Your code is good. Your English is losing you the job.
You passed the coding test. You froze in the system design discussion.
Not because you didn't know the answer — you did. But the words didn't come fast enough. You hedged. You repeated yourself. The interviewer moved on.
This happens to thousands of developers every year. Not because they lack skill, but because technical English is a specific skill that nobody teaches you.
This article covers the tools that actually help — including a free vocabulary tracker you can open right now (no email, no signup) — through to the resource built specifically for developers: the Speak Tech English Developers Bundle.
Table of contents
- Why your English is costing you promotions
- The free vocabulary tracker every developer should use
- The best resource built specifically for developers
- Other options if you're not ready to invest yet
- Free ways to start today
Why your English is costing you promotions
Your PR is perfect. Your standup explanation lost the room.
Code reviews, architecture discussions, behavioural interviews, salary negotiations — these all run on English in international teams. And English fluency in these contexts is not the same as general fluency. It's a narrow, learnable set of vocabulary, phrases, and communication patterns.
The developers who get promoted are not always the best coders. They're the ones who can explain a tradeoff clearly, push back diplomatically on a bad decision, and walk a non-technical stakeholder through a system without losing them.
That's the gap this article is about closing.
The free vocabulary tracker every developer should use
Before you spend anything, use this: Google Sheets Vocabulary Tracker. No email, no signup. File → Make a copy and it's yours.
It runs on a three-level system:
🔴 Red (don't know it),
🟠 Orange (know it but wouldn't use it),
🟢 Green (actively using it).
The goal is to move words up the chain until they come out naturally under pressure.
Workflow that takes under two minutes:
- Video (e.g. Computerphile): pause → open sheet → add word → tag Red → review every Friday
- Meetings: after standups, write down any phrase a native speaker used that you wouldn't have reached for. Tag Orange.
- Technical books (e.g. System Design by Alex Xu): same process — book vocabulary tends to be more formal and directly useful in interviews
The best resource built specifically for developers
Most English courses teach you to order coffee and survive airports. None of that helps you explain a distributed caching strategy under interview pressure.
The Speak Tech English Developers Bundle is built for one audience: non-native English speakers who work in software and want to communicate better in professional settings.
Here's what's inside:
English for Programmers — the vocabulary, phrasing, and communication patterns you need for technical work day-to-day. Standups, code reviews, Slack messages, documentation.
English for Tech Interviews — structured modules covering every phase of the interview process:
- Behavioural interviews → build 5–10 reusable stories structured around actions and results, so you're never searching for an example mid-answer
- Technical interviews → learn to clarify ambiguous questions, explain your reasoning clearly, and respond confidently under pressure
- Self-introduction → frame your experience to highlight achievements, not just job titles
- Cultural differences → understand how English interview communication works — directness, feedback styles, what interviewers actually mean when they say "we'll be in touch"
- Build your responses → guided prompts and structures so you're not writing from scratch
- Tasks and answers → interactive exercises that reinforce each module, so the language becomes automatic
The bundle gets you both courses at a better price than buying separately. If you're preparing for an international role, a promotion, or a move to a company with English as the working language, this is the most targeted use of time and money available.
Other options if you're not ready to invest yet
These platforms exist and have their place — but they're built for general learners, not developers.
italki — good for general conversation practice; tutors are not specialised in tech, so you'll spend a lot of time explaining context before you can practise anything relevant.
Preply — better tutor matching and quality control, but expensive per hour and not focused on developers or technical interviews.
Both are fine if you want to build general fluency. Neither will prepare you for a system design discussion or a behavioural round the way a developer-specific resource will.
Free ways to start today
Use these now. When you're ready to go deeper, the bundle is there.
Watch Computerphile on YouTube — youtube.com/@Computerphile. Turn on captions. Every time you hear a phrase you wouldn't reach for naturally, pause and add it to your tracker. One video, one Friday review session. That's the habit.
Read System Design by Alex Xu — technical books use the formal register you need in interviews. Write down new terms and commit to using each one in a standup or code review within the same week. Passive reading doesn't build active vocabulary.
Shadow one video per week — pick any Computerphile video. Watch it once for content. Watch it again with captions and mimic the phrasing out loud — not the accent, the sentence structure. How do they introduce a tradeoff? How do they hedge a claim? That's the muscle you're building. Zero tools, zero cost, five minutes.
These approaches work, but they're slow without structure. For faster progress:
One more thing — if you're targeting jobs in Europe
Try The Stack is a newsletter focused on helping developers find roles in Europe — specifically companies that hire without requiring visa sponsorship. Worth subscribing to if that's your goal.
Start now
The tracker and the Computerphile habit cost you nothing. Start both today.
When you're ready to work specifically on interviews, standups, and the communication patterns that lead to promotions — the Developers Bundle is the most direct path there. Everything else is supplementary.
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Top comments (2)
Let me know if you have any questions. Would love to help out.
very useful thank you. esp. the google tracker