There are many forms and styles of writing, ranging from creative writing to technical and academic writing. Despite the type of writing it, requires both talent and acquired skills. While some writers have inherent writing talents and others must put more effort in order to produce quality writing. However, talent alone is not enough; innate talent in writing must be combined with hard work to improve a writer’s skills. Practice is the key to improving one’s writing skills and the writer ought to pick lessons from the mistakes he or she makes in every piece of writing. The most difficult yet crucial part of writing is the ability to express one’s self in writing. Someone may have very good ideas to write on and even verbally explain them perfectly well but writing the ideas is a completely different ball game. Unfortunately, expressing one’s self is not something one can learn from a classroom, but can be developed through extensive and intensive reading to develop the skill of choosing the right written phrases and vocabulary.
I received instructions and assignments on important elements of essay writing in my English 3000 and 3001 classes. In addition, I have done several writing exercises on topics such as “The value of college education” and “the impact of outsourcing on U.S. economy and the economy of other countries.” Theses exercise assignments together with out-of-class essay drafts; discussions on various topics with my classmates through blackboard discussion and vocabulary and grammar exercises have helped in improving my writing skills. Review and critique of my written work by my classmates and my teacher have also helped in improving my written expression of ideas, opinions and facts.
At the beginning of the course, I struggled with introducing my subjects/topics and formulating a good and strong thesis that would guide my arguments in the essay. I also struggled with coming up with summarized concluding remarks without sounding repetitive or introducing a new idea not present in the essay’s body. However, with the help of my teacher and exercising through several writing assignments given in the class helped me to overcome these challenges and to improve my writing. The teacher gave us useful handouts on “crafting a strong thesis” and, “writing an effective introduction.” I studied these handouts and endeavored to apply the knowledge therein in preparing my essay assignments and preceding drafts. Indeed, “good writers write a lot” because the more I wrote, the better my theses statements; introductions and conclusions became. In addition, I used the feedback provided by teacher after every essay to improve my next essay. The feedback, I received from the teacher and my peer reviewers helped me to overcome the problems grammatical errors such as fixing a sentence fragment, and run-on sentences and coma splices. The feedback further improved my written expression and vocabulary.
Proofreading my essays after completion helped me identify my mistakes and I learnt from the same as I edited the essays. I also learnt that it is important to give the papers to a second person to proofread the essays because they may see mistakes I missed out during my proofreading. Reading novels has helped improve my vocabulary and creativity in expression of ideas and opinions.
Like any other skill, writing skills are continuously developed, and there is always room for improvement. As such, one must continuously improve his or her writing skills through practice and learning from other more accomplished writers. To improve the content of writing and the writing skills hard work and regular writing exercise is mandatory.
