A Wordzen Success Story
Twelve years ago, Li came to Seattle from China to continue her work as an engineer designing industrial equipment. Well-respected at her firm, she has received excellent performance reviews on her technical skill, speed, punctuality, ability to work as a team member, and attitude. Speaking with her, it’s easy to see why she’s been successful during her time in the US. Intelligent and eager to learn, Li spoke to us about her trials and tribulations of being a non-native English speaker
Despite her obvious achievements, Li hasn’t received a promotion in five years, a fact she attributes to her inability to communicate effectively with her colleagues and superiors in English. While she has taken classes that have helped, she admits that her writing skills still lack the polish and clarity of a native speaker.
“I know what I want to say, but I can’t put the words in the right order,” she told Wordzen. “My supervisors tell me they know what I’m trying to say, but sometimes I use the wrong tense or the wrong punctuation. It’s frustrating.”
That is, until she began using Wordzen.
“Since I started using Wordzen, not only have my inter-office emails improved, I have actually learned so much from the editors,“ said Li. “My skills have improved every day, and I feel more confident.”
As part of her learning experience, Li prefers to compose the emails herself and then have them edited as opposed to using Wordzen’s audio feature. Going beyond just hitting “Send” every evening, she prints out the original and edited versions of each message she has “Wordzened” to see how her work lines up, finding out where she needs to improve further. She even takes the time to read each edited message aloud. “That’s how I learn,” she explained.
Li said she appreciates the fact that she can learn at her own pace and she can access Wordzen from work or home. She loved it so much that she decided to share it with her colleagues.
“I told my boss how I use Wordzen as a learning tool. The first thing she did was sign up for Wordzen herself!”
Wordzen is a one-of-a-kind email editing tool, helping its users construct a concise, grammatically correct, and effective email message. While Wordzen is not a translation service, our editors are happy to help those who speak English as a second language communicate with their native English speaker counterparts and, hopefully, learn something new along the way.
Li says she uses Wordzen often because her goal is to advance to the next level by the end of the year. After having the chance to speak with her, we’re hoping for the same and look forward to being there to edit her emails as she works her way up the ladder.