ships and you must be good enough to have conversations with people, to understand technical terms in your area of expertise and to understand safety instructions given to you during safety drills. In fact, Safety Officers on ships can get you signed off the ship if they feel that your English language skills are not strong enough as this may endanger you and other passengers in case of an emergency.
Some cruise lines may ask you to take an English language proficiency test, so if you are not sure how good your English speaking ability it, you should take some lessons beforehand.
You can’t learn to speak conversational English just from reading a text book. Watching English movies will NOT help improve your English speaking skills either. You must listen to a level of English that you understand.
Speaking more than one language can certainly be useful on ships as there will be guests of many nationalities, but English will most definitely be the primary language.
Test Your Level of English
Here are some free online tests you can take to find out if you need to upgrade your English language skills.
► http://www.examenglish.com/leveltest/index.php
► http://www.kaplaninternational.com/english-test/index.aspx
► http://www.examenglish.com/leveltest/listening_level_test.htm
