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What can I do to improve my writing?
British Council tutor Rob shares some ideas to help you improve your English writing.
Earlier this week, we asked you how you feel about writing in English. It’s a question that often gets very strong reactions. On the one hand, a lot of people prefer writing to speaking because you have more time to plan what you want to say and to edit and change what you’ve written to make it better. On the other hand, speaking is about communication, and even if you make some mistakes you can still get your message across. When you’re writing, though, you can feel under pressure to get everything absolutely correct. So what can you do to improve your writing in English?
Well, just as I said that listening a lot is a great way to help your speaking skills, reading a lot will definitely help you with writing. What kind of writing do you need or want to do? If you need to write emails for work, look at other people’s emails. What features do they have in common? It’s easy to find examples of every kind of writing. We’ve mentioned the importance of planning. It’s the key to any successful writing. Time spent thinking about what you want to say and how you want to organise it is always time well spent. There’s also a huge range of materials to help you practise and develop your writing skills.
We’ve posted some of them on this step for you. Like everything with English, practise is the key.
Listen to Rob talking about things you can do to improve your writing. Add your own ideas in the comments below.As Rob mentioned, there are many excellent online resources you can use to develop your general writing skills. Here are some to help you practise and develop your skills in writing emails, letters and essays.
- An informal email – a look at the conventions and language in informal correspondence.
- A more formal email – a look at the structure and language of more formal correspondence.
- Writing a formal letter – an introduction to writing formal letters.
- Try this complete IELTS writing Practice Test to help you prepare.
- A for and against essay
- Sample Task 1 and Task 2 writing questions with sample answers and examiner comments to help you prepare.
This article is from the online course:
Understanding IELTS: Techniques for English Language Tests
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Understanding IELTS: Techniques for English Language Tests
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