UPDATE is a project aimed at developing communication skills in the field of computer science started by a small but ambitious team of ESL teachers. Being directly and indirectly involved in the information technology industry, our team observes the latest developments in the tech world, how they influence our everyday life and how important information technology has become globally. One of us has been working as a translator in an IT company for 10 years. The other UPDATE team member has been teaching English as a second language to children for over a decade. We have united our efforts and experience to create an innovative educational course for those who need to learn English to succeed in their IT careers.
English fluency is a key ingredient of success in the realm of information technologies and computer science. The majority of the digital era technological breakthroughs originates from the English speaking countries and especially the United States of America. Most popular programming languages are based on English, the best and the most up-to-date books on information technologies are written in English, the international community of IT professionals uses English as today’s lingua franca to communicate with each other for the purpose of collaboration and further industry development. Therefore the aspiring IT engineers have to learn English in order to build and maintain their professionalism at a decent level, keep up with innovative approaches, and tap into the global workforce market.
IT technologies are one of the most promising career paths for young people all over the world and especially in developing countries. In countries like India and Ukraine people are starting to get ready for this career from early ages. They organize all sorts of educational courses for kids to start learning programming and computer science basics since as early as five years old. Availability of all kinds of Internet-enabled gadgets and computing devices to today’s kids make them much more tech savvy than their parents, let alone earlier generations. No wonder modern kids are readily getting involved into the IT industry. Many of them start their blogs and YouTube channels even before they go to school. As they grow, they chat with friends online, share their content on social networks thus interacting with some of the most sophisticated IT products ever created. Those technological wonders inspire lots of modern kids to become computer scientists, software developers, web and graphic designers. This is when non-English speaking young people realize how important knowledge of English can be when one needs to streamline developing essential skills and increase chances of getting better jobs or successfully marketing their own IT projects.
We have started UPDATE project to create a series of teaching materials to help aspiring IT professionals better understand the English language sentence structure, learn the basic words and expressions related to computers, the Internet, social networks, blogging, entrepreneurship as well as practice their communication skills through a variety of exercises.
The course will be interesting to non-native English speakers who want to develop their career in computer science and information technologies where English fluency is indispensable. Our teaching materials can also be useful for educators who teach English to people that are interested in modern information technologies or whose profession is related to the IT industry.
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