improve your English writing skill

Sample Writing Exercises

Skill	Description
Character Development	A big part of writing is character development and setting up scenes. Practice makes perfect, so the next time you’re out, pick a person and write about them. Take what you observe about this person, whether they were sitting across from you on the bus or bumped into you as you were leaving a coffee shop, and develop that character. What is his name? What does he do? Where is he going? Where is he coming from? Is he shy or social? What is going on in his head? Cover everything from his family to his inner struggles. This will really test your creativity.
Organization	When you’re detailing the emotions of one scene with one character, it’s easy to lose sight of the big picture and get lost in your own story. Grab a poster board and outline a story from macro to micro. Start by splitting up the story into the introduction, the build-up, the climax, the cool-down, and the conclusion. Then, add in the major events. Just a few words will do: “Stacy finds her cheating boyfriend” or “Brett crashed his car into the swamp.” Add in minor events that led to major events. Then add in the progression of the characters’ emotions during these events. Having this visual aid will allow you to focus on each scene without having to waste any time remembering where you’re going with the story.
Intro and Transition	Nothing can stop you in your tracks faster than when you can’t think of a clever sentence to begin your next chapter. Even lousy transition sentences between paragraphs could lose your reader. Look to the greats for inspiration. Look through Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Palahniuk, and other successful authors and write down the sentences that have the strongest effect on you. You don’t want to copy their work; you just want to draw inspiration from their methods and style. Whether it’s blunt, jarring sentences to take you off guard or questions directed at the reader, take each method and make it your own by coming up with your own transitions to draw in your audience.
Dream Stories	Finding inspiration is another roadblock writers face. Try writing down your dreams the moment you wake up. Even if you only remember snippets and scenes all out of order. Write down every detail immediately. Do this every day of the week. At the end of the week, take all of the information from your dreams and write a story with it. Your dreams will more than likely have nothing to do with one another, but doesn’t matter. Take all of the scattered information and find a way to put it all into one story. Trying to connect everything will help you practice creating plot twists, as these are meant to be rather jarring and abrupt.
Verbs and Adjectives	A great story can be ruined by drab, overused adjectives and verbs. Evocative, specific words help put the reader in the scene. “He walked through the door and put his briefcase down” doesn’t give the reader much to work with. “He burst through the door and marched in mechanically, releasing his briefcase and letting it tumble to the floor” paints a much clearer picture. Write out a scene without putting much thought into the specifica words. Then, go through the adjectives and verbs to find better synonyms. Add in adverbs to be even more colorful with your writing. Be careful with the thesaurus, though. “She briefly pondered the situation” and “She obsessively agonized over the situation” are both good substitutes for “She thought about the situation”; however, they communicate completely different emotions. Be sure you’re choosing an appropriate synonym.
Description	A good writer can put the reader directly into the scene. This means having the ability to describe things very well. Write down the manner in which things work, such as the mechanics of a dishwasher or how to change the oil of a car. Then, read what you have written to a child. If she/he doesn’t understand, simplify the terms and enhance the details until she/he does. The purpose of this is to practice writing details in a way that is clear and specific. Beautifully descriptive language is useless if it is muddled.

grammar learning points

How to learn grammar

Introduction

Grammar is an aspect of language about which learners have different opinions. Some learners are very interested in finding out or learning grammar rules and doing lots of grammar exercises. Others hate grammar and think it is the most boring part of learning a new language. Whatever opinion you have, however, you cannot escape from grammar; it is in every sentence you read or write, speak or hear. Grammar is simply the word for the rules that people follow when they use a language. We need those rules in the same way as we need the rules in a game. If there are no rules, or if everybody follows their own rules, the game would soon break down. It's the same with language; without rules we would not be able to communicate with other people.

So you cannot escape from grammar, but the key question here is: what is the best way to learn grammar? You can learn the rules of a game by simply playing the game. You will certainly make mistakes; you may even get hurt. Eventually, however, you will know how to play. Of course, the rules of a language are very much more complicated than the rules of any game, but in fact this is exactly how you learned your own language. Nobody taught you the rules of your mother tongue as you were growing up but now you never make a grammar mistake.

It is possible to learn a second language in the same natural way, if you have enough time and you live in the right place. For example, if you are a Korean boy and you move to Russia at age 6, attend a Russian school, play every day with Russian friends, you will probably learn all you need to know about Russian grammar by the age of 15 without ever having a grammar lesson or reading a grammar book.

