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if you spend time writing in english or
you would like your writing to be
a bit more professional i want to talk
to you about some very useful tips
that's going to help you immensely
improve your writing really it's going
to help you greatly improve your
academic writing
and develop those skills and i know that
when i say academic writing you you may
think of university which is where
a lot of academic writing is done but
this is also very
important in a more professional setting
a business setting
so these tips will help my name is wes
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so that you will learn about future
lessons so let's begin with the first
tip that i have for you and i think this
one
is is very important which is why i've
put it at the very beginning
and that is to be concise and what it
means to be concise
is that you are stating the information
clearly
and you are using as few words as
possible
so really you just avoid wasting words
and i think this applies to so many
different things
so let me give you an example uh with
these video lessons
before a long time ago when i first
started doing these lessons i thought
that
well the longer i could make them then
that would just make it better
and more people would be watching them
but what i realized after once i started
doing this
is that i shouldn't be trying to make
the lessons longer
i should try to give you the information
i should try to teach you the lesson
and then whenever it's finished then
well that's how long the lesson is
and that's the same with your writing
you should be concise
state the information and try to use as
few words as possible because
why say something in ten words when you
could say it in five
and one way that you can do that that's
going to help you be concise
is to use action verbs so let me give
you some sentences so that you know what
i mean
a simple way that you can avoid using
too many words
is to stay away from the tio n words and
i'm not saying that you should
never use these but really just keep
this in mind because it will help you
cut down
on unnecessary words so if i were to say
the report provided an explanation
for these unusual results you see that
tion word explanation
well i can just make that an action verb
and say
the report explained these unusual
results
i've said the same thing it's more
concise i've used fewer words
and and you're still saying the
information clearly another reason why
it's very important to be concise is
because it's going to help whoever it is
that's reading your writing
it's going to help them more easily
understand what you're trying to say
the final thing that i'll say about this
is that you should try to use the
vocabulary that you already know
i think quite often people will try to
look up words that are more difficult
that sound more academic
intelligent and and they put that into
their paper
even if it's a word that maybe you don't
even know
try to avoid doing that use the
vocabulary that you already know
it's going to help you say things
clearly and be concise the next tip that
i have for you
is to organize your paper this is going
to help you carefully structure your
writing
and all you need to do is create an
outline it's as simple as that
and i cannot emphasize this enough
because
often i think many people will just skip
this part of the writing process
i used to teach ielts and ielts is a
proficiency exam
and part of the exam you have to write
and it is
timed and i would work with students to
help them try to achieve
a high mark and what i would always tell
them
is that at the very beginning just take
five minutes
organize your paper and write down
create a quick little outline about what
you want to say
before you start writing and so
so often they would tell me well i just
don't have time
there's no time for this i just need to
start writing and when i would read
their writing
i could see the lack of organization
some of the ideas would overlap and and
some points were not even connected
to their main thesis so i think without
organizing your paper and saying okay
this is what i'm going to talk about
first
second and third it's very easy to lose
track of where you want to go and
when you start to lose focus of your
main
idea you you kind of go off track and
you start writing about things that may
not even be relevant so
please take a little bit of time create
an outline
organize your paper and think about how
your writing should be structured my
next tip is that you should avoid
contractions idioms and other colloquial
expressions
simply because they're very informal and
writing in general
writing is more formal and academic
writing is definitely more formal
so let's have a look at some informal
language like contractions
instead of writing it's right it is
instead of writing could of
write could have or instead of writing
theirs right
there has i'll also include phrasal
verbs in this because they can also be a
bit informal
and in that case instead of if you were
to say like put up with
use a more specific verb like endure or
tolerate instead of saying check out you
could use a verb like view
or consult so not only are you using
more formal language but you're also
you're also being more concise you're
using
fewer words and as far as idioms go just
just please avoid them look at these two
sentences
right here collecting data was easy and
efficient or
collecting data was a piece of cake it
just
just reading it is a bit awkward and the
same goes for colloquial expressions
if you if i were to write something like
the scientist had trouble
finishing the experiment but no biggie
if they didn't finish they could just go
back to the drawing board
and i the colloquial expressions like
saying something is well no biggie it's
no big deal
or i use that idiom go back to the
drawing board
not only does this informal language
sound
unprofessional but it's probably going
to seem strange to the person who's
reading it so please avoid
contractions idioms and these other
colloquial phrases
the next tip is that you should vary
your sentence structures and this is
going to help you avoid choppiness
and if you're unsure what that means i'm
going to tell you a little story
and i think it will make more sense but
let's get into some more details about
sentence structure so there are four
basic sentence structures you have
simple sentences
