'I hope my journey can help others develop writing strategies that work for them.' This week's ScienceWorkingLife.
I grew up in China and was still developing my English skills, so I was nervous when I emailed my Ph.D. supervisor the first draft of a manuscript. One week later, he sent it back full of changes. At first, I was frustrated that my writing required so much editing. But after I took a closer look, I realized where I’d gone astray. He had shortened many of my sentences and commented that I should avoid unnecessarily long and complicated phrases.
The first time I needed to write anything substantive in English was during my master’s program in China, when I wanted to submit a manuscript to an international journal. I didn’t have enough confidence to compose a first draft in English, so I wrote it in Mandarin and used an online translation tool. The paper was accepted, which gave me a feeling that my strategy worked. But as I read more papers in English and reassessed my own writing, I realized my approach wasn’t ideal.
At first, I sometimes sat at my computer all day and only ended up with 200 words of text. I couldn’t tell whether my writing was any good. Every time I composed a sentence, I imagined someone laughing at it.University of Bristol My supervisor’s feedback on the draft was another turning point. Without his comments, I wouldn’t have figured out that complicated sentences and big words might confuse my readers. He also helped me see the importance of telling a story as clearly as possible, paring down tangential details.
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