Hi everyone,
I have been participating in Codeforces for a long time. So I want to share my struggle and experiences. Since I was born in Thailand, a non-English speaking country, I hadn't used English in my daily life. Until I started learning competitive programming in Thailand's National Selection Camp, my friends suggested that I solve competitive programming problems in Codeforces. I am confident in my problem-solving skills but I couldn't understand the problem statements so without translating those problems to Thai, I couldn't solve any problems.
However, I didn't give up. I started trying to read the problem statement anyways. Sometimes there are technical words I don't understand so I translate them using Google Translate. Moreover, to get a higher score, I realized that in Codeforces Educational Round, the problem statements can be understood easier so I practiced my skill on that round.
I would suggest participants who are not native English speakers and are struggling to understand the problem statements to:
Practice by solving problems and reading the editorial carefully. If you don't understand a word try to translate it (For me personally, I use Google Translate). Then write the word down in a list and try to review it every day.
If you are worried about losing too much rating, I would highly suggest you participate in only the Educational Round. The benefit of doing this is that you could practice reading and understanding statements. Moreover, you could also learn some new tricks from these problems. When you think you're ready you can participate in the Normal Rated Round.
When you are searching for resources related to programming I suggest that you should use English when searching. There are many more resources in English compared to resources in my native language.
So in short, Learning English skills and Programming skills are kind of similar, that is you have to practice a lot. If you can keep practicing I believe that you can be better and one day you can be excellent at English.
