Today is programmer's day. On this occasion, there is a holiday in our office, balloons, fireworks (actually, no: we are working hard). But we could not ignore such a day, so we prepared an article about technical English for IT specialists.

Why does the developer need English (this question made me laugh). The answer is obvious: English is needed to understand terminology, work with English-language interfaces, read technical documentation, study professional literature, conferences and webinars... And, of course, to be able to work abroad.

The developers already know a huge number of English words (at least listen to ours: they don’t seem to speak Russian at all, but only “fix”, “debate”, “asapyat”). But using professional slang does not mean that you have a full command of the English language. Therefore, we have collected resources in the article, thanks to which you can fully upgrade English for work.

The content of the article "English for developers":

We are looking for professional vocabulary:

Downloading skills:

English Dictionary for Programmers: Vocabulary Sources

The vocabulary for developers is extensive. Those who the layman can call "IT" include a dozen different specializations: frontend developers, backend developers, testers, web designers, products and others (but they all need to be able to "fix a computer").

We have collected sources where you can find both basic and highly specialized vocabulary.

1. English for IT-specialists: textbooks

Textbooks are especially suitable for those who decide to learn the language on their own, as they offer a ready-made lesson program.

English for Information Technology- suitable for entry level. Includes the main basic vocabulary.

Career Path Software Engineering is a lexical guide for programmers that combines specialized vocabulary and work situations to develop communication skills. Topics: software development, testing, user interface, modeling, career options, etc.

Oxford English for Information Technology- another complete course. Suitable for intermediate level. Includes student workbook and audio course.

Professional English in Use ICT- The course is suitable for intermediate level. The book is built from simple to complex, all units are divided into topics.

Check Your English Vocabulary for Computers and IT is a workbook designed to improve understanding of technical vocabulary. Includes crosswords, puzzles, and more.

2. English for it: online courses

On the Internet, you can find sites with various online simulators for your technical English.

You can also find specialized vocabulary on the websites:

The sites are in English, but ours will translate any word in two clicks.

4. Professional literature: blogs, magazines for IT specialists

The most effective way to replenish vocabulary is to “take out” words from a living context. For example, read an article about a professional issue and write out new words from there. Such vocabulary will be better remembered, because it will be associated with a qualitative context.

Materials on Lingualeo: technical English for programmers

The Lingualeo material library contains over 250,000 authentic texts, videos, audios, and more. The main feature is that you can 1. click on an unfamiliar word ⇒ 2. see the translation ⇒ 3. add a word to study ⇒ 4. learn it with . And the context will always be with you.

We have a huge amount of materials on IT topics: collection, collection, etc.

Also, vocabulary and ideas can be drawn from and from special. And we have collected cool examples of Elevator pitch.

How to search for materials: enter any technical term in English and sort the materials by difficulty level and format (video, audio, book). Link instructions.

Magazines and blogs in English for developers

The principle of working with texts on other sites can be just as convenient: 1. install ⇒ 2. poke on unfamiliar words ⇒ 3. and add them for study.

Where to find lyrics:

• news.ycombinator.com
• blog.codinghorror.com
• www.improgrammer.net
• www.smashingmagazine.com
• designm.ag
• sdtimes.com
• www.drdobbs.com
• www.creativebloq.com

Working with other skills: listening, speaking practice

Full knowledge of a foreign language includes 4 skills: reading (we named many sites for it), listening, writing and speaking (that is, speech). We will find additional resources for listening and speaking.

1. Listening: podcasts and videos

Part of the collections on Lingualeo that I talked about above - are collections with videos that will also help you improve your listening skills. Now let's find some more podcasts:

• Herding Code - technology podcasts with Scott Allen, Kevin Dente, Scott Kuhn and John Galloway.

To summarize: English for web designers, IT specialists

• Like any specialist, developers need not only basic English, but also highly specialized. Basically, it concerns special vocabulary.
• Vocabulary can be found in professional dictionaries and materials in English. The second option is preferable: this way you will learn even the most difficult words better.
• Do not forget other skills: listening (listen to podcasts, watch videos and TV shows) and speaking (communicate with English-speaking colleagues on special forums and social networks).

