An English study mission for developers who want to improve their practical reading, writing, and speaking skills for real-world software work.
This mission is designed for people who want to become better at both English and development. We will read accessible English articles about software engineering, discuss the topics in English, and study useful vocabulary, expressions, and difficult sentences together.
The key rule of this mission is that everything happens during the session itself. There is no separate preparation required. We will read, listen, speak, and think together on the spot in a low-pressure but active environment.
- Developers who want to improve both their English and their practical engineering skills
- People interested in working abroad or joining global companies
- People who can handle basic everyday English, such as ordering food while traveling
All reading, listening, and speaking in this study will be done in English.
- Reading: able to read English library docs without an LLM, even if slowly
- Speaking: able to order food at a restaurant
- Listening: able to follow Korean CSAT-level English listening without major difficulty
This plan is tentative and may change based on participant suggestions and discussion.
- Week 1: Self-introductions, career introductions, and reading a job description from your dream company.
- Week 2: Read Google's How to Do a Code Review? and discuss code review in the age of AI.
https://google.github.io/eng-practices/review/reviewer/ - Week 3: Read Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule by Paul Graham and discuss time management.
- Week 4: TBA
- Week 5: TBA
- Week 6: TBA
Each weekly session runs for two hours.
- 30 minutes: Read the English article together
- 10 minutes: Break and content review
- 60 minutes: Discussion in English
- 20 minutes: Review session in Korean
- Article Reading (30 min): We read an English article related to software engineering.
- Break + Review (10 min): Participants look up unfamiliar words and make sure they understand the content before the discussion. This is included because discussing in English is already challenging, and it becomes even harder without enough time to digest the article first.
- Discussion (60 min): Participants freely discuss the article in English.
- Review Session (20 min, Korean): Participants share what was difficult and review expressions based on feedback from speech-to-text models and GPT. The results of each Review Session will be documented on GitHub every week.
- English only: Korean is not allowed in any session except for the Review Session.
- One Korean chance: During the discussion, each participant may use Korean only once per week, and only for up to 10 seconds. In the Review Session, they must explain why they found that part difficult and what they learned from it.
- Two-group discussion: The session will start in two separate groups for 30 minutes, and then the groups will be mixed for the remaining 30 minutes of discussion.
- No translators or LLMs outside the Review Session: Translation tools and LLMs are not allowed except during the Review Session.
- Dictionary only: The only allowed dictionary is Oxford Learner's Dictionaries.
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com
Easy
By the end of this mission, participants are expected to feel more comfortable reading engineering content in English, discussing technical topics out loud, and expressing their thoughts with more confidence. The goal is not perfect English, but steady improvement through repeated exposure and real conversation.