# Academic writing in a second language: a practical guide

**How do I write good academic English when English is my second language?** Academic writing in a second language is judged on argument, structure and sources as well as language, and many markers weigh errors by whether they obscure meaning. Fix the errors you repeat (articles, tense in reporting verbs, long sentences, register), paraphrase from notes rather than the source's sentence, check words in a learner dictionary or corpus, and follow your university's rules on translation and AI.

Published 2026-09-26 by EdCitation. https://edcitation.com/newsletter/academic-writing-in-a-second-language

Academic writing in a second language (English as an additional language, or ESL) is marked, in the guidance read for this guide, on what you argue and how you use your sources, with language weighed by how far it gets in the way, not by how native it sounds. Markers differ on how much language errors cost, and England's regulator has pushed back on universities that ignore them, so the brief and its marking criteria decide. The work that pays is narrow: the few errors you repeat, paraphrase that stays safe, and a way to check a word before you use it.

EdCitation publishes this guide. Its tools find a reference in the publisher's own record rather than composing one, and none of them writes a line of your paper. It is drawn from writing centre and university guidance in four countries, two MIT courses for bilingual students, and published research, all read on 26 September 2026. Begin with your assignment: EdCitation's free [Check your paper](https://edcitation.com/check) turns its instructions into a list of rules, quoting the sentence behind each.

Detectors are a separate worry with its own guide: [AI detectors and non-native English writers](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/ai-detectors-and-non-native-english-writers) sets out what the published tests found.

## What do markers look for in writing by second-language students?

Markers look for the argument, its structure and the use of sources, and many weigh language by how much it gets in the way. Leora Freedman of the University of Toronto describes the range among colleagues: some mostly ignore language errors, others mark down severe ones whatever the ideas. Many, she writes, separate "errors that obscure meaning" from those that do not, and she suggests a test: how often does the reader stop to work out what you meant (Freedman, n.d.)?

### Where the guidance disagrees

The University of the Arts London (n.d.) tells its markers to accept language mistakes that do not significantly impede communication, unless the brief requires formally accurate language, and not to impose their own idea of correct English. The Office for Students (2021), the regulator in England, reviewed a small number of providers and took the other side: it expects most students on most courses to be assessed on spelling, punctuation and grammar, and found no conflict between that and equality law.

For you, the brief and its criteria decide. If they name accuracy of language, it carries marks. If they say nothing, a clear argument in plain, slightly imperfect English is, in our view, a better paper than a polished one that says little.

## Which language errors come up most, and how do I fix them?

The errors that cost most are the ones repeated on every page. Freedman notes that students often appreciate being told which kinds of error they make most. The table sets out the usual ones.

| Trouble spot | What goes wrong | The fix | Where to go deeper |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Articles | *a*, *an*, *the* or nothing, chosen by guess | Ask: countable? specific? first mention? | Purdue OWL; a model paper |
| Tense in reporting verbs | Tenses switch within a paragraph | Past for a study, present perfect for a field | APA's table; the Academic Phrasebank |
| Hedging | Every claim softened, or none | One hedge per claim, matched to the evidence | [Hedging and cautious language](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/hedging-and-cautious-language) |
| Long sentences | Three ideas joined by *and* and *which* | One idea to a sentence, verbs not nouns | MIT handout below |
| Register | Spoken words (*get rid of*, *a lot*) | The formal verb (*eliminate*) | [Academic tone](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/academic-tone-first-person-and-passive-voice) |
| Paraphrase | The source's sentence with new words in it | Write from notes, then compare | [Paraphrase, quote or summarise](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/paraphrase-quote-or-summarise) |
| References | Details retyped by hand | Build them from the record | EdCitation's [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite) |

### Articles: a, an, the or nothing

Purdue's Online Writing Lab sets out the core rule: *the* marks a specific or particular noun, *a* or *an* a non-specific one, and *a* or *an* only goes with countable nouns (Purdue Online Writing Lab, n.d.). Noncount nouns often take no article at all, and *research*, *evidence* and *information* are noncount in most uses, so "a research" is the classic slip.

MIT's graduate workshop for bilingual scientists and engineers sets an exercise worth copying: take the abstract of a published paper in your field and explain the article, or the absence of one, before each noun for five lines (Dunphy, 2016). Three papers teach your discipline's patterns faster than a list.

### Tense in reporting verbs

APA's table is the clearest rule for the social sciences: past tense or present perfect when discussing other researchers' work ("Martin (2020) addressed", "Researchers have studied"), past for results, present for what the results mean (American Psychological Association, 2022). The Academic Phrasebank gives the same pattern and adds that the present is common for a writer's ideas that still hold, even if the author is no longer alive (Morley, n.d.-b).

