How To Write Well On Medium When English Is Your Second Language

Sharing my best writing tips

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Something that’s great about Medium, is its willingness to accept writers from all over the world. If you’re brave enough to write in English when it’s your second or third language, you’re even able to participate in their Partner Program, and earn money according to the amount of reading time your articles get.

Writing in a foreign language can be challenging. You might need to put more time and effort into your articles. You are constantly competing with native English speakers, and it puts you in a disadvantaged position. But you are also very valuable to Medium for a different reason: You have access to sources of information based upon your first language, whatever it may be. This is something unique you have to offer to the Medium community: Your access to perspectives and experiences from a culture, or from a part of the world, where only-English speakers would need to use translator tools to gain any access at all. It’s a strong card to have, and it makes you interesting enough to follow. It might even more than compensate for your lack of English synonyms. So why not just go for it?

Absorb from the right people

To become successful on a platform, you always want to observe other people’s work. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that every native speaker is good enough. You want to look for people with talent. Popular writers tend to be skilled writers. (There’s no guarantee, though.)

Another approach, is to find the book worms. Choose subjects that require some research to write. People who have to read a lot of background information for their articles, will usually acquire writing skills of their own in the process. History is therefore a pretty safe subject, or people who write about books and authors. How to get rich fast-articles are more often something people just threw together, and you’re taking a greater risk. Is your English good enough to distinguish high quality writing from garbage? It’s something to think about.

Never underestimate the importance of repeating basic things, like knowing the irregular verbs well. There are actually not that many of them, and if that’s what you need to do, then open your dictionary and just try to learn them properly. “Begin, began, begun..”

Narrow it down

Start writing about a subject you’re more comfortable with, and learn it well. Read similar articles on the same subject matter, and write down all words that are very theme specific to that area. Make sure you know what those words mean, how they are spelled and how they are commonly used. Have a note book and make subject specific lists to use for later.

Many professionals who go to a new country to work as a doctor or an engineer, will use this method. They’ll focus in on a very specific vocabulary for what they will be doing, and combine that knowledge with the basic grammar they are learning or already know.

Make sure you know all the frequent words

This may sound too obvious, but not everybody knows that there are vocabulary lists online that are not based on alphabetic order. The words are listed according to how often they are used in the language. You can find lists of “the 500, 1000 or 2000 most commonly used words in English” .

Take a look at these lists, and see if you know all of the frequently used words. If you don’t know all of them, try to learn as many of them as you can. This will be an enormous advantage to have, when you continue diving into the details of the English language.

Choose your tools carefully

There are many excellent writing tools available, but if you want to improve your skills, you should never go for anything that automatically corrects your mistakes. Having a document full of red lines may be frustrating, but it’s also incredibly valuable. You need to be made aware of your own flaws. Make sure you take the time to manually correct your own mistakes. Progress will come much faster this way, and you’ll see less and less of that red color in your writing.

Find grammar by removing words

Have you ever stumbled upon the problem of pronouns? When should you use “I” or “me”? If you listen to videos by random people, you may adopt their lousy language. People will say everything: “My friend and I”, “Me and my friend”, “My friend and me”…

There are certainly grammar rules to follow, but have you tried just removing words to find the answer? I’ll give you a few examples: You want to express that you and your wife went to the store. Should you say “My wife and I” or “my wife and me?” Remove “wife” and you’ll know. It’s much easier to hear the correct answer if you say “I went to the store.” You would never say “Me went to the store.” Now you also know that “My wife and I” is the correct way to say it.

To solve the problem of who should go first in the sentence, think politeness. It’s more polite to put other people first, and it’s also more correct. This is why your best option is “My wife and I, not I and my wife.”

If you want to say that someone invited you and your friend to the movies, should you say “Someone invited my friend and me, or my friend and I?” Remove the friend and you’ll know. You would never say “Someone invited I to the movies”. Now you know that the correct answer is “Someone invited my friend and me to the movies”. You know that the friend comes before you in the sentence, because of politeness! This is a very simple, but very useful trick. I hope you see the pattern.

The apostrophe (‘)problem

English is full of that comma in the sky, namely the apostrophe. And it’s not easy to get comfortable with it. When you don’t know, always ask yourself three questions: Can this be separated into two words? Can the number of people involved be misunderstood? and Can it confuse the meaning? For example; is it unclear if you’re writing about 1)who owns something, or 2)if you’re just removing the first letter in the word is?

“John’s not here” can be separated into John and is. Your “sky-comma” is going where a letter is missing. In this case, the “i”. But what if the name ends with an “s?” Then, what do you do? It’s now Thomas who is not here. There’s no reason to worry. Even though you could write “Thomas’s not here”, in this example, most people will go with is for clarity. “Thomas is not here!” No need to complicate things.

But when it comes to ownership, there’s no “is” to put in. It’s John’s car. He owns it. When the owner is called Thomas, you can choose, so don’t worry. “It’s Thomas’ car” or “It’s Thomas’s car.” Both options are correct. But what if the car belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Thomas? You now have two Thomases… Here you need to remember the question about how many people are involved and how it could be “misunderstood”. You put your sky-comma last! “It’s the Thomases’ car”. Plural endings never have a sky-comma to express plural. The sky-comma is there to express the ownership. You would’t put a sky-comma to express that there are more than one people or objects. You would say “I hear you have three kids.” (Not kid’s). But you would say “It’s my (three) kids’ toy car.” If you only have one kid, you would say “It’s my (one) kid’s toy car”.

Go and enrich Medium

Don’t think of yourself as the under-dog. Your presence on Medium enriches the English speaking world, and I hope more non-native English speakers like myself will give it a try, even if their English isn’t perfect. There are actually many natural ways to improve your English skills. You just need to be consistent in your efforts and keep writing as you go. And your presence will only make Medium so much more interesting.

How To Succeed As A Writer When English Is A Foreign Language

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