How to improve your English writing

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This is a series of my lecture notes about English writing. The English writing lessons are on Bilibili. This blog is the first lecture note about how to improve your English writing.

Before your writing, you need know what you write for or what you want to achieve. Then you need plan your writing. What idea you should include and what idea you need leave out? You need know your goal and what your reader need. Next you need organize your ideas into clear paragraphs. Usually one main idea is in per paragraph. Cutting empty words and sentences, as well as using short simple sentence where possible (about 10 words in a sentence) are a good habit. Finally, it's important to put your subject at the start of the sentence.

Below is my notes:

Part one

Understand your audience

  • Who are you writing for?
  • What are you trying to achieve?
  • What does your reader want?

Part two

Planning your writing

  • What ides are you going to include?
  • What ideas are you going to leave out?
  • How are you going to organize your idea?

Part three

Deciding what to including

  • Think about your goal
  • Think about your reader's needs

Part four

Using paragraphs

  • One main idea per paragraph
  • Don't try to do too much in one paragraph
  • There's no minimum length for a paragraph!

Write as little as possible

  • very tired, exhausted
  • as a result, consequently
  • This will get better improve in the future

Part five

Use short, simple sentences where possible

  • 10 words is good target
  • 20+ words could be dangerous
  • Don't use the passive voice unless you need to ???
  • Put your subject at the start of the sentence
  • Don't use relative clauses unless you really need to
  • Consider breaking longer sentences into shorter ones