Why is writing important?
Are you struggling with your writing? You have a feeling that you understand a lot of content in English, but when it comes to writing, you’re stuck. Maybe you don’t know where to begin when writing or even when you begin to write in English, you simply get frustrated as you do not know how to express yourself in written form, but you really need to be able to, to write that email in English or even write that report for your boss!
Maybe your the type of English learner who believes that writing is not even important for your English speaking skills! :O Friends, writing in English is a great way to develop your brain’s ability to think in English. When you are writing in English, you are forced to use various words, expressions, phrases and grammatical structures to express yourself. Writing is also a means of communication which you need to be developing to improve your English fluency.
If you are having problems starting, you don’t have to worry…. it is only natural that you are having problems! English spelling can be quite difficult, but the more you practice the better you will get. The most important thing is that you want to improve and that you put some effort into improving your writing skills.
Let’s go through the importance of writing together and look at ways you can start improving your writing skills
Now, friends, you may be wondering, why is it even important to improve your writing skills?Â
You only need to be able to speak in English…. but did you know that developing your writing skills will help you improve your speaking skills.
When you speak in English, you can make some grammatical mistakes and use the wrong word in a sentence, and you can get away with it.
But when you write in English it is a different story….
….you cannot be using wrong grammatical structures or overusing the same words, as (unfortunately) your potential employer, your boss or even your University professor will perceive you in the wrong way
Why is writing in English critical for your success you ask?
Friends, writing is a skill that all good communicators should be developing on a daily basis. This not only applies to English learners like yourself but also native English speakers like me!
To help you better understand the importance of writing in English, I have included a section from an article from the Huffington Post, demonstrating the importance of why writing remains a critical skill for success.
Below you will find an extract from the text. Click here for the full text
Reasons Why Writing Remains a Critical Skill for Success
Effective communication Keeping your writing short and to the point is important – but there is no point if it’s not effective writing. As such, being able to express yourself in both an easy to understand and interesting way is the key to achieving success through writing. This is an experience which likely falls on many professionals across many fields. If there is one “golden rule” of effective writing it is this: write for the reader. When someone gets into the habit of writing, it’s often their first instinct to go for the flowery prose and drawn-out metaphors. However, if you turn around and read your own writing in this fashion, you’ll likely soon realize you’re better off keeping things simple. With that, always read your writing before clicking send or submit. Opt for getting to the point rather than going on a tangent – readers will be forever grateful.  Self-improvement Ultimately, writing helps us think better, and perhaps even be smarter. Similar to dreams, writing allows us a way to collect our otherwise scattered thoughts and ideas, and channel them into a single beam of information. It opens up a new dimension for the mind to move into and, consequently, creates a space for unparalleled expression and imagination. It sounds like the rambling, inflated poetry previously warned about, but there’s some science to the idea that writing makes us smarter. The caveat is that studies show old fashioned pen to paper writing is what leads to improved cognitive ability, whereas typing didn’t have the same results. However, it’d be hard to argue against the idea that writing of any kind is sure to enhance the way you perceive the world around you. The ability to write well is not reserved for authors, poets, journalists, and screenwriters alone. In fact, strong writing skills are crucial for countless careers and callings. They’re also important even for an email to a friend or a text message to a family member. Perhaps most critical of all – writing can help us become better people. Source:  https://www.huffingtonpost.com/tomas-laurinavicius/reasons-why-writing-remai_b_12701380.html
To help you better understand the importance of writing in English, this week in The WhatsApp English Learning Group we focused on the topic: Reasons Why writing is important.
Listen and Download the
Vocabulary Analysis from the text
Effective (adjective) – Successful in producing a desired or intended result We need to find effective solutions to environmental problems. Flowery (adjective) – (of speech or writing) full of elaborate or literary words and phrases His approach allowed me to see that not all food writing has to be flowery prose. Drawn-out (adjective) – Lasting or seeming to last longer than is necessary It is necessary to prepare for a drawn-out political conflict.
Grammar Analysis from the text
- This is an experience which likely falls on many professionals across many fields.
In this sentence, “this” is a demonstrative pronoun. The demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative adjectives modify nouns – the most popular are this, that, these and those. The only difference between demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative adjectives is that demonstrative adjectives are followed by nouns while demonstrative pronouns are not.
- Opt for getting to the point rather than going on a tangent – readers will be forever grateful.
“Rather than” is a conjunction. It is used with the infinitive form of a verb to indicate negation as a contrary choice or wish. You use rather than when you are contrasting two things or situations. Rather than introduces the thing or situation that is not true or that you do not want.
- The ability to write well is not reserved for authors, poets, journalists, and screenwriters alone.
A common English error is to misuse the words good and well. The rule of thumb is that good is an adjective and well is an adverb. Good modifies a noun; something can be or seem good. Well modifies a verb; an action can be done well.
Are you too busy to write in English?
One common reason I hear many English learners (and also native English speaker) use to justify the reason that they are not writing is that they are simply too busy to write in English. This week on my Instagram Profile, I shared a post how to set goals to stay consistent and motivated to improve your writing skills.
Are you too busy to write in English?
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You have a dream and a goal to improve your writing skills, but you’re simply sitting there reading this thinking that you’re too busy 🤔
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Friends, life gets hectic, work gets in the way, you may have family problems and some days you probably can’t be bothered doing anything… this is only normal and part of being human đź’†… but there are 24 hours in a day, and there are NO EXCUSES for not dedicating yourself for at least 30 minutes a day to achieve your goals đź‘Ť
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Today I got asked an interesting question by @englishlearnerkumi during our Instagram live chat. She asked me ‘How do I manage to be so active and get so much done everyday?’
