How can I improve my writing skills?

[Jignesh]

Hi!

Thank you for your suggestion. I wish all the best to you too.

Regards,
Jignesh

[Jignesh]

Hi All,

Today I decided to write a small paragraph on "The Importance of Hard Work". I spent less than 10 minutes to write this but I was stuck at the end and could not elaborate with new ideas. During my self-evaluation, I found that my paragraph consists of PLAIN english with no attractiveness. If anyone would like could he/she please attempt to re-write it as a model example so that I and others can learn from it. So here it goes.....

The Importance of hard work
Everyone knows that you can’t have a free lunch. And so you must work. Now there is a big difference between just working- for a sack of it, working hard and working smart. Most of the time people who work hard do realize that their hard work has not gone wasted. On the other hand some feel guilty foe working hard all their life and not being able to achieve much. Could the luck play a part in your success and failure? Is it necessary to work hard to achieve the success? My personal take on this is to work hard but also to see that your efforts are not ruined by few bad decisions. I also find that if I am motivated, I can really work hard as well as smart. How people react to my creation, suggestion and criticism plays a vital role in keeping me motivating and taking that extra effort to get the things done. Everyone with dreams has to work hard at some point in their life to realise their dreams.

Thanks & Regards
J

[Devat]

My holiday plan - goes to switzerland

i have to make a plan for holidys and now i m finaly decided is goes to switzerland. i can heard regarading country for environment is best for in all over the world. so i wanna goes there and enjoyed it.

so p'se give me the situatiuon in this topics for my english is good or bed also which step can consider to imroved my english lang..

so p'se once again i can request for all of u

ps'e help me and reply me ASAP

Thanks

Brgds,

Devat

[Torsten]

Dear Devat,

Thanks a lot for joining our forum and posting your first message. Please tell me again what exactly you are planning to do. Do you want to go to Switzerland or do you want to write an essay about your favourite country? As for your English, there a number of things you can do to improve it:

- try to use simple phrases and sentences you know are correct
- type the words properly, do not use "SMS slang" like "u", "i", "p'se", "Brgds" and other creations that don't exist in standard English
- use spell checker to eliminate typos

Let me know what you think.
Regards,
Torsten
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Linghong]

I am going to listen to the english songs while I am reading the lyrics. I think this could help, do you all agree?

[Torsten]

Hi Linghong,

Reading the lyrics of the songs you are listing to will help you improve your listening comprehension and build your vocabulary. However, in addition to the lyrics of pop songs you should expose yourself to other language too if you don't want to end up talking and writing the same way a pop star sings.
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Linghong]

Dear Torsten.

Thanks for your opinion. I will try to expose myself to the other kinds of English sources such as English newspapers, radio talk show and etc. Actually, I am quite interested with the location of yours now as Alan had already listed out where he is.

Also, I am quite annoying because of the fonts of the words in the forum as they are so small. This was not happening when I was first exposed to the forum but happened only around these days. I have to quote someone's post to read what exactly was written as the words are too small. May I know what actually had happened to my settings of software? Please inform me where the problem is if anyone knows about that. Thanks!!

[Hussein78]

[My_Am]

hi everybody .. here a piece i wrote ..

i just finished watching Mulholland drive and that's what i understood from it!

i think it's an excellent movie to show the abyss of the human soul (<- that's a german expression, i'm wondering if i can say that that way in english too)

the story is about a lesbian low-income actress who falls for on of her colleagues. they have an affair until her colleague moves on to be with a famous director.
she can't stand the pain of being dumped and on top of that she is obviously suffering from low self esteem due to her lack of success.
she is desperate and pays a killer to get her former lover killed. the impact of her act turns her psychotic. she forgot about everything she has done; put all her memory's of that incident into a little box inside herself/her brain and locked it away

the film starts with her dream version of her life. she meets the other woman, but in different circumstances

they find a lot of money in on of the purses, a strangely shaped key and later a box with a matching keyhole.
one of them opens the box and reality comes back ---
we get to know the reality - as mentioned above
there is a ugly-face monster seen twice - towards we see him hiding the box - he represents the ugly part/the dark side every one has inside.
at the very end of the film we can see people leaking out of the box and running onto the street; that's a picture, that her psychosis and the reality of what she's done is melting into each other.
the dream characters come and knock at her door, she opens and screams and the people at the door are very excited too -- she can't stand it anymore - and shots herself.

the only one other person talking about the evil face demon - it's a guy talking to his therapist, he is clearly a little disturbed.. it makes sense, he's more open to the realm of the world a person suffering from a psychosis would enter.

a correction and a feedback if any of you who have seen the film is highly appreciated. and yes i know i should write some of these words in capital letters

[Dupree]

Im from Vietnam and im currently studying in Singapore. As some people here, english is not my mother language. I found out this website from Google. When I had an essay to do and i was stuck totally. I cannot use my english very well. I started writing my essay and at the 3 or 4 line everything is ok and go on it seems to be very hard, my mind was empty. I cannot use these word that I have studied before to write the essay. Something's really wrong. Can sbd tell me what i suppose to do now.? I really do my job very hard and a lot of effort. just I want to improve my writing skill asap.
btw, I tried to read more and more english book, but i cannot get it to use for my essay. and also I tried to improve my vocabulary. When i tried to remember it and a few day more I would fly away. and also I decided to move out live with some foreigner that make me forget my own language. but it's still useless. Im deeply saddened.

[Quan11287]

Hey you guys...I'm wondering whether Alan and other teachers still correct our essays on this site ?

[My_Am]

me too - i've been waiting for a reply ever since i posted it ...

[Stanciu]

Well I shall post one of my essays here and I need a properly correction frome Torsten or Allan so please read it carefuly and say me if it's good enough :

So here it is ( this essay is one of my thoughts about humanity and foolishness)

Here I am in one of the biggest cityes of my country thinking about humanity and foolishness ( don't worry you are not included in this "humanity").
Lately i've started to think about these two things that are starting to have more and more common elements. First I am upset because of the people who think that they are the best without being very good in one domain because when you are very good in one thing and that thing is importat for other people you're not arrogant and selfish. This is the first step in being a complete fool (to be arrogant ) .
The 2nd step is to start claiming that you are easygoing (but actually to be very interested in being in the center of the attention).
Of course the minimal number of steps that you must do in order to become a complete fool is three. So the 3 nd step is to completely denie that you are fool and to start hating your fool comarades.
If I would describe to you all the things that you can do to become a full fool you would think that I am an idiot but I am not!
Seriously I am just trying to pay your attention in a problem that becomes worster and worster : the bond between humanity and foolishness .
Let's look a bit at our friends , the animals . They are not fool . They act instinctively and even if they are doing wreckless things they've managed to survive to the huge wave of foolishness that came from the humans because these nasty brainy creatures are not so smart to think about their own mistakes. Instead of doing this they are trying to take over the world(here is just a little bit exaggerated )
Finaly the bond between humanity and foolishness is that the humans have the stupidity in their esence and they are not trying to get rid of it and this is a very grave thing but I 'll tell you some more next time because now I am a sleepyhead.

So how was it like? DId you like it? Tell me your opinion please!

[Torsten]

Hi Stanciu,

Many thanks for posting your essay. The first step you should do is remove redundant spaces and spell check your text.

Regards,
Torsten
_________________
Test Of English for International Communication
TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Stanciu]

Dear Torsten please excuse my spelling mistakes . I tried to correct some of them but I am not quite sure if I managed to "fix" all of them . Could zou help me please?? Sorry for disturbing you!

Regards