English exams cause a negative reaction from most developers. On the Internet or in the smoking room, you can often hear statements that TOEFL / IELTS does not test the level of language proficiency, but the ability to match the templates. Developers cling to their B1 or even B2 / C1, which was given to them in an internal assessment at the company or during a 10-minute online test. Next, we have 2 paths. You can accept your level and not develop, thinking that you “don't need,” “not mine,” and so on. You can find 100 reasons to deny internationally accepted tests and even get around them when migrating. Or you can agree that your level is not good enough when objectively assessed by criteria, and think about the development and benefits for a developer's career. The article will be about the second way, specifically:
- Grammarly
- (RPG/RTS)
- TOEFL GO
To begin with, I would like to point out that people tend to think distortedly, and these distortions can have huge negative consequences for a programmer's career. For example, "maximization" or "overgeneralization". Imagine a conventional programmer who dropped out of English in school or junior year because of difficulties. There can be a huge number of these difficulties and they can be of a completely different nature, ranging from incorrect approaches and materials not in accordance with the level, to personal characteristics of perception and real deviations (for example, attention deficit). Maximizing is that people can inflate problems in magnitude, while overgeneralization is inflating in time. If a person has poor auditory memory, how much? You should always express everything in numerical form and compare with colleagues.Only 20% worse or 180% worse? Maybe you should look for some exercises or approaches that can improve cognitive performance in general?
Usually, it is the deviations that cause stupor in development. After all, a mentally healthy person at the age of 25, using modern approaches in teaching, will be able to learn a new language with pleasure in a couple of years and pass any international exam for B2 / C1, and there will still be a lot of free time.
Introduction
I would like to draw particular attention to the ideological approach to teaching, and give you the right attitude. Now I will tell you about 2 approaches to the same task (passing a language exam), which can be very different and affect your motivation for several months or even years. The first approach is to look at the exam as a stressful situation, very limited in time and which will require internal efforts "to the maximum" in order to have time for everything, go through this hellish circle and never come back to it. The second approach is to accept that the lack of time can be related to inappropriate language development and inappropriate learning approaches. Adjust these approaches, and add that in each of the parts where the time is limited, you still have 5 minutes free.
On July 18, 2020, I passed the TOEFL with 98 points out of 120 (C1), and in this article I will show you some of the unique approaches that I had to develop to pass this exam despite the difficulties, problems and demotivators.
It should be noted right away that I will not go into detail about well-known fundamental upgrades, such as reading text without translation and without google translate, watching videos without subtitles and writing text / speech immediately in English without intermediate Russian. All this is mentioned many times in articles and is also familiar to language course tutors, and does not present any particular difficulties. The article will focus on unique content.
It should also be noted that a discussion of TOEFL vs IELTS is beyond the scope of this article. I chose TOEFL because for many years I adhered to pure American English, and I don't really want to migrate to UK or New Zealand in the future, where IELTS is a priority. Also, I often watch scientific lectures on various subjects (health, nutrition, physiology) and I am satisfied with the academic language. And I also know that TOEFL is more difficult than IELTS for many reasons, and is a kind of challenge and a good benchmark in this sense.
Will the employer pay more for the transition from B2 to C1
No, it won't (directly). In articles about remote work and migration, you can often find a mention that good English "was not useful". Don't be under the illusion that adding C1 to your resume will in any way promote it and increase the chance of a cooler offer. The main benefit of moving to C1 is that working with English-language content will become much more natural and enjoyable. This can save a lot of effort and time, especially in development and learning. And effective development and training in itself can lead to more delicious offers and steep positions in the company. Also, the transition between levels will force you to make quality leaps forward, which can indirectly affect your work. This article will be about them.
And the main benefit of passing a certificate is in measuring your real level and tracking your progress. This can be an important, very important motivator and performance tracking. If you set a goal to improve your level of English proficiency in half a year, then the certificate will allow you to express the goal in numerical form and make it a SMART goal.
