How to Improve Your English Writing Skills

When studying the English language, one aspect that you’ll have to master is writing. Writing, just like speaking English, means you have to be able to use the language actively. Listening and reading, on the other hand, are passive skills. Students are often hesitant to start writing in English because they are afraid to make mistakes. However, to master a new language, you should never be afraid of making mistakes. Even native English speakers make mistakes when writing. In this post, we will give you some tips on how you can improve your English writing skills. 

Read

Reading and writing go hand in hand. The more you read English, the easier it will be for you to construct your own texts. By reading English novels, news articles, or even academic texts, you are exposed to a wide variety of writing styles. All these different styles can help you form your own style. In case you’d like to write novels, you can even focus on one specific genre. Maybe you love to write romantic stories or you like to keep your readers on the edge of their seats as they read your thrilling stories. Find out what you like to write about because it will give you more motivation to finish your texts, but don’t be afraid to experiment with different genres when exploring your writing style. 

Expand Your Vocabulary

When writing, it is important that you know English vocabulary in order to construct your sentences. Now, if you don’t want to become too repetitive with the words you use, keep on expanding your vocabulary. You can do so by reading a lot and looking up synonyms for words. In one of our previous blog posts, we gave you more tips about how to memorize vocabulary. You can never know enough words, so keep on learning so that your texts become more diverse. The more words you know, the easier it will be to express yourself when writing. 

Mind Map

Before you start writing, make a mind map. What you basically do is write down keywords that you’ll want to use when writing your text. First, choose the main topic or theme of your text, then write this word in the middle of a paper. Around the word, keep on writing terms that pop into your mind that are related to your topic. By doing so, you allow your brain to fully explore the topic and associations you have with what you already know. This mind map can be used to give you some direction during your writing process. It can also help you point out which parts of your text will require some research before you work on your actual piece.

Research

After you’ve made your mind map, write down questions that you would like to answer in your text. Maybe you already know some answers because of your own experience, but there might be answers that are still unknown to you. It is crucial that you do background research on the topic. Find out what has already been written on the topic by looking at scientific research, news articles, and blog posts. Use all this information to create your own story but make sure you don’t plagiarize or use someone else’s text as if it was your own. You are unique, and you have your own message to share with this world! 

Get Feedback

After writing your text, let someone else read it and ask for feedback. Maybe there are some things that the reader does not yet fully understand. In that case, you need to fill in the information gaps. You can even team up with a writing partner to help you produce texts; you can check each other’s work before publishing. It’s always good to have a second pair of eyes take a look at your text. This person does not have the background knowledge you had while writing the text, so it is good to find out if what you wrote was convincing enough. 

Hire a Tutor

In case you feel like you need help from a professional to up your writing game, consider hiring a tutor. A tutor can help improve your writing skills by giving you weekly assignments. Together, you can discuss the outcome of your assignment. The tutor will also point out things that need your attention or points of improvement. Because of the professional background and experience of a tutor, you will see results after a while. 

Take a Course

Just like getting help from a tutor, taking a course will allow you to learn from a professional. There are various writing courses you can take. You could find them in your hometown, join a study group online, or study on your own using books. The advantage of a course is that it will teach you writing principles step by step and give you assignments so that you can immediately apply what you’ve learned. If you join a course with other students, you are able to discuss any difficulties you may face while writing and receive feedback from your teacher. 

Proofread and Edit

After finishing your text, read your written piece while paying attention to possible grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. In case you find it hard to notice these mistakes on your own, share it with your writing partner or tutor so that they can go over it again to make sure you publish text that is error-free. As much as you want to deliver a certain message with your text, you can lose credibility if you make simple mistakes that could easily be avoided by a round of proofreading. 

Keep it Simple

One danger of writing is that you can use too many prepositional phrases or long sentences to make your point. Yes, it’s good to use a wide variety of vocabulary while writing, but you don’t have to show off how many different words you can use when constructing sentences. The power of a message is found in its simplicity. This means that a very long text written on a certain topic is not necessarily better than a short one. Try to write to the point. It’s better to use active voice than passive voice to keep your audience’s attention and make them feel like they are part of the story. 

Websites to Help You Improve

You can find a vast number of websites to help you improve your writing skills. Websites like Grammarly or Quill help you with spelling and grammar checks. They also give you assignments that you can complete to improve your sentence structures. Even YouTube videos can help you with general knowledge of the English language or offer specific advice on writing. 

Practice, Practice, Practice

And now it’s time to write! Stop postponing by reading how it should be done. Instead, try it yourself. The first few times might be hard, and you might feel insecure. You may even be scared to share your text with someone else. But, in order for you to become better at it, there is really nothing better than to actually start writing. You will see that the more you do it, the more you get the hang of it. You’ll feel proud when you receive your first positive feedback. But this won’t happen if you never try. Even if you get some negative feedback, don’t take it personally. Rather, use the feedback to grow and become better. 

Takeaway

Writing is an active skill that you need to master when learning the English language. Just like any other skill, it takes practice in order for you to become better. A few things that you should consider doing include reading more, making a mind map before starting the writing process, and getting feedback from others. You can do so by teaming up with a writing partner, hiring a tutor, or joining a writing class. Various websites on the Internet can help you with improving your writing skills. Don’t be afraid to start. You can keep the first few pieces of texts to yourself as you increase your confidence in writing. But the best advice we can give you is to just take that pen and start writing down whatever comes to your mind!