Prepare your brain for the challenge of writing in English.

It is hard to overemphasize the real challenge that writing in English presents even for the great majority of educated Thai people. Academic-minded people with high levels of learning and achievement in other fields find themselves poorly prepared for the task of writing in English. No Thai student or ajarn should ever feel personally embarrassed or ashamed because of this widely shared problem, because it is not a single individual’s fault.

It is a nation-wide problem which has not been resolved, and indeed, there are some signs that the problem is getting worse in recent years. So how can you pursue a rewarding academic career and communicate your excellent work to the rest of the world despite this issue?

When you start to think about writing your article or thesis, try to persuade yourself that your subject can be told to someone else, even someone with no prior knowledge or even interest in your subject. Pretend you are telling it your grandmother or one of your siblings. This approach may keep you from using too many specialized terms right away. By keeping things as simple as possible, chances are your sentences will be clearer and easier to understand. A common problem in Thai academic writing is that researchers sometimes believe that the more complicated and long sentences are, the more impressively intellectual they seem. Instead, they are just hard to understand, even for native readers of English.

The longer a sentence is, the more likely it will have some errors in it. By keeping sentences short, you reduce the chances that you will make a mistake. Imagining you are telling a friend or relative the story of what you are writing about. This approach can be useful for a variety of reasons. Many Thai people are more comfortable speaking English than writing that language, or at least do so without worrying too much about making errors. If you are one of those who speak English with more confidence than you write, just act as if you were speaking and note down what you would say, even writing as you speak the words aloud, if that helps. If this exercise of the imagination is too difficult for you, try actually taping yourself dictating a few sentences, and then listen to the result and transcribe it. Unless you have very patient and tolerant friends and family members, it is probably best not to try to explain your studies to them in great detail. If they fall asleep or turn on the TV set in self-defense, you may feel discouraged.

Some style tips.

Recent international studies make it clear that the Thai Ministry of Education inadequately prepares students and ajarns for life in the larger intellectual world, where the English language is required. Lessons in the Kingdom also promote a style of Thai English which can be gently called out of date. Pompous, stuffy words like “moreover” are used to link sentences, where most of the time no such link is necessary or even helpful. Many Thai ajarns write in a style which is full of errors in English, but this does not stop them from also trying to use Latin abbreviations, for the most part incorrectly. On the principle that one foreign language at a time is difficult enough to master, try leaving out the Latin from your writing until you feel very secure with your English. This means abbreviations like “i.e.” or “e.g.” or “viz.” or even “etc.” should be replaced by good English words. Latin may be misused in Thai academic writing in some misconceived attempt to impress the reader with the writer’s intellectual level. When strewn amid a disaster area of badly used English, Latin just looks sad and misbegotten. Since it is not necessary, just leave it out.

The more you read in English, the better you will write in English.

This rule is true even of native English speakers, who at universities often must read a vast amount of badly written, dull material that cannot be good for developing any sense of language or writing style. It is even more essential for Thai people who must try to use English as a foreign language to keep improving their understanding and appreciation of English. Learning to like English is easier said than done. For many Thai people, it is like telling someone who hates durian fruit that he or she must learn to love it.

This is especially true since starting at age five or so, every Thai person has been programmed to hate and fear English as a painful bore taught in classrooms by nice Thai ladies who themselves cannot speak, read, or write the language correctly. In academic careers, many excellent students and brilliant young Thai ajarns excel in their chosen field but have poor command of English. No wonder many Thai people hate English. To retrain your brain from this agonizing situation to finding a source of delight in English is a difficult form of self-education. Yet it is necessary if you want to make your mark as an international scholar. Find a way to associate English in your mind with something that you already consider fun.

Since your time – and also possibly income – is limited as a busy student or ajarn, you may not be able to invest in expensive British Council courses in English, and these may not transmit the fun that is needed, either. The cheaper English language courses available in Thailand, often taught by unqualified, inexperienced farang who are not even native speakers of the language themselves, are often very disappointing in terms of quality and results. So try to see if you can persuade your own mind to improve. If you love food, movies, sports, travel, history, music, or any other form of sanook, try to spend twenty minutes each day reading about your chosen form of sanook in English. You can do an internet search and easily find favorite websites with new content every day, just Google “best websites about food” or whatever subject you prefer.

Some Thai readers like to read English language fiction, and this can also be pursued through our library’s collection of authors such as Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and others known for using limited vocabularies that are more welcoming to learners of English than more complex authors. As a student or ajarn, you will most likely already have things you must read in English in your field of study, and because they are required reading, it is very unlikely that they will be fun. The point is for you to be in control of the choice of material, and to read what you genuinely enjoy every day. After a few weeks, it is likely that English may seem more appealing in general than it has been before.

Should you pretend to be British or American?

Most academic journals will say it is fine to write in British or American English, but you must choose one and stick to it for the entire article. Thailand has never been a British colony, of course, but perhaps due to the influence of Hong Kong or Australia, British expressions and spellings are often used here. Be sure that you have a firm understanding of the differences between British and American English, to avoid mixing the two and winding up with a confusing result. Arguably, since American English is used in a great deal of international scholarly discourse, if you have to master one form of the language, then it might make sense to choose American English.

Avoid Outsourcing.

            Keep in mind that the whole point of writing an article or thesis is to challenge yourself to improve your understanding. That means the project is all about you, and making yourself a more informed and skilled person. This is one case where it is acceptable, and even essential, to be selfish. If you hand over key aspects of this task to someone else, then you miss out on much of the benefit which you should enjoy. The Thai tradition of outsourcing, for example, suggests that people with bad English should just pay someone who claims to have better English to correct it for them. Doing this cancels out the learning process, and once the learning process is gone, what is the point of a university?

(all images are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).