Poor English

[shermarama]

Today isn't going well, in certain ways. My car's back from being serviced and now runs better and has new oil and stuff, but it took several goes of ringing the garage to get them to admit it. I said I'd drop in and collect it just before 5 but when I put the phone down, about half two, I tried to get back to doing work and found I just couldn't deal with it all. So I went then and picked the car up and drove home and here I am.

Looking back I think I remember wondering if it was a good idea to go and study with a supervisor whose written English is so crap. I think I meant it as a joke, more or less, but I should perhaps have taken the little wriggle of doubt that prompted it more seriously. I've got to do a whole bunch of writing and I'm just banging my head against a brick wall, trying to get my head round how to structure it, for the sake of later use in the thesis write up and for what the boss-man wants. I went to see him this afternoon and tried to get it clearer but I left practically crying after 20 minutes because he doesn't even understand the question. At the same time it's not down to him, I don't really care if he thinks it's good or not because any rating of it is meaningless coming from him, it's frustrating that I can't get it done to my *own* satisfaction. But it would really help if the person who's supposed to be giving me guidance on these things had a clue.

*sighs* Time to go to band practice over in Acton. Drumming usually helps but I seem to have the doom on today; I have a nasty feeling that I'm going to get hung up on all the things that are wrong with this band today.

Comments

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

You need to find another collaborator, not your supervisor, who can mentor you through the learning-paper-writing thing. For me, my supervisor did it, but you basically just need to find someone else to write with. Once I'd written the first few papers, I could pretty much do all of it solo anyway, and I'd suspect you'd have a similar experience. Ask around other people in your department.

[shermarama]

Hmm. Thing is I'm at Queen Mary, which is a very international sort of university. Of the eleven people in my research group, only three of us are native English speakers (five Chinese, two Pakistani, one Albanian) and of those, one is enthusiastic but disorganised (turns in hundred-page reports that are mostly irrelevant) and the other rather too laconic to be much use. There are very few people in the department as a whole whose main problem is not having to write in their second language, basically. That doesn't mean some of them can't write reasonably well but it makes it hard to have a conversation about such abstract things. And since my supervisor is careless about English and doesn't value care with English in others, it's definitely not the group's strong point, as it were; I'm the odd one out who worries about it.

I'm getting a few more ideas off my bloke Jon but he did medieval history, which works differently. Ach, thanks for the suggestions, it'll come together eventually but this afternoon it was really getting on my wick. (Meanwhile at band practice we have done something excitingly sick by way of splicing a cover into the middle of an existing song of ours, and I feel rather better now.)

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

I'd be happy to attack stuff with a red pen, but bear in mind that my background is theoretical computer science/electrical&electronic engineering, so you pays your money (or not) and you takes your choice (or not). If you see what I mean. (Or not).

Sorry, the power is out in my apartment, so I'm sitting in Starbucks downstairs, so the caffeine is probably making me excessively tautological. :-)

[compilerbitch.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, our group at NASA is similarly international, so it's very common for people to wander into my office asking, 'er, how do you say...' or, 'does this sound right?' questions. You're not alone with that issue.

Having a supervisor who doesn't value good English must be pretty irritating. My own writing was once described by an author friend as, 'engaging, but not necessarily in English,' so I found it very useful to have Alan's help during my PhD.