Can a writer who is not a native English speaker proofread essays written in English?

Can anyone tell if a writer that is not a native english speaker will be able to proof read essays?

Just test him with the sentence above; unless he can find at least 4 glaring mistakes, he can't.

That i can't tell, but i am pretty sure you can't proofread any essay. You would most likely introduce more errors. I am wondering why would anyone ask such a dumb question. Someone in this forum (FB or WB) will call you the F word.

Anakelson is FABULOUS!

My foot! Nobody can be fabulous for an egomaniac like you.

Ah, nonsense. What a nice way to start the day.

it depends, but i guess most of the time, they can't write well

You certainly seem to know about not being able to write well. Too bad that has nothing to do with the question being asked.

didn't your mother ever teach you to say something nice, or nothing at all?

No, but YOUR mom taught me some pretty neat tricks last night.... SNAP!

wow... that's something I haven't heard since the JV locker room (except the "snap" part, which would have gotten you beat up). thanks for the flashback.

Slow, down, I'm taking notes!

Things editor75 can't recognize:
1) rational arguments
2) irony
....

OK, I'm caught up. You may continue.

But you can, i suppose.

I'm guessing you think this is sarcastic and cutting, but it's pretty weak both as an argument and an insult. At least Eddie has some semblance of wit, is able to use figurative language, etc. You're really outclassed here.

Mocking - writer or customer???? Decide!

It is a bit hard. It is what I'm experiencing right now. T.T english is not my native language but since I am trying to explain something I end up being psycho.

simple test will be the answer to your question

This sounds like a badly-written Magic 8-Ball response. Or advice from Yoda.

I disagree. An advice from Yoda would be something like:

Answer to your question, simple test will be.


Translation: I'm trying to sell my services as a freelance writer but have poor writing skills in the English language. I tried to look smart by posting a thread that showcased the best of my substandard skills, but it did not work out the way I thought it would.

I've never really liked the Star Wars movie and don't know them well, so I am fully willing to concede this point.

well, that's a little better than selling accounts

Of course. I find many teachers whose first language is English are so shabby in their language. Although generally a person who speaks English from birth is supposed to have better knowledge of English language, this isn't true always.

you're from the Philippines, I presume?

take your spam to essaychat.

Why in this forum people always talk about the country of origin (COO)? Is this not called "discrimination"?

I was just wondering. it's hardly discriminatory to ask a question; in fact, it's quite the opposite. if you don't want to answer, that's your business.

the bottom line is, your business isn't here. take it to essaychat. oh, and good luck with that PhD.

It's much more about customers' wanting their work written by someone who sounds like they do in their written "voice." It's not really as much about English language knowledge or even grammatic perfection. There's no question that many ESL's (those who speak English fluently, that is) actually have better grammar than most ordinary educated Americans. It's the myriad different idiomatic expressions and other quirks of colloquial native speakers that ESLs frequently get wrong, and (especially) the ones that they add that native speakers would never use that makes even pretty good ESL writing very recognizable to Americans as ESL. It really is very much the same type of thing as an "accent" in spoken language and most American customers don't want their written work written in any foreign accent, regardless of how good the grammar or even the substantive work is.

Customers (or the students) demands, which are the requirements for academic language/courses, prevails. FreelanceWriter, your statement supports this notion, if I did interpret your statement correctly. And therefore, although ESLs may have an upper edge but such advantage is less relevant for higher degree courses. ESLs pride is a kind of prejudice. It confines the self to a hard husk and ties the self to a particularly perverse relationship of self-immolation

No, I don't believe you understood me at all if your conclusion was that ESLs have any "advantage" from the view of the American customer or the American student choosing a writer. Let me say it more simply this time: No American customer and no American student wants to buy any writing produced by anybody who doesn't sound the way we do in our written "voice." Customers and students who are customers get to decide for themselves what "matters" to them and almost none of them want a writer whose written English (including aspects of "good" grammar that are uncharacteristic for most Americans) just doesn't sound like them. (And the last two words of the previous sentence would be one simple example of something that's grammatically imperfect but colloguial for Americans that an ESL probably wouldn't write, substituting something instead that might be grammatically perfect but that sounds completely unnatural to our ear.)

