Discover the Secrets to High Achievement In Academic and Professional Writing! - By: lp5

Helping Non-native Speakers of English to Achieve Excellence in Writing

If English is not your native language, the basics of speaking and listening can be frustrating enough—so imagine the plight of non-native writers in English. They struggle to write papers, reports and business letters; to navigate the paths to good writing, and more often than not, they are unable to express themselves effectively using written English. A new website plans to take on this problem head-on: ESL Writer features English as a second language writers as its primary audience. The brainchild of veteran educator Joe Norden, Jr., ESL Writer (located on your browser at http://www.eslwriter.ne
), aspires to help non-native speakers of English with one of their biggest difficulties: Expressing their thoughts in writing. Whether it is academic or professional English, ESL Writer is dedicated to providing the best possible information in the most concise and impactful ways.

To that end, ESL Writer delivers its content via some exceptional takes on traditional means. The text content is devoted to concise explanations, most highlighted by enhanced (boldfaced) text to better allow students to navigate through and to grasp meaningful concepts more quickly—and thus to be able to skim critical concepts many times in a quick manner. Among other features, the site offers many “quick reads,” short pages that are often synopses of the most significant content related to some characteristic of high-quality writing.

Another way http://www.eslwriter.ne
serves its audience is by offering a nice selection of different types of content, gems that have been gleaned by Norden from his practice—with topics ranging from the mechanics of a good thesis statement to philosophic pieces to help non-native writers understand “academic and professional culture.” The voice of experience comes through strongly as students are counseled one way or another, as if they were sitting in Prof. Norden’s office, and he were across the desk during office hours. In fact, one of his plans for the immediate future involves setting up some sort of “virtual office” in which he can meet with students and critique their work. Interactivity will be a critical part of the finished ESL Writer product, with additional features such as blogging and forum participation.

But most of all what one notices about ESL Writer is its attitude. The author is grounding his site in the research and in a great deal of experience, and he is not shy about “giving it to students straight,” that is, not hiding inconvenient facts. He believes in his views strongly, and the site sticks with his beliefs. One, of which is that most ESL students spend way too much time on grammar (to the detriment of everything else that is good about writing). The website conveys this point strongly and makes no small display of that fact in several places. After teaching for almost two decades, Prof. Norden knows the academic terrain pretty well, and he is going to express himself forcefully on whatever the point may be.

The site does not—at least at this point in ESL Writer’s young life—focus much on grammar, and the reason being, “…we did not want to start there. Many young writers, particularly ESL writers, are absolutely obsessed with grammar—one of my goals is to disabuse them of that notion once and forever. Just by focusing a few of their efforts elsewhere, they will quickly become much better writers. They just have to be willing to take the chance.”

Actually, much of the advice about writing is relevant to native writers of English, many of whom would also do well to listen to Prof. Norden’s advisements, thereby saving themselves hours of headache and heartache, not to mention the poor grades and evaluations that often follow. All types of writers, and especially ESL writers, should get quite a lot of “bang for their buck” when visiting this efficient and content-rich website. Learners of English as a second language from across the world will be able to access its content in a quick and helpful manner, allowing them to use their time more effectively—and to develop this critical skill in the process.

And, for the future, http://www.eslwriter.ne
offers even more. Plans are in the works to present video tutorials and ultimately to add real-time instruction via lectures, using something like “Go To Meeting Webinars,” Norden explains: “Oh yeah, we are just getting started here. We want to be able to offer an affordable, yet very high quality resource for non-native writers of English. Thus, costs for special topic webinars will be inexpensive—and most of the site’s text content will be free. We will be interacting with students in order to learn which topics to feature in the near term. We are most interested in topics that will provide the greatest benefit to aspiring ESL writers.”

For more information visit http://www.eslwriter.ne
today!

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