How Can I Improve My Writing?

I frequently have students ask me, "How can I improve my writing?" What they frequently mean is "How can I make a better grade in your class?" But my answer is the same for both questions: practice and immerse yourself in good writing.

Practice

Remember your mother telling you to practice? Practice your catching skills. Practice the piano or horn. Practice your penmanship. Practice.

Practice is an effective way to strengthen a skill, particularly if you practice effectively. (Devlounge, 2009, gives tips on how to improve practice.) The secret to practice is that if you repeat an activity over and over again, you strengthen your skill at that activity. We know that practice helps us to learn and strengthen a skill; thus, we wrote our names over and over again, repeated our multiplication tables, and frequently use software that we are seeking to learn. "Practice makes perfect," as endurance athlete Bergland (2011) explains in his article, "No. 1 Reason Practice Makes Perfect."

Practice trains the brain. So as you learn to use the old/new pattern in your writing, practice that pattern in all of your technical writing: e.g., in class reports, in emails, in texts. As you learn how to identify passive and active voices, use active as often as you can.

Immerse Yourself in Good Writing

Imitatio means "imitation," and if you immerse yourself in good writing—i.e., read the works of great writers and imitate their styles—you will strengthen your writing skills as well. Therefore, read other writers' works and identify what those writers do well. Then apply those strengths to your writing.

In many classical classrooms, students study, memorize, and imitate the great writers—e.g., Plato, Socrates, Locke. Then, as students begin to express their own opinions or report information in their own way, they adapt the strengths of these great writers to their own writing. In the same way, find strong writers and imitate what you appreciate about their styles.

Imitation does not mean you are copying their works; instead, you are learning from them and applying what you learn to your own writing.

References

Bergland, C. (2011, October 13). No. 1 reason practice makes perfect. Psychology Today. Retrieved from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201110/no-1-reason-practice-makes-perfect

Devlounge. (2009, May 29). How to practice effectively to improve your skills. Retrieved from http://www.devlounge.net/strategy/practice-effectively-to-improve-skills