Hello. My name is Emma, and in today's video I am
going to teach you some great writing tips. These tips are for both academic
writing and non-academic writing. Okay? So it's for writing in general. Now, this video is going to be in two parts,
because I have so many tips, so I'm going to give five tips in this video
and five tips in the next video. Okay, so let's get started. So, there are so many
different ways... Or so many different types of writing we do in
our lives; we write emails, we write essays if we're a student, we might write a Facebook post,
or we might write a resume or a cover letter. So it's very important to develop your writing
skills because you will be writing throughout your life a lot. So let's look at my first tip. My first tip is: It's very important to think
about the genre of what you're writing. "Genre" is a very fancy word
that pretty much means type. So, a genre of writing might be an essay,
or it might be a cover letter, or an email, or a tweet. These are all different genres, and each one
of these has a different expectation on what you should include and
how you should write it. So it's very important, first step is: Know
the genre or know the type, and know what is expected of you. Also important in this is knowing your
audience, or thinking about your audience. So, for example, if you write an email, the
language you're going to use and the way you're going to write will be different if you write
an email to your friend versus an email to your boss. So it's important to think about: "Who are
you writing to?" because this is going to help you decide what to
write and how to write it. Same with, you know, if you are on Twitter and
you write a tweet, or on Facebook a Facebook post, you know, it's important
to think about your audience. You know, are you writing this post for friends
to see, or is this a post your boss might see, or members of the public? You know, and that
could be a problem. So it's important to think about, especially
with this and on other social media, too: Audience. Who will see this and what will they think
about it, and what are their expectations? You know, some people work for companies where
they're responsible for social media, so it's important, too, the type of wording they
use when they're writing on Facebook. If you work at a company and you're writing
for your company, it's going to be different than if you're writing
for your friends. Same with an essay. An essay has a certain structure, you know,
it's supposed to be a certain amount of pages, it has a certain organization to it, and so
knowing what's expected of you when you write an essay will help you because it's going
to be very different than, for example, a Facebook post. Same with in business,
business reports. Understanding the format of a business report
is important if this is something you're going to be writing, and thinking
about your audience. Same with executive summaries, which is
a type of thing businesspeople write. If you're not in business you might not ever
write one of these, but if you are in business you need to realize that audience is important
because professionals are going to be reading this, and these people are busy, so, you know,
knowing your audience and knowing what is expected of you is the very
first step to good writing. Let's look at some other tips. Okay, so we've talked about genre or the type
of writing you're doing, and part of this is knowing the expectations for how
long what you write should be. Okay? So you want to know a bit about length
expectations before you start writing. This is really important, especially in university
where you often have a number of pages you're allowed to write. It's important, you know, in the workplace because
sometimes, you know, you can't write a lot. And it's important, you know, on Twitter because
you have a certain number of characters you can use. So length is very important because that's
going to help you decide what to include in your writing. Okay, so let's look
at this a bit more. When I was younger I used to think long, meaning
a lot of writing, was always better, but this is not the case. You know, the more you write, maybe you can
include more detail, but a lot of the times the person or your audience who's reading
what you write does not have a lot of time, and so they don't want to
read long pieces of work. Okay? So it's important to
know expectations. So, for example, I have here the word "short"
and "long", and so this is kind of like the scale. If you write a tweet it's going to be something
short; a Facebook post might be a little bit longer; a paragraph, you might write something
like five sentences if in school you have to write a paragraph on something; an email
might be a little bit longer than this; a cover letter you might use a full page; a resume
maybe you might use two pages but nothing more; and then you might write an essay which
might be 5 pages, 10 pages, depending; and then maybe a report which might be 50 pages-who
knows?-depending on what's expected. So my main point here is that different types
of writing have different expectations with length, and it's really important
to follow those expectations. For students who are writing the TOEFL or the
IELTS, you only can use a certain number of words, so this is very important for
you to know and to really think about. How are you going to get your message
across using the right amount of words? This is a key word we often talk about
in good writing, and that's "concise". So when you are concise, it means you say
something with as few words as possible, but still getting the
meaning across. So you are communicating your idea, but you're
doing it in a short way, as short as you can while still keeping
the idea there. So, in different cultures you
have different rules about this. In some cultures
longer is better. In English-speaking cultures usually we really want
to get to the point, so we want something to be... We want to communicate our idea, but we want
it to be in a concise way, so using our words very carefully so we don't
use too many words. So main point here: Know how long something
you're writing should be, and paying attention to this when you write. All right? Now let's look at my next tip. Okay, so my third point might be one of the
most important points in this lesson, and that is: When you write something, very important
to plan or to think about what you will say before you write it. This is something a lot of people don't do
because they're busy, they feel like they don't have a lot of time, or you know,
