How to Improve Your Writing Skills

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Original Editor - Michael Rowe

Top Contributors - Ewa Jaraczewska, Jess Bell and Kim Jackson  

Introduction

Transforming and organising ideas into written text is a complex activity. Writing is a process which involves integration of higher and lower level skills. Content, structure and organization are considered a high level skills, while punctuation, choice of appropriate vocabulary and grammatical structures are low level skills.

Writing competence is essential in both daily lives and academic achievement. A person's ability to write well, and to communicate their thinking clearly and effectively through writing, is essential for learning. Writing helps individuals to express their ideas effectively. It assists with building their analytical, rational and critical thinking skills. Writing helps in improving persons'presentation skills and builds effective oral communication skill by making the speech eloquent, concise and elegant.

Academic writing is a complex phenomenon that includes a creation of essays, reports, theses up to scientific papers, or reviews of articles. Students need writing skills to be able to execute their academic tasks. This article will discuss different perspective on writing and offers suggestions on how to improve ability to write and to communicate thinking more effectively.

Definitions

Writing: a form of human communication that involves the representation of language through symbols.

Text: the result of writing.

Reader: the interpreter of the text.

Why Writing?

Writing should be a way of improving persons' ability to think and to learn. It should bring clarity and structure to the writers' thinking and the way they can improve learning and understanding.

Weak Writing

Most novice writers are weak writers. The following are considered main reasons for poor writing:

• The curse of knowledge: the writer is unable to grasp the idea that the reader may not have the same level of knowledge
• The writers do not understand what they are writing about. They use jargon and complicated ideas to convince the reader that they know what they're talking about
• Overuse of the passive voice. Passive writing is impersonal. It hides the active participant in the text and comes across as vague and evasive.

Classic Style

Classic style is a foundation for improving writing.

Writing in classic style means the following:

• Telling the readers something true and important that they did not already know
• Telling the story in a way that there is no doubt as to what the writer means
• The writer understands the concept thoroughly, before putting it into words

Classic style is premised on the following:

• The writer has seen something in the world.
• The writer positions the reader, so they can see it with their own eyes.
• The reader and writer are equals
• The goal is to help the reader see something that is real.
• The style is conversational

Rules of Writing

1. Writer to be able to self-express well
2. Writer to have a basic understanding of the language rules
3. Writer to have good reading skills that will give the writer insight into how others use language to communicate effectively

Stages of Writing

Because writing is an interactive process, it includes phases that overlap. Before or during the process of writing, the writers should be open to change their way of thinking and the destination of the initial writing. Four stages of writing in a step-down sequence include pre-writing, drafting, editing, and revising.

Pre-writing phase outlines the idea and searches for resources necessary for the writing, and organises the content.

Drafting phase is a complete, but not final version of the writing. This phase can include having a good understanding of what the writer wants to say, preparing several drafts, and deleting words not aligned with the purpose of the task.

Editing phase focuses on tidying up the writing. It may include, but is not limited to attending to transitions between paragraphs or subsections, signposting, improving the grammar, correctly formatting the references, and deleting what is not working for the piece that was written. It can also include the step of sending the piece to someone who is a better writer than she original author and asking them for help on how to improve it further.

Revising phase includes amending fundamental aspects of the original based on the feedback received. Revisions can comprise change some of the structure, or the way the evidence is presented. In summary, revision may span from gaining a fresh perspective to the task to replacing the original idea with a new one.

Text Structure

The structure of the text may vary depending on the topic, the audience and the purpose of writing, however each piece should contain the following three basic sections:

• The introduction
  • includes the main concepts which is introduced to the reader. The understanding of this concept will determine how well the rest of the piece is understood
  • identifies the main characters in the story
  • presents the problem that the writer is going to resolve through the writing
  • shows the background or context in which the narrative takes place
• The body of the text
  • includes the arguments the writer is making that relate to the characters and the problem introduced earlier.
  • writers remains consistent how they frame their arguments. The structure of the writing can be chronological, geographical or social, as long as it is consistent throughout the text.
• The conclusion
  • ties writing's loose ends
  • answers questions asked earlier in the piece
  • brings characters' stories to a close
  • resolves the problem the author presented in the introduction

Barriers to Writing

Barrier # 1:lack of time/procrastination.

Solution: schedule time to write until daily writing is a habit ("time blocking")

Barrier # 2: waiting to have the right resources.

Solution: there is always going to be more research to do, more articles to read, and more notes to make, so start NOW.

Barrier # 3: inadequate equipment, e.g. old computer.

Solution: develop a habit of carrying a pen and notepad with you wherever you go so that you can write almost anywhere.

Barrier # 4: waiting for inspiration.

Solution: more you write, the better you get at writing. Do not wait for inspiration. Allocate the time to write.

Barrier #5: having a "writer’s block."

Solution: writer's block is not real. Start with putting one word after another, edit, gather resources, read, and take notes.

Barrier # 6: writing environment is not set up yet.

Solution: disconnect from the internet, turn off your device notifications, take out your pen and notepad, and start writing. Your writing environment is ready.

Tips to Improve Writing

Tip # 1: Writing is learned best through gaining writing experience. To improve their writing, you should read a lot. Good readers equals good writers.

Tip #2: Write one word at a time, because this is how the writing is accomplished.

Tip # 3: Invest in learning. Write about the topic that you care about

Tip # 4: Clear thinking becomes clear writing. Do not use jargon and big words.

Tip #5: Avoid words such as very, quite, basically, actually, virtually, extremely, remarkably, and completely. They do not have any impact on the sentence.

Tip #6: Including citations at the end of the sentence replaces these sentences “Research shows that…”, “Recent studies indicate that…”, or “New findings suggest that…”as they add little meaning.

Tip # 7: Be selective about what you want to include in your writing and leave out whatever doesn't serve the purpose of your writing.

Tip # 8: Use dictionary and a thesaurus while writing to expand your vocabulary

Resources

1. Graham P. How to write usefully.
2. Pinker S. 10 'grammar rules' it's OK to break (sometimes).
3. Ball CE, Loewe DM. Bad ideas about writing.