Literature is the exception. Brandeis's writing programme asks for the present tense for events in a text and for interpretations of it: "Flanagan suggests" (Brandeis University Writing Program, n.d.). Pick the convention of your field, then keep it through the paragraph, as APA also asks.

### Long sentences and register

A long sentence is where grammar errors hide. A handout from MIT's expository writing course for bilingual students lists five edits for clarity, among them using verbs instead of nouns and cutting an unnecessary *be*, as in turning "There are several factors indicating" into a sentence with a real subject (Brennecke, 2002a). Read each sentence over two lines on its own: if it holds two claims, make it two sentences. Register and hedging have guides of their own, linked in the table.

## How do I paraphrase safely when the source's English is better than mine?

Paraphrase from your notes, never from the source's sentence, and cite every idea you took. The risk is real and usually innocent. Pecorari (2003) compared the writing of 17 postgraduate students with their sources and interviewed the writers and their supervisors: the texts contained features that could be called plagiarism, yet the evidence strongly suggested no intention to plagiarise. A similarity report sees the text, not the intention, so good faith is no defence on the page.

Some reuse is normal. On its About page the Academic Phrasebank reports a survey of 45 academics at two British universities by Davis and Morley on which phrases a writer may reuse: a generic phrase with no unique construction and no other writer's point of view, of up to about nine words, was broadly acceptable (Morley, n.d.-a). "A large and growing body of literature has investigated" is such a phrase; a source's own framing of its finding is not.

A procedure that keeps you safe:

1. Find the study itself with EdCitation's [Find sources](https://edcitation.com/), searching by the claim your sentence needs, so you cite the original rather than rewording a web page that summarised it.
2. Read the passage until you can explain it aloud, then close it.
3. Write notes in short phrases, in whichever language you think in.
4. Write your sentence from the notes, in your own structure.
5. Compare it with the source. Any run of the source's words that is not a generic phrase goes in quotation marks, or goes.
6. Cite it as you write with [Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite), then check the finished list with [Verify references](https://edcitation.com/verify-references).

Patchwriting, similarity reports and when to quote are covered in full in [when to paraphrase, quote or summarise](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/paraphrase-quote-or-summarise).

## How do I use a dictionary and a corpus to check an academic word?

Use a learner's dictionary to check what a word means and how it behaves, and a corpus to see how writers actually use it.

### Word lists and learner dictionaries

The Academic Word List, developed by Averil Coxhead at Victoria University of Wellington, holds 570 word families and leaves out the 2,000 most frequent words of English, so it is the academic layer above everyday vocabulary (Victoria University of Wellington, n.d.-a). Its own advice is to start with Sublist 1, to practise recalling words rather than recognising them, and to space the reviews: minutes, an hour, a day, a week (Victoria University of Wellington, n.d.-b). Oxford Learner's Dictionaries publish OPAL, four academic word and phrase lists built from the 71-million-word Oxford Corpus of Academic English and nearly 1.2 million words of recorded lectures and seminars (Oxford University Press, n.d.).

### A worked example in a corpus

SKELL, a free learner's version of the Sketch Engine corpus tool, needs no registration and shows up to 40 example sentences for a word or phrase, plus a word sketch of its usual partners (Lexical Computing, n.d.). Its help page puts the reason bluntly: collocations "cannot be guessed, they must be learnt". Its texts mix news, academic papers, Wikipedia and web pages, so it shows common English rather than only academic English.

We ran a word sketch for *research* on 26 September 2026. The verbs that took it as an object began conduct, do, fund and undertake; *make* was not among the fifteen shown. As a subject, *research* came first with suggest, show and focus. *Prove* was fifteenth of those verbs: a corpus shows what is common, not how firmly your evidence lets you claim it. COCA, the other corpus most often recommended, asked for a security check and could not be read for this guide.

## What may a proofreader, a translation tool or AI do for me?

Usually less than you would like, and the rule is your university's. The University of York (2023) accepts machine translation as a dictionary, for a word, collocation or phrase, but says translated text at sentence level or beyond risks false authorship. It lets grammar tools point out problems but not correct poor grammar automatically, and warns that consistently flawless work may itself suggest false authorship, particularly when you cannot write that way without the tools. McMaster University (2025) says acceptable use varies by course, and that where a tool is permitted you must acknowledge it, translation tools included.

