4 sure-fire ways to develop excellent writing skills

Writing academic documents is an unavoidable part of every student’s life. While some students enjoy drafting creative pieces in their academic careers, some find it really difficult to express their emotions appropriately in the essays and assignments that are assigned in schools. The basic goal of an academic paper is to provide information, and keeping these forms of assignments engaging and intriguing is no walk in the park.

 In case you often face trouble in condensing complex findings and studies into a lengthy assignment that reads fluently, this blog is for you. Here are some tips that will improve your writing skills drastically and make the academic writing tasks less daunting in future:

• Learn to express yourself

This involves multiple factors. Firstly you must be clear about your arguments in your head. Then think about the ways in which you can make it easy to read. This means, avoiding unnecessary jargons, repetitive arguments, convoluted sentence structures and needless to say grammatical and punctuation mistakes. A single inappropriate use of a comma (For e.g., “Let’s eat, grandpa” to “let’s eat grandpa,”) will change the complete meaning of a sentence and dampen your grades in the process.

• Participate in workshops

If you are really invested in improving your writing skills, consider joining a workshop. And no, it’s not compulsory to have an unfinished novel hidden in your bedroom drawer to join a writing class or workshop. Workshops give you the scope of getting first-hand feedback from like-minded writers.

So pick a topic, write whatever comes to your mind and listen to the feedback of the group and revise it accordingly. Then repeat. In no time, you will observe considerable improvement in your writing style.

• Write like you speak

Students often get demotivated halfway through their assignments due to the pressure of producing a perfect copy in ‘Shakespearian’ English. Academic papers don’t always need to be filled with overtly complicated vocabulary and flowery language. You can start with writing short, to the point sentences, in an active voice just like your regular mode of speech.  As long as it doesn’t contain grammatical errors and conceptual fallacies, you are good to go.

• Read and write as much as possible

You must have heard the phrase, “practice makes you perfect”. And, just like any other exercise or skills, writing demands practice. Keeping a certain time of the day for practicing your writing skills will massively improve the quality of your write-up. Also, be a voracious reader. It will make you aware of the styles and techniques of constructing a sentence, and in no time, you will be composing your academic papers with renewed confidence.

 Here’s one tip of advice; set up a special spot in your home that is devoid of distractions. It will help you to concentrate and focus on the task at hand.