Question: How does DT help with engineering? does having another language other than English help with your job? Why and How?

Abbie Hutty answered on 9 Mar 2016:

I think DT is the single closest subject from the normal school curriculum to engineering. You have the full design process – you have a customer brief, with a problem you have to solve or a product you have to make. You have to come up with ideas that meet that need or brief. You have to assess which ideas are best, and develop those ideas into a final design. And then you have to make it, and see if it works and meets the brief. that is basically what engineering is! Yes, often you need technical skills too, like physics and maths to do calculations to see if your design is strong enough, or powerful enough, or things like that, but that’s just another skill that you learn and develop and fits in with that overall process.

And another language… well it’s definitely not essential, but I really enjoyed learning languages so I just carried on for the enjoyment. But actually, a lot of engineering projects are so big that they are international- and then you have to talk to people from other countries. I have spoken French to French colleagues, but even the fact that you’ve learnt another language means that if they’re speaking English to you, but it isn’t their first language, you understand what it is like to be speaking a foreign language, and what difficulties they might be having in understanding you or communicating their ideas to you, and it makes you better at communicating with them. A lot of engineering is about communicating clearly and articulately with colleagues, so improving your language skills is only ever going to enhance that side of your skillset.