telling a colleague to improve their English?

[tobypercy]

I am in a project management role. One of my project team gets involved in writing reports which I review. Their writing is generally perfectly understandable, but the way they write makes it very obvious they aren't a native speaker - incorrect grammar mostly. We work for a professional services company and some of the reports end up in the public domain, I can't allow writing that bad to be issued with the company name on.

The colleague is quite new and is writing their 2nd report. For the first one I didn't say anything about the grammar because we ended up restructuring the whole thing on a tight timescale (not their fault). This time I think I need to say something because I am having to rewrite every single sentence.

I've only dealt with this issue once before and that colleague raised it herself - she was very aware that she needed to improve her English and writing and signed up for courses in her own time as well as asking me for "track changes" feedback.

This colleague seems unaware of the issue - does anyone have advice how I can raise this tactfully? If I track changes on the report (as I usually would) there will be more red than black, and I know it's a bit depressing getting a report back in that state (been there, done that!).

Assume best intent and go through it with them?

Or assign another member of the team to go through it with them before it comes to you?

Was this a requirement of employment?

Explain gently that there are a few issues with grammar and can they go back and correct as the content is unclear (if it is) or that it needs to be at a more professional standard. If you don’t say anything they will assume all is ok. Either they will go back and sort it out themselves or come and ask for help, in which case I’d go for the full track changes. If you’re in a professional role you should expect certain standards, being overly gentle in your corrections means you’ll have to keep correcting. I assume this person is an adult and can cope with constructive criticism?

How many "good" templates/samples have they seen? Get them to read it out loud - and if they still are not aware of it, you will really have to be more than tactful.

And as above, was it a requirement of employment?

I am a non native English speaker and learned it almost from scratch aged 18, after coming to the UK. I improved my language skills due to people being quite upfront about my many mistakes and at times continue to do so. If they want to hold down a job where good literacy skills are a must, then they have to improve drastically. You should not rewrite their reports, essentially doing part of their job. I would be quite direct about it.

Was the ability to write good English part of the condition of the job offer?

Was this discussed at their interview, does the company offer help with language courses.

Think you may have some hard decisions to make and ultimately decide if she will successfully complete her probation. The first step is to make sure you feedback on the documents so she knows exactly how much work you have to re-do. Take it from there

Does she have professional qualifications or a degree taken in English?
Was her CV written in perfect English?
Did she say at what level she could write and speak English before she was employed?

I think it's ok to raise it with her and to try and work out a plan together to improve it.

Ultimately though, if she is on probation and is not capable of doing the jobs she needs to do then perhaps you need to consider whether it's a good idea for her to stay.

Writing external documents is tough for someone who's English isn't that great and realistically it's going to take them a long time to improve. Its not just a case of going on a course
it takes years to master a language. Can you rescope their job so that they do the background work but someone else does the writing?

One of my project team gets involved in writing reports which I review.

“Gets involved in” doesn’t sound like it’s a core role requirement?

@TheSpottedZebra

Assume best intent and go through it with them?

Or assign another member of the team to go through it with them before it comes to you?

Oops. Ironically I read the OP all wrong And yes, the OP was written perfectly clearly!

You need to say that the report isn't up to standard as it is not to the correct level of English and it can't be sent out as is.
As others have said, if she's still in her probationary period, maybe it's not a good fit.

But if you want to keep her, she'll have to agree to improve, and quickly. How might she suggest doing this? How can you help her etc etc?
And maybe there is someone else in the team who wants to be stretched and who's good at report writing who can help her rewrite, before the report reaches you. But this will have an impact on timescales of work and she has to be able to manage this.

Think about how you would approach the problem with a native speaker who was brilliant at their job overall, but lacked the knack for writing clear reports for the target audience. Explaining work well is a skill and it often needs to be taught on the job because it is quite a particular one.

The non-native English issue complicates things because of the long history of racism and xenophobia and the potential for offense, but ultimately, it is simply an issue of a person needing training.

You definitely need to raise it. Can most of it be picked up with the highest spelling and grammar checks in Word? The difficulty is if they don't realise what they don't know as much harder to steer them in the right direction.

I used to teach English as a Foreign Language, including a lot of people whose employers paid for 1:1 classes. A person's oral English often seems good to the lay person initially or at interview, but problems emerge when they need to write something.

If you value your staff you could approach a local or online language school for a short course of private lessons. A tutor experienced in Business English should be able to do a needs analysis and draw up a scheme of work to achieve your goals. This would focus on e.g. the area of grammar and specific type of writing required for faster results to address the immediate issues, if not their overall language level, and would give the student ideas for independent study.

Longer-term, they could join language classes but these are not available everywhere. They can also be oversubscribed and not focused on writing or grammatical accuracy, depending on the type of students and level. Also, not everyone has the motivation, aptitude or study skills to learn successfully on their own, although @NannyKrampus appears to have nailed it!

As others have said, was any specific level of English asked for before she was considered for the job (and did she meet that language requirement, CEFR B2? B1? etc, and is writing reports part of her job description. Is correcting colleague's writing part of yours etc etc. Who has got her "involved" in writing them?
If part of her job description is to write to a certain standard, then there is nothing wrong with you correcting her work, and telling her it's not up to scratch. But you need to know what the expectations were of her when she was given the job.

Also - have you / they tried using Grammarly? Many of my students use if very successfully.