Part 1 - Reading
I started math at 12 and wrote my first program (game) at 13. All this seemed very interesting and natural to me. It was around this time that my brain switched to the dominant left hemisphere, which is responsible for logic and analytical thinking, which is so well suited to programming. I easily did what ordinary people find super complicated and incomprehensible. However, a very interesting paradox happened to my brain. The left hemisphere completely supplanted the right and I practically forgot how to think in images. I do not know how to explain this at the level of neuroscience, and whether it is possible. This may have something to do with the fact that I was a retrained left-hander. If my story reminds you, then you can send me your detailed story at kciray8@gmail.com. Let's try to follow this phenomenon.
So, my imagination was almost completely blown away. I enjoyed writing programs and solving mathematical problems, thinking and reasoning logically and verbally, and was fond of natural sciences. 12 years passed in this way. During this time I read only a couple of books in Russian, because it could take a month or more to read one book. Verbal reading forced one to go back and re-read the same fragments of text many times. I knew that this was not natural and that somehow I was not reading correctly, but I closed my eyes to it.
In 2016, I spent a huge amount of time learning English and even published an article How I Spent 1000 Hours Learning English in 2016... I spent 80% of the time and energy in my Master's degree in English to raise it from A1 to about B1 +. I hoped to complete my master's degree with TOEFL on C1, but I could not even pass it on B2 due to stupor, primarily in reading speed. Then I got a job as Java Developer at EPAM, and again began to ask this question about reading speed. It was not a limiting factor in the developer's career, but its improvement could lead to implicit benefits.
To get a starting point, I downloaded the TOEFL GO mobile application, which allows you to pass certain TOEFL parts for a small fee (about 300 rubles for 1 reading unit). I passed Practice Test 1 with my slow reading and it took 1.5 hours instead of 1 hour. At the same time, I correctly answered 37 out of 42 questions, which significantly exceeds the boundary score for C1. But, at the same time, I was too late in time and felt tired, not ready to go through the rest of the parts.
After that, I set a goal to improve the reading speed in general, and only then proceed to the tests. I measured the reading speed and asked my friends to take the same measurements. The results were drastic. It turns out that my reading speed is kept at the level of elementary school (both in Russian and in English). And among my acquaintances at the university, the reading speed quite fits into the norm. We used the site http://bukva.info/rapid/ to measure Russian reading. He gave me 543 characters per minute (WPM = 90), and 4 of my friends had it 2 or even 3 times more! At that time, I read 5 books in Russian, about 10 books in English using verbal reading, without forming a picture in my head.
I began to blame everything on the attention deficit that I always had. While reading, I am often distracted and lost in my thoughts, which makes me go back and re-read sentences, and sometimes even entire paragraphs. I was examined by a neurologist and explained this problem, but even an experienced specialist could not help me, and the standard set of examinations did not reveal any abnormalities. Friends also recommended that I try to just read very quickly and let the brain adapt, but this does not work with verbal reading.
Then I seriously thought: what am I doing wrong? As early as 16, I heard on TV the statement that TV shows do not develop people's imaginations, unlike books. I was stupid then and could not understand what they mean, how dry books without pictures can develop imagination at all? It always seemed to me that there is a widespread opinion “text is better than pictures”. While reading, I always pronounced the text to myself ( Subvocalization ) and read it based on this, adding some reasoning and notes.
Then I came up with an idea that radically changed my future. I tried to read everything also slowly, but at the same time associate each word with an image in my head and try to somehow animate the picture. At first, 1 word took 2 to 10 seconds and this required significant mental effort. But just a week later, I began to read myself quite successfully, and animate the picture. Of course, the quality of such animation was at the level of 2000 games. And it was not easy to keep it in my head, and the brain tried to switch back to verbal reading. However, after a month the picture quality had grown to the games of 2005, I read a large (by my standards) book The Name of the Wind (662 pages), and while reading it I overcame the speed of sound (WPM = 160). Previously, audiobooks seemed very fast to me, but now everything has changed.This was the starting point for success.
When I returned to TOEFL GO and passed the “Practice Test 2”, I was able to cope in 67 minutes (I almost managed to reach the limit), and instead of 88%, I answered qualitatively to 95% (40/42), which can be interpreted as C1 +. This was one of the turning points in my life. At the end of 2018, I realized that I can read quickly and efficiently. It should also be noted that visual reading helped me perceive the text as a whole and as a connected flow of information. If earlier I tried to analyze and divide everything, now it's the other way around. I also tried to completely "think in images" ( Visual thinking ) and it seemed like even reaching 70% a day, but my brain still broke and wanted to go back.
