English for Engineers

You test well. Your grammar is solid. But put you on the spot in a meeting — a question you didn't see coming, a design decision you have to defend right now — and something breaks down.

That's not an English problem. That's a communication problem. And it's completely fixable.

This episode of English for Engineers is for non-native English speakers in technical and engineering roles who feel fluent on paper but still freeze under pressure. I'm talking to Camilla Walton, founder of Cultivate English and English communication coach for international landscape architects and designers. Like me, Camilla built her whole business on one premise: generic English training doesn't work for technical professionals. You need someone who knows your world.

We get into why non-native professionals always self-diagnose the wrong problem, what's actually happening in the brain when your English confidence breaks down under pressure, and why AI tools — however useful for writing — will never replace the reps you need for real human communication.

Plus: the rapid-fire round makes its debut on the show. Camilla's answer to question one is very, very on-brand.

CONNECT WITH CAMILLA WALTONCamilla Walton is an English communication coach for international landscape architects and garden designers, and the founder of Cultivate English. She helps designers close the gap between what they know and how it sounds in English.LinkedIn | Website | Freedom to Communicate programme

CONNECT WITH OLIVIA AUGUSTINOlivia Augustin is a civil engineer and certified English as a 2nd language and Business English teacher. With her one-on-one lessons and group courses, she teaches non-native English-speaking engineers the kind of English that gets the job done.

Work with me | Get the newsletter | LinkedIn | Instagram

Fly somewhere for 3 days. Get a native speaker. Pay a premium, because expensive must mean good. Three things engineers get sold about learning English — and all three are wrong in a way you can test like a spec sheet. This one's for every engineer who's ever asked me if a 3-day miracle is worth it.

Spoiler: I have opinions.

The episode in one line

Why the 3-day English intensive doesn't work — and the three myths engineers keep getting sold (the 3-day cure, the native-speaker trap, the price-tag illusion), plus what actually works instead.

What we cover

An engineer emailed me before a huge construction project. Stakeholder meetings, negotiations, contracts — all coming fast, and his English wasn't quite there. He was choosing between a 12-week one-on-one course and a 3-day intensive somewhere quiet, all meals included, €4,500. He picked the three days.

He won't be the last. So this episode takes apart the three things engineers get sold when they want to fix their English fast:

• The 3-day cure — why you can learn about a language in three days, but not the language itself. What memory science says about the spike-then-fade of intensive immersion, and why you end up roughly where you started (minus €4,500).
• The native-speaker myth — why being born into English doesn't mean you can teach it. Why ~80% of the world's English teachers are non-native, and the phrasal-verb trap that quietly turns a stakeholder email into a safety risk.
• The price-tag illusion — the price-quality heuristic, why it fails badly for language learning, and the Liebherr-not-a-Rolls-Royce frame for choosing the right tool.

Then the boring version that actually works — five practical tips, ending with the one to sit with: forget fluency, aim to be understood.

Chapters

• 00:00 — The Illusion of Quick Fixes in Language Learning
• 05:57 — Debunking the Native Speaker Myth
• 12:34 — The Price Tag Fallacy in Language Training
• 16:16 — Practical Tips for Effective Language Learning

Key takeaways

• You can learn about a language in three days. You can't learn a language in three days.
• Language sticks through repetition over time, not one concentrated burst — that's memory science.
• Native-speaker status doesn't predict teaching quality. Being able to explain why does.
• Phrasal verbs are great for the coffee kitchen, a liability in technical English ("we'll look into it" → "we will investigate it").
• Price is almost completely unrelated to language-learning results.
• Forget fluency. Aim to be understood.

Mentioned in this episode

• The Foundation: 1-on-1 coaching built around your work, over 12 weeks. Business + technical English, taught by an engineer.
• The 25 Minutes: short, focused 1-on-1 conversation sessions for engineers with tight calendars.
• All courses: marcode.org/courses

• Get the newsletter: www.marcode.org/newsletter

Connect with Olivia Augustin

Olivia Augustin is a civil engineer and certified English as a 2nd language and Business English teacher. With her one-on-one lessons and group courses, she teaches non-native English-speaking engineers the kind of English that gets the job done.

