Penang: Writer's Workshop

We are enjoying interacting with roughly 30 people in this writer's workshop in Penang. We are 3 days in, with 3 days to go, and being reminded of some important writing techniques, learning new things, and hopefully helping our small group of 4 people as we facilitate group interaction and help edit their papers.

One of the main things we have spent time considering is how best to write with clarity and simplicity and avoid confusing "academic writing" styles. For example, why use the word "utilize" when you can simply say "use"? Or why say "oral proficiency" when you can say "can speak"?

And still another focus, how can we best write for non-native English speaking audiences? In other words, the local communities that we are serving? For example, what does the word "should" mean? If you say "Based on our information, the people should speak well." Does that mean that because you gave them information, you are ordering them to? Or that you expect them to? Or that they have a moral obligation to? Native English speakers may make these judgment calls based on context. Non-native English speakers may have a much harder time navigating certain words. When writing, we want to be clear and avoid confusion. We've spent some time thinking through what words and phrases may have multiple meanings and how we can reword our writing to avoid them.

Here is a writing rule that may surprise you: It is now (and has been for the last 2 decades) okay in academic writing to write in the first person. Once upon a time, we were discouraged from writing "In this section, I will show you..." and teachers encouraged writers to say "This section will show you" or at very least "In this section, we will show you..." with the royal "we" for some reason being more favorable. But we have thrown off the shackles in academia (although many of our high school English teachers haven't gotten the memo yet) and can finally write in first person, the clearest and most simple way to write! Send out the word!