Well, I meant to say that such advantages were perceived by ESLs - which means they might not be real, whether it was for American or any other customers.

This is an absolute statement that has no basis at all if my experience with native English Speaker clients is anything to go by. I have quite a number of clients, most of who come from this forum and have therefore been reading and almost falling (or expected to believe) that ESL writers have inferior writing abilities compared to their opposites. Let us be clear. What majority of clients want is someone to do the legwork for them which is that of researching and creating a piece of work that conforms to requirements. In fact, you have been working for a company that insists that it only creates "model papers" that are not supposed to be handed over as one's work for credit in an academic institution. Let us assume for argument's sake that this is absolutely true and so the paper I write will only be used as a basis for creating the final paper. So if this student can read what I am writing on the email, why can't the same be true for the "model paper" I create. I think this argument against ESL writers is just some sort of attempt to try lock them out of the market through customer apathy. However, I am aware that in our midst as ESL writers, we have those who need to try their talents elsewhere but that cannot justify the argument that all of them should not be in the writing business. How comes none of the clients I have approached has asked whether I am a native speaker or not? This is in spite of a good number of them being native speakers. I think the whole debate is just advanced as a matter of convenience; it is not a sincere attempt to provide customers with the right information they need to make the right decisions.

Dear forumregulator

What you say is 100% correct, and to me the only and the whole truth. I think this is the first time that I found someone (like you) speaking so clearly to support the 'truth'. Thank you for being here and for your input. By the by, is there any Forum Regulator or Administrator in this forum? I only see people bully here each other.

You seem to have missed the entire point of this discussion. Nobody is suggesting that ESL writers can't possibly do good work, only that ESLs don't have any right to misrepresent that they're ESL. One of them has repeatedly made the ridiculous argument on this forum that nobody should expect them to be honest if it means the possibe failure to get clients who prefer native English speakers as writers. If ESLs disclose that they're ESLs -- and according to you, there's absolutely no reason for them to lie about it, anyway --that's perfectly fine. The many ESLs who choose not to be honest about it, especially when specifically asked by prospective clients, seem to agree with me that American clients tend to prefer non-ESL writers. Otherwise, they wouldn't lie, would they?

Freelance Writer, do you think native speakers cannot recognize ESL writers by reading their emails? What about this Marsvictor? Do you think people like him can write a consistent paragraph in email so that customers get trapped easily? There is no point of asking writers if they are ESL or native speakers because American writers can easily judge their status and writing skills in no time for they do not sound like them. Of course, when a customer asks me where I am located at, I do not lie because I know the person is more concerned about not being scammed than the country of origin of the writer. Never did a customer reject me when I disclose that I am an ESL writer. I believe this to be correct.

Some writers like amnateeb and his/her supporters think that being an American is a status, which is a total rubbish! Most American teachers, when they come to the British universities, for visiting lectureship, fail to stand by the teachers who are either British and from other nationalities.

The fact that there are so much emphasis on the style of writing in this forum is also a misnomer.
People like amnateeb and others are very shallow in their reading and comprehension of wide variety of English that are used all over the academic world. These people simply live in frog holes and think that these OOs are their world - which is very pathetic.

Language is only one part of the whole process. Efficiency is language does not necessarily signify a writer's knowledge base, which is what is most sought in academic work.


Native Americans who are not educated beyond ESL level can hardly read (or understand) more than half the scholars in American Universities who are non-American. Native speakers who lack sufficient education fail to understand the diversity of language usage in America and elsewhere. You are totally confused with cohesion, consistency and diversity.

I have the feeling you'd be happy with them wearing arm-bands, you fascist.


here's my point-- it's fine for a writer to do a job, and not have to admit where they're from, if they know the basics of the English language. it should all be so simple. but here we have obvious failures like MarsVictor, who has no right communicating in written English until he brushes up on subject-verb agreement, countable vs. non-countable nouns, a/an/the, and other English basics. Ignoring these basics, which most elementary school level Native English speakers have long since mastered, will throw off any college-level professor-- especially if you ignore the basics of the language in favor of forced, artificially flowery, incorrect English. hiding behind linguistic diversity would be fine, if this misuse of English were a type of linguistic diversity acceptable in collegiate circles.