Most people learning a new language do not have so much time and such an ideal situation; So what IS the best way to learn English grammar? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to the question. There are just as many different opinions about teaching grammar as there are about learning grammar. Many teachers believe in the importance of grammar lessons devoted to a study of language rules and lots of practice exercises. Other teachers feel that grammar is best learned by doing different language activities without focussing so directly on the rules. Whatever your opinion about grammar, and whichever is the way you are taught, here is some advice that may help you to learn grammar more effectively.

What you can do

final draft example

The new trends in animal testing

Animal testing is known to have a long history, which has been performed since ancient Greek time. The majority of animals in the laboratory are mammals; some common types of animals are rats, rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, etc. Different types of animals may serve different functions. As we all know, animal testing has been involved in various areas like pharmacology, toxicology, cosmetics, biochemical research, etc. However, in recent years, animal testing has become a controversial topic about whether we should still conduct animal testing or not. Although there are many reasons to support animal testing, and it has brought a great amount of noticeable benefits to human’s welfare in the long run, evidence shows that animal testing actually is inhuman, costly, and not accurate enough to apply in our lives.

The first reason to be against animal testing is that all creatures whether they are higher animals or lower animals can have value and are worthy of respect. Life’s value cannot be measured; therefore, all animals’ lives are priceless. For this reason, human do not have the rights to deprive animals of their lives by doing animal testing. Some people might believe that animal testing can improve the treatment of various diseases and further the advancement of science. According to scholarly article by Andre and Velasquez (1988), the animals “should be respected, which includes respect for their interest to be spared undeserved pain.” Although some countries proposed a law to protect the animals from the pain in testing, some sorts of animal testing have to use animals’ nervous system. Evidence indicates that the majority of laboratory animals are in the possession of nervous systems which respond noxious stimuli in a similar way compared to human beings(Carstens and Moberg, 2000); therefore, animal testing to a great extent inevitably causes agony and disorder on animals. Animal testing has been gradually symbolized as a kind of uncivilized performance; therefore, in a bid to adapt to the civilized progress, it is necessary and urgent to come up with new alternative methods to replace animal testing.

The second reason to be against animal testing is that it is causes much more pressure on monetary budgets and personal medical cost in comparison with alternative methods. In recent years, scientists and researchers have designed some new biomedical technologies serving the purpose of replacing animal testing that is inevitably considered as traditional and to a large extent, costly. From the perspective of economists, animal testing cannot be widely applicable in the long run because animal use is considerably expensive compared to alternative methods. Some people might believe that animal testing has been refined to alleviate the pain and distress of laboratory animals. However, according to research by Ranganatha and Kuppast (2012), “non-animal tests are more cost-effective, practical and expedient” compared to the traditional animal testing. In addition, if the cost of animal testing is too high, in order to be in line with the costs of inventing the products, the prices of these products are accordingly high so that people have to pay more.

The final reason to be against animal testing is that the production of many drugs are based on animal testing, but scientists still cannot fully predict the results when the drugs are applied on human beings. Some people might believe that animal testing can help the scientists find better medical cures to carry out the life-saving activities. For example, heart disease and cancer death rates are reducing, because all the drugs are made through animal testing to cure and prevent, just as the scientists believe this is the better way to help people (Mukerjee, 1997). However, in contrast, there are many drugs with side-effects which literally inflict irreversible and non-compensable damage on people’s whole lives. For example, according to research done by Merkes (2012), “Thalidomide had been tested on several animals species and found to be safe, yet thousands of children worldwide were born with missing or shortened limbs after their mothers took the drug for morning sickness.” In a word, animal testing may be fraught with some potential medical dangers which we cannot predict.

In sum, though we cannot deny that animal testing truly has a great amount of contribution to our lives, there is strong evidence that animal testing is expensive, not totally precise and cruel. Animal testing brings about monetary and financial issues, furthermore, the results of the animal testing are unpredictable as well as animals also should be respected and protected by people no matter they are higher or lower. However, at present, many a technology on inventing new drugs or cosmetics is still very immature, which gives an inch to carrying out animal testing. Under the special circumstance, the most urgent challenge is to seek a diversity of alternative methods so as to cover as many aspects as possible. Therefore, in a large sense, investment on alternative methods is also significant and necessary.