Instructing Ukrainian troops in English: how to make instructions land
You give a clear instruction. Twelve heads nod. Ten minutes later half the group is doing step three before step two. Nobody was careless. They caught the words, missed the sequence, and nodded because nodding felt polite. The fix sits mostly on your side of the room, and it costs a few seconds per instruction.
‘Do you understand?’ is the wrong question
It invites one answer, and that answer is yes. Ask for the content instead: Tell me the sequence you’ll do it in. The trainee says it back in their own words, and any gap shows up before the action, not after it. Your reply closes the loop: you confirm it or correct it.
On the radio this loop already has its own words: read back and wilco. In a classroom it needs no special vocabulary, only the habit of asking for it every time the sequence matters.
What, when, what next
Most spoken instructions have three parts: what to do, when or under what condition, and what happens next. Non-native listeners usually catch the action. The condition is what slips away, because it hides in a short clause at the end.
Two small moves help. Put the condition first when it changes the action: Before you fill in the form, read the instructions. And when one part concerns only some people, say so as its own sentence: This applies only to the first group. Once trainees know the pattern, they start asking for the missing part: Should I do this before or after the briefing?
Plain words beat slow words
Written instructions and manuals are harder than speech: no intonation, nobody to ask. A few habits make them readable for someone working in a second language.
- Say before, not prior to. Formal stand-ins like prior to (for before) and in the event that (for if) cost a non-native reader a second look.
- Explain shall once. In documents written to ISO rules, shall expresses a requirement, and so does the rarer is to. Many readers take shall for the future tense.
- Say who does it. Any damage is to be reported immediately does not say who reports, or to whom. If it matters, write it.
- Spell out acronyms on first use. The same letters mean different things in different systems; for NATO terms there is the official NATOTerm database.
If your manuals use boxed WARNING and CAUTION notes, tell trainees what each means on day one. WARNING flags a risk of injury or death, CAUTION a risk of damaging equipment. Trainees who know the convention read the box before the step, which is exactly where you want them. Manuals written in Simplified Technical English (ASD-STE100) help further: short commands and one action per step.
Names, ranks and a word of Ukrainian
Your trainees may introduce themselves with titles your service does not have: senior lieutenant, chief sergeant, junior sergeant. Before day one, have a quick look at Ukrainian ranks compared with yours, so that you know who answers to whom.
And a handful of Ukrainian words goes further than you might expect. Thank you, please and good morning, said in Ukrainian, change the room. If you will be working alongside Ukrainians for months, online Ukrainian lessons turn those words into short conversations.
Two questions instructors ask
Should I slow down or simplify my English?
Both help, but simplifying helps more. A slow sentence full of prior to, shall and strings of nouns is still hard. Short sentences at a normal pace, one action each, are easier to follow and easier for trainees to repeat backCan trainees run documents through a translation app?
Check your own security rules and theirs first: nothing classified or sensitive goes into a public app. For everything else, an app helps with words, not with structure. The read-back is still the real checkOne thing to try in your next session. After each instruction where the sequence matters, ask ‘Talk me through it’ instead of ‘Any questions?’ Then count how often the answer differs from what you said.