Hey, just signed up here as this site seems to be good at helping and guiding people in improving and getting the best out of there writing, as a college student I decided not to continue my English course instead focusing on my 4 courses Media, Computing, Business and English General Studies. With my practice essays that I have been writing up in my revision lessons I have realized that there are many problems with the way that I write, this being my lack of vocabulary and the lack of basic structure in my writing, I also have been said to have a problem of not getting straight to the point and writing about the same thing repeatedly although in a different way.
Could you provide any help and tips in which could improve my writing, I am taking my exams in a couple of weeks and would appreciate any pointers in which could help improve my writing technique. Even little tips will go a long way.
Thankyou.
In the long run, participating in this site -- reading and commenting on the writing of others while also getting feedback on your own writing -- will improve your writing. We learn writing best by writing and by helping others with their writing.
Another way to improve your writing in the long run is to read regularly and widely. Online, visit the websites of real newspapers and magazines, rather than just blogs and forums. Offline, read books, newspapers, and magazines. If you are interested in media, computing, and business, find reading materials in those areas. Read all of your course materials, for sure, but also do extra outside reading. This will improve your vocabulary and your writing ability naturally.
In the short term, you can improve your writing by studying the text book for your English General Studies class. It seems that you already know your weaknesses: redundancy and lack of concision. These can often be solved by outlining before writing. Force yourself to think through exactly what you want to say, organizing this into an outline in which each idea is expressed in only a few words. Before writing, review the outline to ensure you've not listed the same thing two or three times. The draft your essay from your outline, sticking to it and avoiding the urge to repeat yourself. Because you have already made your points in just a few words each, it will be easier for you to go straight to the point when writing.
Sometimes, too, people start writing just to write themselves into an idea. As a result, their first paragraph or two might be verbose, off-topic, overly general, or some combination of these three. In such cases, simply go back and delete your first paragraph or two once you have figured out what you want to write about.
Also, if you are going to be writing for exams, you probably want to focus less on revision, and more on how to write so as to minimize the need for revision, as you won't have time to really rework your essays on an exam. One of the keys to coming up with a first draft that is able to stand on its own is to revise as you go. That is, make sure you are constantly rereading what you have just written, to see how everything connects together. So, you write your topic sentence for a paragraph. Then, you reread it to see how it sounds before writing the next sentence in the paragraph, in order to develop a strong transition between the two sentences. Once you have your second sentence, you go back and quickly reread both of the first two sentences before writing the third one. Once you have finished a paragraph, go back and reread the entire paragraph before moving on to the next one. Obviously, you will tend to reset at the end of each paragraph, simply in order to conserve time. Still, this will catch most grammatical and spelling errors, while improving the flow of your writing. It will also make you less likely to repeat yourself.
Here's a tip for revising as you go when taking a test on paper (rather than on the computer): Write on every other line of the paper, like double-spacing. This way, there's lots of room above each line to write in new or revised words or phrases.
I used to have that problem about not getting to the point when I was writing an essay. My teacher told me to make sure that each piece of writing I do is constantly proving or backing up my thesis. But not to be too strict as each line is proving your thesis.
As for vocabulary, I find the more I read; novels, magazines anything really, helped develop my vocabulary a lot. The more I read the more I'd find words I didn't know the meaning to so I'd look them up and that's how I began to increase my vocabulary.
Hope this helps a little !
I am trying to improve my writing through usage of various sentence structures. Any suggestions how can I get hold of as many sentence structures as I can ?
Moreover, I find it difficult to use Simile or Metaphor. Any suggestions to improve on that.
Thanks !
The Elements of Style or, really, just about any writer's handbook will walk you through the different sentence structures.
The most important thing in the use of metaphor or simile is for your images to be fresh and unique. So, when you are thinking of describing or comparing someone or something, let your mind drift and see what images appear before your mind's eye. Or, you can ask yourself questions. If you are describing a very quiet scene and would like to use a metaphor or simile, ask yourself, "what is the most quiet place I can imagine?"
For metaphors, the key is to draw on words that already have strong symbolic associations. So, if you just say "hate is a glove," your metaphor won't make sense. If, on the other hand, you say "hate is a jet black glove stretched tight over a pale hand," you have something you can work with. The color black is already associated with evil and negativity in our culture, and most people identify hate as a negative emotion. The term "pale" in turn is associated with sickness and decay. So, the metaphor says something along the lines of "hate is a negative emotion that can envelop and constrict (implied by "stretched tight") the soul (represented here by the hand), causing it to sicken and decay.
You can use this technique to create a comparison between just about any abstract concept, especially emotions, and any concrete noun. So,
Sadness is a cup
Sadness is a cracked china cup, sitting forgotten in a dusty cupboard.
Intelligence is a knife
Intelligence is a keen-edged machete slicing through thickets in a jungle of ignorance.
And so on. In each case, the main comparison involves words picked at random (sadness, cup; intelligence, knife) giving you some originality, but the supporting structure is rooted in familiar cultural symbols that make it easy for the reader to understand the metaphor.
