Review From Inside the University of Hong Kong
English is the language of international commerce and communication. Young professionals working in Hong Kong or elsewhere and conducting international business are most likely to use English. Accordingly, employers want people with strong English skills.
You Can Write Better English by Barry Kalb (2010, Journalism and Media Studies Centre at the University of Hong Kong and Hong Kong University Press, 96 pages, US$8) is a practical handbook to help improve written English. It places a special focus on the mistakes that native Chinese-speakers routinely make when writing in the language.
Ford Burkhart, a former New York Times editor, says the book “offers a seasoned writer's advice, backed up with examples from many years in the classroom with native speakers of Chinese”. The author writes his wisdom with a clear, authoritative voice.
Kalb has taught reporting and news-writing at the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre since 2005, stressing the basics of good English writing. His work with hundreds of Chinese people from Hong Kong, the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Southeast Asia gives him insight into the problems that native Chinese-speakers encounter when writing the language. You Can Write Better English is an easy-to-follow guide to correcting the problems.
The author began his journalism career in Washington back in 1967. He became a CBS News correspondent in Hong Kong, then joined TIME Magazine as its Eastern Europe bureau chief and later moved with TIME to Rome, New York and back to Hong Kong. After a detour into the restaurant business, he worked as an editor at the Voice of America's Hong Kong bureau. The stories he covered included the Watergate scandal in Washington, the deaths of Zhou Enlai and Chairman Mao in China, the beginning of the Solidarity movement in Poland, and the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in Rome.
(October 13, 2010)
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