Fluent on Paper, Stuck in the Room
A few weeks ago I was scrolling through LinkedIn and came across a post that stopped me. Not because it said something new but because someone had written down something I say to engineers every single week, almost word for word. The only…
Do Intensive English Courses Work? What Happens on Day 4
An engineer emailed me before a €20 million construction project. Stakeholder meetings, negotiations, contracts, all coming at him fast. His English wasn’t quite where it needed to be. He had two options in front of him. One was a 12-week…
Would You Mind Being Our Boss? Mentoring Young Engineers
Nobody hands you a mentor. Noelia Gozalo worked out her first engineering years alone, and she calls that the hard way. Noelia is an engineer with more than 10 years of experience in automotive and renewable energy. She has worked with Nissan,…
Feeling at Home in a Second Language: What a Dutch Teacher Knows About Your English
Why does a Dutch teacher turn up on a podcast about English for engineers? Because the problem does not change with the language. Rebecca van Raamsdonk founded Nabu Academy, a Dutch-language school for advanced learners at the B2 and C1 levels….
Authentic Leadership for Engineers: Visibility, Feedback and Trust
Saskia Slotboom wanted to study psychology. Architecture also looked interesting. Her maths and physics were good, her study advisor pointed her towards Delft, and psychology quietly dropped off the plan. Seven years later she graduated with a…
Spare the Details: Explaining Technical Work to Non-Technical Stakeholders
Most engineers do not lose time on the technical problem. They lose it on the explanation. Johan Bel knows that pattern well. He is a technical consultant in Rotterdam and co-founder of Ingenieursgroep Nederland. He works in industrial automation,…
Neurolanguage Coaching and its Advantages for Engineers
Neurolanguage coaching blends neuroscience, language expertise and coaching into one approach. Olivia had seen the term on LinkedIn for months. She had never had time to look it up. So she invited a certified coach onto the show. Cathy Intro is an…
Multilingual Engineering Projects: How Three Countries Build in Three Languages
Most engineers accept that international projects run in English. Then they meet a project that runs in three languages at once. My guest is Dr Omar Chávez Alegría, a civil engineer, professor and researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro…
How to Choose a Technical Translator: What Engineers Should Look For
Your specification goes out for translation. It comes back in French. You cannot check it, so you sign it off and hope. That is the position most engineers are in. This episode is about how to choose a technical translator so you are not just…
Career Advice for Engineers Moving to Denmark (and Beyond)
If you’re an engineer thinking about a move to Denmark, or you’re already there and confused about why interviews keep going sideways, this one’s for you. Olivia talks with Kate Dahl, founder of Career Denmark and career consultant for…
The Austrian Oak: What Arnold Schwarzenegger Can Teach You About Learning English
Before Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Terminator, he was an Austrian immigrant. People mocked his accent, his body, and his ambition. In this quick chalk talk, Olivia breaks down three lessons from his story. Each one applies directly to learning…
How Technical Translators Work: The Unsung Heroes of Engineering
Clients ask Olivia to translate their documents all the time — a tender spec, a contract, a manual. She always says no. Not because she won’t help, but because teaching English and translating are two different jobs, with two different kinds of…
Authentically Aussie: How Engineers Get Hired in Australia
Thinking about moving to Australia as an engineer? The timing might be better than you think. Australia is short on engineers right now, especially in regional areas, and employers are actively looking. But getting the job is about more than your…
Writing Work Emails in English (Without the Panic)
You can hold a technical conversation, defend your work in a meeting, and handle the hard parts of your job in a second language. And then a blank email opens, the cursor blinks, and a two-minute task turns into twenty. If that’s the thing that…
All Your Ducks in a Row: Language Barriers & Home Buying Abroad
Highly educated, highly capable professionals still freeze up mid-sentence in a foreign language. That’s the starting point for this episode with Candice Lee — realtor, relocation specialist, and my friend of almost 20 years — who’s spent over a…
Clear Is Kind: A Crossover Episode with Aimee Arsenault
Engineers are trained to communicate in steps. Step 1, step 2, step 3. Read the diagram, follow the procedure, done. But the moment a project manager asks you to cut a 4-hour safety orientation down to 20 minutes, or a client asks you to sign off…
Vienna Waits for You: Reinventing an Engineering Career
In this episode of English for Engineers, I sit down with Andrea Zimmerl, a fellow Viennese and a fellow engineer, who made one of the boldest career changes an engineer can make: she went from plastics engineering to communication coaching, life…
Junk the Jargon: Why Engineering Jargon Isn’t Clear
In this episode of English for Engineers, I sit down with Becky Paroz, a 30-year veteran of the Australian construction industry, engineer, project manager, and quality assurance specialist, to talk about why industry jargon might be costing your…
007: License to Talk
In this episode of English for Engineers, I share why I started this podcast in the first place, then walk through five practical, no-fuss ways to master technical English as a working engineer. What You’ll Learn in This Episode Why does listening…
Why Logic Alone Can’t Hold Your Team Together
In this episode of English for Engineers, I sit down with Catherine Stagg-Macey, executive coach, team coach, and founder of Conversations at the Edge, to talk about the one skill that keeps international engineering teams from falling apart:…
Let the Drawings Speak: How Engineering Culture Changes Across Borders
In this episode of English for Engineers, I catch up with an old schoolmate, Christian Urich, a civil and environmental engineer now based in Melbourne, Australia, about how engineering culture changes once you cross a border — from the…