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Writing strategies

Learn how to improve your writing. A few easy tips can already help you. Read our suggestions and, if possible, try to practise the various steps.

Suggestions for improving your writing skills

Decide why you want to write and who your audience will be.
To decide on a topic: brainstorm ideas and organise them as a mind-map. Highlight important keywords. Think of links between the keywords and draw lines etc.
Decide on a concrete topic and gather your ideas together. Take notes.
Use a dictionary and look up important vocabulary and phrases.
If you feel that you do not know enough about your topic, then do some research and read more about it.
Texts in the foreign language can help you to find useful phrases and words for your topic.
Collect your ideas and research results and put them together into a possible outline.

Create a first draft using your collected ideas. It is not important yet that the spelling or grammar make sense.
Read your ideas. Then check whether those thoughts are what you really want to say.
If you don’t know how to continue, take a break and put your writing away for a while.
Return to your writing with fresh eyes. Maybe new ideas come to mind.
Edit your draft: move, remove or rewrite sections that you feel need correction.
Continue to write and edit until you feel that the result is your final draft.
Hand your writing to someone else for proofreading. Maybe they can give you some new ideas.

Review the suggestions of improvement given by your proofreader. Edit your draft again.
Proofread your final draft, check spelling and grammar as well as coherence of the contents.
Continue to edit until you feel that the result is your final piece.

Source: http://www.learning-english-online.net/skills/writing/writing-strategies/