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Q: Written English Who is better at it?
Reading some of the posts here raises some questions.
All you English teachers out there are the best qualified to answer this one.
How dose your students Grammer compare to that of some of the posts here.
personaly I find Chinese write very well and not with brocken english.
Am I on the right track or is this commen practice?
12 years 11 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
Maybe you are making wrong assumptions, like all out here are English teachers, like all of us are that good at grammar, and like while some consider this a formal place, to me at least it is an very informal one, where I do come in to have fun, kill a few minutes each day, take it easy and do not worry much about spelling and/or typos. I am guilty of a few each day, but in a way I am not writting a letter to the owner of the company, nor an English essay to turn in at college level.
But I am my way, and you have a perfect right to your way too. And also true, sooner or later I have seen wrong spelling and / or typos done by just about every one here.
Maybe in reality, the only thing wrong is that when you ASS-U-ME, THE ONLY ACCOMPLISHMENT is to make an ass of you and me ! 
PS: to me Chinese students are lousy at preposition and articles' usage.
People just pound out stuff on websites, no one puts in time to do it correctly. I worked in State media for a time, where the supposedly best English speakers in the country worked...they were not that great. Better than my Chinese by leaps and bounds, but not that great. And even suggesting they could be better at it is, well dumb.
My students (in the states) begin the writing process with a thoughts draft. That's literally what it is. No editing or spell checking WANTED. Simply put your ideas down on paper, whether they make sense to an audience or not.
After the ideas are down, then they can be developed into a rough/first draft. Again, editing isn't required.
These are very informal writings. By the time they hand in their final paper, then their grammar, spelling, sentence structure, etc... are pristine. MS Word helps immensely in their endeavor for perfection.
The use of the computer/internet has made it possible for the worst writers to write like pros. It helps ESL learners as well.
Like others said, as far as internet forums... its all ideas and thoughts refined enough to make sense to the reader. It's not generally final paper material. And, as long as your idea is understood, it's perfectly acceptable, even from an Eng teacher.
The hardest part about learning any language is usually writing. To say the English writing of Chinese students is good would be a far stretch. Actually, it's something English teachers here need to address more. For example, I met a Chinese person who spoke English very well, but when she wrote an essay and gave it to me to reade I couldn't understand what the hell she wanted to say.
I would say that with the exception of people like Vladmir Nabokov and a few others, the very high majority of English second language learners never write at a native level, in terms of grammar and especially syntax. Chinese students speak and read well, but writing is their weakpoint in my opinion.
Shining_brow:
I disagree with your opening statement. Writing seems to be the hardest, because what we write tends to be more formal, and of much wider subject matters... and often academic (when they're learning). Sounding and writing like a native are hard for any language users anywhere. But, if you put second language learners on the spot, they'll pull out better writing than speaking - because they get to think more when writing, and can edit. If you ask any ESL teacher which is a Chinese person's weakest English skill, and it'll be speaking, easily, followed shortly after with listening. Lastly, speaking has one aspect that writing doesn't - pronunciation
I think, personally, I can always tell who is a native speaker and who is not, by reading the post. Even those who fuction well and can be clearly understood do make mistakes. Like HappyExPat said, its the small things (articles, prepositions and I'd add irregular verbs to the list) that can be the most difficult.
But everyone makes mistakes... when I'm writing here, I'm quite often lesson planning as well, plus chatting with people. If it got my full, undivided attention, then maybe I'd make less typos 
philbravery:
ok with that said are the posts from so called locals meet the profile of written stuff you see at work?
MissA:
It pretty much does in my experience, yes. I must admit, though, that about ninety five per cent of my communciations with colleagues is verbal, and I don't see my colleagues writing all that often.
Shining_brow:
Agreed! It's knowing what you DON'T have to say to be understood. And, what we would use in a conversation, and what we wouldn't - which word in the thesaurus works, and which doesn't. Even a post with bucketloads of mistakes can be more native and natural that some fully structured and spelled-out post by a non-native. (you should read my team leader's sms's to me!!!) Appropriate use of idioms and slang...which punctuation needs to be used to be correctly understood.. and when you don't need it to still be understood!
Mi ingles no sirve para un carajo...
HappyExPat:
Does that means "my english is not worth a shit" ? And no, it is not a literal translation, if done literary it would be "my english is not served a hell". Darn, it has been over two years since I saw or heard a word of spanish.........
Nearly all my Chinese colleagues have quite poor written grammar, and they know it. Their actual writing is very nice nonetheless, the cursive style -- makes me quite ashamed of my odd scrawlings.
i think practice is very important ,there is a saying that practice makes perfect!
Phil, just a point:
"Reading some of the posts here raises some questions.
All you English teachers out there are the best qualified to answer this one.
How dose your students Grammer compare to that of some of the posts here.
personaly I find Chinese write very well and not with brocken english.
Am I on the right track or is this commen practice?"
After reading some of the posts on this website, I have some questions that I believe the English teachers that regularly post here are the best qualified to answer. How does your students' grammar compare to the grammar in some of the posts you have seen on eChinacities Answers? Personally, I find that the Chinese students (I'm assuming you don't mean ALL Chinese) write properly without broken English, (Next part added for clarification) while some of the posts here do not follow the formats and guidelines of good grammatical practices. (I'm not sure what you meant by the last question, but here's my translation) Has anyone else noticed this?
Sorry, couldn't resist as the post was about grammar and usage. We have discussed langauge like this in another thread and the general concensus was that for forum posting, noone is writing a college level essay. We all make mistakes (or have fat fingers 
) and don't bother to check each and every post, as this is more "fun". I don't think comparing students (who's future is determined by their written ability or appearance of it) and some expats posting here after a few beers would provide legitimate results as to who has the better grammar.
philbravery:
The point of the post was to see if others thought that some of the broken english posts and answers were from locals or from those pretending to be locals. I find that Chinese usely are better at written English it than run of the mill westerners like myself so basicly am I right or wrong?
crimochina:
my students know more grammar rules than i do, but much of those rules are actually not followed outside of academic writing (see bbc articles) but i organize my ideas better ;)
MrTibbles:
I would say that SOME Chinese are really good at written English. I also know some foreigners that speak Chinese better than most Chinese people (according to Chinese people). I think it depends on the person.
