Most of Korean do want to perform using English well. In order to develop English skill better, they try their best everyday, but their effort will not be compensated if compared with the time consumed by them. This is because there are natural obstacles originated from the fact that people living in Korea have few opportunities to use English. Moreover, English writing is not more interesting than speaking or listening. For example, people usually prefer to enjoy watching TV or chatting to their friends in a coffee shop than reading books or writing a diary in English. This implies that listening and speaking is more interesting than writing and reading for people. I think you should agree with this argument.
So, I want to introduce a simple explanation to study writing an essay in English. This essay is organized as following sections: Logical structure, Grammar, and Word selection.
First of all, logical structure is the most important point in writing essays. This is not limited to writing in English, but applied to most of writing in any language. When you study writing, the most important thing is exercising to think logically. You do not want to read essays not written logically well organized. Thus, what you consider first is to design the structure of the essay. The structure of the essay means the logical structure and steps to support its main idea. In other words, it is strategy. If you fail to design the structure, your essay is just remained as a garbage, which cannot provide any useful information or knowledge to people who read it.
Second, grammar should not be ignored. Nobody can read articles full of grammatical error. Can you? I do not think so. Even though you are good at using exact grammar in English, there is possibility that grammatical errors are remained in your essays. This means that you always have to be training for grammar and keep your focus on finding grammatical errors. In order to find out all errors in your essay by yourself, it is helpful for you to read them as if it is written by somebody, not you. This helps you to read your writing objectively. Also, reading essays of good writers is so helpful. Do not just read them. Read them in your own point of view. Moreover, after you become used to reading writings critically, you may be able to observe them. Observing means not only reading a text but also recognizing the structure of the text. You may distinguish between good writings and bad writings, and learn how to write good essay from what you read.
Finally, word selection is one of considerations. You should take good words in your essay. What are good words? In our case, they are exact, mild, and formal. Surely exactly using words is most important because wrong usage spoils meaning of your writing that you want to give to readers. In order to use words exactly, you ought to exploit dictionaries. You do not have to memorize meaning of words, but you need to find it out in the dictionaries. To know many words gives you opportunities allowing fluent paraphrasing, which makes your essay stronger. Mild and formal using words is quite important as well. Mild words make readers accept the intention in your essay. Formal words help readers to think your essay seriously. In this reason, it is better for you to take words which are best to deliver your intention to readers.
This is just simple guide to write something good. To make your skill in writing better, it is exercising that is required. In summary, to be a good English writer, writing is first and English is second. |
