Limits to Learning English Vocabulary as a Therapist

Psychologists who want to improve their English skills share one main concern with me again and again: growing their vocabulary.

And believe me, I understand how important it is for therapists to develop a wider range of vocabulary. It allows them to speak with more freedom and fluency, improve their listening comprehension, and share more precise and incisive interventions in sessions.

But in this post, I’ll share two challenges when it comes to learning English vocabulary for therapy purposes, how functional language can be a great alternative to focus on, and why learning it can grow therapists’ confidence more effectively.

First, English is considered to have one of the largest vocabularies of any language.

You cannot wait until you understand every single word before offering therapy in English. By then, you might almost be old enough to retire! (Don’t believe me? Keep reading… I even do the math for you!).

There are approximately 171,476 English words in current use. Of course, you don’t need to know them all to hold therapy sessions in this language. The average proficient (native or bilingual) English speaker has a vocabulary of “only” about 20,000-35,000 words.

What’s more, I don’t believe therapists need to know 35, 000 words. I think they should carefully choose the specific vocabulary they need to learn. This is something I explain how to do in this blog post.

But even if you limit the number of words you learn and accept that you might not learn 35,000 words, learning vocabulary is a lifelong process.

In my experience, students can reasonably expect to learn around 10 new words per week (or around 520 words a year). Students usually come to me with a relatively fluent level of English and might already know about 7000 words. Even then, it would still take them an incredible 25 years to get to 20,000 words.

Secondly, knowing all these words does not automatically make therapists better English communicators.

A wide range of vocabulary is just one part of that, and it’s important to develop other crucial skills too.

For example, other aspects of effective communication include having strong listening skills to understand what others are saying, being aware of and sensitive to non-verbal language, being able to adjust the language you use to suit different situations or levels of formality and cultural contexts, and having high emotional intelligence to read between the lines of what is not being said explicitly.

So, instead of teaching students more and more endless lists of vocabulary. I teach students strategies to learn it in a personalized, realistic, and sustainable way.

But more importantly, when I can, I teach them functional language as well.

But what is functional language? The name sounds complicated, but it’s much easier to learn than vocabulary! Think of it as a secret superpower for communication.

Functional language is a group of phrases, expressions or questions we use to do specific tasks.

In general English classes, you would learn short sentences to give directions, ask for someone’s opinion, say no to an invitation, and so on. For example, you can ask for someone’s opinion by using questions like “What do you think?” or “How do you feel about that?”. Those two questions are functional language! The specific task in that example is to ask someone for their opinion.

English for psychologists is much more specialized, but the basic principle is the same. To start a session (the function), you might use the questions (or functional language) “Where should we begin?” or “What’s on your mind today?”. To end a session, you could say “I’m afraid we have to end in a few minutes. But before we do, I wonder if we could just take a couple of minutes to check in with how you’re feeling right now”.

Of course, there are many more tasks in therapy, often more complex than those.

For example, you might need to interrupt a client, acknowledge and try to repair an alliance rupture or challenge the client when there is a big contradiction in what they are saying. Though the tasks are more difficult, it’s not usually because of how advanced or complicated the functional language is in English. It’s because the situations are more emotionally charged and they are more likely to hurt a client if they are handled badly.  

I love teaching psychologists functional language from the start of our journey together because I see just how empowering it is, for three main reasons.

Firstly, functional language is not overly complicated. This makes it less intimidating, much easier to remember and more likely to be used with real clients. For example, if you want to dig deeper into a client’s emotional experience and make them more mindful of what they are feeling, you can say something like “I wonder if you could try to be present to what’s happening inside you right now”. When you look at that expression, you likely already understand every single word, and feel confident about when to use it. You just didn’t know the expression existed as a whole, expressed quite that way.

Secondly, functional language is flexible and adaptable, helping you communicate effectively even when you don’t know a word. Imagine your client is scowling, and you want to draw their attention to that. (Quick tip- I chose a very specific word on purpose, so search for “scowl” on Google Images to see what I mean). You could say “I’m noticing that as we’re speaking, you’re scowling… can you tell me more about that?” or “I’m noticing the expression on your face as we’re talking… can you tell me more about that?”.

Lastly, because functional language is focused on successful communication, it’s much more immediately practical and applicable than many pieces of vocabulary. Let’s imagine that when growing your vocab, you choose to learn the word “squabble” (= an argument over something that is not important). Great choice! It’s a specific, relatively common word when talking about disputes. Now, if a client describes something like this, you have this very particular piece of vocabulary to use.  But… when is a client going to bring this up? When will you be able to use this new word in a natural context? That’s outside your control.

Let’s compare this to the expression “I wonder if we could go back to something important you said earlier”. This is an expression that you could use every time you want to redirect the conversation- a task you are likely to do at least once a day in your therapy practice.

Functional vocabulary is a Swiss knife, but vocabulary is an apple slicer. Yes, you might get slightly more beautiful, “perfect” looking apple slices when using an apple slicer, but a Swiss knife can give you the same results and be used from day one, in many more situations.

So, what would you rather spend time and energy doing- learning vocabulary that might come up sometime, or expressions you’ll definitely need to use again and again?

In my opinion, there’s no need to choose! Both of these parts of language are crucial, and they each have their place in communication. But next time you are worried about your vocabulary, ask yourself if you’re even learning the functional language you need.

If you want to learn the functional language you need to start working with English-speaking clients in 12 weeks, check out my signature program here.

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