How to improve my writing and vocabulary skills?

Test Preparation
1

English is not my first language and I find it extremely hard to write a very articulate essay or lab report. I basically write like a six year old. I want to improve my sentence structures and my vocabulary. Can you please tell me a way to improve my essay writing skills? I will be heading to college in 2018 so I really need to improve my writing skills. Thanks!

2

Your post doesn’t reveal any obvious problems, so before giving any specific suggestions, I would need to see a longer sample of your writing that reveals the issues you are worried about.

3

@Wood5440 , I write like a six year old and I want to be able to write like a professor. I can tell you for sure that the essays I write sound like I am talking to my peers. I just want to make it articulate and polished. Any suggestions?

4

Write a long, complex sentence and put everything you know into it…If you can use one sentence to express what you mean, don’t separate it into two. Resate what you have mentioned before using different words and sentence structures. Make sure the grammar is correct …Well I know they sound stupid but really useful if you don’t have much vocabularies like I do…

5

This is not a comprehensive list of tips, but they should help:

Writing: Use strong verbs.

Example:

I ate a steak.

vs.

I devoured a steak.

Vocab: Read novels.

6

Buy the following books, available at Amazon or Barnes & Noble:

Merriam-Webster’s Vocabulary Builder ($6.99 paperback)
The Elements of Style - 4th Edition ($9.95 paperback)

7

It would still help to see an essay you’ve written. If you don’t want to post it on the board, you could PM it to me. That said, there are two things that are generally true: first, when young writers want to “sound like a professor” they lard the essay with advanced vocabulary words that they don’t really know how to use. That usually makes things worse. Second, I didn’t see anything wrong with the little bit of writing that you’ve done here, so I suggest you focus on saying simply and directly what you have to say. It is complex ideas that reveal your intellectual power. Having something mature and well-developed to say is the first and most important quality of intellectual writing. Your goal should be to write to convey your ideas clearly, not to worry about writing like a professor.