How to improve your writing skill

For most English learners, writing skill could be probably the hardest skill to master. In addition to mastery of grammatical structures, it demands a better lexical resource as well as logical development of ideas to get your point across your audience.

Compared to other three main skills — reading, listening and speaking — writing skill takes rather long time to develop, and, usually in quite slow manner.

So, I asked some of our TKTiers (who are in-service now) what they excatly did to make themselves better at writing. They contributed us some wonderful tips which I would like to share with you in this blog post.

Developing your lexical resource is essential to be better at writing. Rather than setting up a specific ‘vocabulary learning time’ in your time-table, these TKTiers have figured out some informal approaches in this regard.

As you have seen writing is not my easiest skill nevertheless I try to read comments as much as possible because they are daily life opportunities to improve and I can use later what I learned from those comments, such as idioms, new words,etc.

Mendoza Vivero

As a student, I used to copy phrases and small text, song lyrics, listen to music and write the lyrics as I listen to the song and then I checked to compare how many mistakes I had.

Adriana Cabrera

When I was still a college student, I have made pen-pals by writing postcards and letters to people from English speaking countries. In order to read and answer their wonderfully written life stories, I have also grown to love reading English newspapers and need to check up with dictionaries very often. That is how constantly I become aware of writing for good audience and learn to pay more attention to express clearly what I really want to and have to say.

Kon Xiaoru

I remember that it was so hard, but I watched English movies with subtitles and I had a notebook with me. I wrote the new words that I didn't know and I wrote some sentences with them. I learnt some american idioms. Finally I improve my writing skill making a brief sentence about my daily life using new words.

Walt Marco

Careful analysis on how particular words, phrases and idioms are used in writing is also very important. Let’s see how these TKTiers did that.

First, I will listen to BBC 6 min Grammar podcast as warm up and typing to repeat one of the sentence patterns. Then I can use the same structure by making similar sentences. Secondly having the related reading section where the same pattern was embedded by giving myself grammar recognition exercises along with online TV instructions on this certain grammatical rule to wrap up. The final is getting engaged with “Write & Improve” by exercising the learnt material and have the expert to grade my writing for getting better and better.

Hsiaoling Chen

I always try to read many more books, novels, magazines,newspapers etc. I think. Then it will be very suitable to find senrence patterns, phrases & clauses too. I used to re write and create my own sentences to be more familiar with them.

Rashmi Nawshani Liyanage

I watched news on TV and wrote what I listened to and compared with the day's newspaper. I rewrote it and checked if I can recall the vocabulary used in the TV news and newspaper. I did this for nearly three years and I found a change in my writing skill.

Sathish Kumar

It is very important usage of English in daily life. In WORLD forum France 24, Aljazera, BBC, NDTV has latest news in English. Correct usage of word in a sentence can be learned this format and also can improved our general knowledge progressing vocabulary.

Vipul DeSilva

There’s no substitute for reading. Writers are readers. Reading enriches your lexical resource over various genres and gets you familiar with subtle usage of words.

As a student to develop and improve our writing skills practice by using different kinds of texts depending on the level and needs from the simple to the complex informal or formal, considering lexis, punctuation marks, useful phrases as well as collocations.

Cecilia Vazquez

Personally, the most important thing is reading. It provides you not only ideas about what to write but also lots of expressions and vocabulary. After that, all you need is to practise.

Ceci Sanchez De Brandi

First of all, I started to read a lot in order to know more vocabulary, then I analyzed grammar structures (advance), finally I would write paragraphs, another tip was when I entered into blogs to publish and read, that helped me a lot. It was my experience.

Velvet Blue Queen

Accurate use of grammar is also indispensable when it comes to writing. Therefore, improving your grammar needs your attention.

As an English learner, everyday I study the grammar lessons, learning vocabulary and I take sample writing from useful writing reference books. Then I make habit writing diary with English Language.

Izzaa Izzaa

As an English learner, I usually practice basic form of tenses.I try to use these tenses in daily conversation. And then for improving my knowledge and idea of writing skill I took from reading.

Emerald Florance

Finally, it’s about writing. Write, write, write and write. It needs discipline. Let’s see what strategies our teachers Erick, Irma, Victoriia, Nadia, Escobar, Humberto, Maria, Victoria, Hallyson and Nat have followed.

I worked a lot on different approaches. I tried Process, Product and Genre approach to writing to improve mine. I also use those approaches when I work with my students. Latin American people always find writing difficult just because we are not used to it.

Erick Alexis Maguiño Matusaki

As an English learner I think I should try to write about my daily activities in my life and about the problems and my country and the world giving my opinions about taking care of our planet.

Irma Gutierrez

As an English learner I used to create a word map with the ideas relevant to the issue and then to choose those ideas which were the best ones. After that I worked on the plan to my writing. Next, I made a draft and edited the text if necessary.

Victoriia Myronenko

I started by reading essays about different topics, taking notes of the words related to each topic, learning the structures and finally writing. Songs and tv series also helped me a lot with the vocabulary.

Nadia Barrojo

I read and follow prompts, I also look for fun activities such as answer the questions with funny answers and make a whole paragraph, just for fun. But writing is one of the hardest skills to develop. I try to improve every day.

Escobar Jess

As a learner of languages, in order to improve my writing skills, I wrote some key ideas, then ordered them in a logical way, after this step I wrote a draft, read and corrected it, changed some words or even sentences, and finally obtained the final writing.

Humberto Montemayor

I recommend keeping a journal add daily contributions such as; What was the best thing that happened to me today? What have I accomplished? What words have I learned today? I ask my students to go back to their earlier notes and this is what I get “I can’t believe I used to write like that!”

Maria Hannah Farris

I usually wrote summaries or reviews of books I had just read, an easy way of ordering my ideas, increasing my vocab and having something to talk about that was interesting for somebody else, not just for me. Currently, I keep doing my reviews for those books I love the most, it also helps promoting my favorite authors

Victoria Garcia

I keep a daily journal where I add thoughts, ideas, quotations and so on. Furthermore, I choose a daily topic on which I ask myself to reflect...it may be an article, something I found on the web or a simple quotation or topic. Then, I plan my writing throughout a draft dividing in main points my thought...and I start writing. I find it very useful and effective!

Hallyson Boldrini

To improve my writing skills, I write as much as possible. I read something to learn new vocabulary and then I try to use it. We play games: when someone gives you 5 non connected words and you need to use them in short story. Then I try to send one page letters to my friends from different countries and encourage them. We exchange our ideas about our writings, correct each other. Sometimes we choose same topic, then write short stories and discuss them.

Nat Nat

To summarize

Develop your lexical resource
Analyze how words, phrases and idioms are placed in sentences.
Read a lot
Learn grammar
Write, check and write again

All the suggestions mentioned here are authentic ones contributed by our TKTiers.
Thank you, TKTiers!

Want to improve your writing skills in technical writing? Click here.

Noel Perera

Author / Trainer

Noel Perera has helped thousands of English learners, online and offline, during his 12+ years of coaching. His coaching includes wide variety of English language workshops for young adults, adults, teachers and business professionals. Noel Perera is a former IT student, whose IT career was crushed with a passion for English. Finding a new career path as an English language coach was destiny.