LinkedIn - The Blog - Instagram

Noelia Gozalo moved from Spain to Ireland in 2010 to study engineering in English. She had passed the required exams. She had spent years at the official School of Languages. Then she sat in her first strength of materials lecture and understood nothing.

She was not an Erasmus student. There was no easier version of the course. She followed the lectures, passed the assignments and sat the same exams as everyone else.

Fifteen years and four companies later, Noelia leads cross-functional teams in automotive and renewable energy. She has worked with Nissan, Renault, AVL and GE Renewables. She also spends her weekends mentoring young engineers through the years that nearly sent her home.

We talk about the rule she set herself in Ireland: no Spanish, no exceptions, no matter how lonely it got. We talk about why she practised English with Brazilian and French classmates before she got comfortable with the Irish. And we talk about the day a colleague asked her, "would you mind being our boss?"

Noelia also has one word for keeping a cross-functional team working. Empathy. A colleague's blunt email is usually their English, not their attitude. Mark everything urgent and people stop believing you. And if you want more empathy on a team, it starts with the leaders.

Her advice for the junior engineer who freezes in front of a VP is short. They hired you because you can do the job.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:

• ​Why speaking “perfect English” is not the goal in technical communication
• ​How to build confidence speaking in meetings
• ​The role of empathy in international engineering teams
• ​Why engineers often freeze when speaking English (and how to overcome it)
• ​How real-world immersion accelerates your language and career growth

The English for Engineers podcast is for engineers and technicians who want to communicate clearly, sound professional, and finally stop translating in their heads. It’s packed with real-world tips, cross-cultural insights, and practical ways to turn technical English and business English into tools you actually enjoy using.

LINKS AND RESOURCES:

Why Logic Alone Can't Hold Your Team Together: more on empathy in international teams (https://marcode.org/why-logic-alone-cant-hold-your-team-together)

Why You Can't Understand Native English Speakers: the listening problem Noelia hit in Ireland (https://marcode.org/understand-native-english-speakers)

Fluent on Paper, Stuck in the Room: on freezing up in meetings (https://marcode.org/fluent-on-paper-stuck-in-the-room)

Unstuck Your English: free guide (https://marcode.org/op/unstuck-your-english)

CONNECT WITH OLIVIA

Olivia Augustin is a civil engineer and certified English as a 2nd language and Business English teacher. With her one-on-one lessons and group courses, she teaches non-native English-speaking engineers the kind of English that gets the job done.

Work with me (https://marcode.org/courses) | Get the newsletter (https://marcode.org/newsletter) | LinkedIn (https://linkedin.com/in/olivia-d-augustin) | Instagram (https://instagram.com/_marcode_)

CONNECT WITH NOELIA

LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/noelia-gozalo/)

Why is a Dutch teacher on a podcast about English for engineers? Because the problem is the same in every language.

Rebecca van Raamsdonk runs Nabu Academy, a Dutch-language school for advanced learners at B2 and C1 levels. Her students know the grammar. They have the words. And then they stand at a Dutch party and say almost nothing.

Olivia and Rebecca compare notes on what actually goes wrong at the advanced level, and what to do about it.

In this episode:

• The barrier between your head and your mouth, and why more grammar does not remove it
• Why the most correct speakers are often the least confident, while people at a lower level chat happily to everyone
• Confidence is not the absence of fear. You can feel the stress and speak anyway
• Speaking is not a test. You are not proving your qualification with every sentence
• Why both teachers refuse textbooks, word lists, and fixed curricula

RESOURCES AND LINKS

• Free English Learning Resources: Olivia’s Freebies for Engineers
• Technical English Group Course: for engineers ready to lead meetings, explain designs, and stop second-guessing their words.
• Emails for Engineers Template Pack: real emails you can copy and paste into your next update or request.
• Free Dutch Resource (Rebecca): ⁠⁠Masterclass: From Insecure to Fluent (B2/C1 Dutch)⁠⁠

Connect with Olivia Augustin

Olivia Augustin is a civil engineer and certified English as a 2nd language and Business English teacher. With her one-on-one lessons and group courses, she teaches non-native English-speaking engineers the kind of English that gets the job done.

⁠⁠Contact me | ⁠⁠Get the newsletter⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Instagram

CONNECT WITH REBECCA

Founder of Nabu Academy: Dutch for advanced learners (B2–C1).

