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Checklist-driven academic English polishing and Chinglish correction
Passed 22 of 23 test cases with the skill, and 18 of 23 without it.
and 1 more in the full report
4 fixed18 passed either way1 still failing0 broke
Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.
One of 4 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.
According to standard conciseness edits, which four specific adverb qualifiers should be removed from a manuscript unless absolutely essential?
| Checked | Without skill | With skill |
|---|---|---|
| Identifies the word 'very' | Passed | Passed |
| Identifies the word 'really' | Passed | Passed |
| Identifies the word 'quite' | Passed | Passed |
| Identifies the word 'basically' | Missed | Passed |
The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.
Academic papers are judged not only on their scientific merit but also on the quality of their English. Grammatical errors, awkward phrasing, and non-native patterns (commonly called "Chinglish" when originating from Chinese-English interference) can distract reviewers and undermine credibility.
This skill provides a systematic checklist for identifying and correcting common academic English issues. It draws from the academic-writing-guide repository (327+ stars) maintained by SYSUSELab, which catalogs frequent mistakes observed in student and researcher manuscripts across STEM disciplines.
The approach is checklist-driven: rather than relying solely on automated tools, researchers learn to recognize error patterns and self-edit effectively. This skill is especially useful for non-native English speakers preparing manuscripts for international journals and conferences.
| Error Type | Example (Wrong) | Correction |
|---|---|---|
| Article misuse | "We propose a novel the method" | "We propose a novel method" |
| Subject-verb disagreement | "The results shows that..." | "The results show that..." |
| Tense inconsistency | "We train the model and evaluated it" | "We trained the model and evaluated it" |
| Dangling modifier | "Using gradient descent, the loss decreased" | "Using gradient descent, we decreased the loss" |
| Run-on sentence | "The model converges fast it achieves high accuracy" | "The model converges fast and achieves high accuracy" |
These are interference patterns common when translating from Chinese thought patterns into English:
Topic-comment structure. Chinese allows "As for X, Y does Z." English prefers "Y does Z to X."
Redundant verbs. Chinese often uses verb-verb compounds that become redundant in English.
Missing determiners. Chinese has no articles, leading to dropped "the/a/an."
Overuse of "respectively."
test cases passed, vs 18 / 23 without
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