Teaching English Trade Vocabulary to a New Hire
Why this matters
A helper who does not know the English word for what you just asked for will usually hand you something anyway, because asking feels worse than guessing. Most days that costs a trip back to the truck. Some days the word was "energized" or "don't touch", and it costs more. Meanwhile a skilled tradesperson who learned the work in another country gets read as slow, stays stuck carrying tools, and leaves for a shop that figured out he knew more than the lead did. Teaching trade English on the job is cheap, fast when it is done in the right order, and one of the best retention moves a small shop has.
This article is about the vocabulary itself. Onboarding a hire whose first language is not English covers more than words; see related: Onboarding a Hire Whose First Language Is Not English.
The principle: you are teaching labels, not the trade
Many new hires already understand the trade concept and are missing only the English word for it. A helper with years of electrical work behind him knows what a neutral is; he may not know you call it "the white" or that "hot" means energized and not warm. Find out which situation you are in before you start, because teaching the concept to someone who knows it is insulting, and teaching only the label to someone who lacks the concept is dangerous.
Order the words by what a gap costs, and teach in that order:
- Words that stop an injury. These come first and are checked by demonstration within the first week.
- The names of tools and materials on the truck, because the helper hands them over and fetches them all day.
- The handful of sentences a helper says to a customer.
- The words on the paperwork.
Phase 1, the first week: the stop list
Step 1: Find out what they already know. On day one, with an interpreter or a bilingual coworker if you need one, ask three things: what work they have done, which language they read most comfortably, and how they rate their own spoken English. Ask without testing. People overstate English when they feel judged and understate it when they feel safe, so the rating is a starting point, not a measurement.
Step 2: Teach the stop list before the first job. Fifteen words and short phrases a helper must recognize instantly when shouted from across a basement: stop, wait, watch out, don't touch, live, energized, off, gas, hot (taught both ways, because on a job it can mean energized or high temperature), ladder, heavy, help, hurt, call 911, and "show me". Teach each by saying it, showing the situation it belongs to, and having the helper say it back. Put the list on a card in their language and English.
Why first: these are the words where a gap goes straight to injury. Everything else costs time.
Step 3: Check it by demonstration, not by asking. At the end of the week, say each word and have the helper show you what they would do. "Do you know these?" gets a yes regardless. Why that yes means little is its own subject; see related: The Crew Said Yes but Did Not Understand.
Phase 2, weeks two and three: the truck is the classroom
Step 4: Label the truck. Put a strip of tape on every bin and shelf with the English name, and if the helper wants it, their own word underneath. A typical service truck holds forty or so bins a helper handles daily. The labels teach while nobody is teaching.
Step 5: Teach five words a day at the moment of use. When you ask for a part or tool, name it, point, let the helper say it, then use the word again later that day and again two days later. Five new words a day is a pace most adults retain; forty bins at five a day is eight working days. Reviewing a word at the first use, the same day, and a couple of days later beats drilling twenty words once.
Why at the moment of use: a word learned while holding the thing sticks. A list memorized in the truck at lunch fades by Friday.
Step 6: Learn their words for the same things. Ask what they call each part. You will find the places where your shop's names are regional slang, and the helper sees that the exchange goes both ways. The same item can carry different names across regions in both languages; see related: Regional Variation in Trade Vocabulary.
Phase 3, the second month: customer sentences and paperwork
Step 7: Script six customer sentences. A helper needs to say only a few things to a homeowner: a greeting with the company name; "I am going to turn off the water (or power) for about thirty minutes"; "please keep children and pets out of this room"; "I am finished in here"; "my lead will explain the bill"; and "one moment, I will get my lead". Practice them until they are comfortable, then let the helper own arrivals and room-by-room updates. Anything about price, diagnosis or a complaint goes to the lead, which is true for any helper in any language.
Step 8: Walk through the work order. Go field by field through the paperwork the helper fills in: materials used, start and end time, notes. If your shop keeps work orders in two languages, the format is set there; see related: The Two-Language Work Order SOP.
Phase 4, from month three: formal English outside the shop
Step 9: Connect them with adult education. Almost every area has English classes for adults through community colleges, public adult schools and libraries, usually in the evening, and many are free or low-cost because they are funded in part through the federal Adult Education and Family Literacy Act (Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act). Some offer vocational ESL, English taught around a trade or workplace. Call the local adult school, ask what they run, and give the helper the schedule.
What the shop can offer: a schedule that lets them leave on class nights, tuition help for a paid course, and recognition when they finish a level.
On pay for class time. Under federal wage-hour rules (29 CFR 785.27 through 785.31), time in training the employer requires is hours worked and paid. Voluntary attendance, outside working hours, at a course run by an independent school is generally not hours worked even when the course relates to the job and the employer pays the tuition. Some states, California among them, define hours worked more broadly than the federal rule, so check your own state before setting this up, and keep it genuinely voluntary if you are not paying for the time.
How to teach it with respect
- Correct privately, never in front of a customer or the crew. A helper corrected in front of a homeowner stops talking to homeowners.
- Do not speak louder or slower than normal. Speak clearly in normal sentences and repeat with different words if needed.
- Never imitate an accent or make it a nickname. Where the line sits on a crew is covered elsewhere; see related: Jokes, Nicknames and the Line on a Mixed Crew.
- Do not make English the measure of the tradesperson. Their English improves on its own schedule; their skill is what you hired. A rule requiring English at work is legally narrow and has its own article; see related: English-Only Rules and What the Law Allows.
Worked example: a helper from an electrical shop abroad
An electrical contractor hires a helper whose first language is Portuguese. He has six years of residential and light commercial work behind him and conversational English, and he reads Portuguese well and English slowly.
Week one. The lead teaches the fifteen-item stop list with a Portuguese-speaking tech from another crew helping on day one. At the Friday check, the lead says each item and the helper shows the action. He gets 13 of 15. The two misses are "energized", which he knew as "live" only, and "hot" in the electrical sense, which he took to mean temperature. Both are dangerous misses, because the lead uses all three words for an energized conductor. The lead re-teaches them with the meter, and the shop adds a rule to its own practice: on this crew, an energized conductor is called "live", every time, by everyone.
Weeks two and three. The truck holds 40 labeled bins. At five words a day, that is eight working days. At the end of week three the lead points to all 40 and the helper names 34 of them, 85 percent. Four of the six misses are fittings he knows by a different name; the lead puts both names on those labels.
The measurable effect. The lead had been sending the helper to the supply house with a written list. In the first month, 4 of 11 runs came back with a wrong part, about a third. In the third month, 1 of 12 did. The time saved is real, but the bigger change is that the helper now asks when he does not know a word, because asking stopped feeling like a test.
Month three. He enrolls in a free evening English class at the local adult school, two nights a week. The shop schedules him off by 4 on those days. The class is voluntary and run by the school, so under the federal rule the class time is not hours worked; the owner checked the state's rule before agreeing to it.
What would have gone wrong. Without the Friday check, nobody finds out that "hot" meant temperature to him until he grabs a conductor he was told was hot, thinking it meant warm. Without the labels and the five-a-day pace, the wrong-part rate stays at a third, the lead decides he is slow, and a skilled electrician leaves within the year.
References
- 29 CFR 785.27 to 785.31, training time as hours worked under the Fair Labor Standards Act
- Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (funding for adult English instruction)
- See related: Onboarding a Hire Whose First Language Is Not English
- See related: Teaching Spanish Safety Words to English-Speaking Leads
- See related: English-Only Rules and What the Law Allows