Help non-native speakers ace academic writing
Working as an editor for Scribbr, sooner or later, you will find yourself confronted with a text that was written by a non-native speaker. Depending on their language level and skills, you might experience a normal or much higher workload, which can be frustrating. I would like to encourage you to put yourself in their shoes and understand how meaningful your work as a proofreader for a non-native writer truly is.
Through years of proofreading texts written by fellow students, I have learned a lot about the challenges of scientific writing in a foreign language. My colleague at university and dear friend Hamoud, whose fascinating texts in the field of Islamic history I’ve been recently correcting, has succeeded in learning German very well in a couple of years and shares his perspective. I then provide you with resources and tips from my own experience, which will help you focus better and increase your editing speed while proofreading non-native writing. Following a few steps can make it easier and more rewarding for you to correct complex passages efficiently.
Hamoud: Get to know the soul of the language
To be clear: Studying in another country and in another language, as exciting and valuable it is, can at times feel like merciless brain callisthenics that don’t seem to get you anywhere.
Especially when it’s a language that you have recently started to learn, you’ll probably struggle not only with grammar and vocabulary issues, but also with acclimatising to the new culture and understanding its rules for communication. When I left Syria during the war in 2014 and arrived in Germany, I hardly knew one German word. I had only read about its history and philosophers and admired some of its books. After starting my daily six-hour German class at one of the BAMF language schools, I realized that I would not reach my goal — to work as an author and scientist, which had been my beloved profession back in Syria — by only attending class.
The problem is that these schools have a clear financial focus and, in my experience, don’t employ well-educated teachers. Since getting accepted to university requires language level C1 (CEFR), I spent hours after school reading short texts out loud and listening to books via Audible. I made a list of idioms, realizing that they bring me closer to the German ‘soul’. For these phrases you cannot find a direct translation to your native tongue, so you must understand it within the language itself. I tell this to all non-natives I meet:
The best way to learn a language is without comparing it to your own because this will limit you to a certain understanding.
After you have learned the basics, explain new words with those you already know instead of translating them. It is important that you learn words in the context they are used in the new language. In Arabic all the words trace back to a root of what you might call three letters. When writing, we leave out most vowels, and we love verbs. Germans can write what looks like a sentence but what is really one long-chained noun. Therefore, translating an Arabic sentence into German cannot by nature sound German and will usually not be understood.
What also helped me was disassembling phrases repeatedly to grasp the German syntax. After I reached level B1 (CEFR), I continued reading texts only in my field of interest. I believe that this was the reason for my quick success in becoming fluent in writing and reading. Since I had read many Arabic translations of German historians, I knew the historical and cultural backgrounds and thereby learned a lot of new words that are relevant to my professional context. Following your interest is more effective than spending time on grammar or content you are supposed to learn but dislike. For me, since reaching C1, I’ve found that I learn the most while being fascinated by the content and doing research about it. I do that at least one hour per day.
Hannah: 3 Tips for editing non-native writing
While helping my fellow students with their texts, I identified certain recurrent challenges that both beginners and experienced non-native writers encounter. Here are my solutions:
Keep it simple
Once part of the academic community, many students adapt to other authors’ writing styles, which can result in long, overly complicated and incomprehensible sentences. If this applies to a large part of the text, then I only leave a comment suggesting that the author find the quintessence of every sentence and reduce it using clear, precise language. It is always helpful to be aware of and underline the author’s great achievements in the foreign language while pointing out that a more simplistic word choice may lead to better results.
If way-too-fancy syntaxes and neologisms make you a headache, relax. Remember, it’s not your task to rewrite the whole text but to identify the author’s recurring mistakes, because they may reveal underlying misunderstandings of grammar rules.
Choose the right tense
Another common problem concerns the choice of the right tense. The past continuous and the present perfect are often mistakenly used where the simple past is necessary. If a student repeats tense mistakes, you can help them by referring to online resources, such as Scribbr Knowledge Base articles, to help them learn the rules.
Suggest alternative wordings
Every writer is familiar with certain phrasings and vocabularies, while others might be completely unknown to them. Find out where the student repeats the same wordings and offer them alternatives. It can be eye-opening to learn new phrases or to being explained the little differences between two similar words. You can also suggest looking for synonyms using, for example, Woxikon, a thesaurus for non-native writers.
If you like to learn more about researcher’s experiences, check out: When English is not your mother tongue.
Moreover, the blog of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders provides crucial insights about editing non-native English.