Well, once again, congratulations to those involved on the holiday! And now let's go. 🙂

— Streamline 200 taxi holding point 27;

— Taxi holding point 27 Streamline 200.

Not every fluent English-speaking person is able to understand the meaning of the dialogue above. This short excerpt from a conversation between an aircraft captain and an air traffic controller at a French airport is a typical example of technical English.

The concept of "Technical English" is extremely multifaceted and covers many professional fields of activity: IT industry, engineering, heavy industry, mining, engineering, aviation and many other areas up to the army and merchant navy.

So who can use technical English?

First of all, it is necessary for specialists in various professional fields, for example, to study literature in English.

It often happens that relevant foreign books, manuals, articles, reviews, instructions and other information necessary for work come out in Russian quite late, already outdated. Or, Russian-language analogues to foreign materials simply do not exist.

Also, many specialists need to practice or study abroad, where the entire process of study and communication with teachers and other students is conducted in English, with a wide use of specialized terms.

As one example, there are regular refresher courses for Russian civil aviation pilots at the offices of Boeing in the US and Airbus in France. All information that pilots receive during training, and communication of company employees with them, is conducted exclusively in English with extensive use of professional vocabulary.

As another example, let's take specialists from the IT industry working with many applications that have not been translated into Russian. Due to the fact that the IT industry is extremely subject to rapid changes, specialists need to quickly study large volumes of news and analytical information in English.

As a rule, it is permissible for a technical specialist not to have serious English skills. It is enough to know the basics of English vocabulary, grammar and speak English at least at the most basic level. As a rule, such specialists' knowledge in the field of technical English is guaranteed to grow as they use foreign literature and communicate with foreign colleagues.

As can be understood from the examples above, a strong command of technical English not only allows a specialist to grow significantly professionally, but also gives him an undeniable advantage in the labor market.

Despite the fact that professional linguist translators, as a rule, are doing remarkably well with the grammar and vocabulary of the English language, they encounter serious problems, in the form of a lack of knowledge in a particular area, which interfere with the understanding of specialized texts and specialized vocabulary.

Unlike specialists working in a certain field, for whom technical English rather plays a supporting role, professional translators need serious knowledge in the field of English, since working with languages ​​is their main field of activity. The translator is required to be fluent in English and Russian, to be able to competently and literally translate the most complex texts.

Of course, the ideal technical translator is seen as a person with two diplomas: technical and linguistic. However, for a number of objective reasons, there are very few such specialists.

How can you improve your knowledge of technical English?

There are two main ways to learn technical English - these are specialized courses and self-study.

In the first case, the student will be able to fully explore the nuances of technical English on the professional topics he needs with a teacher. If the student is lucky, the technical English course can be specialized (for pilots, for programmers, etc.). However, this option may not suit a number of students because of the training schedule that does not coincide with their work schedule (if students, for example, work on a rotational or shift basis) or due to cost.

For those who want to learn technical English on their own, there are several ways to learn. These can be training programs, online courses, tutorials and specialized literature. However, in this case, the effectiveness of training will depend only on the student himself.

Friends, do you remember on our website we talked about the levels of learning English? You are familiar with the beginner, basic, advanced and other levels. Each stage requires its own, special knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, speech turns, lexical constructions of the English language.

Today we will talk about the fact that there is another level of knowledge of the English language - this is the technical level. It stands separately, apart from the rest of the stages of learning English. It has its own characteristics and its own requirements. The so-called technical English is the language of various professions and specialties. The study and knowledge of English at this level is necessary for engineers, programmers, motorists, designers, people involved in equipment, spare parts, machinery and many others.

From this it follows that technical English is a fairly broad and voluminous category of language that covers many activities, maintenance and many professions. We will talk about all this today.

The technical level of English is used in many fields of activity, namely:

• IT sphere or programming: web-development of all specializations, assembly and repair of computers

• engineering: communication tools and related mechanisms
• automotive industry: fuels and lubricants, spare parts, cars
• design organizations: creation of design organizations
• army and navy: weapons, aircraft, etc.
• equipment: commercial, construction and medical
• video and television equipment, mobile phones and cameras

• trade and marketing

This is not a complete list of activities, which includes the technical level of English. A person who says that he speaks English at a technical level must necessarily indicate the scope of his professional application. Because to know all the technical English in all types of activities is beyond the power of even the British themselves!

