Creating content as a non-native english speaker?
Hi,
I've been reading/writing english since high school and I'm pretty good at it. However, English is still my second language and it shows. My english writing is really slow. I get things done when I'm inspired, so struggling with writing english eats my daily mana really fast. That's not good for side projects :)
To do some self-hacking, here are my tools that I use when writing english text:
- Google docs for grammar check
- Expresso app for checking all "useless" words
- Google search to spellcheck difficult words
For example, when writing this text I did the following:
- I googled the phase "non-native english speaker" to make it sure I got it right
- I copy&pasted whole text into google writer for spellchecking (yeah, browsers do that too but I don't trust Chrome :)
- I analyzed this text with Espresso
Do you have any tools & tricks when you write your content?
I really like Grammarly for Chrome. It basically does the spell checking for you everywhere where you write in your browser. It even helps you with punctuation. I think the free account is good enough for the basic use cases. You should check it out.
Another thing that I thought about but haven't done yet, is writing a piece in German (my native language) first and then translating it. It makes my sentence construction more flexible. The question is whether the time gained writing my native language justifies the time spend translating...
Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely add Grammarly into my toolbox!
Have a professional translator go over any content that is to be published professionally.
Write more content in your native language. This forces you to get more creative and think deeply about the effect of your content.
Find a grammarpal through interpals and do a language exchange.
Thanks for mentioning Expresso - that looks nice! I also do a lot of Googling for grammar and idiom checking, though sometimes I feel lazy and that's when I fail. :)
I think this is one of those things that you just have to practice, practice, practice...
I really like Expresso! Somehow it just fits perfectly into my mindset UI-wise. Especially the synonym feature, it's handy the check if I'm using the best possible word.