So you have taken on a Ph.D. student from China, and, after two years of graduate courses and lab work, you have noticed that her writing leaves a lot to be desired. You have told Qingling to ask a native speaker to clean up her thesis proposal or else she might not pass that qualifying exam. Clearly, there is nothing much you can do to fix her English, right?
Yet, leaving things to some angelic native speaker to look over will not do the trick. While even native speakers should have a fresh pair of eyes look over an important text, such as a journal article or a grant proposal, struggling writers will not benefit from having their mistakes corrected with no further explanation.
Sure, you have also told Qingling to work on her English. Now what is she to make of that? After all, your department was satisfied with her TOEFL score when it accepted her into the program, so why is her English now a concern? Her English might be far from perfect, but it is not the main problem. It is the lack of writing instruction in her previous education.
Sure, reading a grammar book cover to cover might fix some of Qingling’s recurring grammar mistakes. But it will not help her keep up with her domestic fellow students, who typically had one or several mandatory writing courses in their freshman year of college and, ideally, the ongoing support from their school’s writing center. Compared to Qingling, they are generally better prepared for the writing challenges of graduate school and, eventually, life itself.
On top of telling Qingling to fix her English, you have also claimed that she cannot think logically. Now, saying such a thing can demoralize your students and damage your relationship beyond repair. Offer constructive feedback instead, such as explaining to Qingling that you want her to write in a reader-friendly way and exploring strategies with her for how this can be done.
Consider this: writing for the reader is not a universal virtue. Other countries don’t appreciate short and simple sentences and good flow as much as Americans do, especially not in academic writing. What you, American professor, might interpret as lacking logic might just be the Chinese/Arabic/ French way of presenting information.
As a native speaker of German, I, too, had to learn how to please Americans. When I write for Americans, I abandon my convoluted, pseudo-intellectual, noun-heavy Germanic style for brief, clear sentences. I use meaningful nouns and strong verbs. My writing is clear, simple and to the point. Every culture has its own way of doing things, and these rules extend to the field of academic writing.