What is the technical level for?

Studying the technical terms of the English language will help the study guides of the series "Professional English" - Technical English(Oxford University Press edition). The program of this course includes the extensive use of modern practical material - articles from professional journals, Internet resources, audio and video materials, role-playing games aimed at modeling and practicing professional situations.

But you can learn some basics, basic terms of the professional field that interests you, on your own. Special texts of a technical level, articles in magazines and newspapers in English, documentaries and educational programs in English of a technical and professional nature will help you. Thus, you can learn the most basic technical terms, and learn the rest in the course of your activity.

It is important to understand that the technical level of English is not ordinary language proficiency. This is a very special terminology that you need for your kind of activity. So if your English level is good enough, that's fine. But it’s worth getting a little more proficient in technical English in your profession, and you will immediately feel like a real professional in the language.

It's never too late to master English at a technical level, so you can start right now! Good luck to you, friends!

The people have the term "technical English" - this is the level at which you can read technical documentation, articles and books. This is the minimum level with which you can get a job as a programmer. Of course, this is not language proficiency. The vocabulary covers only a small set of topics, does not allow reading fiction and communicating with people. But it is easy to master.

You need to know it because the only actual source of truth is the official documentation and forums like StackOverflow. They are presented in English. For popular things, good people make translations, but, with rare exceptions, they are either outdated or incomplete, for many reasons.

The story is similar with books. Publishing houses translate into Russian only literature for a wide range of readers and beginners. But even such translations come out with a delay of a couple of years. Advanced literature is not translated into Russian at all: professionals, who are few in number, can read books in the original, and beginners do not buy them.

To learn how to understand technical texts, start using English at work. In other words, put yourself in an environment where you will encounter language every day. How it happened for me:

I switched the interfaces of the OS, phone, Internet services and social. nets into English. This gave me a starting vocabulary: I understood the names of elementary things, tools in Photoshop, settings, and so on. It did not cause discomfort, since I remembered where everything was.

For the first time, from cover to cover, I read the documentation for the tools I used: jQuery, some PHP framework that was my main then, Django. I read and translated every phrase with Yandex.Translate. Somewhere here I realized how my knowledge of these tools was superficial and I need to continue.

In the same way, I reread a book on development in English, which I had already read in translation. The initial acquaintance with the topic is important here: you know in advance what is being discussed and you can guess the meaning of words from the context, without constantly looking into the dictionary.

I began to make requests in Google English and look for answers in English-language articles. The vocabulary, which was accumulated from the previous paragraphs, made it possible to formulate phrases for the search. He also translated unknown words from Russian.

Total: read and translate. This is enough to learn to read. Earlier in this blog, I published translations of random articles, then I did the same for the online magazine frontender.info and even translated a small book on Go. The translator from me is so-so, but it worked.

Text comprehension is tied to how many words you know. Just by reading the text, you will memorize a lot of things in a passive mode, but special techniques with little effort allow you to memorize more words and phrases.

Learn phrases or whole sentences, not individual words. Separately, learning words is difficult and pointless: as in Russian, one word in different contexts means different things. With phrases, it's easier: the meaning of a word can be understood from the context if you don't remember the exact translation.

Use the spaced repetition method. There are a lot of programs for this business. I am using Anki. It is, of course, ugly, but flexible and free, released for all platforms and can synchronize between them. In general, nothing better has yet been invented. Write down the phrases that you translate there and repeat every morning on the way to work.

Do not use browser plugins for translation. Just a personal observation. Try using a paper dictionary or copying the phrase into the translator window with your hands, without copy-paste. So you will try to remember the word right away, so as not to climb into the dictionary for it a second time. But the action “click on a word and get a translation” is not enough to motivate memorization - it’s too simple and takes two seconds.

