How can I become a better writer in English?

July 30, 2009 1:19 PM

Help me be a better writer in English (as a second language)

I'm a native Spanish speaker. In Spanish, writing is my life. I've been writing short stories, poems and essays since I was a kid. I keep a literary blog and I believe my writing is quite good. I graduated as a journalist and a multimedia producer, I worked as an editor and for a long time I worked creating digital storytelling techniques. Writing and storytelling is what I enjoy doing.

I now live in the US. I've been working in bilingual settings for 10 years and I can translate quite well. My English is fine for everyday communications, email and technical documents. My conversation is OK, I make mistakes and I have an accent, of course. I read voraciously in English, mostly contemporary literature, non-fiction, everything I can get my eyes on. I scored 117 out of 120 on the TOEFL and in general, I have no problem writing short, boring, mediocre copy. It also takes forever: these 4 paragraphs have taken me 40 minutes.

I've tried grammar books, style books, writing technique books... they all seem designed for people who are native English writers. All ESL courses I've found are designed to take people to a functional level.

I feel like I've lost my only superpower. How can I become a good writer in English? Should I take English composition college courses? Any other ideas?

posted by papalotl to writing & language (16 comments total)

How much time out of the day do you spend speaking English? It sounds like you have the writing chops, you just need to be faster and more fluent, and I keep hearing the only way to get that is full immersion.
posted by lore at 1:29 PM on July 30

I would say 75% of my day is all English, and about 50% of my writing (including work and fun)
posted by papalotl at 1:36 PM on July 30

Just write in English. Don't let less than perfect grammar or syntax errors or even vocabulary problems stop you, just write. You can work with an editor and fix problems later. The key is producing text in English.
posted by Pineapplicious at 1:36 PM on July 30

Your writing is perfectly fine, but I'm sorry to hear that you have to be so meticulous to get it that way. What is your writing like when you don't let it take forever? If you just write some crap in 10 minutes, then go back and fix it up for 30 minutes, what is it that you're fixing? spelling and grammar mistakes? imprecise vocabulary? awkward constructions? tuning your "writing voice" to make the passage read the way you want it?

If you're at the point where you can construct grammatically sensible sentances with little/no effort, then you're working on flow and subtleties. If grammar still takes a lot of conscious effort, then this is probably your speed block. Fixing your speed block won't make you a more lyrical writer as a direct connection, but it will extend the amount of mental energy you have left to take a document from acceptable to "the best you can make it", thus raising that ceiling a little.

English composition courses might help, but depending on the college, such classes are often focused on convincing freshman that they have to do work at college. Writing as you've done above would get you good grades. It might be an avenue to get some feedback and suggestions, especially if you talk to the teacher and convince them you're aiming higher than they're requiring. If you weren't in a word-based career, a college class would also be a way to give you practice and new topics and deadlines, but you sound like you've got those aspects under control.

Of course, it's taken me 15 minutes to write this, so maybe I'm not one to talk.
posted by aimedwander at 1:40 PM on July 30

It also takes forever: these 4 paragraphs have taken me 40 minutes.

Wow! Why so slow? As a student of Japanese and Chinese I sympathize, but where's the block? I would not guess you were not a native speaker from your writing!

But one thing I see is that you need review of the subtleties involved in connecting declarative sentences; eg. the : is used for lists, a -- or ; would have worked better in the one place you attempted a formal link of clauses.

Reading is necessary but for progress you need someone good to correct your mistakes like that. Assuming you qualify as a resident for tuition purposes, city college is in fact a good place to get that I think.
posted by @troy at 1:40 PM on July 30

Non-native English speaker living in a non-English speaking country here.

In my experience: 1) there's a kind of 'threshold' that you have to get past in order to get somewhat comfortable writing in English; and 2) you need to practice, practice, practice.

Having to explain the somewhat Byzanthine Dutch health care system in an English-language document a couple of years ago took care of 1) for me. YMMV. Any challenging writing task where the challenge is something other than having to write in English might do the trick. Come to think of it - have you considered joining a writer's group or a poetry class for native English speakers? This won't teach you English (but your vocabulary and grammar will probably be on a par with the other participants' anyway) but it might help you to make the written language your own.

As for 2, blog in English, participate in English-language on-line forums like this one, take on a variety of writing tasks in your job if possible. It gets easier.
posted by rjs at 1:49 PM on July 30

Thanks a lot, these are all great suggestions and ideas.

