Improving your writing by writing!

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing recently. I’ve been talking about it, reading about it and mostly importantly listening to successful international students telling me about how they improved their ability in writing. It’s one of the most frequent questions I get asked. ‘Patrick, how can I improve my writing?’ and it is one of the hardest questions to answer.  When a student asks me this I always pull a face and rub my chin thoughtfully.   ‘Hmmm…yes, well… Gosh is that the time?”

Every student is different but all the successful students have one thing in common – and that is that they found a strategy which worked for them, and once they found a strategy that worked they stuck to it and this became their path through the jungle of learning.  One thing is probably true – that your writing is improved by writing. Sounds obvious? In fact, many students are so worried about making mistakes that they don’t write at all! Think about learning other things in life – learning to speak your first language, learning to walk, your first English lessons. How good were you when you started? Not very! Think about learning to drive -  you can read all about how the gears work, how you should use the pedals and so on but you can’t learn to drive until you get in the car, switch on the engine and start going. Why should it be any different with other skills? Like reading, listening and speaking, your writing will get better the more you write. There are times when you should write and concentrate on your accuracy because it is important to be correct. But other times you should write for language improvement when the content of what you write is important. Think about speaking – if you are giving a formal presentation in English you will think carefully about what you are going to say and prepare it. But other times you will speak casually in English and not worry about your mistakes. Of course your casual speaking will improve your English for when you  give presentations. So it is with writing. If you can write ‘casually’ every day you will improve your writing so that when you need to perform an important and accurate writing task you will be much better at it.

Writing casually could mean:

• keeping a real personal diary about your everyday life (as people have done for centuries) only in English!
• writing a journal about something which is ongoing (about work, study, English studies)
• writing to a penpal (on paper or by e mail)
• forming a writing group with friends and swapping texts you have written for fun
• writing e mails to friends in English instead of your usual language (Friends are often embarrassed to speak English to each other – what about writing English to each other? You might find your friends think is  a great idea.)
• starting your own blog so you can write online. There’s any number of free blogs out there which are ready made for you to use. If you don’t publicise it no one will ever know about it. Or do publicise it and have fun!
• write a message to the new forum at English for University. I have set up a ‘casual writing’ forum for this purpose.

Of course, there are times when you want serious feedback on your writing and there is nothing better than sitting down with a teacher who can point out mistakes to you. Unfortunately most students don’t have a private teacher who they can do this with!

Congratulations to Sarah who studies at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland for winning this month’s prize of a year’s access to Macmillan’s Advanced English and IELTS course. Same for next month – if you have already entered you don’t need to enter again because I will just keep your name in the hat. If you’re a new reader read about the monthly prize here.

Making a timetable for your work

OK, so not many posts recently! That means I have been busy! Please visit the new forum that I have set up and ask questions to me or other readers. I had a forum a few months ago but I got fed up with all the advertisements that came with it. I particularly dislike advertisements from companies who will write your essays for you!! When you visit the forum you will be asked to sign in. This is only to stop idiots and your e mail will not be abused in any way.

It is nearly time to do the January draw. Read here about how to enter to win a place on an online Advanced English and IELTS course.

I have talked to lots of students recently about writing their dissertation. You might think that you have a long time to do it – you do not! One strong piece of advice that I would give to students working on a big piece of work is to have a timetable for your work. It might start something like this:

If you fill out a timetable  like this now you will not leave everything to the last minute. Of course you can adapt the timetable as you go along, and this process of adapting it will lead you to be continually monitoring your progress.

As usual I also have a very useful link for you about dissertation writing from Reading University here.

New Year’s Resolution – subscribe to a podcast!

First of all I should apologise for some rogue posts which came out at the weekend – there were some technical difficulties so subscribers got empty or old posts – so sorry about that. I hope it doesn’t happen again.

I met a student today who I hadn’t seen for a few months. Wow! I really noticed a difference in his English. We looked at his work and although there were  quite a few mistakes in it I was really thrilled to see how he had improved. The best thing was that he was writing his own work and even though it had some mistakes it conveyed his ideas. Work which is original and thoughtful can get good marks even though the English is not perfect. We talked for a few minutes and it was clear that he was a lot more confident with his English. He said proudly “I am sure my English is much better than before.”  So I asked him how this had happened and he told me his secret – listening for one hour a day to the news in English on his headphones! The result of this is that now he understands all his lectures! The most interesting thing of all is that by improving his listening his writing is getting far better as well. He now has the confidence to write without copying.

So get listening! To whet your appetite (yes, to ‘get you interested’) why not take a look at this list of podcasts which you can subscribe to from the BBC? If you look in the right hand column of boxes you will see one which says ‘The best of Today’. Well, ‘Today’ is the flagship (i.e. best, most important, most recognised, most symbolic) news programme on BBC radio. This podcast lasts just ten minutes and it is the best parts of the programme put together and packaged up nicely just for you for free!

Not another ‘literature review’ post, surely!

Oh no! Not another post about a literature review! Yes, but this one is better!!
Before I get to that I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year! Please read here to enter the January draw for a Macmillan online English course if you haven’t entered for the draw before (previous entrants are automatically entered). It would be fun to hear from some of you – how about leaving an entry in the guestbook? I know – I’ll enter you again for the draw if you write in the guestbook! So you double your chances (and the chances are already quite good as there are not many entrants!).

I have been searching for some time for a good platform to put up lectures online and I think I have found something pretty handy.  It is called Wiziq (pronounced ‘wise i q’ not ‘wizik’ as I keep saying) and I have been able to record a lecture and show the powerpoint at the same time. I am much happier with this talk about writing a lecture review than the posts I have written before. If you want to view this lecture you will need to sign up for Wiziq but it’s free and worth it I think.

If you need to write a literature review (or know someone who does!) then please watch the talk or forward the post. It lasts just over 20 minutes. I would like some serious feedback – does the sound work? How is the picture? What about the content?? Please review the lecture by leaving a comment using the blue comment button at the top of this post.

(Watch out for your pop up blocker when you try to watch!)