People from the Netherlands are known for fluency in English due to their frequent exposure to English from a young age and the linguistic proximity of the Dutch and English languages.

But when it comes to English academic writing for Dutch speakers—whether we’re talking about journal articles, book chapters, or grant proposals—even highly proficient researchers can encounter subtle challenges that affect how their work is perceived by international readers, reviewers, and editors. These issues go beyond grammar and basic vocabulary, which are usually solid; they are more subtle, relating to style, rhetorical phrasing, and specific conventions. These pitfalls are ultimately caused by L1 interference: the influence of a writer’s first language.

This article is intended for Dutch-speaking researchers, PhD candidates, and academics who regularly write journal articles, grant proposals, or theses in English. It addresses three pitfalls that appear in English academic writing by Dutch-speaking scholars: word choice, sentence structure, and the way claims are made. A good academic line editor will be able to spot these common English writing mistakes by Dutch speakers and address them.

1. Word Choice Challenges in English Academic Writing for Dutch Speakers

One of the most persistent challenges in English academic writing for Dutch speakers is lexical choice: selecting the right word, not just a plausible one.

Dutch and English have a good deal of vocabulary in common. This is mostly an advantage, but it can also be a trap. One issue is false friends: words that look or feel similar but carry different meanings or connotations. For example, the Dutch actueel is often translated into English as “actual” but really means “current” or “topical.” Writing “the actual situation” when you mean “the current situation” subtly misleads an English-speaking reader.

Beyond false friends, Dutch academic writers sometimes choose words that are technically correct but stylistically awkward in academic English. Consider the word “big”: perfectly fine in conversation, but in formal writing, a reader expects “significant,” “substantial,” or “considerable,” depending on context. Similarly, “problematic” is often overused as a direct equivalent of the Dutch problematisch, when “challenging,” “contentious,” or “difficult to reconcile” might be more precise and idiomatic.

Compare the following two sentences:

• The results show a big difference between the two groups, which is very interesting for future research.
• The results reveal a substantial difference between the two groups, with notable implications for future research.

A professional academic editor will flag these choices during the manuscript editing process, not because they are wrong but because they underperform. This kind of phrasing might pass a grammar check, but it fails on the grounds of style.

2. Dutch Sentence Structures and Their Impact on English Academic Writing

Dutch sentence structures influence English prose in ways that are easy to overlook for a Dutch academic writer but will be immediately noticeable to readers who speak English as a first language.

Word order in Dutch is considerably more flexible than in English. In Dutch it’s common and natural to begin a sentence with a time expression, an object, or a subordinate clause and push the verb and the subject toward the middle or end. This can produce English sentences that feel inverted or strangely weighted, with the most important information buried.

Dutch academics writing in English also tend to produce one of two opposing sentence-structure problems. The first is overfragmentation: ideas that belong together are split into several short, choppy sentences, giving academic writing a staccato quality that disrupts the flow of an argument. The second is oversubordination: clauses are stacked upon clauses in a single long sentence, a pattern that works in Dutch but becomes difficult to parse in English.

Consider the following examples:

• Although the study was conducted in a controlled environment, which allowed for a high degree of standardisation, and while the sample size, which consisted of 120 participants, was sufficient for the analysis, the findings should nonetheless be interpreted with caution.
• The study was conducted in a controlled environment with a standardised protocol and a sample of 120 participants. Despite these strengths the findings should be interpreted with caution.

Most major academic publishers see clear and direct sentence construction as one of the key markers of publication-ready academic writing. An academic editor will restructure sentences while editing such manuscripts, not to change the author’s meaning but to ensure that the text is clear for the reader.

3. Hedging Academic Writing: A Common Challenge for Dutch Academics

Perhaps the subtlest writing issue is also the most culturally embedded: the way claims are made.

Dutch academic and professional culture values directness. Saying what you mean clearly and without excessive qualification is considered a virtue, not a flaw. But in English-language academic writing, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, epistemic hedging is not optional; it is a disciplinary norm. Phrases such as “it appears that,” “the data suggest,” “this may indicate,” and “one possible explanation is” signal suitable scholarly humility and are expected by journal editors and peer reviewers.

As a result Dutch academics writing in English often make claims that are accurate but are phrased with more certainty than the evidence warrants—or at least more certainty than Anglophone academic convention allows.

Compare the following two sentences:

• This proves that social media use causes increased anxiety in adolescents.
• These findings suggest a significant association between social media use and increased anxiety in adolescents, though this requires further longitudinal research.

The difference is not that the second sentence is trying to be vague or evasive; instead, it aligns the claim’s strength with the strength of the evidence. This is a skill that sits at the heart of academic credibility.

Conclusion

None of the issues described in this article reflect a lack of intelligence or care. They demonstrate the natural and unavoidable influence of one language on another, something every multilingual academic writer navigates. And while these issues rarely determine the quality of the research itself, they can influence how reviewers and editors perceive a manuscript. Clear, idiomatic academic English helps ensure that readers focus on the argument and evidence rather than the language. An experienced academic editor can help you achieve this.

Whether you are preparing a journal or book manuscript for peer review, finalising a grant proposal, or polishing a PhD thesis, professional academic English editing offers more than error correction. It provides the kind of nuanced stylistic feedback that transforms competent writing into compelling, publishable prose.

I hope that these examples provide useful guidance for academics interested in improving their English academic writing as Dutch speakers. With the right support and editorial feedback, these common challenges can be addressed before submission, setting you up for success no matter what kind of text you’re seeking to publish.