Living in the UK: Learning English Part 6: Building Habits to Write Well
Welcome to the last issue of our “Learning English” series! Last time we shared about how to immediately improve our writing by reducing the number of mistakes we might make. But in the longer term, some of us may not want to stop at writing correctly - we may also want to write in a lively and expressive way; to use new vocabulary, new expressions - and to truly speak our minds in English.
If this is your English writing goal - or maybe you just want to make sure that you can better spot potential grammar mistakes when you are proofreading your own writing, then this article is for you! We can form these helpful habits to strengthen our writing skills, as well as the scope of vocabulary and topics at our disposal:
Read a lot. Cliché as it sounds, the more texts and genres we read, the more new sentence structures, grammatical patterns and expressions we will be exposed to. As our brains are very good at picking up combinations of words and patterns, if we feed our brains with more English patterns, our brains will be able to come up with the right sentence patterns and expressions more easily.
Our brains can also spot that “something is off” with a certain text, even if they cannot tell what grammar rules have been violated. And that is because our brains subconsciously compare what we are reading to the English patterns our brains have collected previously. This is also why many proficient English users may not be able to explain the rules behind sentence patterns except by appealing to their “feelings” or “instincts”, since their brains learnt through repeated exposure instead of memorising grammar rules.Collect the styles, vocabulary and expressions you need. For those of us who are working to strengthen our writing skills for practical needs, we can focus on reading the relevant materials. For example, if we work in engineering, we may want to access reports produced by our local colleagues, websites and materials about the industry sector to familiarise ourselves with the terms and the style in which procedures and instructions are being written. But if we want to develop a personal, persuasive writing style, reading famous speeches, great works of literature and collecting quotes will give us a taste of how others write to convince and also materials to be referenced in our own writings.
Write a lot. To write well, one also needs to write often. One easy way to keep us writing is to keep a diary or a journal in English. We can write a short paragraph on one interesting thing that happened during the day, or one thing that we are thankful for. Or write while we read by writing down reflections and elaborating on quotes and ideas that interest us. We can also write notes, memos, task lists and even social media posts and messages in English.
How, then, do we write? The goal of writing for an audience (like our potential employers, work colleagues, or anyone we are writing to) is to write clearly, concisely and mistake-free. But in our own private writings, it is time to experiment with the English language! Try expanding short sentences into elaborate ones, and embellish the content by really going into details and descriptions.
If there are terms and phrases that we do not know how to express in English yet, do not interrupt our writing by turning to a dictionary at once. Just try our best to describe what we want to say in English and keep writing uninterrupted. We can always consult a dictionary afterwards. We can also consult online thesaurus like the Cambridge Dictionary: English Thesaurus to find out how to express the same thing in different words or expressions.Work on grammar and do some writing exercises. If we can pinpoint the areas we want to work on, such as grammar, we can spend some time on grammar exercises like the free lessons offered by the British Council. There are also many free writing exercises and writing prompts online like Write and Improve, where we can pick a writing genre we want to practise and improve (such as a letter or a summary).
If we decide to write as much as possible in English, then we can easily turn some of our everyday writings into writing exercises by getting someone (or something) to read through them and give us feedback. One of the free and easy ways to do so would be to get generative AI programmes (like ChatGPT) to point out possible issues in our writings. We can also ask the programme to explain how to say something in English or how to use certain expressions. If the programme spots a mistake, we can also ask it to provide an explanation on the issues, as well as to suggest alternative ways to write it.
If we are attending an ESOL class at the same time, we can also ask for the teacher’s help in proofreading our writing and explaining some of the issues found in them. (Unsure about how to find ESOL classes in your region? Read this blog article to find out more about UK ESOL opportunities and other English learning resources!)Caution:
Please do not rely solely on generative AI programmes like ChatGPT to check an important piece of writing, or to rely on them for fact-checking our writings. Generative AI programmes are known for occasionally fabricating facts (also known as “hallucinating”) and coming up with incorrect translations, so we need to verify the information we obtain through generative AI programmes!
We hope that some of the tips, suggestions and resources we have shared throughout the series have been helpful to you. Now, at the end of the series, we have a few more special tips about learning English!
Learning English takes time. So, let's be kind with ourselves when we make mistakes. Especially when we know we make a mistake, then it is actually a time for celebration: because we know enough English to know that we make mistakes! (Hurray!)
English is a tool for communication. It is nice to have good English skills but the end goal is to talk to people. So, don’t wait till you have perfect grammar and pronunciation before using English. We do not need to worry about how much we can communicate in words: given enough context (including non-verbal clues like gesturing), a lot of people can guess what we mean. And mobile apps like Google Translate can also be good communication tools if we want to make sure that our audience gets the idea about what we are trying to convey.
Learning English takes time. (And we cannot emphasise this enough.) Keeping our English learning activities and exercises fun will help motivate us to keep learning and improving for a long time to come. Better still, combine leisure with learning and start binge watching Netflix in English! And do not forget about rest or even taking holidays from our studies once in a while too.
To make learning English truly fun, why not join communities of English-speaking friends? A lot of churches in the UK offer different groups and activities, from English cafes, English classes, to toddlers’ groups and arts-and-crafts groups. They welcome everyone, so let's find out here what interesting activities churches in our neighbourhood are offering, where we can make friends, practise our English, or even take part and volunteer to serve other newly-arrived friends!
So, let’s have fun learning English, and learn to be patient with ourselves - the English skills will come gradually when we keep using English without scolding ourselves for every little mistake or imperfection. And, before we know it, we will be joking with others and writing in English with ease.
Happy English learning, everyone!