Precisely, Marsvictor is an idiot who could not even understand sarcasm in my posts in which I was offering him a dissertation for $50.

In my opinion, if the customer never asks, you don't have to volunteer that you're an ESL unless you actually realize that your English language skills aren't that great and could be an issue. In your disclosure, it's fine to make the argument to customers that you're such an expert in the academic area that they should overlook any ESL-related language issues as long as you leave the decision to them based on your honest disclosure. The only thing that's not OK is lying to them about it after being asked; they wouldn't ask in the first place if they didn't care about the answer.

I practice exactly what I preach anytime a UK client says he prefers a UK writer. I may indicate that I can do the topic well enough to overlook that I'm a US writer, but I never pretend I'm UK-educated, such as by typing my emails in UK spelling. It would be easy enough to just use UK spelling and say that I'm UK-educated, but I don't lie to get anybody's business. Obviously, that's another concept that's completely foreign to some writers on this forum, like one quoted below.

In my opinion, there are 4 types of ESLs in this industry:

1. ESLs who are genuinely delusional and don't know or believe that practically anything they write sounds like ESL to us;
2. ESLs who genuinely believe that subject-matter competence trumps their lack of English language proficiency;
3. ESLs who are completely honest about it when asked; and
4. ESLs who are too stupid and/or too rationalizing to understand that customers have a right to an honest answer to the question about their location and primary language of origin and who are too stupid and/or too rationalizing to understand that just suggesting writers be honest with prospective customers isn't the same thing as racial or nationalistic prejudice or hatred. (See below.) Some of them lie because they believe it's their right (and not the customers') to decide that their subject-matter competence trumps their lack of English-language proficiency. The worst of the worst (again, see below) actually admit publicly (in other threads on this forum) that they lie because they know most American customers do care and would probably choose not to hire them if they're honest when asked if they're ESL.


Only you, and your armband should have the entire text of your forum post where you justify lying to customers because telling the the truth when asked about being ESL makes it "unrealistic" to expect them to use you for their projects.

More precisely, the fact that you do not understand that
---- nobody can do a dissertation of 70 pages with $50 but you offered me so, makes you the biggest American (I think so) assH among the bunch of super idiots!

Furthermore, the fact that you do not know or understand that
---- academic dissertations have to be essentially based on primarily data for which data collection itself takes huge time and the subsequent offer of completing it within 3 days - should clearly indicate to everyone here that you neither know what a dissertation is or how it is done.

Such sarcasm also shows you lack any respect towards writers, and as such you have no self-respect, let alone your student-customers.

I just wanted to see how your behaviour develops from the point of your offer to your exit. If you read back the conversations between you and me until you resorted to "begging", you will definitely see that you are morally, ethically, academically, and personally a total bankrupt.

I thought that as I would go along developing my conversation with you, you would change your course or tone of conversation - but you were such a super idiot that you concluded that I did not understand your sarcasm. As I indicated in earlier conversation, fools like you live in such erroneously conclusive worlds - the frog holes (OOs)

Try to understand and be understandable, Marsvictor. Good luck!

My friend, try to respect others, whether it is in the same or other industry. All fingers in your hands are not equal, and yet each of them has distinct function and place. All human beings on this earth are not same. Some are American, some are British, and some are Spanish. Human beings do not have control on what colour they have, what language the speak, and for cultural and other reasons how good or bad they might be in language proficiency.

Please respect these differences.

There is no credit in insulting people. This kind of behaviour does not pay. It is easy to type the word 'idiot'. Once you type it in this post - it remains and it hurts. Everyone reads them, but that makes you silly. What is the meaning of education if what you write hurts others?

Respecting others will increase your self-respect.

The best way to develop your competitive advantage as a writer here is to cooperate with others, not to demonstrate fierce rivalry though unbecoming use of words. If you and your colleagues can follow these, we all can make a good community here. Each of us can serve others interests here. I hope these words will help you.