In my 5+ years as a freelance editor on the IU campus, I've worked with hundreds of clients whose first languages have ranged from Arabic to Thai (and everything in between!). Depending on each client's educational background—and especially if the first language uses a writing system other than the Latin alphabet—I have found that most English-L2 academic editing clients' speaking skills in English tend to be much stronger than their writing skills, at least when they haven't worked with an editor regularly. Native speakers with dyslexia, dysgraphia, or other disorders of written expression may also be much more comfortable speaking than writing in English.
If you speak more easily and fluently than you write in English, this tip is for you! Even if you are not an especially auditory (ear-based) learner, this tip may still be helpful. This tip is as easy as downloading a free audio recording app onto your iPhone or other smartphone. (I have an Android device and use one simply called Audio Recorder.) Next time you want to write a paragraph or even a sentence in your next paper, just think through what you want to say and say it out loud into the audio recording app on your phone. Then replay the recording and type the words you just spoke! More often than not, you'll find a simpler and clearer way to say something when you are just speaking it into the recording device, because you're not attempting to impress your professors with your big vocabulary. Remember, though: well-constructed ideas, spoken or written clearly and simply, are going to be much more convincing to the reader (your professor) than a bunch of unnecessarily long and unclear sentences that you stuffed with big words to impress your reader. Those of you whose first language uses another writing system (not the Latin alphabet) may see the most immediate benefit from this speech-to-audio-recorder technique, since it takes more brainpower (specifically working memory) to hold your idea in your head as you translate that idea into a written alphabet with which you may not be entirely comfortable yet. If you record your speech first and type what you said later, your working memory doesn't have to hold that idea for several minutes as you pick out the letters and words. That way, your idea is less likely to be "lost in translation" as it's being transferred from your brain to the computer screen. Try speaking your ideas into the recorder app as you write your next paper and let me know how it worked for you!
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For those of you whose first language is not English, you may be tempted to try writing papers in your first language and then translating them into English after you're done.
Here's a story to illustrate why this is a really bad idea. Early in my editing career, a native Arabic speaker (I'll call him Mike) contacted me to assist him with his master's thesis. He had written the entire thing in Arabic and had then translated it into English himself. He had two issues, though:
When I was pursuing my undergraduate minor in Spanish at the University of Michigan, our professors always warned us not to write our papers in English first, and they did so for the exact reasons I showed above in my story about Mike. Those who wrote in English first had to undertake much more work to prepare a draft in Spanish, and when they did, the final product was not nearly as good. The professors could always tell who had written their papers in English first, because those papers received lower grades! If you need to translate a primary source article in your first language for your own academic papers, this is a different matter; however, I still recommend getting a professional translator or a fully bilingual friend (like someone born in the US, but raised by parents who speak your first language) to do the translation for you. Translating from your L1 to your L2 is always more difficult than translating from your L2 (for me, Spanish) into your L1 (for me, English). That's why I offer Spanish to English translation services, but not English to Spanish translation services! Welcome to my Writing Tips page! Here, I'll share some of the most popular and helpful advice I've shared with clients all over the English learning spectrum—from those spending their first year in an English-speaking environment to native speakers who just want to refine their writing even more. These posts are not meant to replace an individual editing session, of course! They will simply outline some important things to keep in mind whenever you're writing a paper.
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