I do edit too much. I guess I have unreasonable expectations on the quality of text I can produce at this point, so I edit, edit and edit. I will take your advice and start writing more, worrying less.

A writing group or a challenging class sound like good ideas as well.
posted by papalotl at 2:06 PM on July 30

I imagine simply writing as much as possible in English would start to make things easier. Perhaps dedicate 20 minutes a day to writing in English - maybe a short story you'd normally write in Spanish.

This writing will just be for you, so embrace mistakes. You can analyze what you write after, if you feel like it - certain recurring errors may start to appear.

I think, like almost anything, the more you work on it, the easier it'll get.
posted by backwards guitar at 2:14 PM on July 30

I can't give you a complete answer to your question, but this might help a bit. I teach at a medical school in Puerto Rico and often review writing from graduate students who have Spanish as their first language. I have found that the errors are often of the same variety and repeated. I suggest to them, first: write freely and quickly. Then use a list of common errors and use that to correct the writing. In/on, other prepositions, verb tenses.

Beyond that, there are several keys to writing dynamic English.

When someone is less familiar with a language, that person tends to rely on all-purpose, general words. Some of these are: good, bad, place, thing, big, small, beautiful, pretty, ugly, smart, dumb, important, happy, easy. Look for these words and replace them (let's say reduce your usage of them by half - sometimes the simple word choice is best for flow). For example, there are many wonderful, vivid words to replace "good." Depending on the meaning you could use "decent, ethical, righteous," or, referring to the quality of your writing, "first-class, choice, superior, exciting, striking, memorable, thrilling, superb, quality, impressive."

Choose the strongest, most specific verb. (examples from science) Instead of saying "the cells were grown in culture," say, "the cells were cultured" or "I cultured the cells." Make up a list of weak verbs and replace them with a stronger, more specific verb whenever possible. My list of weak verbs include: to be (is, are, was, etc.); have; go, come, see, look, show, say, get, know, put, make, want, think. Choosing a strong specific verb is the single most important bit of advice to achieve more dynamic sentences. When I write poetry, I go back to look for all of the times when I chose a weaker, less specific verb. In a recent poem, I replaced: "sang" for "crooned," "was in flames" for "blazed with flames, "drawing for luring," "stood" for "leaned." (This was in the first two stanzas.)

This next section is from a presentation I made to students regarding practical tips to improve their writing.

The First Edit – eliminate technical errors

-Spell-check.
-Double check homonyms. (there – their)
-Subject verb match.
-Give it to someone to read for feedback.

The Second Edit - clarity and flow.

What makes up clarity?
Being direct.
Understandable.

Tips for clarity:

-Structure what you want to say in paragraphs.
-When in doubt, make it simple.
-Keep the subject (somewhat) near the verb.
-Leave out unnecessary words.
-Be specific.

What is flow?
The story moves logically from one part to the next.
Easy to read.

Good flow is the product of two forces: gravity and no obstructions.
-Gravity: Arranged what you are saying such that it has direction and continuity.
-Keep like ideas together.
-"Fishhook" Arrange it so one idea pulls you into the next. An easy way to fishhook is to use a key word from the previous paragraph in the subsequent paragraph.

No obstructions.
-The reading is easy. The wording is varied so as to not be boring or monotonous.
-Vary sentence structure. Don't repeat noun-verb, noun-verb. Start some sentences with preposition or a verb. (Again a recent example from a poem.) Chirring locusts trilled in the husky-throated night was changed to In the husky-throated night, chirring locusts trilled. (This came after two sentences of noun-verb.)
-Vary sentence length. Let a couple of short jabs be followed by an extended sentence.

The third edit. Dynamic writing.

-Project confidence without arrogance.
-Don't pull punches unnecessarily. And never pull two punches in the same sentence. So many people do this. You will find sentences such as "Babe Ruth may have been one of the most famous baseball players during the 1920s." "May have been" can be replaced by "was" "one of the most" with "the most." For someone of his stature, you could replace 1920s with "all time," or "baseball players" with "sports figures." Since Babe Ruth's all-time ranking can be disputed, you can leave in one pulled punch. "Babe Ruth was the most famous sports figure of the 1920s."

