In your study of English ,What is the best way to improve your writing ability ?

I believe that learning to think in English is important and keeping a diary is an excellent habit to get into because although you begin by 'translating' for your diary, you will soon begin to think of what you write directly in English. Some people find that keeping a diary is difficult because you have no 'audience'. One way of making it easier is to use one of the many blogging platforms to write regularly and to build up a list of friends who come to read and comment on it. You may very well invite your MyLot friends to visit your blog, for example. The best way of doing this is, of course, by Private Message inviting them to the 'opening ceremony' of your blog. I think that reading is just as important as writing because it not only helps you to think in English but (if you choose the right material) will also help you with spelling, grammar, syntax, construction and idiom. I would recommend that you subscribe to News feeds from respected English sources, for example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/ http://www.nytimes.com/ You may also find these sites useful: http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/subjects/english.shtml http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page (Project Gutenberg is a site where you can find most English classics for free as downloadable e-books. There is also a growing list of free audio books.) Finally, of course, there is MyLot. Not always the best model of 'good' English but an excellent place to practice writing!

Reading good English books, listening to English radio programs eg; the news; news readers are using very good English grammar. But reading a lot of English, with a good English dictionary next to you, and a note book, in which you can write down all those words you don't know the meaning of. This is the best way to brush up on your English grammar and speech. You cannot write properly without knowing how to articulate all those words that are foreign to you. So in order to build up good word power, or a good vocabulary--this is a good way to start. Try reading any old Readers Digest mags; if you cannot afford to subscribe to the Readers Digest, borrow old ones. It has a Word power section in, from which you can learn a lot.

i think in english, the very first thing that you would learn is write. to help you learn faster, copy sentences from newspapers or anything you see around you. it will help you with basic sentence construction, etc. Your idea of keeping a diary is also good, but dont stick to the basic recording of events, write about something deeper like feelings or learnings.

I think if you want to be a writer of books, the person should read a lot of books and practice writing.

Hi, I'm a Chinese too. I ever started my study of learning english several times, including this one. And my most impressive achievement is: don't let yourself too tired. English is just a language, and it needn't put too much time and energy on. If you do, you'll find your life loses pleasure and you'll being worried that your english is always not good enough. Of coure it's only my feelings. I believe you have more talent than me. Maybe you'll survive that. I just want to say, make learning english a interesting and relaxing thing.

To improve your writing ability, the very first thing that i've done was to read articles in a magazine. Reading is one of the best attitude of a good writer. When you are reading, your mind try to analyze the words and make it easy for you to imitate the style of writing that you have read. So, i think you should alot of more publication and notice how they come up with such a great one. Next is be fond of reading novel books. I think writers of various fields have their own way of putting words together, you could get some hints while reading their masterpiece. After all, i wanna say is simply just read, read and read.

I still think that practice makes the perfect. Try to make some foreign friends and write to them in English. Soon you will get used to write in English and therefore you will see your writing will make a progress step by step. This is my experience and I hope it will be helpful for you:) I love China

Before, I had this friend of mine who was really really good in creative writing. I really admired him, I told myself I also want to write like that. What I did was, everytime he makes new composition I would keep a copy for myself, then just read it. Then I started reading more books, then I tried to write my own stuffs. I could say that I'm not yet as good as he is, but at least I was able to write on my own. Yeah, that's probably the key factor in writing, you have to learn on how to think in English so it will be much easier to write. I haven't tried attending formal writing classes or seminars, but for sure those could help a lot!

Frankly, I don't know, I was born with two mother tongues, one of them being English and haven't learned a language since. Your discussion is very interesting as I plan to learn something very similar to English in the near future, if there's time.

We had finished our English courses in schools already maybe but since it's not our major subject, we may just have an average writing ability. I found it however that writing blogs, participating in discussions like here in mylot and even communicating with our online friends help us improve our writing abilities. Reading of course give us an idea on what to write. Like in mylot, reading others' topics help us think of what to comment, as we write our comments we developed ideas, we share views and we drew conclusions. As we go along we realize our writing abilities were improving.

Hi, English is really a headache for many people. Now coming down to writing, one must organize his/her thought and then put them into words. This is not necessary that you have think in English if this is not your first language. While writing this comes up automatically. Besides writing help enriching your vocabulary and systematize your thought process.

Although I'm not yet fluent in English and my writing skills is bad. I think its help because you can practice your English in writing. Reading is also can help to broaden our vocabulary. For my experience it is hard when you are not native English speaker and your not used to speak the language very often. To be able to express my thoughts here I think I need to improve my English.

Yes writing ablity must want to each and every percon of studying it's english are any other language.There are many way to improve writing ablity read more books then write a daily one page with your own pages and check wether the gammer is correct.Then improve ur reading skils means automaticaly the writing skils improve. Then keep the diary wirting in day to day activity it's also way to improving the writing skils.Thanks mylot

I think reading, writing and listening to English are all equally important. It would help to enroll in an English language school or join an English writing group. In the U.S. many computer programs have grammar and spelling checking. You have several misspelled words and grammar errors, but you're writing well for someone who's not a native English speaker. When you read English, read many different authors' works. Authors have different ways of phrasing things. And sometimes when you read a book, read it out loud. Even record yourself and then listen to your pronunciation. Perhaps you can find buy a book and also find the same book on tape or DVD. Then you can read the text and listen along with the speaker. When you write, you must find a friend or teacher who will read what you wrote and give you honest feedback. My sister has been a freelance writer for over 10 years and belongs to a writer's group. She still asks for opinions and they all read and critique each other's writing. Keeping a diary in English is a good because it'll be a habit to write every day. But if you don't show the diary to anyone, you won't know if you're writing correctly.

I read a lot. Avoid being selective in your reading material because it would eventually restricts our style and ability to adapt to different topics. Reading helps us to get used to the language structure. This includes grammar and use of phrases. If we start writing without seeing other examples we may not be able to play with words and phrases. Thus our writing becomes dull. Since different writers have different styles of writing it is better for us to get axquainted with as many styles as possible, at least until we develop our own presentation. Writing without any form of guidance will not help in developing our true potential. all the best, rosdimy

I think the best way to improve our ability is starting to write anything. He can try to start from a small thing such that reply a sms with english. Or may be he or she can try to chatting in english like what i was doing right now. My english is not good. Chatting from mylot is also one the way i can improve my english, especially in written.

i guess the best way to improve one's writing ability is to write and write and write. this could easily be done by taking a journal with you everyday or have a blog where you can freely express your thoughts, of course in English. one thing that should also be considered is to have with you a realistic critic who will give you constructive and even deconstructive criticisms. thats it! :)

i think reading is as good as writng when it comes to learn english, because you will get a good sense for the language and some authors use english in such a refined way.