Benefits for the developer
People from EPAM noticed how quickly I scan Stack Overflow and Google. Indeed, the development of peripheral vision has led to faster processing of large amounts of information. If I read in the morning for 30 minutes, then my brain is "overclocked" on fiction and you can read anything and quickly. But even if I don't practice visual reading, being well-read leaves an imprint in the form of more effective verbal reading.
Reading skills can be especially useful if the programmer does a lot of googling or looking for something in the documentation. And if you apply it outside of IT, you can get a huge bonus in reading books on self-development, management or psychology. Or rare technical books. All of this can have a profound effect on your career as a professional.
Also, some large companies have R&D departments, and programmers have to read scientific articles and base their development on them. In this case, fast reading skills and academic English are very, very important.
But the main idea that I want to convey to you is try TOEFL / IELTS, find your bottlenecks and try to fix them, and then look at the consequences.
Part 2 - Letter
Writing has always come naturally to me. I was sure that the essays would not cause me any problems. But there were still problems. When I first tried TOEFL Independent Essay, I was surprised that I simply do not have enough time to write (it takes 35-40 minutes instead of 30). And in terms of size, my essays do not always fit into the recommended norms. I thought my writing skill was super awesome, because it's better than most of my IT colleagues. Then I took a long list of 104 independent essay topics and started writing 2 essays a day inside Grammarly, in the evenings after work. Even the free version of Grammarly found a huge number of errors and typos. 40 essays were enough to train yourself to write 1 essay in 20-25 minutes, with a margin of 30 minutes.
It should also be added that after the first unsuccessful attempts I took a break for a week and developed blind typing, which significantly accelerated the writing of an essay and added energy savings. Before that, I had been typing for 13 years with regular glancing at the keyboard (which added strain to my eyes), and my hands were walking around the keyboard instead of learning the ASDF JKL: pattern and using it as a base. Only a week of investment, and she changed my entire future seal for the rest of my life. That's how fundamental!
Thanks to the TOEFL developers for raising the bar and making the time limit. It got me thinking and upgraded my writing and typing skills.
Benefits for the developer
Actually, blind typing speeds up code editing and takes it to a new level of comfort, and the skill of fast and competent writing will allow you to better communicate with foreign customers, spend less effort and more pleasure on it. Also, there are prospects to publish a technical book on Amazon and receive passive income from it. And also, the publication of articles on any foreign sites or even in magazines.
Also, I noticed an increase in critical thinking, when for some controversial issue a clear list of arguments immediately appears (for 1 essay, I always gave 3 arguments). You and I know that at interviews they often look not at the information that a person remembered, but at his train of thought (HOW he remembered this and how he reasoned at the same time).
Part 3 - Speaking
Speaking in TOEFL boils down to recording responses to a microphone lasting 45-60 seconds, while the preparation time is not long (about 15 seconds). This may not be the most enjoyable part of TOEFL, but there are many interesting lessons to be drawn from it too. The simplest conclusion is that you are not given time to correct mistakes in words and sentences before pronouncing them. You need to pronounce it the first time and well, and at the same time the speech will be assessed according to a number of criteria, including the abundance of vocabulary, the adequacy of the use of words and even the correctness of grammatical structures. The question arises - how to wind up spoken language?
I must say right away that I have never liked classes with tutors. They are boring, run on schedule, and require large sums of money. And the problem is not the lack of money, but the fact that you don't want to spend so much on something that you can do yourself. I have tried a lot of approaches to developing spiking myself and have been very persistent. Inside, I felt that he was somewhere nearby and I had to keep trying. In 2019, my efforts were rewarded.
