They say that immersion is one of the best ways to learn a language. You were probably told that as you were preparing to begin your academic experience in the US (or wherever you are studying). And one would think that, if you're studying in an English-speaking country, you're getting the full immersion experience, right?
Well, not necessarily. When you're not in classes with American (or otherwise English-L1) professors, how are you spending your time? Are you joining clubs and other extracurricular activities through which you're making English-speaking friends? Or—let's be real—are you watching movies in your first language or hanging out with friends who speak your first language, because it's more comfortable and you're just so tired from all your classes that thinking in/speaking English feels like more work for you? Trust me, I've been there too! While I didn't formally study in another country, I briefly toured as a pianist on the ms Zaandam, a cruise ship that spent most of its time in Spanish-speaking countries (Spanish is my 2nd language). Knowing that I wouldn't have many other Spanish-language immersion experiences in Indiana, I made a decision to seek out as many opportunities to speak, listen, read, and write in Spanish as I could possibly find! As a result, I immediately and dramatically improved my skills during my 4 months on the Zaandam. In fact, when my Mexican art dealer friend would give me a wake-up call to ask if I'd help with his next art auction in a few hours, I'd sometimes find myself thinking in Spanish first, even before my English would kick in! (This amused and somewhat annoyed my violinist, who had taken 4 years of high school Spanish but hadn't kept up with it!) Additionally, because I intentionally spent more time with the native Spanish speakers also working on the ship, I formed great friendships with some people I never would have met otherwise. Four years after we met on the Zaandam, one such friend and I are creating a performing group and another friend has supplied me with Spanish-language poems to use in composing art songs! Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "I'm a shy person and I don't think I can just start making English-speaking friends the way you befriended all those Spanish speakers!" And that's no problem! There are other ways to start the immersion process if you're more introverted or don't feel ready to join clubs with English speakers in them. One simple way to begin the immersion process—one that will also help you as you write papers and have me edit them—is changing your laptop's settings so that everything displays in English. I actually require all Arabic-L1 clients to do this (at least in Microsoft Word, if not on their entire operating system) because Arabic's right-to-left writing system makes it impossible for me to type comments in English within their Word documents. Also, as students, we spend so much time on our computers that if you set your computer's default language to English, you'll be giving yourself hours and hours of additional reading/writing practice without even thinking about it! Understandably, not everyone can do this (maybe you are sharing a computer or you don't have administrative privileges on yours, so you can't go in and change these settings), but if you can, it's a very easy and valuable way to get yourself more comfortable with English. Some other ways you can immerse yourself in English (if you are not ready to introduce yourself to new people on the street!) include:
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When meeting with a client, I often make a joke that if all my clients somehow hosted a party together, and at this party they decided to subject me to a "roast" (a good-natured insult session directed at me and meant to be funny), the first thing everyone might do is imitate me saying something like "stop using so many 'of constructions'!"
Well, they wouldn't be wrong! This is among my signature writing tips, particularly when I work with a client whose first language is Korean, Arabic, or any Romance language (French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Portuguese are the most common Romance languages, and they share origins in Latin). These languages frequently construct phrases using the preposition "of" or something equivalent to it. Thus, when clients with these L1s (first languages) turn to English writing, they transfer these phrase constructions as well...and it doesn't always work. "What's wrong with of constructions?" you may ask. But first, you might also ask, "What is an of construction?" To put it simply, an of construction is any phrase that contains "___ of ___" or "___ of [the/a/insert another article here] ____." Such a construction is not inherently incorrect in English. It is a bit like salt on your food: sometimes you even want to add some or a phrase (like a particular recipe) specifically demands it. However, many writers will overuse the of construction to the point that the writing becomes difficult to understand, because of constructions place greater demands on the reader's working memory capacity by asking them to store more information in their head as they read the phrase. Just like when you use too much salt on your food, when you use too many of constructions, the phrase becomes difficult to digest! Even more problematic is the of chain; that is, two or more of constructions in a row. Here is such an of chain: "Garlic mustard is a member of the group of plants of the genus Alliaria." Now, even if you know exactly what garlic mustard is (it's an invasive plant in the United States), you may feel a little lost reading this phrase! It would be more concise to say "Garlic mustard is in the Alliaria plant genus" (and perhaps you could explain elsewhere exactly what a genus is). Here, I deleted all the ofs from the sentence, but you don't even need to delete them all. Just try to leave only one, at most, per sentence! Whenever you find that you've written an of construction and it's not part of an established "phrase chunk" in English (See what I did there? "Part of" is just such an established "phrase chunk" for which it's totally OK to keep that "of"!), see if you can take the word after the of and make it a possessive (or, in grammar-speak, genitive) instead. This is what I mean here: let's say you had written "the wings of the monarch butterfly" somewhere in your paper. If you take the noun after the of and make it possessive, then place it before the first noun, you would have "the monarch butterfly's wings." And that conveys the exact same meaning in fewer words! Now that I've said all this, I should clarify that you don't need to delete every single "of" from your paper every time, but trying to limit your of constructions will make your writing far clearer and more concise. In fact, when I am just beginning to work with a new client who appears to be overusing the of constructions, I will usually recommend that they try a specific exercise: write a paragraph in academic prose without using any of constructions! While this is not something you may ever have to do in your real-life papers, it's a great brain-stretching exercise that will help you write more clearly in the future. Did you try the exercise I just described? If so, let me know how it worked for you! 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! |
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