LinkedIn | Instagram

Saskia Slotboom was 30, chairing a project team, and telling engineers twice her age what to do. She did not feel like a leader yet.

She trained as an architect, graduated in building technology, and expected a career in calculations. Six months into her first job she was miserable. What she actually wanted was people. That took her into project management at a Dutch government agency, and eventually out of engineering altogether and into coaching.

This conversation is about what happens to engineers when the work stops speaking for itself. When you move into a leadership role and nobody has taught you the human half of the job.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL HEAR ABOUT

• Why Dutch universities split students into "alphas" and "betas", and why that word does not survive translation into English
• How to become more visible at work without turning into someone you are not
• What to do with feedback you have decided not to act on
• Why the feeling that something is off is expertise, not intuition
• Why nobody is mature in every direction, including your manager

RESOURCES AND LINKS

⁠Free guides for engineers →⁠

Emails for Engineers template package → ⁠

Saskia's free reflection tool: (English) | (Dutch)

Read next on marcode.org:
Soft Skills for Engineers: It Is a Translation, Not a Transformation →
Why Engineers Need Emotional Intelligence →
The Hidden Risks in Global Engineering Teams →

CONNECT WITH SASKIA SLOTBOOM

Saskia Slotboom is a coach and trainer for professionals in STEM fields. She works on communication, influencing, public speaking and personal leadership. Before that she spent years as a project manager in Dutch public infrastructure.

Website | LinkedIn

CONNECT WITH OLIVIA AUGUSTIN

Olivia Augustin is a civil engineer and certified English as a 2nd language and Business English teacher. With her one-on-one lessons and group courses, she teaches non-native English-speaking engineers the kind of English that gets the job done.

⁠⁠Contact me | ⁠⁠Get the newsletter⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠Instagram

Johan Bel has commissioned a coal power plant and helped rebuild 37 kilometres of the busiest motorway in the Netherlands. The engineering was never the hard part. Explaining it to people who had never read a technical drawing was.

Johan is a technical consultant in Rotterdam and co-founder of Ingenieursgroep Nederland. He works in industrial automation, systems engineering and asset management. Most of his clients sit inside government organisations, and most of them have no technical background at all.

His rule: spare the details. The Dutch even have a phrase for it — Jip-en-Janneketaal — explaining something the way you would explain it to a small child. If Johan can explain his work to his own kids, he knows the client will follow.

We talk about what actually goes wrong when engineers brief non-technical stakeholders. Why a decision about a green door nearly caused an incident with a Belgian colleague. How Johan reads the person in front of him and changes his message instead of repeating himself louder. And why one Austrian had to split every email into three before her Dutch team would read them.

Resources:

Free guide for engineers who freeze up in English

Read the companion article: Spare the Details

CONNECT WITH JOHAN BEL

Johan Bel is a technical consultant in Rotterdam and co-founder of Ingenieursgroep Nederland, which builds and maintains technical installations for Dutch infrastructure clients.

LinkedIn | Ingenieursgroep Nederland

CONNECT WITH OLIVIA AUGUSTIN

Olivia Augustin is a civil engineer and certified English as a 2nd language and Business English teacher. With her one-on-one lessons and group courses, she teaches non-native English-speaking engineers the kind of English that gets the job done.

⁠Website⁠ | ⁠Get the newsletter⁠ | ⁠LinkedIn⁠ | ⁠Instagram

Neurolanguage coaching blends neuroscience, language expertise and coaching into one method. Olivia kept seeing the term on LinkedIn without knowing what it meant. So she asked someone who does.

Cathy Intro is a certified Neurolanguage Coach based in Montreal. She trains other teachers to become coaches, and she hosts the podcast My Polyglot Life en français. In this crossover episode she explains how the method works, and why it fits the way engineers think.

You will hear why the coach-learner relationship is horizontal instead of top-down. Cathy explains how she and her clients set KPIs for language progress, so you can see improvement without tests or grades. She also names the trap engineers fall into: you get so interested in the system behind the language that you forget to practise it.

The conversation then moves to culture. Cathy compares French, Quebec and English-Canadian workplaces. She explains why a European can walk out of a Canadian performance review feeling praised, and get fired two weeks later.

