I wish I had been paying more attention to this thread as I’ve doing the post-vacation cleaning out of my mailbox and ruthlessly deleting without reading ….

As someone who leads workshops in scholarly writing in Norway, I can say that most of my participants *feel* that language is a big issue for them. But when I look at their writing, I see that language is a much smaller problem than issues of general communication: e.g., having a clear research question, clear argument, appropriate framing for the audience, etc. In that respect, Norwegians are on an equal playing field as native speakers – who also have problems with general communication skills. But they don’t realize this. They see the language issue as a much bigger obstacle than it actually is.

So my feeling is this:  yes, scholarly writing is easier for native speakers, but nowhere near as much as non-native speakers think – and probably not for the reasons non-native speakers think. Norwegians are generally very competent in English, but of course struggle with conjugation and syntax, etc. But their biggest obstacle is their lack of self-confidence. They view every little mistake they make in English as “proof” that they are not able to compete at as high a level as native speakers. And it’s this lack of self-confidence that really drags them down and makes it difficult for them to think about what they are really trying to communicate. They are amazed when I tell them that native speakers – even those who are exceptionally good writers – also need copyeditors to look through their work. Honestly, I sometimes spend more time editing work by sloppy and disorganized native speakers than I do editing work by non-native speakers whose biggest handicap is their lack of confidence.

I don’t have any articles or accounts to send you now, but I’m currently working on a Doctorate in Education, where I’ll be looking into the attitudes, behaviors, and strategies that scholars adopt when writing. I’ll be doing in-depth semi-structured interviews, and this topic will be one we will touch on a lot. So, let’s stay in touch!

Lynn Nygaard

This is exactly the kind of thing we hope to compile through the AILA Research Network on Academic Publishing, so we’d be grateful to see replies here or get them from Jim and Vera. We are working toward setting up a website where such resources could be listed, if not posted as pdfs.

Thanks!

MJ Cury