How to improve writing ability? book, Read, dictionary

leenyao

just some experiences

I copied the followings from the 'writings and notes' section.
1. Reading is of first importance. But now you may focus on the writing skills of the author. Try to enjoy and cherish the other's writing skills.
2. Read a good English writing textbook (do not read a rubbish book).
3. Purchase a good dictionary of synonyms and the other related reference books for writing.
4. Practice writing. But better find someone, when possible, to make a correction or comment for you (maybe you are not so lucky).  Actually we are practicing writing on this English forum.
5. Do not rely on any grammer book. Grammer is useful only when your level is very low. All the authors of thick grammer books are liars in some senses.  I hate them.  They waste our valuable time.
6. Can you write Chinese well? If you can not, improve you Chinese writing first.

      The above suggestions are for those who want to start English writing. Later on, you may be interested in rhetoric, writing style, semantics, et al.  I like to add the comments as below.

      Essentially advanced reading can not be sussessful unless some writing skills are mastered.  Writing skills and advanced reading comprehension are both very closely related.  After all, any language is an art rather than a science.  No precise rule can be followed exctly.  When you finished even all those grammer courses, you can find that the grammer books say nearly nothing about organizing a paragraph, though you may use the grammer book rules (low-level rules in fact) to write a single sentence.  The sentence you wrote could be correct, but the same sentence could become not suitable when you put it in a specific context or language environment.  You may learn some high-level rules from a good writing text book.  If you read more, you can find that these books are so different from each other, implying a high-level rule is not as mechanical as those low ones.  Do not worry so much of Chinese style in your English writing.  Because of the culture difference, such a style may stimulate culture exchange, haha, only if what you write can be easily understood by the readers.  In summary, writing is not so mysterious.  As an advanced skill of English language relative to reading, writing requires a better and longer patience and needs new eyes and new skills that are different from mastering the reading comprehension.

xiaomeixin

I think we must practice writing articles as often as we can.

leenyao

回复 2# xiaomeixin


    yes,you are right

evaxiaofan

just keep practice~~

leenyao

回复 4# evaxiaofan


    i think so