My favorite bad sentence from a textbook: "Sex has probably gone on since the beginning of mankind."

State what you want to say in positive terms. Don't say "The virus did not appear until 1981." Instead: "The virus first appeared in 1981."

There is a place for pulled punches and phrasing things negatively. If you purposefully need to be overly diplomatic, or you are writing dialogue and trying to portray a natural voice, then people do talk with a plethora of adverbs, pulled punches, and imprecision. A sort that can make for a poetry of its own.

Hope this helps. And by the way - quality writing is demanding.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:25 PM on July 30 [5 favorites]

Here's an idea someone gave me once on improving my writing: Find an author whose writing you really like or think is really good. Read a sample of his or her writing (no more than a page) several times until you know exactly what's in it. Don't try to memorize it, exactly, just try to learn the topics covered.

Then set the page aside, and try to rewrite it word for word. You'll probably get the content pretty accurately since you read the original several times, however, the way that content is expressed may be different from what you write, even though you're trying to simply repeat the author's words.

Once you're done, go back and compare your writing to the original. Take note of where your words are different from the author's, especially where you convey the same idea but in a different manner. If your version has two sentences where the author has one, for instance, you might learn a way to blend your sentences. Or maybe an idea that requires a few words from you is captured with a single word from the author.

The purpose of this isn't to copy another author's style, but to discover different ways of converting ideas in your head into words on a page.
posted by losvedir at 3:05 PM on July 30 [3 favorites]

You need to spend some time writing without grammatical concerns, and then read what you've written aloud. Flow goes much better that way. You can hear where you used clunky phrasing and correct it more easily.

Incidentally, your use of the colon was fine. People do tend to use --, and ; would also have been ok, with a slightly different emphasis, but what you didn't wasn't ungrammatical or a clue that you're a second language speaker.
posted by jeather at 3:24 PM on July 30

but what you didn't wasn't ungrammatical or a clue that you're a second language speaker.

agreed, but it would be something pointed out in an advanced composition course (or my terroristic English teacher in AP English). My main point with that was that the sentence structure was just a series of declarative sentences, btw.

When I was trying to teach advanced business writing in Japan (and was way out of my depth) I found a pretty good workbook that was published by Longman. It had a lot of good stuff that hadn't been covered at all in my English-learning experience, like basic guidelines of the priority of multiple adjectives on one noun.
posted by @troy at 3:34 PM on July 30

Thanks again, great exercise ideas. That particular use of the colon is common in Spanish. Perhaps I need a combination of better editing practices (reading aloud, checking for clarity and vocabulary) and another set of eyes reviewing for details and pointing out the mistakes.
posted by papalotl at 3:55 PM on July 30

My advice is don't be so judgmental with yourself until you finish. Write something from start to finish without looking back at what you've written. Don't worry about things like, this part seems so fake, or this dialogue is too cliche, just write. Then when you're done re-read it. It'll be painful, but the point is to notice everything you don't like in concretely. For example, say a certain part makes you cringe every time you read it. Figure out exactly what it is that you don't like about it, and figure out how to fix that specific problem. Is the transition from one scene to another too abrupt? Is one part dull and boring? Is the tone of a scene not quite what you want it to be. Do it until you can't fix anything, and start over.
posted by fizzzzzzzzzzzy at 4:36 PM on July 30

i think the advice you've gotten from others is great... one thing not mentioned in response to your observation that ESL classes are aimed at getting people to functiona level. have you considered taking a literature course (in english), meant for native English speakers, maybe at a community college? i'm a native english speaker, and I studied german in college. once we got past the basics, that was the next class in the curriculum, reading books in german (Katz und Maus comes to mind) and then writing analytical essays on them. All reading, class discussion and writing were in German; my fluency increased exponentially, even though it was incredibly hard versus the previous classes and I know I made tons of mistakes.
posted by Tandem Affinity at 6:58 PM on July 30

I think that all you really can do is practice, and you've got some great ideas here for that. The problem seems to be your speed rather than your actual writing.

When you're writing, are you thinking in English or Spanish? I once had a friend who spoke English as a second language. He told me the way he learned English was to start thinking in English rather than Spanish. Might be worth a shot.

And honestly, you write better than most native English speakers. Just keep it up and it'll get easier. English can be a tough language.
posted by reductiondesign at 10:43 PM on July 30