Writing Resources for Non-Native-English-Speaking Scientists

Felipe Beltrán-Mejía

Felipe Beltrán-Mejía offers a few tips toward meeting the challenges of writing scientifically in a second language.

 

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For many who have English as a second language, writing a paper sometimes seems to impose a double burden: Not only must you express your results clearly and interestingly for your audience, but you must do so in a language that is not the one you use every day. Sometimes I have a very clear idea to share, only to have that idea become blurred as I try to find the right English words to express it. In other situations, I have had to guard against having idioms from my own language, Portuguese, trespass into my English writing. Sometimes these foreign “intrusions” emerge only after proofreading several times.

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