Focus on writing

No doubt you’ve already heard that if you really want to improve your English, it’s important to practise outside of your lessons as much as possible too. This is important for all levels, but today I’m going to focus on ideas for upper intermediate and above.

In terms of practising writing, this typically involves emails to colleagues and maybe friends. But aside from emails, what can you do to make your writing interesting and relevant to you?

One way is to choose a text on a website that interests you. It can be related to news, hobbies, a specialist subject…it’s totally up to you. Next, copy the text to a Word document and then… re-write it yourself! Let me show you what I mean. Let’s start with an original (fictive) text:

“Whilst working in their garden on 5 April, Mr & Mrs Jones of Ocean Lane, Hartlepool uncovered what they thought at first was an old water pipe in the ground. On closer inspection, it was in fact an iron chest full of jewellery. After an initial police investigation, a specialist team was called in from Durham University. At 4:15 this afternoon, it was confirmed that the jewellery mainly consists of rare diamonds and rubies stolen from a local jeweller, Coopers & Tate, in 1972.”

How could you re-write this? Importantly, you can do it in a variety of ways:

Firstly, you can focus principally on synonyms and approximate meanings. This is really good for improving and expanding your vocabulary. Pay particular attention to nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. For example:

“While gardening on 5 April, The Jones family of Ocean Lane, Hartlepool stumbled upon something that they believed at first to be a historical water outlet under the soil. When they looked more closely, it turned out be an iron trunk containing jewels. Further to a preliminary police inquiry, a team of experts was convened from the University of Durham. Today at 4:15pm, the team affirmed that the precious items were in fact mostly unique diamonds and rubies seized during a robbery at a nearby gems dealer, Coopers & Tate, 50 years ago.”

Can you compare the two texts? What do you notice? What has changed and what has remained the same?

There are many other ways of re-writing texts, for example, in a completely different style: more formal, less formal, in a specific genre (broadsheet newspaper, tabloid newspaper, children’s story…)

You can also try to change tenses, facts, replace words with their antonyms…and it may end up as a totally different story. You can even write your own stories/texts and swap them with friends, colleagues or with your teacher. See who can be the most creative, silly, serious or technical. Most importantly, this type of exercise is almost always fun, and you will always learn something new.

I would love to know if you try this out and how you get on with it! Please don’t hesitate to let me know.