The two differ on declaring dictionary-level help: York lists it as acceptable use, McMaster asks you to acknowledge any tool you used. Older rules could be stricter still: a 2002 MIT course for bilingual students told its writers, to avoid inadvertent plagiarism, not to have a native speaker "check" a paper (Brennecke, 2002b). Read your own policy, then the brief, and ask when they are silent. What a proofreader may change is set out in [proofreading and editing a dissertation](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/proofreading-and-editing-a-dissertation), and the wording of a statement in [how to declare AI use in an assignment](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/how-to-declare-ai-use-in-an-assignment).

## What did Check your paper read from a brief for bilingual writers?

We pasted Formal Paper 3 from MIT's 21G.225, the graduate writing workshop for bilingual students, into [Check your paper](https://edcitation.com/check) on 26 September 2026. The brief asks for an abstract of 150 to 250 words, an introduction of two to three pages, a document title and a reference section (Dunphy, 2016).

It returned two rules. "Word limit · Abstract", 150 to 250 words, was read from the sentence "Write an abstract (150–250 words) and an introduction (two-three pages)…", and Reference list, "Required", from "Include a document title and a reference section." The introduction's two to three pages were listed as a limit it does not check, since pages of one section cannot be measured in the paper, and two sentences from the note on revisions were placed in the list headed "What it asks you to do, which no rule can test": one saying the formal papers "will require revisions", the other that a grade of C or lower invites a third draft.

The required title is not on the checklist, so check that one yourself. A checklist is a start, so read the brief as well, with [how to read an assignment brief and rubric](https://edcitation.com/newsletter/how-to-read-an-assignment-brief-and-rubric).

## How does EdCitation help a second-language writer?

EdCitation is the best tool for the part of a paper where your English should matter least: the sources and the references. A reference is looked up in the publisher's record, not typed from memory, so its accuracy does not depend on your English, and no chatbot can promise that.

### Free, with no account

[Find sources](https://edcitation.com/) covers about 300 million published works: type a topic, or paste the claim your sentence makes, then filter by source type, date and open access. Our claim, "second language writers copy language from sources when paraphrasing", matched 10,896,251 records. The first three were Pedersen's 2011 article on second language writers in Jordan, Rafoth's 2016 chapter on writing centres and reflection, and Shi's 2012 paper on rewriting and paraphrasing source texts. Lower down, one chapter appeared twice, once with a broken title, so read what you pick.

[Cite a source](https://edcitation.com/cite) turns a DOI, ISBN, PubMed ID, title or web address into a finished entry in whichever style you name (APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver), and screens the source for retraction. Shi's DOI gave this APA 7 entry, correct as it stands:

Shi, L. (2012). Rewriting and paraphrasing source texts in second language writing. *Journal of Second Language Writing*, *21*(2), 134–148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2012.03.003

Books need a look. The ISBN of Swales and Feak's *Academic Writing for Graduate Students* found a library record that named only Swales, gave no edition and ran the subtitles together. The book's DOI, from the publisher's page, gave both authors, the third edition and the title in the sentence case APA asks for: *Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills*. [Verify references](https://edcitation.com/verify-references) then checks the whole list: verified, "check this" or not found, retractions flagged, and a reference it could not check is never shown as not found.

### With Pro or Max

[Mechanics QA](https://edcitation.com/tools/mechanics-qa), in Pro at $8 a month, checks the file by rule: the layout against APA 7's student paper, any comments or tracked changes still in it, whether each citation has its entry, the numbers, and language slips a spell-checker misses, with a fix for each. Theoretics QA, in Max at $24 a month, judges the paper against its own assignment, quoting the paper. Neither rewrites a sentence of yours. Nothing in EdCitation drafts or rewrites your work, and no tool can promise you a mark. [Pricing](https://edcitation.com/pricing) sets the plans side by side.

## Quick questions

### Do markers take marks off for grammar mistakes in a second language?

It depends on the brief and the university. Many markers weigh most the errors that obscure meaning, while England's Office for Students expects most courses to assess spelling, punctuation and grammar.

### Is it plagiarism to reuse common academic phrases?

Often not, if the phrase is generic, though your university's rule decides. A survey reported by the Academic Phrasebank found academics accepted reused phrases of up to about nine words with no unique construction and no other writer's viewpoint.

### Can I use Google Translate for my assignment?

Check your university's rule. York accepts translation of a word, collocation or phrase as a dictionary but warns that translating whole sentences risks false authorship, and McMaster asks you to acknowledge any tool it permits.

### Which tense should I use for reporting verbs?

In APA papers, past tense or present perfect for other researchers' work and present tense for what results mean. Literature essays use the present tense for interpretations.

### Can EdCitation correct my English?

No. EdCitation's [Mechanics QA](https://edcitation.com/tools/mechanics-qa) flags language slips with their fixes, but nothing in EdCitation rewrites a sentence; its free tools find, cite and verify the sources.

