Is the IT vocabulary bubble enough? 

When I'm working with software developers, I kinda feel like an LLM. If the discussion gets technical, I have no idea what we're talking about. Well maybe just a little, on some very abstract level. But I can ask logical questions (more or less) and keep the conversation going, because I've been exposed to this topic enough to pattern-mach.

And then I thought — is that how my clients are feeling all the time?

If you take any IT English course, it typically follows the lexical approach. I.e., learning context-specific collocations — what do you say at a stand-up meeting? How do you give feedback?

It's a good approach. Very practical, helps you with exactly what you need. No irrelevant textbook topics. And it sells well too — you can boost your English in just a few weeks.

On second thought, however... Have you heard about the curse of knowledge? — We tend to take our knowledge for granted. And it would seem that most English courses for IT professionals are designed by people for whom English is not a foreign language anymore. They've been fluent in it for years, have an intuitive feel for how to use it, have no additional cognitive load associated with language switching.

In this scenario, learning 'IT English' is just adding one more interface to the existing architecture. That's how it worked for me when I joined the US startup some years ago. Getting to know the language for SCRUM rituals was indeed very helpful. But since I had been lucky with my previous educators, my brain already had a vast associative network in English.

So when I would hear some business slang phrase — say, 'I'm swamped with work' — it wasn't just some abstraction. It would evoke a bunch of associations (Shrek, childhood camping trips, wet feet, lost shoes, frogs, a monster from The Witcher, moss — the list goes on), a visualization of what's happening, maybe even a visceral sensation of muscle tension / suffocation.

Now, I'm not sure that's the case for someone who hasn't had a chance to get immersed in the English-speaking environment before having to look for a job. Which introduces a problem: if a language is not embodied, it makes about as much sense to us as it does to ChatGPT. It's a soft version of the Chinese Room experiment. We are relating to the rules, not to the people.

Just to clarify, I am by no means saying that IT English courses are inefficient or insufficient. They are a great tool to work with what you have on a tight deadline. That said, let's explore what else there is to the language.

Do we really need to know 'irrelevant' words?

Arguably. If you think about how a language is formed, the core vocabulary is always grounded in something physical. Simply put, we have objects (nouns), their qualities (adjectives), what we do to those objects (verbs) and how we do it (adverbs). Prepositions show us how things relate to each other — spatially and otherwise.

A language describes our relationship with the environment. Take, for instance, phrasal verbs — they are very physical, the context of movement is embedded in them. Much like the system of prefixes in the Russian language.

So it is logical to assume that general vocabulary, not necessarily related to your work context, is actually very useful to integrate. So that you map the language to your sensory experience. That's when it starts making sense and becomes real, unlike some abstract code you need to remember.

How to expand your vocabulary

Since I'm referring to general English now, it's tricky. The English language has a lot of words. At least 600k. An average English-speaking adult knows ~20-35k words. But since we've been talking about the concrete, physical world, let's say a child's level is already not so bad. That's around 10k.

By the way, here's a tool to estimate your vocabulary.

So how do you learn 10 thousand words? In addition to Agile English, that is?

I'm afraid there are no short-term solutions here, sprints only work in Scrum🙃 One of my clients had been learning words in an app for years. That's very admirable and had produced a result — he would recognize the words he had learned when he saw them. Their meaning — not so much. Not until he would use them in some personally meaningful context.

So targeted learning combined with activation is one way to go about it. If you have the stamina for it. You can also try the following:

📖Reading

Truth be told, that's how I gained most of my passive vocabulary. At first, it was reading and translating. Then, as soon as I had enough vocabulary to somehow follow the plot — just reading.

The result was — an intuitive feel of the language at the expense of clarity. The syntax part was good. But my thoughts had been foggy for years. Contextual understanding is a natural way to learn, but it strips away the comfort of precision.

Still, the number of words you gradually adopt when you read 50 pages is much larger than if you read 5 pages, translating every new word.

It's also about which word goes with what. E.g., I might not tell you the translation of the word 'ajar'. But I know it's a quality of a door, and my brain provides a picture where it's open. I'm not sure I can explain the verb 'wield', but I know that it's what you do with a sword (a specific object) or power (a broad abstraction), and I have a Game-of-Thrones-like clip playing in my mind when I hear / read it.

That's how you build your associative networks. They say that the unconscious exists within a language. Arguably, that's where thinking actually happens.

✍🏼Writing

It's an effective way to force your brain into precision. Try describing what you sense and feel. How your body is doing. It's like a verbal savasana — check in on yourself limb by limb. If you don't know the words to describe your sensory experience — anatomy and animal biology is one vocabulary bubble I highly recommend exploring. As well as the verbs associated with it — what can happen to your body, and what your body can do.

The better you get at describing your visceral sensations, the more real the language becomes.

🫂Relating

This one is probably the most effective — not in terms of quantity, but in terms of salience (how prominent a word / phrase is in your mind).

When we hear something from people who are important to us — especially in some emotional context — it sticks. Song lyrics / something your professor said / a line from a relatable movie character.

And, of course, the people you talk to. It's much easier to activate an expression if you hear it firsthand in a real interaction.

As my dear friend said — 15 years of pillow talk. That's all it takes.

It goes without saying that all of the above takes a lot of effort and dedication. It can only work if you find the process rewarding. And it's OK if it takes a while, it's not supposed to be a quick fix.

PS, if you need a quick fix because you've signed an offer, check out this post🪄