this is one independent clause so if i'm
going to tell you
a story about my day i could say i woke
up late this morning
it's a simple sentence we also have
compound sentences
which is when you have two or more
independent clauses so
continuing the story i could say i
immediately went to the kitchen and i
made myself a cup of coffee
a complex sentence is when you have one
independent clause
plus one or more dependent clauses
after i finish my coffee i got ready for
work then we have
compound complex sentences which is when
you have
two or more independent clauses plus
one or more dependent clauses and let's
continue
when i looked at my watch i realized i
was running late so i ran out the door
and jumped in my car
so let's review our story using all of
those different sentence structures
i woke up late this morning i
immediately went to the kitchen
and i made myself a cup of coffee after
i finished my coffee
i got ready for work when i looked at my
watch i realized i was running late
so i ran out the door and jumped in my
car if we were to change this
and just use simple sentences the story
is going to
sound well it's going to sound very
choppy if i say i woke up late this
morning
i immediately went to the kitchen i made
myself a cup of coffee
i finished my coffee i got ready for
work
i looked at my watch i realized i was
running late
i ran out the door i jumped in my car
all right it's
it sounds more like a children's book
and it's definitely not academic writing
so when you vary your sentence structure
it's going to help your writing have a
nice
rhythm and flow and to be perfectly
honest when you're writing
you may not analyze each sentence
and really look at the sentence
structure this is more likely something
that you will notice
and you'll be able to get a feel for it
as you re-read your writing
so when you re-read you'll be able to
get a better sense
if there is some choppiness and you need
to adjust some of your sentence
structures my next tip
is to use the active voice and that is
because the active voice
it just gives more clarity now i'm not
saying that you should never use the
passive voice
it really depends on what you're writing
if you're writing
some scientific paper then yes it's
likely you may have
some passive sentences but in general
overall
most of your sentences should be active
so let's compare
the active and passive if i were to say
archaeologists conducted a study
of the newly unearthed artifacts this is
an active sentence
it has nine words and if we compare it
to the passive
a study was conducted of the newly
unearthed artifacts
you see that the issue is that well in
the passive
we don't know who conducted the study
now we could add that to the end of the
sentence and i could say
by archaeologist but now
i have 11 words why say something in 11
words
when i could say it in nine so again
it's about being more concise
so just keep in mind that most of your
sentences are going to be
in the active voice the next tip is to
avoid repetition
try to use a variety of words because
it's going to make your writing more
captivating use
precise language if possible and try to
avoid words like very because words like
that
are often overused now in writing
one one way to avoid repetition is when
it comes to
transition words these transition words
are when you can will add
information perhaps you're moving from
one idea to the next
but when you're writing transition words
it's easy to repeat them let's take the
word also
this is a word that's commonly used to
add more information but
you do not always need to use this word
because there are other words that have
the same meaning so instead of saying
the crisis caused severe economic damage
companies were forced to downsize and
many people lost their job
also banks were forced to tighten
lending practices which meant small
businesses had a difficult time
accessing money also the local
government proved ineffective in
offering relief
we can just remove also to replace with
some other words
like in addition and furthermore and
it's going to sound much better
so we have also in addition furthermore
moreover besides
there are a variety of words that you
can use
when you're talking about these
transition words the good news is
is that well repetition is pretty easy
to spot
when you reread your writing you should
be able to identify
if you continuously use the same word
again
and again and again and really unless
you're writing a poem there is no good
reason to continuously repeat words
over and over just remember this famous
saying when you avoid repetition
your writing won't suck actually it's
not a famous saying i just made it up
right now but the message
the lesson is still relevant avoid
repetition the next tip and i really
want to emphasize this
is proofread and the reason why i say i
want to emphasize this is because
it's another step in the writing process
that some people tend to skip
and the reason why it's so important to
proofread is because you're
able to do some of the things that i've
already talked about
you're able to get a feel for the
sentence structure that you use
you're able to spot some of the words
that you may have repeated most of you
are probably proofreading because you
want to correct mistakes
so in that case i have a bonus tip for
you and that is
read backwards go to the very last
sentence
read that one try to look for mistakes
go to the next to the last sentence
read that one look for mistakes and just
continue reading backwards
until you get to the beginning and the
reason for that is because
you're really isolating the sentence and
you're able to look for spelling
mistakes
grammar mistakes punctuation and in
short when you read backwards
you're focusing more on the text and not
the ideas so
proofread forward from beginning to end
if you want to get a feel for the rhythm
and flow of your writing
make sure that your ideas are logically
ordered as well as check for repetition
proof read backward if you want to
really focus
on the text and check for grammatical
errors and most importantly
just make sure that you proofread and do
not skip this step
so i hope that you found these tips and
suggestions useful because i definitely
think this will help you immensely
improve your academic writing please i
would love it if you would practice your
writing right now
and write to me in the comments i always
love hearing from you
thank you guys so much for watching and
i will see you next time