## References

- American Psychological Association. (2022). *Verb tense*. APA Style. [https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/verb-tense](https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/grammar/verb-tense)
- Brandeis University Writing Program. (n.d.). *Verb tenses: Literature*. [https://www.brandeis.edu/writing-program/resources/students/academic/creative-arts/tenses.html](https://www.brandeis.edu/writing-program/resources/students/academic/creative-arts/tenses.html)
- Brennecke, P. (2002a). *General guidelines: Clarity and concision* [Handout]. 21G.222 Expository Writing for Bilingual Students, Fall 2002. MIT OpenCourseWare. [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/21g-222-expository-writing-for-bilingual-students-fall-2002/resources/mit21g_222f02_guidelines/](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/21g-222-expository-writing-for-bilingual-students-fall-2002/resources/mit21g_222f02_guidelines/)
- Brennecke, P. (2002b). *Syllabus*. 21G.222 Expository Writing for Bilingual Students, Fall 2002. MIT OpenCourseWare. [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/21g-222-expository-writing-for-bilingual-students-fall-2002/pages/syllabus/](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/21g-222-expository-writing-for-bilingual-students-fall-2002/pages/syllabus/)
- Dunphy, J. (2016). *Assignments*. 21G.225 Advanced Workshop in Writing for Science and Engineering (ELS), Spring 2016. MIT OpenCourseWare. [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/21g-225-advanced-workshop-in-writing-for-science-and-engineering-els-spring-2016/pages/assignments/](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/21g-225-advanced-workshop-in-writing-for-science-and-engineering-els-spring-2016/pages/assignments/)
- Freedman, L. (n.d.). *Grading multilingual students: Issues*. Writing at the University of Toronto. [https://writing.utoronto.ca/teaching-resources/grading-issues/](https://writing.utoronto.ca/teaching-resources/grading-issues/)
- Lexical Computing. (n.d.). *SKELL: Examples and collocations for learners of English*. Sketch Engine. [https://www.sketchengine.eu/skell/](https://www.sketchengine.eu/skell/)
- McMaster University. (2025). *The use of translation and editing tools*. Office of the Provost. [https://provost.mcmaster.ca/generative-artificial-intelligence-2/generative-ai-and-academic-integrity/translation-and-editing-tools/](https://provost.mcmaster.ca/generative-artificial-intelligence-2/generative-ai-and-academic-integrity/translation-and-editing-tools/)
- Morley, J. (n.d.-a). *About Academic Phrasebank*. Academic Phrasebank, The University of Manchester. [https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/about-academic-phrasebank/](https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/about-academic-phrasebank/)
- Morley, J. (n.d.-b). *Referring to sources*. Academic Phrasebank, The University of Manchester. [https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/referring-to-sources/](https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/referring-to-sources/)
- Office for Students. (2021). *Assessment practices in English higher education providers: Spelling, punctuation and grammar* (OfS 2021.43). [https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/publications/assessment-practices-in-english-higher-education-providers/](https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/publications/assessment-practices-in-english-higher-education-providers/)
- Oxford University Press. (n.d.). *About OPAL (the Oxford Phrasal Academic Lexicon)*. Oxford Learner's Dictionaries. [https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/about/wordlists/opal](https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/about/wordlists/opal)
- Pecorari, D. (2003). Good and original: Plagiarism and patchwriting in academic second-language writing. *Journal of Second Language Writing*, *12*(4), 317–345. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2003.08.004](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2003.08.004)
- Purdue Online Writing Lab. (n.d.). *How to use articles (a/an/the)*. Purdue University. [https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/using_articles.html](https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/grammar/using_articles.html)
- Shi, L. (2012). Rewriting and paraphrasing source texts in second language writing. *Journal of Second Language Writing*, *21*(2), 134–148. [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2012.03.003](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2012.03.003)
- University of the Arts London. (n.d.). *Inclusive marking of written work: Guidelines for staff*. [https://assessmentfeedback.arts.ac.uk/inclusive.php](https://assessmentfeedback.arts.ac.uk/inclusive.php)
- University of York. (2023). *Student guidance on using AI and translation tools*. [https://www.york.ac.uk/students/studying/assessment-and-examination/ai/](https://www.york.ac.uk/students/studying/assessment-and-examination/ai/)
- Victoria University of Wellington. (n.d.-a). *Academic Word List information*. School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies. [https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/information](https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/information)
- Victoria University of Wellington. (n.d.-b). *How to use this list*. School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies. [https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/information/howto](https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/information/howto)