There are many students who are good at talking but lack essay writing skills or vice versa. If you feel like your writing isn’t as good as you want it to be, it’s time to start working on it. It’s possible to improve any kind of skills if you just practice in a lot of ways.
5 Effective Ways to Improve Your Essay Writing Skills
1. Read a lot.
Reading shows you different styles of writing and all of their outstanding features. By remembering them, you will become better at writing any type of academic tasks. Read books, other academic works, scientific articles, newspapers, etc. to understand the rules of different writing styles. Also, find some high-quality essays of argumentative, persuasive, descriptive, and other types, and read them, remembering the structure and phrases used.
2. Go back to the basics.
Recall all the lessons when your teachers gave you tips on writing, starting with the elementary or middle school. If necessary, read more information on it, as although basics seem very easy, one might easily forget them. Read about the basic writing skills and be ready for a surprise, because you might have forgotten something very easy yet important. Guides and learning books can be found online or in libraries, so they are quite accessible.
3. Keep an academic diary.
To practice the actual skills, you should write a lot but not too much. When you have something you would like to talk about, try to write an essay on the theme. You can use personal topics as well as more common ones like a movie you watched recently. Make sure you have different types of works written in your diary, so you have a diverse practice. If necessary, look for the rules of a particular type of work, as this isn’t a test yet.
4. Make a teacher check some of your works.
If you feel like getting some extra check by a specialist, give some of the papers to your teacher. You can give him or her your common writings, it isn’t necessary to share your personal affairs with anyone. An adequate evaluation of your work will help you immensely, so if you wonder how to improve writing skills, this is one of the best ways.
5. Learn literary writing rules.
People use different styles when writing messages online, emails to their professors, friends, etc. There are many shortened words and slang, but this isn’t what you need in academic writing. So, to make your skills better, learn the rules of the literary language. Try to talk like that with your friends for a while – this will help you get used.
Conclusion
They say practice makes perfect, and it’s always true. However, practice has to be diverse as well, because if you only write for several hours a day, this may become boring. Your personal interest in improving your skills is highly important, and if you want to write better, prepare to do more. Read a lot, write a lot about the things you like, make specialists check your writing, etc., and you will succeed.