This is a guest post by Natalya Savenkova.

Some time ago Gabor has written the article Want a job abroad? Improve your language and communication skills!. He told about necessity of improving communication skills if you want to get job abroad.

Communication is impossible without knowledge of the language. From my point of view, first of all you should learn English even if you're going to work in your country.

English language will allow you:

  • To share your own experience and get it from developers and communities from another countries.
  • To read documentations quickly and carefully.
  • To talk to tech support directly using forums.
  • To read books which will never be translated into your native language.
  • To visit international summits without translator.
  • And of course to write code without shameful mistakes.

Eventually I realized that only technical English is not enough absolutely because even technical people use a lot of expressions. Most of them you won't be able to understand therefore you'll lose the meaning of phrase. But that phrase might be really important. So I began learning English.

What I did:

  • Set English language for interfaces of all my devices (computer, mobile phone...).
  • Started studying at an english school near my home. It's just for motivating and keeping up the rhythm. And I have an opportunity to talk to teachers and other students in the school.
  • Vocabulary is a big problem with studying languages. For improving it I use online-service Lingualeo. You can watch videos, listen to the music, read texts and exercise words you want to remember. It has mobile applications too. I use it while going to work.
  • Began translating english articles but it's difficult if you have lack of time.
  • Subscribed on podcasts. It's convenient when you can't read for example. While cooking or walking on your feet. New podcasts automatically downloads on my iPad and deletes after listening.
  • Started using English for searching something on the web. It was difficult at the beginning.
  • To be honest, I didn't begin reading professional books immediately because it's important for me to read it quick. If I have a translation of this books I prefer translation. My vocabulary is not enough good. But I read many technical articles on the web during the day.
  • If you want to improve speaking I suggest you to find speaking club in your city. Just for training your speech.

The most important thing is to keep up the rhythm. By this time I've been learning English for four month. It's not bad not I think. Good luck!

Comments

Thanks for this good information.

With your good skills in English language, you will be able to all the good benefits of it because you will have an efficient communications. Good thing that you have able to put some good overview about the English language here and its benefits as well. These are good terms to consider when learning all the different forms of languages.