How to Improve Writing Skills as a Non-Native Speaker
Thanks to the Internet, the competition in the writing industry has never been fiercer. Compared to the 20th century, it has never been easier to express yourself, write a post an article or even a book. It’s even harder to compete in the industry if you’re a non-native speaker and you’re trying to post in English.
Every help you find along the way will have an immense impact on your odds to succeed. We will discuss some of the best tools and ways to improve your writing below.
1. Use Online Writing Checker Tools
Before analyzing how to create better content in the future, we have to make sure that your present content has good quality. Grammarly will help you improve the linguistic and stylistic part of your writing. Regardless of where you’re currently writing or who you are writing for, you never want to submit an article with lots of errors in it.
You want to have a clean text and this type of software will help you out. There is a free and paid version. The free version should suit your needs if you’re just starting out.
2. Read, Read, Read
When we discuss ideas and outline our own arguments, they are usually based on what we have consumed – everything we read, heard and saw in the past.
If you want your writing to become better, it’s important to have good inspiration sources. Read more books and high-quality articles.
“The great thing about reading is that you can absorb the benefits even if you don’t try hard. If you add a conscious effort, like writing notes then you will become even better”, says Estelle Liotard, a writer at TopEssayWriting and ClassyEssay.
3. Write Daily
The more you practice writing, the easier it gets, the same as with other areas of life. This will provide an opportunity for you to accept more work and with time your portfolio will keep growing. You will have a final word on how much you want your portfolio to expand and how much you want to work.
Try challenging yourself every day with different topics, quantity goals or different styles.
“Before you get there, everything starts with work. It’s just like Picasso said: Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working”, says Melanie Sovann, a freelance writer at BeGraded and Subjecto.
4. Expand your Vocabulary
Vocabulary is your best friend when you’re trying to express ideas in a foreign language. Grammar and syntax will usually not give you that much trouble because they’re technical and fixable, but having trouble finding a word can be really frustrating.
A great vocabulary workout is definitely reading, which we mentioned above. However, there are also many other great ways to expand your vocabulary in a fun way:
● chatting with a native speaker
● watching movies and TV shows
● playing games in a foreign language
● listening to music
● browsing the dictionary
How fast you learn will depend on many factors. Among the most important ones is definitely the general talent you have for languages. So, if you have a history of successful language learning, expanding your vocabulary for writing shouldn’t be much of a problem.
5. Get Feedback and Learn How to Handle It
When it comes to feedback, you could get it from writers and from readers. It would help if you know some fellow writers who could give you useful advice, especially if they have more experience from you. Unlike the “general audience”, writers have actually gone through the same process and can give you the most valuable bits of advice.
The second type of feedback you will get from readers. Sometimes, there will be mean comments but focus on real critics who have included arguments in their criticism. If you notice that your articles lack research, fact-checking and attributing sources, then practice putting in more research into your work.
There is a great example of this. A former basketball player and NBA star Guilbert Arenas explained the advice his club owner gave him a long time ago.
He told him: whatever you do, you will always have 10% of people hating you and 10% of people loving you. Whatever you do, they will act this way. Now, the remaining 80% are the ones who have a more open-minded opinion and their voice has some meaning.
You could use the feedback from those 80% of readers to improve your writing.
6. Write about What You Love
If you’re in a position where you get to write about things that you are passionate about, you should be very grateful because many writers never reach that.
Most writers write on-demand articles or even books. The one thing you have to remember as a writer is to always spare some time for your creative work. Set some time aside for yourself only.
As a writer, you are at the forefront of human freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of thought. If you don’t allow your creative self to express itself, that’s the beginning of the end and you will quickly start noticing the detrimental impact on your creativity.
Your writing skills have to be practiced each and every day. Like any other skill, if you fall into the day-to-day auto-pilot mode of functioning, your chance of reaching your potential will be extremely low.
It is crucial to jump out of auto-pilot mode, out of your subconscious way of writing one text after another without ever experimenting and trying something new. Allowing some “self-care” writing time will allow you to focus on the work you’re passionate about.
Conclusion
As a non-native speaker, when you start writing, you will be behind native writers. However, this shouldn’t de-motivate you and stop you from achieving your goal of becoming an awesome writer.
With lots of effort and self-improvement, you can become one of the greats! In the digital realm, some of the best writers in English we know nowadays are actually not native speakers. That says a lot about the possibilities for every non-native speaker out there!
December 25, 2019
