Building confidence for non native English speakers?

[livinitup]

Does she realize that correcting grammar is quite common for native speakers, too?

Maybe she should note how often it happens for everyone.

[Deleted]

Toastmasters is great. Practicing is the best way and I've found it to be a very supportive environment.

Maybe suggest a lean in group too.

[dana2006]

Apr 29, 2016 15:25:59 GMT -5 mp said:

Apr 29, 2016 15:23:37 GMT -5 tiki said:

Honestly, unless she's a technical writer, why did someone correct her? I work with tons of people who aren't native English speakers (my company is based in Germany, and the R&D lead is Chinese but speaks both English and German fluently). Grammatical mistakes are pretty much irrelevant as long as the person can be understood. That's just the nature of having diverse coworkers.

Because we send client facing reports. It's part of the job.

We have a new girl who is sharp but socially awkward and just really nitpicked some work- which wasn't the wrong thing to do, but it was addressed in way that made other girl more self conscious than she already was.

So because it's part of the job, and because she's feeling insecure, as her boss i would like to find a way to not just remove her forever from that task, but find a way to coach her in a productive way.

Why is the new girl reviewing her work? Is she the editor? As her supervisor, could you review?    

We do a lot of writing in our job and our direct supervisor reviews everything before any of it goes forward. It then goes through several more levels of clearance and, depending on the end use (internal briefing vs. publication), the agency editors may be involved as well. It's a well known process and nothing is personal.

FWIW, as a native Chinese speaker, I found the best way to improve my writing skills to be reading newspapers and magazines (NYT, WashingtonPost, Smithsonian magazine...)

[SwimDeep]

wow... she's in a tough spot.

I think I would start by building up her confidence in what she's already strong in: her technical skills. She knows her stuff, otherwise you wouldn't have hired her.

Miss Nit-Picky Socially Awkward needs to tone it down and back off. I'm a technical editor that works with SMEs from all over the world. I do not red mark their emails to me and send them back to them with grades. Their emails to me are perfectly understandable whether they are grammatically correct or not. (And if you want to tell your new hire I said so, you are more than welcome to!)

Is there any chance you could pull Miss Nit-Picky into the conversation so that she could help coach the new hire? Or would that be a bad idea?

[chimera]

I'll see if my BFF has any suggestions for you- language development for non native speakers is what she does on the University /Graduate level.

Do any local schools have TESOL programs? They might have suggestions for resources
www.tesol.org

[dd1204]

Apr 29, 2016 15:19:25 GMT -5 mp said:

I have an employee who is really insecure in her wording and grammar and is a native Chinese speaker. She's been here since she was a teen and, IMO, communicates really well but not perfectly. She recently had a little bit of a meltdown from being embarrassed at someone correcting her (she did this privately just to me).

I am giving her more tasks that are technical and reassigning some of the verbiage things, but want to find a way to work with her over this year to build her confidence up without highlighting her errors in front of others.

Any classes or books? Any advice on how I can help coach her?

I Don't have an answer for coaching her but is really nice of you to look out for her. English is not my first language and I work as a secretary, my old boss would make me feel really bad whenever I'll do the meetings minutes and misspell a word.

[miso]

I think it's great you shared that your boss needs grammar help, too.

Improvement in this area will take time and study -- either classes or self-help books (sorry, I don't have actual recs).

Realistically speaking, this isn't going to happen overnight. For immediate assistance, she may need to rely on a trusted friend to proofread and explain the "why" behind her errors, so she may learn from those mistakes.

I slash and burn when I go through others' writing. It's nothing personal. The work product needs to be perfect before it goes out, and it's part of my job to make sure of it.

Aside from acquiring superior grammar and English mechanics, your employee needs to understand that, while criticism can feel hurtful and/or embarrassing, it is often necessary for the good of the work. At the end of the day, you are all on the same team, and everybody is playing her part on that team. Even the best writers have editors. That's just how the world works.

Seriously, I slash and burn. It's not pretty. But the people who give me their work are eager for me to do that because they know the end result will actually make them look better because their names will be on a flawless product. Once your embarrassed employee can accept this, she will feel better.

Do you supervise the person who made the critical remarks? She may need a brief lesson in improving her approach when it comes to corrections and edits. She needs to communicate that her edits are not an indictment of the other employee's abilities but a part of the process of making the work product shine.

[AutumnRose25]

I'm going to ditto everything miso said.

Also, I have done Toastmasters for a few years now and it has been extremely helpful for both verbal and written communication.

My ED is ruthless with editing any documents that go out of the organization, and even my best grants that my direct supervisor sends back without edits gets torn to shreds.

English is not my native language, most people could never tell speaking to me but it does come through sometimes in my writing.

I understand her feeling embarrassed, and I think perhaps the employee responsible for feedback my need guidance on better ways to give constructive criticism to someone who isn't a native speaker in a way that is sensitive to that.

That said, if she can learn by editing and reworking it would be extremely valuable to her future career growth.

[frkls]

the community college here offers all different adult english language classes for free. maybe something like that?

[papie]

As a non native English speaker myself, I dint know how much you can do as her boss to help, other than enduring a proper editing is done and ensuring she understands it's a normal process. Personally, what helped me the most with grammar was just reading and writing a lot in English, like on these boards, lol. Also, I used to never read books in English because it was too hard. About 10-12 years ago I started reading more and more in English and it helped tremendously. But it's not something that can be suggested. Maybe have her read some technical work in English to give her examples on how it should be done? I know for me reading a lot of research papers helped me learn how to write them in English.

[Shreddingbetty]

I don't think she should feel bad that people are correcting her written stuff. Not everyone is meant to be a good writer. But I guess it would be nice if the one that corrects is not nasty about it. I'm a non native speaker but my grammar and spelling have always been very good actually but I'm still not a good writer as far as flow etc. I wasn't in my native tongue either.
And have some of these people that criticize others seen the spelling and grammar of a lot of born and bred Americans? It is pretty sad. I think if this lady is really worried about her written skills maybe she can just take a writing class at a local college if that's available? And if not having someone that corrects and gives constructive criticism in a supportive manner would probably also go a long way.