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12 activities to upgrade your writing skills to the next level

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Perfect writing skills could be acquired only by constant practice and diligence. No one was born a great writer. Every person may become a writer if he or she is enough studious and decisive. Every person has its own point to improve writing skills. Someone needs it for work, someone for studies. Maybe you just want to launch your own international company channel, and you need to write in English. Surely, practicing and learning will take you a long time before you master it. However, once you learn the method, you will be able to write any paper. We have collected for you the most important clues for improving writing skills.

writing skills

  1. Write dictations. With the help of dictations, it is possible not only check your grammar but also improve it. This method, like the courses or tutoring, is not so interesting, but it is very effective.
  2. Look for mistakes. Another essential way to improve grammar is to study the rules in the semantic context of a speech. That means that it is better to write not knowing the rules than to know all the rules by heart, but not to write. You should also edit what you write, but it is not necessary to correct mistakes only in your work. You can find them in newspapers, magazines, friends’ essays, etc. That would increase your spelling attention and you will be more organized and attentive while writing a personal paper.
  3. Read aloud. At school, teachers told us to read aloud, to pronounce every word when we were writing, and that was to teach us the right spelling. When we usually read, we do not pronounce each word. This kind of reading only helps us to accumulate images of words through our visual memory. Nonetheless, reading aloud operates with a verbal-motor memory in order to save the images of words corresponding to the spelling standard.
  4. Rewrite sentences. Rewriting is an effective method. Just take a piece of paper and a pen. Firstly, read the sentence and learn it by heart. Find main grammar forms in the sentence. Repeat the sentence again paying attention to grammar. Write it down without looking at it and then check your sentence.
  5. Play word games and draw. To remember the spelling of a word or a rule in which you constantly make a mistake, you can just draw it.  How you will do it – depends only on your imagination. To improve grammar, it is also useful to solve puzzles, crosswords, and anagrams. Once you know how to improve your grammar, it is time to give you some important clues for writing in general.
  6. Try to keep all your papers in a definite place. Use notebooks, folders, a laptop, and notepad for your papers. When they are gathered together, it would be easier for you to find the works which you have already written and compare them to the new ones. In this way, you will see if you make any improvements.  You will be able to define what mistakes you stopped to make and what you need to work at.
  7. Do not stop practicing. It sounds simple, but to improve your writing skills, you must write in English as much as possible. Try to do it every day.  It may take you 20-40 minutes a day which is not so much. Only by making small steps, you will reach the goal.
  8. Start writing right after having chosen a topic. We advise you to start writing as quickly as possible, without thinking for hours about the topic. It does not matter what you write about. Just start writing. You can, for example, describe the objects that you see, people who surround you, view from the window. You also can write a dialog and put it in a story. If it is still difficult for you to choose a topic, find it on the Internet.
  9. Use two or more drafts to write. You are free to start writing from a part which will be the last one in the final version of the text and then to write the first one. Leave space between lines.  In that way, when you reread the text, you will be able to add a new sentence if needed. It will improve your work. When all parts of your paper are written, put them in order using numbers for each paragraph.
  10. Write something extraordinary. Now, when you have learned how to describe things around you, try to do it from the new angle. You can rewrite the story from the part of another narrator, or wonder how other people perceive the surrounding events. Use various tenses, imagine, and create.
  11. Ask your friends or family to check what you write. It will be useful for you if somebody else reads your papers. Sometimes, we do not remark our own mistakes. English-speaking friend will help you with that. Moreover, if you let your friend read your paper, he or she might give you some new ideas which also will make your writing better. Give to your friend the whole work or a part which was the most complex for you to write.
  12. Good place-good writing. Try to write in the places you like the most. It may be a garden, a bench in the local park, a bank of the river or a library. Your task is to find a place where you feel the most relax and inspired. Sometimes, there is too much noise or people that may disturb you. Take these facts into consideration. You also can use headphones to write when listening to music. The best for you would be to find a quiet and comfortable place. Choose the appropriate time for your writing – early morning, lunchtime or night. That will help you arrange your thoughts.

You should memorize that you can develop writing skills over time. Write a lot, and only then, you will see effective results.

 

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