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A book on useful explanations, grammar exercises, and self-help strategies to address common language needs of multilingual students.
Writing Clearly: An Editing Guide 3rd Edition provides useful explanations, grammar exercises, and self-help strategies to help students learn from their language errors and help instructors become better aware of the common language needs of multilingual students. The book provides short chapters that focus on fifteen of the most common types of language errors made by English language learners with an initial focus first on “global errors” such as verb tenses, verb forms, and sentence structure. These errors often impede a readers understanding of the sentence and are something the instructors should focus on first when assisting multilingual students.
In other sections, the book focuses on “local errors” such as prepositions, word forms, and articles. These errors do not cause as much misunderstanding as global errors, but they may be prevalent in English language learner writing and something the students will want to correct. The focus of all chapters and units in the book is on helping students become better editors of their own work and understand the grammatical and rhetorical principles behind clear writing. The book is particularly useful for instructors who are not familiar with the types of errors students from multilingual backgrounds make in writing and want to both familiarize themselves with the reasons for the errors as well as provide practical explanations and exercises to help their students improve their sentence-level grammar. It includes a helpful glossary on common language errors.
One way for instructors to approach the writing of their multilingual students is to focus first on the most serious errors in writing, defined in Writing Clearly as “global errors.” Global errors generally affect the reader’s ability to comprehend the sentence.
Examples include verb tense, verb form, and sentence structure errors.
Consider the following sentences with global errors from the glossary in Writing Clearly:
Once students have an understanding of the global errors in their writing, instructors may want to point out the less serious errors or “local errors.” These errors generally affect only part of a sentence and do generally impede comprehension of a sentence, paragraph, or writing assignment.
Examples include subject-verb agreement, article, and preposition errors.
Consider the following sentences with local errors from the glossary in Writing Clearly:
In addition to the focus on sentence-level errors, Writing Clearly offers chapters, units, and suggestions throughout the book on other ways to write more clearly and effectively including a section on avoiding nonidiomatic writing. The authors distinguish nonidiomatic from unclear writing in that readers can generally understand nonidomatic writing, and multilingual writers use nonidiomatic language on purpose in order to represent their linguistic and cultural background. At the same time, multilingual writers should consider that some readers might regard nonidiomatic writing awkward and confusing.
Consider this example of a nonidiomatic sentence:
The authors include suggestions for students and instructors to improve idiomatic writing in English such as:
1) Read in English as much as possible;
2) Interact with others in English as much as possible;
3) Ask a tutor or friend for help revising sentences that have been marked as nonidiomatic and the rewrite the sentence five times in order to memorize the language pattern for later use.
One way for instructors to approach the writing of their multilingual students is to focus first on the most serious errors in writing, defined in Writing Clearly as “global errors.” Global errors generally affect the reader’s ability to comprehend the sentence.
Examples include verb tense, verb form, and sentence structure errors.
Consider the following sentences with global errors from the glossary in Writing Clearly:
Once students have an understanding of the global errors in their writing, instructors may want to point out the less serious errors or “local errors.” These errors generally affect only part of a sentence and do generally impede comprehension of a sentence, paragraph, or writing assignment.
Examples include subject-verb agreement, article, and preposition errors.
Consider the following sentences with local errors from the glossary in Writing Clearly:
In addition to the focus on sentence-level errors, Writing Clearly offers chapters, units, and suggestions throughout the book on other ways to write more clearly and effectively including a section on avoiding nonidiomatic writing. The authors distinguish nonidiomatic from unclear writing in that readers can generally understand nonidomatic writing, and multilingual writers use nonidiomatic language on purpose in order to represent their linguistic and cultural background. At the same time, multilingual writers should consider that some readers might regard nonidiomatic writing awkward and confusing.
Consider this example of a nonidiomatic sentence:
The authors include suggestions for students and instructors to improve idiomatic writing in English such as:
1) Read in English as much as possible;
2) Interact with others in English as much as possible;
3) Ask a tutor or friend for help revising sentences that have been marked as nonidiomatic and the rewrite the sentence five times in order to memorize the language pattern for later use.