How Would I Improve My Writing Skills to Excellence and Confidence?

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This thread is a follow up to this one on improving my listening skills.

The reason I wanted to keep these two topics separated was to receive more specifics advice on each of these arguments. Yes, they will interchange, but it is more about best specific methodologies, materials, and so on.

Target language: English

Improving my writing is my MAIN goal for the next year and more. The reason is that I have been rebuilding everything in the last months, and changing my goals entirely. Improving listening, and fine tuning it, will be a plus.

Believe it or not, I haven’t dedicated much time in the last 20 years to English, which is the language I love the most!

But now the goal is different, I want to be able to write properly in English, at the level of blogging/copywriting/journalist/writer. It is a progression, starting with blogging, which is something I love to do.
This would be my job!

I cannot tell you the format/subject because I don’t know it yet. It will change and improve step by step.
But I want to reach a level of excellence, starting from the average point I’m right now, which is just random with weak foundations.

Time Block: I hope to be able to dedicate 3 hours daily, including or not the listening time block (45’).

TOOLS:
A part from the activity already done with LingQ/Youtube/podcasts for building vocabulary, I haven’t thought about much else.

The only tool I thought is Italki to find a good teacher and create a long-term program.

I don’t think it is possible to improve writing without laser professional feedback that will first correct all my current mistakes, and then step by step improving on style. I need to fix grammar and punctuation first, and then improve the rest.

It is very difficult to write “on paper” without second guessing everything all the time. Is this good? Does it sound good? Is this a repetition? Is it too stupid? Do people really say this or that?

What would be your suggestions to include in my learning program? Which characteristics should a teacher have?
What tools do you think should I consider?

I really appreciate any help I can get. Writing in English could become my main occupation if I will be able to achieve the level I desire.

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As foreign students we were supposed to write 10-15 page long academic papers right from the first semester. Grammarly was recommended by our English professor. She was German native but did her masters from an American university and lived there for 20 years. Using Grammarly as a tool was a great help when it came to rewording cretain words, phrases and spellings.

Seeking help from a professional tutor is always helpful. You can not go wrong with that. As per our professor reading voraciously always helps with devleoping writing skills. If you are aiming to emulate a certain style of writing then you must start reading that sort of stuff (blogs, articles etc). Whatever floats your boat.

You write amazingly good.

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Thanks for sharing your experience. I appreciate it.

Reading is always presented as a good tool for learning to write properly. However, it doesn’t work for me, or at least, I think it’s not enough.
I have tried to observe this on myself, and I could read forever but nothing would change. In fact, I read in English all the time.

I believe we need to be intentional and methodic. What I mean is that by learning to improve writing, which is what I intend to do, and then reading by focusing on what I learn, I could possibly improve. But it would be less effective - probably - that producing writing outputs and have immediate professional feedback.

I have noticed that my mind can laser focus on something but not on everything at the same time. I can read for increasing vocabulary, I can read for understanding the content, I can read for…, but I cannot do everything at the same time.

I read in English all the time, my writing is the same. Same thing that I have written in the listening thread. I can listen to podcasts and audiobooks all the time, but my listening skills don’t improve too much.

I believe it is a question of challenge as well. The problem with writing, compared to listening and reading, is that we need professional feedback from others, unless we have a very high level of competence on the language.

A tool like Grammarly could be interesting as well. Today we have many different offers like Grammarly, DeepL write, Gpt4.5, etc.
It’s becoming somehow difficult to understand what it is the best tool, and for what. I can definitely invest some money in one of these softwares to improve writing, but at the moment, I wouldn’t know which one to choose.

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Hi Davide,

IMO, your English is good enough to start a blog in English right away.
You don’t have to wait until you’ve reached a level comparable to that
of elite journalists from “The New Yorker” :slight_smile:

It’s probably more important to find topics you know well (from
your own experience, after doing some research, etc.) and
care about (that is, passion goes a long way!).

However, if you want to improve your writing, you could use the following
resources:

  1. Deepl Write
    You can choose between various styles (academic, business, etc.) and
    get alternative formulations, which are often quite helpful.

Do you need other AI tools as well? In my experience, that’s overkill.
“Deepl Write” usually does the job - and it’s free.

However, it’s sometimes good to have the second opinion of educated native
speakers (tutors, writing forums, etc.), esp. when it comes to nuances (slang,
included).

That is, I trust educated native speakers more than any of the AI tools
currently available.

  1. Grammar
    Michael Swan’s “Practical English Usage” is awesome because
    it lists many of the problems that non-native speakers of English
    tend to encounter!

  2. Creative Writing Courses
    See Coursera.

  3. Copy editors / writing coaches (?)**
    Look for them on the internet - if you think you
    need them.

  4. Imitate what you want to become
    Read your favorite blogs in the domains you’re interested
    in and rewrite some of their posts (rince and repeat).

You could use 1. and 4. for these reformulations…

  1. SRS for interesting collocations and sentences
    Read like a professional writer and collect the sentences / collocations
    from fellow authors you like.

And then use an SRS to drill them (if possible, use LingQ2Anki because
that’s a straightforward tool pipeline).

Good luck / have a nice Sunday
Peter

PS -
Style guides in English might be helpful as well!

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@PeterBormann Thank you as usual for your suggestions. However, you definitely have much more confidence on my writing that I do.
I will definitely look more closely to Deepl Write as a possible tool, and I’m glad you mentioned a practical grammar because I was looking for one to use in parallel of what I have already.

Time flies when we write, I guess that time block will be the bare minimum to consider.

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I think non-native speakers worry too much about their language levels.
However, what I’ve seen in academia and business is that it’s much more important
that people “know their stuff”.

In other words, native speakers who don’t know what they’re talking about are
worse than non-native speakers who make a few language mistakes,
but know their stuff.

In short, knowing your stuff comes first, language excellence comes 2nd.

That said, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work on your writing skills
in English (I mean we all do, right? :slight_smile: ).

So if I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much about my writing skills (at least
the ones enhanced by “Deepl Write” :slight_smile: ).

BTW, what is your blog about?
Self help / optimization, travel, etc.?

Apart from that:
Have you already thought about selecting a writing platform such as “Medium” or “Substack”?
Or a combo like: “Wordpress blog + Medium / Substack”?

What I want to say is this: Choosing the appropriate platform and doing a lot of social media marketing are as important as the writing process itself..

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True, but I will compete in an enormous marketplace where at least knowing the language very well will be the bare minimum. A typo could be ok sometimes but not the norm, bigger mistakes absolutely not.

You make a good point here, and this is definitely something else I’ve been working on. However, everything is under transformation and investigation, so I can’t be totally sure about it at the moment. But I can start with sharpening and refining the tool (writing), and then progressing and evolving from there. I’m sure the answers will come.

This is something else I have been working on understanding as well. I’m well aware on the platforms as I’ve been using them for the last 10 years. However, many things have to be taken in consideration depending on various variables that are not specific for this thread or even this forum. But yes, choosing the right platform would be another decision to take, but it won’t be immediate, as I would dedicate more time on working on the language first.
Unfortunately, my relationship with social media is not idyllic either, but that’s another story as well.

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