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[spiral78]

Hoping to get some knowledgeable feedback to assist a student....
I am teaching an upper-level academic writing course to immigrants and have just one Thai student in the group. It would be useful to me to know how writing style in Thai differs from English.

For example, from my MA research, I know that in most Asian languages, the reader is expected to make inferences from a paper. But when my Asian students write in this round-about style for their professors here in Canada, they receive poor marks because in English the burden is on the writer to state points overtly. Subtlety doesn't fly here!

Can anyone offer some specific points about typical writing styles in Thai? Then perhaps I'll be able to explain how they differ from English writing to my student.

Thanks for any feedback!

[sigmoid]

Well, I think you hit the nail on the head. Writing in Thai tends to be as you describe it: fuzzy, unclear and somewhat unorganized. I have had Thai people tell me sometimes they don't exactly understand the point of a memorandum composed in Thai. They have to guess.

Naturally the students bring this style to writing in English and you have to really start with the basics of sentence and paragraph writing, preparing an outline, intoduction, conclusion, etc.

Of course, good clear writing is not easy for the native speaker of English. It is a skill that must be developed, not a natural gift of someone who speaks the language. I'm sure we've all seen our share of poor writing.