There are many articles on the Internet that are collections of tips for English learners. They can be very helpful for beginners and generally give correct settings. One of these tips is “comment on your actions”. I decided to take it to the absolute and apply it to games. At first, the process itself was unusual, I spoke slowly and with a lot of errors, because the whole speech was delivered without preliminary processing, in its pure form. But, after 5 hours of playing this way, I felt that the process became a natural addition to the game and even added a new level of immersion. In a couple of months in 2019 and a month in 2020, I spoke 142 hours of pure conversation (I used a self-written tracking application). Speech accounted for 50 to 70% of the total playing time, and most of this it was in the background and did not interfere with the game.
I watched in amazement how my spoken language grew. I worked out a huge number of grammatical constructions to the point of being completely automatic. I preferred games like Risen / Gothic 2 with a rich game world and a lot of dialogue within the game itself. They naturally intertwined with my speech and got some simulation of the real world. In the morning I used the Tongue Twisters to play the pronunciation, and in the afternoon I played for 3-4 hours. I was amazed at how easy it is to play and how naturally the language develops.
There is also one powerful side effect of commenting on your actions in games to be mentioned. If you played in this mode for 2 hours, then the brain continues to think in English for some time (30 minutes), giving you a + 25% bonus. If you play for 4 hours and before bedtime, then the bonus can be increased up to + 50% or even up to + 200%, when you fell asleep and thought and talked a lot in English in your sleep. Get bonuses not only in games!
I have heard many times how young gamers developed their English by playing CS or MMORPG. However, I am skeptical about the effectiveness of this approach, because usually the level of vocabulary of players in CS is poor (not a fact that will help you even reach B2). And in MMORPGs, communication is focused in chats, and I don't know how to get native people to communicate with an English-learning stranger and get at least 100 hours of spiking out of it. It is possible that this is possible through manipulative gimmicks or tricks. Anyway, I hate MMORPGs, and I don’t play with my real friends either. But the old games - I can replay them regularly every 2-3 years. In general, this is an amateur technique.
Benefits for the developer
Speaking automation can help in interviews in foreign companies. The main benefit lies not in the fact that the customer will like your speech without errors, but in the fact that the formation and correction of sentences will not distract you from the essence. You will be able to focus on specific questions and answer them better / more confidently / faster, and this improves the experience and it seems that the applicant is better versed in the technical part.
Also, in algorithmic interviews, it is often important not to solve the problem, but to show the correct train of thought and communicate correctly with the recruiter (ask the right questions). Improved communication can improve your chances.
Part 4 - Hearing
Success in using the right brain and imagination while reading was also carried over to listening. The first time I tried to associate the words of characters with images and implement these images during viewing (although this requires additional effort), I experienced some pretty powerful emotional orgasm and the pleasure from films was increased 2-3 times for 2 days. Then my brain burned out for several days and I couldn't watch anything at all. Then, I adapted to this viewing mode and began to receive consistently + 20-30% for pleasure and + 5-8% for speech recognition. I experimented with the children's TV series The Dragon Prince, and thanks to this technique, my percentage of understanding went up to 90-95% (was 80%), which feels pretty cool. I still understand 70-80% of adult TV shows, and the problem is probably already in the vocabulary.
Benefits for the developer
I must say that I have not yet completed full-fledged experiments in this direction. It is possible that it will be possible to increase the pleasure of watching specialized conferences such as JavaOne, or technical lectures. Also, in theory, you can use imaginative thinking to develop memory (the Memory Palace method) in order to quickly adapt to a new project at work.
By the way, free watching TV shows and movies in the original can increase your overall happiness level. I cannot refer to the research, but I am 100% sure that the difference between the originals and the translations is very large, since the content and language are literally tailored to each other, and the professionalism and emotions of the original actors are simply incomparable with the translators.
It is possible that some of you use the right hemisphere of the brain with might and main during coding and switch freely between them by nature. In this case, the value of this part of the article for you is to once again think about what prevents you specifically from perceiving speech effectively. Indeed, in the article I describe exactly my difficulties, and for you they may have a completely different nature. The main thing is to measure more!
Conclusion
In a couple of weeks I will turn 27 years old and I am already C1. I once thought that it was too late to start learning English at 23, because I did not receive those super-bonuses that children have. Now I understand that I am still 3 years old until 30 years old and 5 years old until 35, and during this time I will have time to use English in many areas of life. Good luck and your comments!
