My ideas on how to Improve writing.
N.B. this is original material and as such, permission is required to reproduce it in any way shape or form.
Let me start with a story.
Parents sometimes have a romantic idea when thinking about buying their child a horse to learn how to ride. Their child doesn't know how to ride, and a new horse also doesn't know. So, the parents buy a new horse with the romantic idea that child and horse will learn and grow together.
WRONG.
The horse learns all the bad commands from the unlearned child, and as the child grows and learns the proper commands, these proper commands do not work on the horse, as the horse has learnt the 'bad' commands and it's extremely difficult for the horse to learn new 'correct' commands. So the child is left with a 'broken' horse.
It's much better to buy the child a well-trained horse. This horse will then only respond if correct commands are given, which helps the child to learn all the more quicker (and properly).
Let's apply this to learning how to write. Most of the time we say 'practice makes perfect'. But what are we practicing? Are we practicing true and correct sentences or are we repeating mistakes again and again and thus learning more and more our mistakes? I believe the latter.
I view this situation as engraving wood repeatedly and the teacher needs to somehow break out the sander and get these mistakes out of the students constitution. Washing them out might be nicer way to put it.
Because English skills do transfer into other areas (not completely, but still somewhat), if you read a lot, this will begin to affect your writing style as essentially we begin to mimic what we have read when we begin to write.
Straight to the point, the best way I think to start writing correctly is to start COPYING perfect sentences. If you copy them enough, they begin to become yours, to become your English skill. Once you've copied enough simple sentences it becomes easier to change the nouns/verbs to what you want to say, and moreso, with simple sentence structure totally learned as to be completely natural, adding adjectives, adverbs, clauses to the sentences is much easier with less chance of errors being made in the process.
Next, it's up to you. DO IT. Everyday. Everyday copy down the same paragraph down again and again. After one week, you should be able to write the paragraph perfectly in your sleep. This will naturally just become a part of you and your skill in writing. It sounds simple, and well, it is, but actually doing it day by day is not. Try it, and let me know how it goes.
