How to improve your written English

Tweet

Writing perfect English means knowing all the rules of spelling, punctuation and grammar, when to apply which rule and, perhaps more importantly, when not to! Improving your written English can be done by reading well-written texts and learning how they are put together, but an even better method is to get down to writing and then learn how to do it better. It is also important to read English that means something to you, in the sense that it written about subjects that are important to you or that you just find interesting to read. For example, if you are a medical student you should read plenty of texts on medical subjects, so that you get practice in reading and writing the sort of things that matter in your chosen profession. If you have no interest in sport, don’t bother reading accounts of football matches! I used to spend a lot of my time reading and correcting texts written by students for whom English was not their native language. I found the same mistakes cropping up time and time again, because these had not been pointed out to the students and they had not learned how to phrase their sentences so as to avoid these mistakes. It is a good idea to get somebody who is a native speaker to go through some texts of yours and show you where you are going wrong. Learn from these mistakes, write some more texts, and see how well you can do!