By Jessica McCaughey
In many ways, editors in the workplace are a lot like writing teachers. They review and provide feedback on writing. They have to be patient. They answer questions. They weild the proverbial red pen (or at least the red “track changes” bubble). And in other ways, of course, they are nothing like teachers—mostly because if a writer can’t fix something, editors have to fix it for them. There’s not a lot of room for “learning through failure” in the workplace, and this makes professional writing especially challenging for multilingual writers. These are often writers who need that space to practice most, yet when we edit their work—our red pens wreaking havoc across their writing, our scratching out of phrases, our question marks, and our rewrites—we are often telling them that there’s no time to practice. Unfortunately, most second-language (or, more often, third- or fourth-language) English learners in the workplace receive the kinds of edits that teach them, simply put, nothing.
Time is often at the heart of any dilemma of teaching through edits—project turnaround often needs to be lightning-fast, and we are busier than ever—and yet when it comes to multilingual writers, the “spend-time-now-and-save-it-later” adage is perhaps more true than in any other editing situation. Below is a series of nine strategies that work, and concrete steps editors can take to support their multilingual writers as they develop as workplace communicators.
1. Remember that Idiosyncratic Writing Is Not Necessarily Bad Writing
We are used to hearing words in a certain way, and in a certain order. One of my favorite things about multilingual writers is that they rarely, if ever, rely upon clichés—those tired, old phrases that native speakers water down their language with all the time. Multilingual writers don’t usually know those clichés, and so they find original, unique ways to say things instead. And while such phrasing isn’t always successful, of course, you shouldn’t give in to the inclination of crossing out phrases just because they sound unfamiliar to your ear. Your voice and style don’t have to be the writer’s voice and style, as long as the writing is clear and effective.
2. Ask Struggling Multilingual Writers to Build Their Own Reference Guide
It’s an old teacher trick: Get the students to make the textbook. But it works. Ask your multilingual writers to develop a kind of “writer’s resource guide” for themselves that they can use as both a reference and a tracker of their work and improvement. Such a guide might include:
- Resources specific to the language issues they’re struggling with
- A list of common errors in checklist form they can use for proofreading
- Common go-to phrases they can and should use
- Phrases to avoid
- Models of good writing in various forms and genres
- Previously edited documents
- Goals and strategies
- Notes on style that are specific to the organization
3. Look for “Patterns of Error”
This phrase—“patterns of error”—is key in working with multilingual writers, and it takes a keen editorial eye to perform the task. While you may need to line edit every little error, you should also try to step back and begin to categorize the most common types of errors you’re seeing. Are there subject-verb agreement issues? Misused prepositions? Problems with articles? The more clearly you can identify and articulate these patterns of error to your writers, the likelier it is that they’ll begin to spot them in their own work—before it hits your desk.
4. Edit Everything—But Choose Just One Paragraph to Teach
Receiving back ten pages of red slashes and scribbles overwhelms even the most adept writers. And even if a writer can get through those notes and adapt the text, they’re not going to learn much from them. At the same time, you don’t have time to annotate every single line edit. So, compromise: Choose one paragraph and edit it very carefully, including notes about the grammar rule or what specifically makes a sentence unclear or less than ideal. By choosing to focus on a small number of issues—and providing an explanation for why they’re being changed—you’re giving your writer a much better chance to not only understand your revisions, but also to internalize and learn from them.
5. Prioritize
After leaving thoughtfully annotated comments—either periodically or limited to one paragraph—you might consider writing an endnote to your writer about how and where to focus and learn from your edits. Guide them, in this paragraph, through your notes, and point them to the places you really want them to learn from. You can even include links and other references here to help them. Be sure to also point to those places in the text where the writer was successful and where you see improvement.
6. Provide Models of Form and Language
If you’re like most editors, you probably have a folder full of exemplary documents. Why not share these with your struggling writers? Better yet, share them and walk through the documents, exploring with your multilingual writers not only the forms but also the language the samples use, and how they might emulate some of those successful strategies.
7. Have an In-person (or Online) Conversation about the Writing
A few forward-thinking CEOs around the country are making news lately by implementing all-out writing centers within their businesses, but even if your company isn’t ready or able to put in those kinds of resources, you can still mimic the proven success of university writing centers by spending some time one-on-one with your multilingual writers. Some tips:
- Ask the writer to read out loud—you’ll be surprised by how many more “errors” they catch
- Talk through clarity issues with the computer closed and the paper flipped over, so that writers can focus on the words they intend (and their ideas), rather than those already on the page (also, many multilingual writers are more comfortable talking than writing)
- Ask them to describe their process and where they see the text’s strengths and weaknesses
- Look at models together
And if you don’t have time to “tutor” your writer? Find someone with the time and interest to do it. That might be another strong writer on your team with a knack for teaching or even another multilingual writer. Often such partnerships between second-language learners work wonders, especially when each writer brings different skills to the table. Even if it’s just a 30-minute in-person or online session once every couple of weeks, the consistent time spent talking through their writing (or the strong writing of others!) will go a long way in advancing a multilingual writer’s skills.
8. Be Realistic about the Pace of Change
As anyone who has ever tried to learn another language—let alone write complex business documents in that language in the workplace—knows, improvement takes time. The next time you’re exasperated by seeing the same error you’ve corrected in the past in a draft, try to imagine yourself writing a report or a proposal in German or Japanese, and know that with patience and thoughtful feedback from you, the writer’s work will improve eventually.
9. Recognize that These Are the Writers Who Are Making You a Better Editor (And Thinker. And Writer.)
What’s the difference between “imagine” and “consider”? What does “out of left field” mean? Why use “that” rather than “this” in a given sentence? Being able to answer questions like these—questions that inevitably come from writers working to master written English—are the kinds of challenges editors love when they have the time. Even when time is tight, remember that taking a few minutes to answer these questions for multilingual writers will not only help them to recall correct usage in the future, but it will also make you a better editor. They force you to think of language in ways you’ve never considered, and ask you to articulate nuances that often go unnoticed by native English-speaking writers.
Whether you work with teams across the globe with a variety of first languages, or one of your writers happens to be multilingual, these are the strategies and ways of thinking that will allow you to not only make your job easier and more satisfying, but also show your employees that you’re willing to invest the time in them and their writing to make them stronger communicators.
JESSICA McCAUGHEY (jessmcc@gwu.edu) is an assistant professor at George Washington University in Washington, DC, where she teaches academic and professional writing. She also developed and oversees a professional writing program at GWU that provides workshops and coaching to writers in the workplace. In her previous life, she taught English as a Second Language and worked as a copywriter, editor, and communications manager.
