Writing...when English is not your first language...

Being a lecturer in Malaysia, I often find students complaining and struggling with reading materials in English. This is no surprise because Malaysians learn more than one language in their daily lives and also in school. Also, Malaysians often do not converse in a single language at a time. We often start a sentence in a language (say Malay) then switch to English or Mandarin or Tamil etc before they complete the sentence. Part of the reason may be because of our limited vocabulary in each language but also because some meaning can be best expressed only in a particular language and the use of other words may not convey the meaning we want to.

What are some of the struggles that I faced when I write (which I can think of today):

i. vocabulary particularly when I am trying to describe something.

ii. grammar particularly the use of articles, consistency in the use of tenses etc.

iii. sentence structure because the way I write a sentence (even if it is grammatically correct) may not be the common way of writing. Also this sentence structure may be influenced by other languages I know and use.

This post is by no means a generalization. I know many Malaysians who are excellent in writing in English. I am sharing my thoughts and experiences hoping that more students will realize that many people struggle with these problems when they write. But the good news is, writing is a skill, perhaps I will share some ways to improve your writing skills in the next post.