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Subject:Re: Who is an ESL writer? From:Julie Stickler <jstickler -at- gmail -dot- com> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 27 Mar 2013 17:55:30 -0400
>Reshma asked - For all academic and professional purposes, English is my language of communication. Why then should I categorised as an ESL? There is nothing "second" about it.
Other folks have made good points about dialects and expecting
differences in skill in speaking and writing a language. Oddly enough
we have that within English speaking countries too. =P
Yes, I too have worked with non-natives whose grasp of English grammar
is probably better than mine. But I've also worked with people whose
written English needed heavy editing. As an American writer who often
works with developers (and occasionally technical writers) from India,
I've found that even people who have excellent spoken English often
need additional editing when it comes to written English. The most
common problems I can think of off the top of my head are subject/verb
agreement and the misuse or lack of articles (a, an, the). If your
writing is overly formal, makes correct but unusual word choices, or
has the same sort of grammatical errors that I've seen in other
non-native writers' work, then I'll probably label you as an ESL
writer.
So, like so many things discussed on this list, the answer to the
question "How do you categorize someone as ESL?" is "it depends."
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