3 Steps to Improve Your English to Advance Your Career as a Software Developer or Engineer

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As a software developer or engineer who speaks English as a second language, you realize how important communicating well in English is to advancing your career and gaining job opportunities.

You want to improve your English, but you may find that you’re having difficulties improving on your own.

You might think this is because:

• You are too busy and don’t have the time or energy
• You don't have people to speak English with
• You need a guide or program to help you

Let’s look at the first of these reasons.

You probably are in fact very busy with your work and other things in life!

But of course, using that as an excuse isn’t going to help you reach your goals.

What you need to do instead is to use the time you have efficiently in order to improve your English for your career.

You can do this by approaching English in a systematic and focused way where you:

1. Do the right things to efficiently develop your English fluency and accuracy
2. Learn to use the English you know more confidently and effectively
3. Develop the English communication skills that are most important for your work

Let me give you an analogy to help you understand.

Get ready to compete professionally—and win!

Imagine you’re a casual athlete—someone who is physically active.

You took many PE (physical education) classes in school, and these days, you exercise and play sports sometimes.

Suddenly, one day, you find out that you have been signed up to join a sports team.

Now, you are going to have to compete with professional athletes!

How will you get ready?

Whether by yourself or with a coach, you would want to do three things:

1. Get in the best shape using the right methods—proper diet, training, and even physical therapy if needed
2. Learn strategies so that you can do your best with your current fitness level and skills and be confident whenever you have to compete
3. Focus on training in the skills that are most important for the sport you’re competing in

Your situation with English and your career is quite similar.

You probably began learning English as a subject in school, and since then you’ve studied English and used English sometimes.

Now, you find that you need to use English professionally.

Even if you don’t have to use English in your job right now, you realize that being able to communicate well in English is important, or even critical, to advancing and gaining opportunities in your career.

Three steps to better English communication for your career

The steps you need to take to improve your English for your career efficiently and effectively are much like the steps to take if you suddenly had to compete as a professional athlete:

1. Strengthen your English communication foundation

Just as developing physical fitness and strength is foundational to doing well in any sport, developing fluency and accuracy in English is foundational to communicating well in English in any profession.

Therefore, you want to get your English “in shape” by following the right methods to efficiently improve your listening and speaking fluency and clarity.

Unfortunately, many people who want to develop English fluency do things that are inefficient or even ineffective, like taking classes where they mainly study grammar from textbooks.

Like trying to get physically fit by reading about physics and fitness, that just isn’t effective for developing fluency!

You may already realize that, but believe that you can’t really improve your English without having people to speak English with.

Actually, the most important thing for developing English fluency is listening to and understanding lots of spoken English.

Therefore, you should listen to English content that is highly understandable and interesting for you as much as you can each day.

As a software developer or engineer, you should especially listen to English content where people discuss topics that relate to your work and express things that you want to communicate in English.

Another important part of strengthening your English communication foundation is pronunciation—in particular, being able to distinguish English consonant and vowel sounds.

Working on pronunciation can help you not only make yourself better understood when speaking English, but also hear spoken English more clearly and acquire English more efficiently.

2. Improve your English communication efficiency

Like building physical fitness and strength, it takes time to develop your English fluency and accuracy.

But what do you do if you have a presentation or a job interview in English tomorrow?

Just as good athletes learn strategies to be confident and do their best whenever they have to compete, you can learn to use the English that you already have more confidently, efficiently, and effectively.

For example, by focusing on communication, rather than language, you can often make your message simpler and clearer and find ways to communicate it well using the English you have already.

Many English learners hesitate to communicate in English at work because they worry that they don’t know enough vocabulary, or that their vocabulary isn’t complex or impressive enough.

But if instead of focusing on the language, they focus on their goal of communicating what they want to communicate, they may find that they can do much more with the English they know right now.

3. Build your English communication skills

Rather than training for every sport or physical activity, an athlete focuses on training in the skills that are most important for the sport they play.

Similarly, rather than learning English in general, you should focus on the English and skills in English that are most important for your job and career.

This means focusing on using English effectively in the most frequent and important tasks in your work, and developing the skills in English you need for your work such as giving presentations and communicating in meetings.

Your next steps to improve your English and reach your goals

By strengthening your spoken English fluency and accuracy, learning to use the English you know more confidently and efficiently, and focusing on developing the skills in English you need for your work, you can efficiently improve your ability to communicate in English so that you can achieve your career goals.

You may want to take these steps to improve your English, but feel that you need a guide or program to help and support you.

Just like athletes who compete professionally have coaches, having this kind of support can be very helpful, and even essential.

However, any guide or program should follow the right approach so that you can improve efficiently and effectively:

1. They should help you do the right things to develop your spoken English fluency and accuracy
2. They should help you use the English you know already more confidently and effectively
3. They should focus on the skills and tasks that are most important in your work as a software developer or engineer

I work with software developers and engineers on all these things so that they can communicate in English more fluently, confidently, and effectively to advance in their careers, gain job opportunities, and reach their goals.

If you’d like to learn more, just send me a message here on LinkedIn!