How to Improve English Writing Skills?

It is generally not recognized but writing is probably the most commonly used language skill for many people. Because English is generally learned for professional and academic purposes and in many cases, it is used to write emails and essays. As a result, writing is a really important skill. So, how can a person improve writing skills? There are some things you can apply to improve your writing skills.

1) Pay attention to your grammar. As teachers, we generally don’t force our students to pay a lot of attention to grammar while speaking because speaking is mostly used in informal settings. However, writing is generally used in formal settings and you should be careful about grammatical usages.   

2) Writing isn’t simultaneous. You don’t have to think and write quickly at the same time like speaking. You have time, so use this time effectively to write better sentences. 

3) Get help from another person. You can get somebody (your teacher, one of your friends) to check your writings. We are human beings, so it is possible to miss some mistakes. Somebody else can provide you some solutions and better ideas.

4) Be careful about similarities and differences between your native language and English. For example my native language is Turkish. Adjectives are used the same in my language and English. But we use verbs at the end of the sentence in Turkish while in English verbs are used after the subject. There are some similarities and differences between your native language and English. Be careful about them because most writing mistakes result from the differences between students’ native language and English. 

5) Copy. Copying is a really important step to improve your writing skills. For example if you are going to write an essay, start writing by copying good essays. You can find a lot of sample writings on the internet about essays, business emails, letters etc. Find good writings and copy them. But there is an important point. You shouldn’t copy them exactly. Try to change some things and add some of your own sentences. 

6) Find an online friend. This can be really helpful in terms of both improving writing skills and also learning new things in English. Find a pen friend and write to him or her regularly. By doing this you can practice writing regularly. By the way don’t always try to find people higher than your level, try to help others who are lower than your level too. 

7) Use online games. If you are playing an online game you can start playing it on European or North American servers. You can chat with your team and others in English to improve your writing. Believe me it works; I improved my English a lot thanks to Warcraft. 

Well, for now these are some tips which come to my mind. Just remember this, spend time on your writing and it is going to improve one way or another. If you spend this time on something you like such as having a pen friend or playing online games, you will improve it even more. Because you don’t do these things to study and that’s why you don’t get bored. As a result you spend more time on them without getting bored. On the other hand, you should also study writing because online games and pen friends are really effective but they aren’t formal. 

Always remember; Copy, practice and be careful. That’s all you need to do.