Is this a graduate level employee?

If you are willing to help them improve, you have a couple of options.

1- Be upfront and explain the job/reports requirements - the majority of non-english speakers tend to be open to this type of feedback.
2- Can you help or can the company organise english classes for your spefic profession?
3- Help with a grammar software
4- Offer some report writing sessions and explain that they are expected to be independent after a while.

English is my 2nd language and It did take me a while to understand the requirements for my work reports. I had to study and worked overtime to improve my skills. I had english speaking colleagues that struggled writing reports , I had to help them with the content but they needed someone else to help with the grammar.

Is your colleague only struggling with grammar or they don't understand the content needed?

Thanks for the responses, some really good points here and I can use quite a few of them.

To respond on a few of the queries, preparing reports is one of the key parts of the role and yes it's in the job description. Without being too "outing", it's a role for graduates with 5+ years experience and is primarily technical but includes writing reports on the technical work. Their technical work is good and it would not be easy to replace them for several reasons.

It would be difficult but possible to scope it out but that would hold back their career advancement, and require someone else to take on that part of the role (and most people prefer the technical side). I suppose that's one of the points I need to make. On technical work they take constructive criticism well, perhaps I'm being oversensitive about how they will feel about the language issue.

It's interesting how many people asked if it was in the job description - I must admit it's something I would have assumed in our line of work even if it wasn't in the description but that was probably naive of me. (It's a good job I don't write the job specs!) We don't specify a level of English but we do specify report writing and general communication as required skills.

If they are good at their job and difficult to replace, can you suggest arranging an assistant to help check the reports until they are more comfortable?

The assistant role can be virtual and it will be cheaper than using your time, which I'm assuming costs more to the company.

@tobypercy

Thanks for the responses, some really good points here and I can use quite a few of them.

To respond on a few of the queries, preparing reports is one of the key parts of the role and yes it's in the job description. Without being too "outing", it's a role for graduates with 5+ years experience and is primarily technical but includes writing reports on the technical work. Their technical work is good and it would not be easy to replace them for several reasons.

It would be difficult but possible to scope it out but that would hold back their career advancement, and require someone else to take on that part of the role (and most people prefer the technical side). I suppose that's one of the points I need to make. On technical work they take constructive criticism well, perhaps I'm being oversensitive about how they will feel about the language issue.

It's interesting how many people asked if it was in the job description - I must admit it's something I would have assumed in our line of work even if it wasn't in the description but that was probably naive of me. (It's a good job I don't write the job specs!) We don't specify a level of English but we do specify report writing and general communication as required skills.

It sounds then as though the writing mistakes are also caused by the technical nature of the content? Can you find out what courses they've signed up for? Are they relevant to what s/he needs for the job- it's quite hard to find courses which focus on writing skills and/or ESP (English for Specific Purposes) Otherwise, I think you just have to continue correcting, and having feedback/follow-up sessions where you explain why you've changed what you've changed. Which pushes you into the role of English teacher- not ideal as presumably you've got your own stuff to do!

Does the company have a training budget or access to training funds? It could be money week spent arranging some intensive ESP courses. They’re more expensive than EFL but they’re straight to the point. Ultimately it depends on the type of errors being made as to how easily they can be rectified. English grammar is actually pretty simple, the difficulty is in fixed expressions, collocations, getting the wrong prepositions.

I'm that employee but in German but luckily in my job it doesn't matter much as long as what I write is clearly understandable. Our reports and documentation are internal although they can be viewed by regulatory bodies. When I write something that will be refered to frequently/ will be "high profile" I use a well written version of the same type of documentation as a sentence structure model. This appears to work well and helps me internalise better grammar.

I didn't learn my target language until my 30s and tbh it will never be native speaker level in terms of accuracy, although it is "fluent" in the sense there's no hesitation verbally and I'm not misunderstood any more often than native speakers misunderstand one another. I'm very aware of my linguistic limitations and find it unlikely anyone in a similar position wouldn't be, though they might be trying to style it out 😜 (I was effectively told to do this by colleagues).

If your employee isn't especially young (say over 25) you probably can't expect them to ever "sound like a native speaker" although of course they can improve their grammar.

I'd say approach this very objectively and constructively- offer "model" reports to read which are well written so they can scaffold sentence structure, and signpost to the courses your previous colleague took.

Being direct is fine but not just critical- constructive, concrete suggestions are helpful where open ended "please improve" or unrealistic demands like "I can tell this is your second/ third/ an additional language, please sort that out" obviously isn't.

Do you have more junior members of staff who could be tasked with proof reading the reports? I learned a language from scratch at 21 and my grammar wasn't perfect even if what I had written was understandable. For most of my work it wasn't important but for things that went to clients or in front of the board of directors I used to run it past one of the secretaries before running it past my boss. It saved him the time correcting basic mistakes. The secretaries were always lovely and helpful, I asked them to just scribble over the printed document so I could see where it was wrong and learn from it. A side bonus was that I had a really good relationship with lots of the secretaries across departments because it gave me a reason to speak to them beyond the usual "good morning". It also helped that when their boss announced they need to call or email an English speaking country they didn't think twice about asking me for help if they needed it.

To reassure you, I never took any criticism of my language skills personally. It's different when someone is correcting a second language compared to your native language. I doubt they think their English writing is perfect.