Olivia is also a guest on Cathy's podcast Crossroads / La Croisée des Chemins, where they discuss neurodivergent communication skills for engineers.

Neurolanguage Coaching® is a method and approach created by Rachel Marie Paling.

Find Cathy:  Website | LinkedIn | Instagram

Find Olivia:  Courses | Get the newsletter | LinkedIn | Instagram

Multilingual engineering projects are normal now. Running one in three languages at the same time is not.

Olivia talks to Dr Omar Chávez Alegría — civil engineer, professor and researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro in Mexico — about the Eco-Innovation Network, a research collaboration between universities in Mexico, the United States and Canada.

The network sits under the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), created alongside NAFTA in 1994 to deal with the environmental fallout of cross-border trade. Every CEC report is published in English, French and Spanish. Every public meeting runs with simultaneous interpretation in all three.

Then there is the site. On a construction site in Yucatán, the working language is Maya. In central Mexico it might be Ñañu. The Spanish word for pavement will not help you there.

In this episode:

• What the Eco-Innovation Network does, and why it started in 2019
• How the CEC and the Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC) reach decisions across three countries
• Simultaneous interpretation vs. translation, and why the CEC pays for both
• What happens when the correct technical term is not the one your crew uses
• Inside the Youth Innovation Challenge: microplastics, mushroom-fibre cups, UV robots in strawberry fields
• Why civil engineering covers far more ground than roads and bridges

Resources:

The Eco-Innovation Network: http://ecoinnovationnetwork.org/

The CEC: http://www.cec.org/

The JPAC: http://www.cec.org/about/joint-public-advisory-committee/

The TMEC (formerly TLCAN): https://www.gob.mx/t-mec

Connect with Dr. Chavéz

Dr. Omar Chavéz Alegría is the department head of the Facultad de Ingeniería at the Autonomous University of Queretaro, where he fills the roles of a professor and researcher. 

Linkedin | University Website

Connect with Olivia Augustin

Olivia Augustin is a civil engineer and certified English as a second language teacher. With her one-on-one lessons and group courses, she teaches non-native English-speaking engineers the kind of English that gets the job done.

Work with me | Get the newsletter | LinkedIn | Instagram

Wondering how to choose a technical translator for your engineering documents?

In this episode of English for Engineers, I talk to Alice Miozzo Zana and Pierre-Yves Zana from TradZana. Alice is an Italian technical and marketing translator. Pierre-Yves is a French engineer turned technical translator, with a Master of Science in electrical engineering and four years at Bosch behind him.

We look at what an engineering degree actually adds to a translation. Pierre-Yves explains how he catches technical mistakes in the original document, not just in the translation — a confusion between power and current, for example. That makes the translator a second technical reviewer.

We also cover why machine translation still fails on technical text, why serious translators only translate into their own native language, and why Alice and Pierre-Yves call you before they send a quote.

In the second half, they explain how formal and informal address works in Italian and French. Once you switch to informal with someone, you cannot go back. Get that wrong with a client and you feel it.

Connect with Alice and Pierre-Yves
Website: https://www.tradzana.com/en-home
Alice on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amiozzo/
Pierre-Yves on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pyzana/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tradzana_translation/

Connect with Olivia Augustin

Olivia Augustin is a civil engineer and certified English as a second language teacher. With her one-on-one lessons and group courses, she teaches non-native English-speaking engineers the kind of English that gets the job done.

Work with me | Get the newsletter | LinkedIn | Instagram

Career advice for engineers moving abroad: Olivia talks with Kate Dahl, career consultant and founder of Career Denmark, about the mindset that actually helps you integrate — not just the paperwork. They get into leaving the expat bubble, learning the language before you think you need it, and choosing discomfort over the easy option. Kate also shares her own move from small-town America to building a career consultancy in Denmark, and the one piece of advice she gives every engineer who wants to work abroad.

Connect with Kate Dahl

Kate Dahl is the founder of Career Denmark, helping internationals navigate the Danish labor market and land roles that fit their skills.

LinkedIn | Website

Connect with Olivia Augustin

Olivia Augustin is a civil engineer and certified English as a second language teacher. With her one-on-one lessons and group courses, she teaches non-native English-speaking engineers the kind of English that gets the job done.
Work with me | Get the newsletter | LinkedIn | Instagram