Writing for Research

Writing for Research

writing in your first language, but do the Summative writing in English. You may do all of
your Outreach writing in your first language, if that is where the relevant audience is
found.

English is a hybrid language. Because of its history, it has a Germanic syntax and a
French vocabulary, plus a disorderly mob of words from the old Empire (including
boomerang, verandah, and slogan). Compared with other European languages it is
relatively un-inflected, which simplifies its rules. But that also makes its meaning more
dependent on context and style.

One feature of style is paragraph length. In English the conventional method is to have
one idea per paragraph. Sometimes that idea is expressed near the beginning of the
paragraph in a “topic sentence”, but you do not have to do this. In some other
languages, paragraphs are longer and express a sequence of ideas or a larger chunk of
argument. This can be found in Spanish, and in German.

English has very strange spelling. This is difficult for native speakers too! (I believe the
letters “ough”, in different words, have ten different pronunciations, all of them correct!)
Quite often the same written word can stand for two different spoken words, or have two
different meanings – that is true for both “can” and “stand”.

American English has a number of different spellings from British English. Curiously, the
American spellings are often older, deriving from the time of colonial settlement which
was also the time of Shakespeare. Shakespeare did not spell consistently, not even his
own name.

Therefore, have no shame about getting help from native speakers of English – and
hope they can spell better than Shakespeare! For a thesis, a supervisor can help, within
limits of time. Someone who will go through part of your draft line by line, and help re-
write it in fluent English, is a great asset. Make a note of any kind of change that you
have to make repeatedly. In future you can correct this yourself, as you write.
Also, remember there are limits to what translation can achieve. Sometimes there are
expressions that simply have no equivalent. Current slang may be an example. All
translation is approximate, and with poetry, very approximate. As always in writing for
research, simple and clear expression is what you aim at!