In the summer of 2022, a few months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I took part in a short project: interpreting for NATO military instructors. I had no experience doing this and wasn’t sure I’d handle it perfectly. I did. Here’s what I took away from it.
TV Shows Build Your Passive Vocabulary
I had no idea how much years of watching films and TV shows in English had actually helped me. That’s the main reason I could follow the instructors at all. And I’m not just talking about military terms. I’d never thought about the difference between a bullet and a round, for example. I had no idea what zeroing meant (sighting in a weapon). These words had simply never come up in my everyday life, even after the war started.
But I had no trouble interpreting idioms, phrasal verbs, rarely used words — only because at some point I’d heard them in films, worked out the meaning from context, or bothered to look them up. There were a few moments when I understood more than the professional interpreter from Kyiv.
Here’s one of them.
The instructor told the platoon commanders:
“I fart louder than you guys give commands to your unit.”
The interpreter didn’t know the word fart. Fair enough — why would you learn that?
But I’d seen that word in subtitles, matched the sound to the spelling, and understood it. I’d never used it in my life. But it was sitting in my passive vocabulary, ready when I needed it.
Passive vocabulary is the foundation of any communication. If you can’t understand others, you can’t take part in the conversation.
When Does Passive Become Active?
When the right context shows up.
On the last day of the project, an Irish instructor and I were talking about our cats’ behavior. I was describing what mine does, and out came “reconnaissance and observation.” Niall laughed and looked at me with surprise.
Honestly, I surprised myself. The words just came out. I wasn’t searching for them, wasn’t preparing. Enough English heard over the years, the right moment — and passive becomes active on its own, without effort.
Interpreting and Teaching Are Not the Same Thing
Understanding what an instructor is saying is one thing. Interpreting it out loud in real time is something else entirely. Especially when Ukrainian, as in my case, has been pushed to the background: I teach almost exclusively in English.
You probably know this feeling: you’re listening, you understand every word, you can almost see the object someone is describing — but the Ukrainian word won’t come. Does that sound familiar?
The better your English gets and the more you use it, the more often this happens. It’s not a failure. It’s a sign the language has become more natural to you.
From my own experience: the instructors kept saying “put the safety on.” And at least a few times a day I’d fumble the interpretation, reaching for the Russian предохранитель instead of the Ukrainian запобіжник. Not because I didn’t know the word — my brain just kept grabbing the first thing that surfaced.
On “Speaking English Confidently”
Prospective students often tell me:
“I want to speak English confidently.”
But 30 years of learning and teaching a language won’t guarantee you 100% confidence in every situation. Not for me either.
When I agreed to this project, I told the coordinator I had no experience with this kind of work and wasn’t sure I’d do it perfectly. I wasn’t afraid to try, because I knew enough to figure things out as I went. I didn’t need confidence in advance.
There was something else that helped: I knew that if I didn’t understand something, someone would help me, rephrase, explain. That took the pressure off.
So if speaking English feels scary, ask yourself: do I actually believe the people I’m talking to are on my side?
Sometimes they’re not. But much less often than it feels.
Look for situations where it’s okay to make mistakes. Where you can ask for help finding a word and not feel awkward about it. That’s where something actually shifts.
If you want to read more about how passive vocabulary becomes active — and what actually helps that process — Turn passive vocabulary into active: Proven strategy to activate vocabulary (this post goes into it in more detail). And if you’d like a weekly note on what actually works in English, the newsletter is here:
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