Technical English is a writing style, that is, a specific way of expressing ideas, with its own characteristics in semantic and structural aspects. It is a form of writing that used within a particular discipline, to express more clearly the ideas of that discipline. Therefore, it may not be useful for communicating on a daily basis. It differs from other styles, such as poetic, colloquial or narrative. Although each discipline has its own technical English, there are characteristics present in the technical English of all of them:
- Impersonal: the sentences do not refer to the speaking subject but to concrete objects.
- Short and precise: does not provide more information than is necessary, but all the necessary information is provided.
- Seeks to reflect objectivity
- Passive constructions: with the aim of reflecting greater objectivity and suppressing the observing subject, the sentences are constructed passively. This way you can focus your attention on the most important element of the sentence.
- Specific terminology: Technical English for each discipline has its own terms that must be studied in order to communicate with experts in that discipline. In addition to words, technical English can have specific grammatical constructions other than everyday English. On the other hand, words that are used in everyday English take on a different meaning in technical English. The specific words of each discipline do not usually have synonyms.
- Preponderance of the verb "to be" (be)
- Stationary constructions- Similar to passive constructs, but the emphasis is not on an action but on a state.
- Inverted propositions
- Logical progression: generally a paragraph is the logical continuation of the previous one.
Learn technical English
Since the meanings of words may be different than in everyday speech, it is important to use specialized dictionaries or glossaries for the discipline under study.
However, it can be easier to learn than other forms of English (literary, everyday speech, etc.), because the words it uses are relatively limited and the syntactic construction of sentences is often repeated.
- Digitization (Digitization: converting analog data to digital)
- Boot sector (Boot sector: On a computer, the device that contains the boot code.)
- File infector virus (File virus)
- Sampling (sampling: selection technique)
- Quantization (quantification)
- Noise (interference)
- Output (output: signal emitted by an electronic system)
- Thresholding (threshold: minimum amount necessary for a phenomenon to be noticeable)
- Dithering (interpolated or lattice)
- Occurance (presence of a phenomenon)
Andrea is a language teacher, and on her Instagram account she offers private lessons by video call so that you can learn to speak English.
