IEEE Learning Network offers courses on English for engineering and technical professionals to improve their communication skills.

IEEE has sponsored this post.

English is a common language used in business, science and technology all over the world. Strong communication is one of the top skills sought by employers in every sector and at every level of employment. Given that engineering is a global profession, with engineers working collaboratively with others both at home and abroad, having top-notch English language skills isn’t just a bonus. It is a necessity for getting hired and succeeding in engineering and technical careers.

These days, employers expect all their hires—especially engineers and technical professionals—to be able to read and write clearly in technical English, interpret business and technical documents, and be able to both understand and communicate engineering concepts to their peers, supervisors and the general public. 

Getting the right refinement to your English skills can be tricky.  Luckily, the IEEE Learning Network (ILN) offers the IEEE English for Technical Professionals course program for improving your technical English language reading, writing, listening and speaking skills.

Improve Your Skills with English for Technical Professionals

The IEEE English for Technical Professionals course is an 18-hour online learning course that is designed to provide non-native English speakers with a solid grounding in the knowledge, techniques, and vocabulary essential to the technical and engineering workplace. 

The fundamental skills and techniques covered in this course benefit not only current working engineers and technical professionals, but also new graduates entering technical industries, university students studying engineering and other technical concepts, as well as PhD students, research scholars, and individuals who want to get better at writing technical papers.

The course program is available through ILN and is presented entirely online in an interactive format that uses real-life scenarios to illustrate the concepts and provide participants with the opportunity to apply what they have learned in each lesson.

Each lesson includes modules on reading, writing, listening and speaking skills, as well as short assessments and practice exercises throughout the lesson to give participants the chance to practice and improve their skills.  A final quiz completes each lesson, to summarize what has been learned.

The online interface is easy to use, with features such as a table of contents and course navigation that keeps track of your progress through the lessons, closed captioning for accessibility and ease of understanding and downloadable supplementary materials to aid in studying and practicing the lesson content.

The course covers a broad range of essential English language and communication skills, starting with the basics and digging into deeper into the ins and outs of professional communication.  Some of the knowledge areas covered by the course include:

• The basics of reading documents and engaging in interpersonal communication with colleagues.
• Interpreting business documents, technical language and how to ask questions to get the answers you need.
• Reading and understanding whitepapers, calls for proposals, recommendations and interpreting data.
• English communication concepts including writing in future tense, acronyms, adjective clauses, qualifying phrases, cause and effect statements and punctuation formulas.
• How to identify and understand technical terms, jargon and buzzwords.
• Effective communication for individuals, group meetings, public messaging and other professional situations.

The course is available through ILN to individuals, for $140 for IEEE members and $240 for non-members.  IEEE student members can access the course for a discounted price of $90.  Organizations can also purchase access to this program for a group of employees as part of their professional development plan; group access to the course program can be arranged with an IEEE Account Specialist. 

Successful completion of the course provides participants with a certificate of completion to recognize their accomplishments. Those who complete the program can also earn a digital badge to display on their resume, LinkedIn or other social media. The IEEE English for Technical Professionals course can also be counted toward the continuing education units (CEUs), or professional development units (PDUs) required to maintain professional licenses.  

ILN Brings Together IEEE’s Professional Development Resources

The IEEE Learning Network at ILN.ieee.org launched in July 2019 and provides a wide range of professional development and continuing education courses for engineers and technical professionals.  IEEE has long been one of the largest technical professional organizations, and with ILN the organization brought together all of it’s vast and varied educational resources under one umbrella and easily accessible from a single central platform.

Along with the IEEE English for Technical Professionals course, ILN offers over 1,000 courses on a searchable education platform.  With professional development and training courses from more than 30 IEEE societies and covering a ride range of topics across 17 categories, ILN caters to the engineers, technical professionals, students and educators who are seeking to enhance their skills and keep their training up to date.  Courses are peer-reviewed and created and taught by subject matter experts and university professors from top organizations and engineering schools across the country.

Course categories available to search or browse on ILN include Power and Energy, Emerging Technologies, Computing, Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems, Transportation, Communications, Aerospace, IEEE Standards, Bioengineering, Telecommunications, Photonics & Electro-Optics, Signal Processing & Analysis and more.

For more about the IEEE Learning Network, check out our previous article All Your Electrical and Computer Engineering Professional Development in One Place.

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Learn more about IEEE English for Technical Professionals or register for the course at ILN.ieee.org.