General Writing Improvement Strategies
Writing is a skill like playing tennis. You have to practice. There is a lot of extra work you can do on your own to help you become a better writer. Doing these activities, you’ll practice your writing, practice your penmanship, and practice forming opinions. To improve your writing, pay attention when you read. Notice how the author of your book organizes thoughts and expresses ideas. You can do the same thing.Take the model college essays and write them out by hand. Write them several times until you get a feel for the use of transition phrases and other cohesive devices. Try to understand how the details support the topic sentences. Pay attention to the introductions and conclusions. Read more. A lot of research has shown that reading improves your writing. Reading will build your vocabulary and your understanding of the way ideas are expressed. Read every chance you get. An essay is made up of sentences. If you have some extra time, for example, while waiting for someone, don’t just stare at the wall. Buy a notebook to record your thoughts and your writing. Don’t use this notebook for anything but for essay editing and writing practice only. This notebook will be your private classroom.
Keep a journal. Record the events of the day. Tell what happened and what you felt about the event. Record what you thought about the events and what conclusions you reached. This will give you practice in writing about your opinions. Review these notes periodically to see if any of these opinions can be used in your essays. When events happen, take notes. Later in the day reread your notes and turn them into sentences. Turn the sentences into paragraphs. Write every day. Give yourself a gift of time. Spend five minutes a day writing, and do it faithfully everyday. Once a week, assign yourself a topic and write an essay in thirty minutes. Go back over your writing frequently. The more you write, the better writer you will become. You may think of a better, or a different, way of expressing a thought. Use the blank page to experimentwith different ways of expressing the same idea. When you rewrite, imagine you are writing for a different audience. The first time you wrote for yourself. How would you change your writing if your friends were to read it? Your teacher? Your mother? A stranger?