Dear Helpers,

I am a PhD candidate in the field of Civil Engineering (Water Resources and Environmental Engineering). I started looking for a job which needs a lot of writing (cover letter and email to professor and companies for example).

However, English is not my mother language (Arabic is my mother tongue). My question(s) is(are):

(1) are there specific guidelines or regulation for writing cover letter (for the language and vocabulary point of view) and NOT from the content.
(2) are there certain sentences and vocabulary which are recommended to be used in different contexts.
(3) I have a problem in writing Email to professors (I can not find the right and the strong English vocabulary or phrase, and I do not have the starting point where I can look it up in a dictionary.

Could you please help me?
Taiseer