Technical English Vocabulary: 5 reasons why you should never study words.
If you’re learning English for engineering, then learn like an engineer — put down the flashcards, and focus on efficiency.
Compare it to all the other flavors, and it doesn’t take an engineer to spot the differences that make technical English a whole other animal.
The consequences of mistakes are one of the most glaring; they can be really expensive. But so are mistakes in English if you’re, say, an accountant…
So maybe costly is a better fit here.
Because when engineers fail to communicate, people can die. Besides mafia bookies, I doubt many accountants have to worry about that.
Another aspect that makes technical English unique is how difficult it is to practice on your own. For example:
If you want to practice your business English, that’s easy — head to any Irish pub in or near your city’s business district, because that’s where all the English-speaking business travelers hang out. Just look for a guy in a suit, buy him a round and start schnacken.
Want to improve your English for wastewater engineering? No problem — just attend your local “English-Speaking Wastewater Engineers” meetup and spend a cozy evening talking shi-
Oh, wait — those don’t exist. Anywhere.
A different engineer, a different language
But more than anything, what makes technical English so challenging (both to learn and to teach) is the vocabulary.
Practical vocabulary is entirely different for every engineer, and depends 100% on one’s field, role and project requirements. Even engineers on the same project team might need totally different terms in their Wortschatz.
So understandably, this is what most new subscribers to Vorsprung durch Sprache tell me they struggle with above all else.
Well, after almost seven years of teaching engineers in everything from Abwasser to Zyklonfiltertechnik, the best advice I can give you for learning technical English vocabulary is:
Stop worrying about it so much.
Sound crazy? Let me give you five reasons why:
1. Words are always available
I had a math teacher in high school who never allowed us to use calculators on our exams. His reason was that we “wouldn’t go through life always carrying a calculator in our pockets.”
Well, he was right — I don’t. I carry a small Linux computer instead.
And chances are that you carry a smartphone in your pocket, too.
Gone are the days of sitting on the bus and wondering to yourself, ‘which dinosaur had the biggest head?’, and needing a special trip to the library to find out.
The same applies to technical vocabulary — these days, any word you need is just a few taps or keystrokes away.
It takes only a few seconds to look up a word you need: so find it, use it, and move on — you’re more likely to remember the word by using it in a practical context anyways.
2. A little planning goes a long way
Of course there are situations when you can’t stop to look up the words you need, in a meeting or taking a client on a plant tour, for example.
But these things shouldn’t happen spontaneously — at least not often.
Therefore, you can avoid vocabulary troubles in these situations the same way we engineers try to avoid every problem: planning.
Your meeting should have an agenda, your tour should have a plan, and your presentation should have an outline. So, use them!
With a quick mental rehearsal, you can easily identify the words that you’re missing before your ‘live performance’, and create a quick list of the translations you’ll need beforehand.
And don’t worry about memorizing it, either. Take it with you to your meeting or on your tour, and use it when you need it.
Or even better:
Add that list to everyone’s meeting agenda so that everyone’s on the same page. Some colleagues will probably thank you.
But of course, you can’t plan for everything, and Murphy’s law is all too real…
…so just keep this next point in mind the next time you’re forced to improvise:
3. You can always cheat
I’ll never forget the first time it happened to me in German: I didn’t know the name of the weg used to go über the street, so I just said ‘Überweg’.
Turned out that my creation was actually correct, and that’s been my strategy ever since — if I don’t know a word in German, I just make one up (and hope).
I know I won’t always be right, but being right isn’t really all that important in such cases.
Here’s why:
Even if my made-up word is wrong, everyone still understands what I’m talking about. Not only that, but I never have to break the flow of my speech simply because I don’t know a certain word.
And you can do this in English, too, just with one VERY important difference:
You’ll crash and burn if you try to make up a word in English (trust me).
But whenever you can’t think of a word in English, technical or not, you can always cheat, and say its definition instead.
For example:
If you can’t think of the word ‘chair’, just say ‘thing that you sit on’. Or if you can’t recall the English word for ‘Absperrklappe’, just say ‘shutoff valve with a turning disc’.
Everyone will know what you mean, and you’ll never have to stop your sentence and stand there scratching your head.
And the best part? Almost always, someone will end up saying something like ‘You mean a butterfly valve?’.
It’s almost too easy.
4. Learn formulas, not variables
When you were in university and learning the basics of engineering, what was more important in the end:
Remembering how to apply the right formulas in the right situation, or remembering the exact values that you plugged into those formulas in order to solve one particular problem?
Of course understanding the formulas is more important than the memorizing the variables. Why else do you think we’re taught to read all those crazy charts, graphs and tables?
Knowing how to find the right values when you actually need them makes A LOT more sense than trying to remember all of them.
See where I’m going with this?
If the focus of your technical English studies is to memorize technical vocabulary, then it’s like you’re trying to memorize material property tables.
But if you switch your focus to understanding how to use those words by studying concepts like the construction and proper use of English tenses…
…you’ll immediately find yourself learning the vocabulary for technical English you need without even trying.
You still need to plug the right values into the formula, after all. But this approach brings in new words on an as-needed basis, rather than flooding you with tens or hundreds of context-less words at once.
5. Lack of practical learning material
23. That’s how many workbooks for ‘technical English’ I have on my shelf so far. And even as my collection continues to grow, so far, all except 2 of them will remain there, untouched, indefinitely.
Why? Because they’re junk (to put it nicely).
They’re either written by someone who has no clue about what engineers actually do, or they’re designed to help English teachers who themselves have no idea what engineers actually do.
Almost all of them focus on teaching technical vocabulary that any engineer above A2 would never need, never use, or would already know.
So unless you’re willing to write your own workbook with practice questions and silly memory games, good luck finding a technical English workbook that’s actually worth your time.
(But if you do find one, be sure to let me know.)
Closeout
Now don’t get me wrong: vocabulary is a very important element when you’re learning technical English. It’s just not important enough to be the central focus of your studies.
In other words: Cool it with the flashcards, unless you know for sure that that’s a strategy that works for you.
From what I’ve seen over the years, it always comes down to this: instead of studying lists, you’re better off learning how to apply the words you need (e.g. grammar) and filling in the words you find are missing as you go.
Also, regarding point 5: Out of fairness to the authors, I don’t want to endorse or dismiss any particular technical English book, nor do I have any intention of writing my own.
I am writing something though… but this project isn’t designed to teach engineers specific technical vocabulary. Not directly, at least.
Instead, I’m working on a method through which any engineer in any field can teach themselves exactly the technical English vocabulary they need to describe and explain any component, process or system.
In my opinion, it’s much more than any vocabulary workbook could ever do. It’s technical vocabulary: re-engineered.
Imagine that.