What not to do

Don't memorize extra words. Language learning services and courses offer ready-made sets of words for memorization and texts for training. But I already had my own sets of words and my own texts. What I studied additionally turned out to be an extra burden: in technical texts, words from the everyday life of Americans are almost never found. So, there is nowhere to even apply them outside the course. And unused knowledge tends to be erased from memory.

Don't rush into grammar. Grammar is, in fact, materiel. It is needed if you are going to use the language to the fullest: for speaking and writing. However, it has almost no effect on reading, vocabulary decides here. I don’t write or say anything like that, so the grammar was partially eroded along with unnecessary words. In my opinion, this should be the next meaningful step in language learning.

Conclusion

Here's how I went about 2-3 years ago. Subscribe. Another time I will tell you how to move from technical English to human.

English is spoken by more than 400 million people worldwide and another 1.5 billion use it as a second language. All programming documentation is originally in English, the 5 million Stack Overflow community communicates in English. Interesting and money orders, latest news from the IT field and much more are closed to developers who do not speak this language. Knowledge of English is a prerequisite for successful employment and career growth as a programmer. To help GeekBrains blog subscribers learn, we with a startup team for learning English via Skype EnglishDom prepared practical tips on how to learn technical English quickly and effectively.

Get busy every day

This is true for anyone who wants to quickly learn a foreign language. Do not look for excuses in well-established phrases like: “five minutes does not solve anything.” During this time, you can read the news in English, learn a few words or watch a thematic video. Look for opportunities, not excuses. Download an English audiobook to listen to while riding the subway, or a language-learning app to make the most of those five minutes.

Learn words by topic

For a better memory study words in context of usage. For example, in order to master the English terminology on the topic “Algebra of Sets”, read the thematic articles and highlight the unknown words. After that, practice them by studying materials on the topic until you can do without a dictionary. This way of studying will allow you to understand the shades of the meanings of words, which cannot be achieved simply by memorizing a dictionary.

Set your goals right

“Learn technical English” is too abstract a goal. New words appear daily and even native speakers do not know all the subtleties. And when something is too abstract, it is impossible to understand the quality of the result, because of this there is no motivation. So set specific, measurable goals, for example: “Fulfill a small order from an English-speaking employer”, “Read such and such a Java book in English”, “Know 100 technical terms”, “Ask for advice on an English-language resource.”

Read English-language IT forums

Here you can pick up relevant expressions that programmers around the world use in informal communication. It's not just a fun whim. Knowing the subtleties will be important for subsequent communication with foreign colleagues and customers.

Subscribe to English-speaking programmers on social networks

First, it is an inexhaustible source of new words and expressions. Secondly, you will be “in the know” of the latest events and novelties from the IT world.

Knowledge of vocabulary without the ability to perceive by ear is not enough. In order to successfully communicate with foreign customers and colleagues, you need to be able to perceive the language by ear. In order to acquire this skill, we recommend watching videos from conferences, hackathons, presentations. The main rule is the maximum of live communication. Movies, series, programs are useful, but they will not give the same effect as familiarity with “unfiltered” speech. You can also listen to audio recordings, but watching a video creates the effect of complete immersion in the language environment, everything is tracked, down to the characteristic gestures and facial expressions of the speaker.

Review material regularly

A person remembers well only what he uses. This fact is due to the fact that the brain considers a skill that has not been used for a long time to be irrelevant. So it is very important sometimes to repeat even long-studied and obvious words and expressions. It would be better if it were in practice.

Don't go deep into grammar

Learn grammar along with vocabulary, this will give a deeper understanding of the language and its structures. When young children learn to speak, they are not drilled into dozens of rules for the use of articles (although, unfortunately, this is often the case when learning languages ​​at school), they simply watch how others do it and repeat after them.

Do not teach by force

You can make learning even a dry technical language enjoyable. Find a specific topic or news item that interests you in English and try to translate it. When you understand that this will bring you results right now, for example, in the form of new knowledge about technologies, then this is very motivating.

Practice

Everyone talks about it, but not many use this mandatory rule. The absence of a language barrier, the ability to quickly switch to conversational mode and select the right words are one of the most important indicators of language proficiency at an advanced level. Look for any opportunity to speak. For example, you can chat with native speakers in text and video chats.