Here is a mini sample of some proofreading for a non-native speaker of English.  

My name is Salvador Alonso and I’m a filmmaker.  I make documentaries, corporate videos and community-related projects as well.  I’ve been living in the UK since about three years and I’m travelling all over Europe.  The role of a director is to be involved with everything that is creative within that particular documentary.  As a director, I’m focusing on the people and how their stories fit together as a whole.  And apart from that, I would need to consider all the technicalities involved.

When I started working in the UK, it was a complete different working style compare, for example to Ecuador, where I came from.  There were lots of things that were new to me and I’m sure I made so many mistakes and even offended people without realising it when I first started.  But now I really feel like I belong and I love my job.  It is such a priviledge to be able to watch people tell there stories and I think that the people are actually more open and honest in front of the camera than they would be to even their own neighbours.

 

New version:

My name is Salvador Alonso and I’m a filmmaker.  I make documentaries, corporate videos and community-related projects as well.  I’ve been living in the UK for about three years and I travel all over Europe.  The role of a director is to be involved with everything that is creative within that particular documentary.  As a director, my focus is on the people and how their stories fit together as a whole.  And in addition to that, I would need to consider all the technicalities involved.

When I started working in the UK, there was a completely different working style compared, for example, to Ecuador, where I come from.  There were lots of things that were new to me and I’m sure I must have made so many mistakes and even offended people without realising it when I first started.  But now I really feel like I belong and I love my job.  It is such a privilege to be able to watch people tell their stories and I think that people are actually more open and honest in front of the camera than they would be even to their own neighbours.

 

As you can see, his English is generally excellent and you can understand everything he has written.  But his work has benefitted from some rephrasing to make it flow more fluently.  Which tense to use in which situation is a tricky one for many people, as well as when ‘the’ is needed or should be left out.  My job is not to rewrite his entire work, but to correct things that must be corrected (such as ‘their’ or a missing comma) and to tweak the phrases that are a little clunky to make the document an easier read for his intended audience.

Here is a sample email with a few mistakes in it, followed by my proofread version

From: Alex Brown

To:  Tom Green

Subject: Operations Meeting Agenda

 

The next monthly operations Meeting will be held in conference room G.2 at 1000 on Monday 30 October.

 

AGENDA

 

1 Apologise for absence

2 Minutes of last meeting

3 Matters arising

3.1 Office-wide rollout of software upgrade

3.2 Health and safety

4 Middle East Engineering Conference.

5 Hamilton contract

6 Any other business

 

7 Date of Next Meeting

 

Please let me know before 27 October if you wish to add any thing further to the agenda.

 

Thank you for your Health and Safety report; I appreciate all the hard work you have put in.  I’ve added my comments in blue; feel free to respond to my comments in another colour.  Please would you send Helen Chester a copy of your next draft and invite her to add a paragraph on the C.42 annex.

 

I spoke to Julia Grey at Hamilton Engineering earlier today regarding the contract.  They have no
no more queries and overall very positive about our submission.  They will let us know there final decision by end of the week.

 

Best regards

 

Alex

 

Proofread version:

From: Alex Brown

To:  Tom Green

Subject: Operations Meeting Agenda

 

The next monthly Operations Meeting will be held in conference room G.2 at 1000 on Monday 30 October.

 

AGENDA

 

1 Apologies for absence

2 Minutes of last meeting

3 Matters arising

3.1 Office-wide roll-out of software upgrade

3.2 Health and safety

4 Middle East Engineering Conference

5 Hamilton contract

6 Any other business

7 Date of next meeting

 

Please let me know before 27 October if you wish to add anything further to the agenda.

 

Thank you for your Health and Safety report; I appreciate all the hard work you have put in.  I’ve added my comments in blue, feel free to respond to my comments in another colour.  Please would you send Helen Chester a copy of your next draft and invite her to add a paragraph on the C.42 annex.

 

I spoke to Julia Grey at Hamilton Engineering earlier today regarding the contract.  They have no more queries and overall are very positive about our submission.  They will let us know their final decision by the end of the week.

 

Best regards

 

Alex

 

How many did you get?  Some were obvious, others less so.  Let me explain some of my reasoning…

Operations Meeting:  operations meeting without capital letters and Operations Meeting with capital letters – both are correct.  The issue is consistency, both with capitals or both without.

apologies: easy for spellcheck to miss because apologise is a correct word, but not the right word in this case.

roll-out: another tricky one.  Roll-out is the British spelling, whilst rollout is the American spelling.  The issue is not the American spelling, but again consistency.  Further down the email, the British spelling of colour has been chosen, rather than the American color.  Decide whether you want to use British or American style and stick to it throughout.

No full stop after conference: once again, it is consistency.  Either have a full stop at the end of each item in a list, or no full stops at all (with an optional full stop after the final item on the list).

Date of next meeting: again consistency.  None of the other lines on the list are capitalised, so I have removed the capitals here.

Line spacing after item 6: I have changed the line spacing to be the same as the rest of the list.

No: it is very easy to accidentally type a small word twice, particularly if it falls at the end of a line.

I love to dance or I love dancing?

