the authors collected the test scores of 475 students enrolled in an intensive, total immersion business English program (divided into Intermediate and Advanced levels, which students self-select) at the foreign language training center of a major Japanese company between October 1999 and September 2001. To investigate the correlation between writing skill and TOEIC scores, the British Council and the authors jointly administered the BULATS Writing Test to a total of 100 employees, 90 of whom were students of either the Intermediate or Advanced course between September and November 2001. Ten individuals, who were not students at the corporate language training center at the time, took the test in April 2001. The participants made up a homogeneous sample: they were all graduates of the Japanese education system and held at least an undergraduate degree from a Japanese university. They had six years of English as a foreign language education in school, with an emphasis on reading and translation. In the Japanese university system students typically receive three semesters of foreign language education and as almost all the participants were from a science and engineering background, it is unlikely they will have had more than this minimum level of English education at the university level. They ranged in age from 24 to 46 with an average age of 29 and had been working in the corporation for an average of six years. English proficiency varied from elementary (TOEIC 255) to advanced (TOEIC 935) with an average score of 559. Although some of the participants would have had prior experience of using English as part of their professional duties, the majority of the employees attending the foreign language training center came with little experience of communicating in English.