Useful Websites for Non-Native English Speakers

As my primary language is not English, I have always been worried if I can catch up with university classes. My English is improving as the semester progresses, and I don’t have any significant issues catching up with the classes or understanding the contents. There are some tools that are definitely necessary for me to keep on the truck during the semester.

Luckily, we live in the 21st century, so there are lots of online resources to support your study! In this post, I will introduce some of the websites that I have used throughout the semester, especially for writing and reading:)

Grammarly

Grammarly has become a famous grammar correction tool worldwide, so some of you must have heard it. This website is essential for writing an academic paper or essay, and this post too! You can see suggestions depending on how your writing piece is to be sounded; casual or academic. I don't know if the word is academic sometimes, so Grammarly helps me to keep my writing sound appropriate. This also allows you to go through it after you are done with writing and make sure the sentences match what you want to write about. And we FSS students have a perk:) The faculty provides Grammarly premium for free!! I strongly recommend downloading it and seeing how it works on your writing.

https://library.fss.muni.cz/study-research-support/grammar/grammarly

DeepL

DeepL is an accurate translation website, and it helps me when I find the readings for the classes difficult. These readings usually consist of jargon and academic vocabulary, so sometimes, it is way faster to translate the whole sentence rather than to look up each word. This website doesn’t have many languages compared to Google translate, but see if your language is on the website. If so, this website supports you well!

https://www.deepl.com/translator

Scribbr

The citation rule is confusing for me, and without the citation generator, I have no confidence in citing correctly. Scribbr offers a citation generator for free! Once you use the contents from your resources, you can type information, such as the author, edition, and page, into it. The generator will create the citation that you can directly copy and paste into your paper. When you have the URL of the resources, you won’t even need to type manually. As soon as you paste the URL, the tool will automatically collect all the information you need for the citation. You can also create a list of the resources you used for writing and copy all the citations when you are ready for the references part of your paper.

https://www.scribbr.com/citation/generator/apa/

Academic Phrasebank

The University of Manchester publishes Academic Phrasebank, and this website provides useful phrases for writing papers. The phrases that I use for papers sometimes get limited. I want to avoid using the same phrases or words again in the same essay, so this website helped me to choose alternative ones. You can see plenty of them depending on the language functions.

https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/

Thesaurus.com

This online thesaurus online dictionary also helps when you have a limited vocabulary. Of course, you need to check if the synonym still keeps the same meaning as your original sentence, but this website will help you enhance your vocabulary and your papers more uniquely.

https://www.thesaurus.com/

Tips from me

Using these websites is an essential factor, but besides that, there are some things I do to survive the semester as a non-native English speaker.

1. Preparation is the key
   
   Preparing for the classes is important because it takes more time to fully understand the materials than native English speakers. To prepare for the class, take as much time as possible to read through the materials and write down what you thought while reading. These thoughts will help you to share your opinion in your classes. It is better to prepare at least one thing you want to say for every class.
   
   
2. Never skip reviewing
   
   Although you are perfectly prepared for the class, the contents always have additional concepts too. So, after the class, you should go through your notes or slides from the lecture and make sure you don’t leave any question marks in your head. Also, this is the time to look up the concepts in your mother tongue you couldn’t understand in English for better understanding and paraphrase it into easier words.
   
   
3. Don’t hesitate to speak up in the class
   
   This is something I should still work on this, but thinking your English skills are not enough and missing the chance to share your opinion is a waste. Your opinion or story is too good not to share in the class. I regretted a couple of times for not raising my hand even though I knew what I wanted to say in Japanese, but I worried I wouldn’t make everyone understand in English. Your grammatical or pronunciation mistakes are not that important as long as you have a solid opinion, so don’t miss the chance to speak up!