Different languages use grammar in different ways.  While English has only one verb “to be”, Spanish has two words for two subtly different circumstances, and Arabic generally prefers not to use “be” at all.

Your own language might use the present tense for a particular situation, but perhaps English uses the future tense.  Let me give you an example:  I wouldn’t have thought the restaurant would still be serving food at this time of night.  We use the past tense, but really we mean something in the present tense: I think the restaurant will not be serving food.

The key is not to just translate from your own language into English, but to translate the whole concept.  A wide range of vocabulary might mean that you are generally understood, but grammatical errors can unfortunately lead to confusion or doubts that you are at the top of your game professionally.

I know that grammar can be mind-meltingly dull, but if you nail a few key principles, that could make all the difference.

 

Try this quiz on when to use to + infinitive [e.g. to live] or -ing [e.g. living]:

1. I prefer [to live / living] in an apartment.
2. I love [to ice-skate / ice-skating].
3. We [go / are going] on holiday on Tuesday.
4. We [use / are using] dairy-free alternatives in all our products.
5. Charlie [enjoys / is enjoying] his new job in Manchester.
6. This curry [tastes / is tasting] a bit too spicy for me.
7. She suggested [to take / taking] the train instead of driving.
8. Even though he broke the window, he refused [to pay / paying] for the damage.
9. I don’t mind [to wait / waiting] for a few minutes.
10. Everyone denied [to see / seeing] the accident.
11. You used to enjoy [to cycle / cycling] to work.
12. My driving instructor was very supportive, so I decided [to book / booking] a test straight away.

 

Verbs such as love / hate / like / prefer are usually followed by an -ing verb when the meaning is general, but an infinitive (to + verb) when referring to a specific situation. So we have I prefer living in an apartment (general) but We use dairy-free alternatives in all our products (specific: all our products).

The present continuous (enjoying) rather than the present tense (enjoys) is used to describe something that is ongoing, unfinished or incomplete: Charlie is enjoying his new job in Manchester.

Examples 7 to 12 seem at first rather arbitrary – how do you decide whether to use to + infinitive or -ing?  Verbs which tend to fall into the category of feelings or subjectivity use -ing, whilst verbs which are more definite and final use to + infinitive.

So if you swap some of these examples around, you would have: He broke the window, so he decided to pay for the damage.  Also My driving instructor was very supportive and suggested booking a test straight away.

 

Answers:

1. I prefer living in an apartment.
2. I love ice-skating.
3. We are going on holiday on Tuesday.
4. We use dairy-free alternatives in all our products.
5. Charlie is enjoying his new job in Manchester.
6. This curry tastes a bit too spicy for me.
7. She suggested taking the train instead of driving.
8. Even though he broke the window, he refused to pay for the damage.
9. I don’t mind waiting for a few minutes.
10. Everyone denied seeing the accident.
11. You used to enjoy cycling to work.
12. My driving instructor was very supportive, so I decided to book a test straight away.

What you see is not what you get … at least not in British English.

With many languages, for example, German, Spanish or Indonesian, every sound which is written is also spoken.  But for others, such as French or English, you have to know which letters we leave out.

So how do you pronounce average / comfortable / temperature?

One simple rule to follow is that the vowel [a e i o u] is usually not spoken after a stressed syllable.

Here’s what I mean:

average: AV()rage

comfortable: COMF()table

temperature: TEMP()rature

 

Now try saying these for yourself:

1. different
2. separate
3. interesting
4. desperate
5. vegetables
6. references

 

Answers:

1. DIFF()rent
2. SEP()rate
3. INT()resting
4. DESP()rate
5. VEG()tables
6. REF()rences

 

Let me highlight another area of difficulty which many of my friends and colleagues have encountered when learning English.

The issue is when there are two similar sounds in English but the learner only has one of those sounds in her own language.  This makes it very difficult for her to hear the difference.  And the knock-on effect is to make it even harder for her to pronounce the two sounds correctly.  Often, this does not present a problem, but unfortunately there are a lot of pairs of words in English which are exactly the same apart from this one sound, but with two very different meanings, and it can cause confusion.

 

Here are my top ten sound pairs:

1. theme – team
2. sock – soak
3. hat – heart
4. cheap – jeep
5. pear – bear
6. hit – heat
7. seat – sheet
8. tip – dip
9. verse – worse
10. glow – grow

 

Read them out loud to yourself.  Do any of the pairs sound the same to you?  If so, ask an English colleague to help you out.  They could make a recording of themselves reading out sentences with the tricky words in, which you could then play back to yourself.  The more you hear it, the more aware you will become, and the easier it will be for you to hear the difference.

Or you could play a pronunciation game, where you assign numbers 1-10 to five tricky pairs.  For example 0-theme 1-team 2-sock 3-soak 4-hat 5-heart 6-cheap 7-jeep 8-pear 9-bear.  Then the other person has to work out your phone number, date of birth, passport number or any other number.  Let’s imagine your phone number is 020 7248 7015.  You would say theme – sock – theme – jeep – sock – hat – pear – jeep – theme – team – heart.  The other person would try to correctly match up your pronunciation with the numbers.  Give it a go!