Since writing is a multifaceted intellectual production requiring concentration, discipline, and careful thought, the journal “Academic Writing Difficulties of ESL Learners” by Al Badi (2015) acknowledges the importance of ESL students reviewing their grammar. In particular, you must understand the difference between spoken and written phrases and words for your work to match the quality of ENL experts. But why do ESL students or writers struggle in developing coherent paragraphs or essays? Ideally, some encounter difficulties in generating ideas about an issue or subject. Others are unable to read and understand the text and consequently use their voice and words to write. For that reason, Al Badi indicates that most ESL students or writers are more likely to summarize or paraphrase the author’s work. What do you think are some of the disadvantages of this approach? Even if your work is plagiarism-free, a professor can deem the paper to contain plagiarism as you have not unveiled new ideas based on scholarly sources. Similarly, direct rephrasing of the text might lead to grammar mistakes and undermine the text’s structure and style. This article provides a roadmap for making your English better in essays by highlighting 11 ways to eliminate ESL markers.

1. Avoid direct translation

You are more likely to agree that reasoning in your first language (for instance, Kiswahili or Kinyarwanda) and writing in English would make your text or essay awkward. In most cases, writers or experts tend to complete papers in all non-technical languages. For example, you will find a nurse graduate doing an essay in business. Unless such a person researches and reads extensively, his or her paper would contain a lot of ESL markers. What does this mean?

A nurse graduate from Kenya might write, “A company made a profit within a year.” As you can see, this sentence does not contain any grammatical mistakes, but it is unacceptable for customers requiring ENL or top-10 services. Ideally, a business graduate or someone who reads extensively would write, “a company breaks even within the first financial year.” The first person (nurse graduate) directly translated the text from his or her first language. However, the second statement gives detailed information. In particular, the company has met its initial investments (capital) after operating for 12 years. If you have a challenge in expressing ideas, writing only papers that match your expertise would be best.

2.Constantly review homonyms 

What are some of the strategies that ENL writers use to make their English or essays perfect? Ideally, UvoCorp.com recommends appropriate usage of an online grammar and style checker. By utilizing this software, you might assume that your paper would not contain any typo mistakes. However, you might be wrong since the grammar and style checker might be unable to rectify misused homonyms. For ESL writers, constantly reviewing homonyms is obligatory. Some examples are outlined below:

• Right – write
• Forth – fourth 
• Lead – lid
• Seam – seem
• Their – there
• Too – to
• Principle – principle 

Based on these examples, you must be keen when manually proofreading your work before uploading the final draft.

3. Avoid using informal or simple words

You might think an ENL writer utilizes complex vocabulary to make their essays or write-ups perfect. However, it is never the case as most avoid using simple or informal words. As an ESL writer, start eliminating the following terms in your essays:

• Use ethical or moral instead of right
• Use undesirable rather than awful or terrible
• Use useful instead of good
• Use obtain or receive rather than get
• Use demonstrate instead of show
• Use provide rather than give 

By eliminating these words, you will achieve something similar to beginning a journey of a thousand miles with a single step.

4. Learn to maintain agreements in your texts

As most ESL writers focus on ensuring that the verb reflects the number of subject(s), some forget to check the tenses or blindly follow grammar and style checker suggestions. Take a look at the following examples:

• UvoCorp.com offers their writers the best price per page – correct because of the pronoun “their.”
• UvoCorp.com offers its writers the best price per page  – incorrect because of the pronoun “it.”

When referring to the company, use the plural “pronoun”; however, the verb should remain singular.

Examples with inconsistent and consistent tenses:

• She went to school and write an essay – incorrect because of using present and past tense verbs in one sentence.
• She went to school and wrote an essay – correct because of the consistent use of the past tense verbs.

5. Avoid unnecessary repetition

Overusing similar words in your sentence makes your work wordy. For instance, it is incorrect to write, “Tourists visit Nairobi city, Cairo city, and New York City.” It would be best just to say, “Tourists visit Nairobi, Cairo, and New York City.” By putting the city at the end of the sentence, you have represented every region. 

6. Always follow parallelism

Why do you think UvoCorp.com emphasizes making your text simple to understand but not ordinary? Ideally, one of the rationales concerns adhering to grammar rules. For instance, as a writer, you must use parallelism at all costs. Take a look at the following examples:

• She likes traveling, swimming, and sleeping
• She likes to travel, swim, and sleep
• She likes to travel, swimming, and sleeping
• She likes traveling, swimming, and to sleep

The first two sentences are in parallelism form, whereas the last two are not.

Ideally, parallelism makes your work consistent.

7. Use active voice

Always ensure that your verb comes after a subject (noun or pronoun) in your sentence.

8. Avoid using phrasal verbs

Examples:

• Use devise or invent rather than Come up with 
• Use extinguish instead of put off

9. Never use “on how to”

Examples:

• The writer learned on how to avoid wordiness – incorrect 
• The writer learned strategies for avoiding wordiness – correct

10. Avoid using empty adverbs

Examples of these words are:

• Really
• Basically
• Actually

11. Avoid generalization 

According to Loyola University Chicago, general statements are more likely to be categorical, abstract, and false. Ideally, it might also suggest a writer never conducted in-depth research on a specific topic. Take a look at the following sentences:

• The Member of Parliament represents the interests and concerns of citizens in the government – it is specific
•  The Member of Parliament helps citizens – general

In the second sentence, the information is scanty and tends to raise more concerns and questions.

Although the information presented in this blog post might not be enough for ESL writers to sharpen their skills, it offers a foundation for becoming better.