Writing the English sentence pattern from another first language
Writing in English from another first language involves more than replacing words. Sentence order, articles, tense, connections between ideas and familiar expressions can carry patterns that English readers do not expect.
Transferred sentence patterns
A manuscript for an English-language academic audience needs an English pattern of organisation. Reported difficulties for writers using English as an additional language include too few subordinate clauses, leaving ideas insufficiently differentiated or hierarchical, and differences in how defining and non-defining relative clauses work.
Discourse markers can also be underused: an analysis of manuscripts by writers using English as an additional language found “yet” and “still” nearly absent. An analysis of manuscripts by writers using English as an additional language identified incorrect use of the definite article as the most frequent error, followed by tense and sentence structure. Expressions of modality, ranging from possibility and probability to certainty and from specificity to generality, can be another difficulty. In Italian, passive constructions commonly provide hedging, and mitigators such as “hardly”, “to a certain extent” and “almost” can mark politeness.
A medical editor working with German-speaking researchers reported recurrent tense errors, confusion between adverbs and adjectives, long sentences with the verb at the end, long passive paragraphs, unnecessary words, excessive nominalisation and misplaced or dangling modifiers. Speakers of continental north-west European languages may also carry into English a greater tendency to begin sentences with prepositional phrases or clauses. Successive openings of this kind can sound clumsy in English, where such openings are less frequent and may instead provide emphasis or variety. Avoiding an opening preposition can simplify a sentence, but this is not a reason to avoid every such opening.
Japanese and English
Japanese often omits a subject recoverable from context: 食べた (tabeta) can mean “I ate”, “you ate” or “they ate”. English may therefore require Japanese writers to state details they would ordinarily leave implicit. Japanese usually places the verb at the end: 私は昨日病院に行きました (watashi wa kinou byouin ni ikimashita) follows the order “I yesterday hospital to went”, whereas English uses “I went to the hospital yesterday”. Carrying the Japanese order into English can make a sentence sound odd or unclear.
Practice and exposure to English medical journals, reports and books can help writers learn how ideas are expressed. Collaboration with native English speakers and medical professionals can help check that English expressions carry the intended Japanese meaning.
Chinese and English
Chinese lacks articles such as “the”, so deciding when English requires one can be difficult for junior writers. Chinese also conveys time through context rather than the English system of verb-tense forms, creating another potential source of errors.
Direct transfer of Chinese expressions can produce wording such as “decrease of variable X has statistical meaning and clinical meaning”. The intended English distinction is between being “statistically significant” and “clinically meaningful”. In one regulatory-writing practice, ongoing projects provide language practice, native English-speaking document-quality reviewers provide feedback, and Microsoft Word Editor, PerfectIT or AI tools assist language checks.
Russian and German writers' experience
A Russian medical writer describes Russian texts as less personalised than English, with more passive constructions, additional explanations and freer word order. Those habits can give the author's English a recognisable Russian flavour. The same writer finds that a rich choice of nuanced Russian words can help precision but also influence English wording in ways readers may not readily understand.
A German medical writer finds English's more concise and direct sentence structures can make some communication easier.