Speakers of Romance languages like French, Italian, or Spanish face some specific problems when writing advanced English.
If this applies to you, check out the following 3 tips to help you with the most common issues:
Writing is hard for everyone, that’s a given.
But writing is hard in a different way for native speakers and non-native speakers of English.
Most teachers don't have time to explicitly teach writing as well as their content matter, but they still want students to write decently.
Because of course, who will be reading those papers?
If this sounds familiar to you, then why not use ReallyWrite in your classes? It's minimal effort, zero risk, and high reward.
To get you started:
Do you ever put down an article and wonder if it really had to be so hard to read? If it couldn't have been easier, lighter, more interesting? If it couldn´t have been written in a way that made it a pleasure, not a burden, to read?
Research articles don't have to be so heavy. They haven't always been this way.
It's human nature to seek pleasure and avoid pain. But when it comes to learning, the proverb is true: no pain, no gain.
Learning is supposed to be hard. It is supposed to make us feel vulnerable and uncertain.
But when we're in the middle of that discomfort and we feel like everything is wrong, we may start to think that we haven't learned anything. Or we may get discouraged and think that we will never learn it. Maybe we want to lash out or give up.
My academic writing classes start with skeptics and usually end with converts. The path between can be uncomfortable.
Some participants hate writing. Some have had bad past experiences, which they describe as "frustrating" and even "traumatic".
My students sometimes feel that applying the principles[^1] of clear writing conflicts with them developing their own personal writing style.
We can resolve this conflict if we think about our stages of learning. I particularly like using the ancient Japanese concept of Shuhari.
Academic writing can be hard--hard to read and harder to write. But does it have to be?
What rule states that academic writing should be heavy and exhausting to read?
Can your structure be simple, even if your subject matter is complex?
Will readers understand your complicated topic better if they first have to untangle a complicated structure?
Can academic writing be easy to read? Even, dare I say it, enjoyable?
How often do you stop to reflect on the purpose of your research and the purpose of the article or book you are writing?
Photo by Ian Schneider
Why are you doing that research? What is your ultimate reason for writing that article?
Or maybe
Let's talk about comparisons.
Comparisons, or comparative sentences, are a blind spot for many academic writers, but especially those for whom English is not a native language.[^1]