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Friends, it’s pretty simple. I set really small and simple tasks every single day to complete.
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If you are struggling to achieve your goals I suggest that you do the following.
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🔸Create a 3-month vision where you want to be
🔸Write down what is important to you in your life
🔸Break down your 3-month goal into small daily actions
🔸Create a small daily to-do-list that will help you reach your end goal in the next 3 months
🔸REWARD yourself on a daily basis.
Use these tips to not only improve your writing skills, but completing any tasks in English
In order to improve your English writing skills, you have to write as much as you can in English. Â
This means writing on a daily basis so that you will be able to boost your English writing skills and improve fluency. It doesn’t mean that you have to write down a novel – just write down a few sentences. In that way, writing in English becomes a part of your daily routine, you get used to it, and in a no time, you are writing more and more every day.  If you used to ignore written word and you focused too much on speaking English, it is a time to improve writing!
Writing in English can be a difficult task if you don’t practice.
Right now, decide to practice!
It can also be very helpful because it gives you a chance to work on your spelling, vocabulary and grammar skills.
Everything you have learned up until now, you can practice it when writing in English!
If you want to improve fluency and achieve a high level, you need to pay attention to your English writing skills.  It isn’t enough just to learn new vocabulary and grammar.  Writing is a form of communication, and if you want to be able to communicate effectively in English, then you will need to know how to write in English!
When you write, prepare yourselves that you are going to make mistakes. It is a part of the process.
However, it doesn’t mean you need to disregard the mistakes, but you need to learn from them. With time, you’ll become better and better in writing in English. Then you need to pay special attention when writing in English so as not to make mistakes.  Mistakes can sometimes lead people reading your texts to misunderstand you.
Having good writing skills are especially important if you need to be fluent in English because of your job. Nobody wants to hire someone whose writing skills aren’t as good as they need to be.
Writing skills show a lot about the person. If you make too many mistakes when writing, people can think that you are sloppy and careless. But with practice, you can learn from your mistakes and avoid them in the future.
Below you will find 4 tips to improve your writing skills in English….
1. Start writing a diary in English!
As you can see, my first tip is to write a diary in English.
This can be very helpful because it will give you a chance to work on your everyday use of English language.
Think of what happened to you each day and then write it down in a notebook.
That way you will practice using English while describing everyday situations.
Pick out a cute notebook and use it do write in English every day. Just start with writing a few sentences, write down the most important of the most interesting part of your day. It is important to have fun while doing it. Don’t think of writing your diary as a chore, but as a fun way of practicing your English. Write whatever comes to your mind. In time, you will notice that you are writing more and more, and that it becomes much more easier!
2. Write a story in your native language and then try to re-write it in English.
Be creative! Activate your imagination, think of a short story and try to write it in English. By this, I don’t mean that you need to translate everything that you wrote in your native language. Just try to think of many different ways how to tell in English what you wrote in your native language. You don’t need to translate every single word, that is quite a difficult task, but try to translate it into English in a way that the still captures the main idea of the story. It is okay if the story is shorter in English, just try to write and translate anything.
This is a great exercise because it gives you a chance to practice thinking in English and also writing at the same time.
Read an article and try to write a summary of it.
This is a great exercise because it helps you with both your writing and reading skills.
Find an article that you like and then read it. Don’t pick out something that seems “smart” to you, pick something you are genuinely interested in. In that way, you will put more effort into trying to understand the article. While reading it, try to focus on the most important things mentioned in the article.
After finishing reading the article, write down the most important things. Just put down on a piece of paper a few sentences that seems like the gist of the text. Now that you have done that, write a short summary of the article.
This means that you need to write in your own words the most important things the author of the article said. Do not just rewrite the sentences from the article, it is important that you use your own words. In that way, you will combine both your reading and writing skills, while also thinking in English!
Try to practice this often and soon you will see that your writing skills are successfully improving!
Find a partner who will read your writings and correct your mistakes.
As mentioned above, mistakes are a part of the learning process. However, you often cannot correct your own mistakes, because you simply don’t notice them as mistakes. If you are not aware of the mistakes that you do, you won’t be able to improve your writing skills.
Therefore, find someone who knows English very well and then practice with them. Kindly ask the person to check your work and to provide feedback. When the person corrects your texts, pay attention to the mistakes and to the correct form.
Pick one of my tips and write something, and then give it to someone who can tell you if you made a mistake and how to correct it. This is a great way of improving your English. When you make a mistake and someone corrects it, you are likely to remember it, and the next time you encounter the same word, you won’t have problems with it anymore!
It is always great to have a feedback on your writing!
If you loved this English Lesson, you will also love these lessons…
Click here to learn how to improve your English Speaking skills
Click here to learn how to stop translating in your head when speaking in English
Click here to learn how to speak English like a native English speaker
How often do you write in English?
 Let me know in the comments below
I try my best as much as I can by using the effective ways that your guidance.
Great stuff Khin! 🙂
I want to join in group
You can enroll here> https://englishteacheradriana.com/whatsapp-english-group/
Thank you very much Adriana I’m currently preparing for PTE and this has been very useful for me.
Glad you found this useful 🙂 good luck with PTE exam 🙂
Thanks teacher
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Thanks for being here and for your kinds words 🙂 Glad these tips help!