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Competition in the IT sphere is increasing not only due to the fact that people are massively mastering IT specialties and successfully acquiring soft skills, but also because many now have English as a “basic language”. Not everyone was so lucky to be motivated from childhood, not everyone had good teachers at school, so they have to catch up on an accelerated program. How can you learn English specifically for IT? Are there any nuances? How can you pass an interview in English if you don’t know much more than London is the capital of Great Britain.
We asked about this from someone who teaches English for IT and from someone who checks English at interviews.
- The most important thing is - does IT require any special English?
- As a rule, general English without any special features works, - explains Irina Shumanskaya, a corporate English teacher in IT companies. - If you have an average level of general English and social media marketing service the technical terminology you work with, then you can cope with any client. You can get used to different accents and master some phrases already in the process of communication. You can learn a couple of dozen common phrases and phrasal verbs that are typical for Americans or Australians to facilitate mutual understanding. Usually, it is these "local" phrases that create problems, but clients try to use them less so that communication is easier, because everyone is interested in dialogue, and not in "flushing" you.
Lifehack #1:
Many kids watch Netflix series to pick up conversational phrases and improve their listening skills. I watch series with all my students, then we discuss them and work on phrases to better memorize them. We watch both British and American films to learn to easily distinguish between both accents.
Well, what about the ads: English for life, for travel, for CT, business English... As if these are all different Englishes?
- This is called a "marketing ploy," laughs Irina. - You need to learn general English, which will allow you to correspond and communicate with customers and employees, if it is an international team, for example. And you also need it for business trips, which sometimes happen. Regarding preparation for CT or other exams: this may be enough for the interview. It depends on how well you are prepared for CT. Difficulties will come later, when the general vocabulary begins to use professional jargon, slang, phrases understandable to those who have been in the IT field for a long time. And this is where that very IT English appears, which you need to "polish" your existing level in order to get used to the team and customers as quickly and easily as possible. For this, you will have corporate English (courses from an IT company), which I advise you not to neglect.
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What about the fear of speaking?
— This is one of the most common problems among those who learn another language, — Irina continues. — It is quite difficult to overcome this barrier, since a person is constantly focused on the point that the interlocutor is looking for and focusing on his mistakes, and therefore it is easier to remain silent than to make mistakes, and they will laugh at you. Perhaps these complexes were “gifted” to us by our education system, fixated on finding mistakes instead of encouraging successes, teaching us to ridicule instead of encouraging. In fact, no one tracks your mistakes during communication. The main goal of any communication is mutual understanding. If you were able to convey your idea with your mistakes, this is already a success. Of course, you need to strive to speak correctly and beautifully, but if you think about it all the time and remain silent, then there will be no communication in principle.
Lifehack #2:
The most effective “cure” in this case is to force the student to talk about everything: news, thoughts, opinions, how their day went, etc. Over time, the person relaxes and stops getting hung up on this barrier.
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