Editor Barbara: She's Been There!  

So you've been in Canada for a while now, and you've gone from understanding very little English to understanding almost everything. From there, you've taken the leap to speaking fairly fluently. And yet ... and yet ... writing is a lot harder than you thought it would be.

Learning the Language

I hear you. I lived in Germany for many years, and when I first got there, having done very well in my four years of high school German, I thought I'd get along just fine. I remember the first time I tried to listen to the news, only to find that in the flood of verbiage streaming from the radio, all I could make out was "today … and … but … very …" and the like. This was disheartening, to say the least.

Later on, once I'd gotten the hang of speaking the language, I discovered ways of getting around my knowledge gaps—mostly the articles der, die, and das—by adjusting the syntax so that the nouns ended up in the dative case, in which both masculine and neuter singular nouns take the pronoun dem.

But writing, oh my! It's so much more difficult, especially since there's almost no rule in the English language that doesn’t come with a raft of exceptions. We at TEC understand how hard it is—and we’re here to help.

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Editor Melissa: Here to Help!

Before my graduate studies, I spent nearly two years in Paris, France, teaching ESL to French students. This experience has given me a special understanding of the needs of English-language learners—as well as some of the more frustrating idiosyncrasies of the English language! Do you know exactly when you should use the future perfect tense? Do you know the difference between restrictive clauses and non-restrictive ones? Before my time in France, I didn't either, but both my students and I benefitted from learning these rules!

Personal Success

Having taught everyone from middle-school students to seasoned businesspeople, I learned that all second-language learners are essentially striving for the same thing: personal success. For 16-year-old Claudette, personal success meant getting good grades. For 32-year-old Antonin, it meant getting to know his American in-laws. And for 57-year-old Jean-Marie, it meant securing more clients for his firm. In each case, English-language skills were essential to the achievement of these students' personal goals.  

ESL Editing Plus can help you achieve your own personal success. We will edit and proofread your document, plus we will provide you with customized tips and tricks to improve your written English in the long term. Get in touch with us today!

For more information, contact our Senior Editor here.