they just don't have any ideas. And the thing is, though, that this
will really help improve your writing. Okay? And it doesn't matter what you're writing;
planning out an email can be important, just like planning out an
essay can be important. So let's think about some ways we
can plan out what we want to write. There are... There are different
ways to do this. Some people like to make
a plan by brainstorming. So, for example, imagine you were writing
a paragraph about cats, so you might have your subject or your key idea here, and then
you might think about: "Okay, what's something about cats? Hmm. They make great pets", and then you
might write some stuff about that. Maybe they're quiet, so
they make a good pet. They're cheap. Okay? And so the thing is just
getting out your ideas. Okay? And then you can organize
your ideas better. Or maybe, you know, you're thinking:
"Okay, cats, they eat food. What kind of food do they eat?" So you can do the same
thing with reports. You can think about: "Okay, what's the main ideas
that I need to talk about in this report?" You know, where you just kind
of brainstorm in advance. I usually do that when I write reports, and I
find it very helpful actually, just to get my ideas down on paper,
and then I organize them. So, this is one method. Another thing you can do is you can just write
down everything, just like this, with a dash. So, for example, if I was writing about cats
in a paragraph, I might just start thinking... Writing anything I think: "Quiet,
cute, Grumpy Cat", okay? And I might just write
down all the ideas I have. Now, of course, you're probably not writing an
essay or a paragraph on cats; you're probably writing something very different,
but the idea is the same. Okay? The idea being it's important to plan, and
these are different, great ways to get out your ideas, and to think about
them before you actually write. Sometimes if you're writing an essay you might
think in advance about your thesis or what your... The main topic and the main argument
of your essay is going to be. So, for example, cats
are better than dogs. Maybe that's something I
want to argue in an essay. And then I might organize based on ideas,
so I might write, you know, my first main idea: "They're cleaner", and then I
might put some details about that. My second main idea is that they're great
for apartments, and then I might write some examples or some reasons why. So, my main point is
all of these can work. Find what's... What helps you in
terms of planning. There's many different ways to plan what you're
going to write, but the most important thing is to plan and to take some time to think about
what you want to say in advance, because it will really
help your writing. And it's very obvious when somebody hasn't
planned what they're going to write, because everything's disorganized
and it's hard to follow. Planning makes it easier for the
audience to understand you. Now let's look at another tip
for how to write better. Okay, so remember I said that it's very important
to think about the type of writing you're doing, and your audience
or who's going to read it? One of the reasons why this is important is
because depending on the type of writing, you're going to write either in a
formal way or an informal way. Okay? And I'll explain why this is important
to know and how it affects your writing. So first let's talk
about what that means. Well, when you write something formally, this
means that we choose certain words and certain types of sentences, and we write a certain way,
and we write this way because our audience or the people who are going to read this are
usually people from work so we want to be professional, so we write formally
when we're being professional. We might write this way to
strangers or customers. Okay? If we work somewhere and we need to write an
email, we might use this type of language, formal language. And we also use formal language in high school,
in university, in college when we're writing for an assignment or for our homework, or
something that our teacher or professor will read. Okay? So we use formal writing mainly in work
settings and in academic or school settings. Now, this is different
from informal writing. Informal writing is the type of writing you
will be doing with your friends, so maybe for example a text message, that's informal;
you might use this type of writing when you're talking to children or writing something for
children; and also on social media, so if you write a tweet or a Facebook post, usually
you'll be using informal language; and also with your family, too, you
usually use informal language. So, I have here some examples of genres or
types of writing that you might use the formal version or the informal version. So, under formal we have essays, if you do
that at university or high school, it would be formal; a cover letter, if you want to get
a job and you have to write a cover letter then this is going to be formal language you
use; a report, if you work at a company and you have to write reports, you'll be using
formal language; or emails to customers you'll be using formal language. And there's a lot more;
this is just some examples. For informal, if you write a postcard to your
family you'll be using informal language; a text message would be informal; an email to
your friend you would use informal language; or maybe a birthday card. Okay? So it's important to think in advance what
kind of language you're going to use. Okay, so how can we make something
formal or informal with our language? There's a couple of
ways to do this. The first thing you need to think about is the
words you're going to use or your vocabulary. So, different words either fit into the
formal category or informal category. So, for example, if we were talking about a
lot of something and we want to be informal, we might use the word "lots". So this is an example of an informal word:
"lots"; we'd use this with our friends. If we want to be a bit more formal, we're
writing, you know, at the university level, we might use the word "many"; this word is
formal, whereas "lots" is more informal. Okay? Or same with if we're writing an email and at
the very end of the email we sign our name, we usually say something like "From",
but we don't use the word "From". We can say "Cheers" if we're writing an
email, we can say, you know: "Cheers. Emma", this would be informal. Or if, you know, we're in a business and we
need to be more serious and formal, we might say something like: "Regards"
or "Kind regards". Same with different
words, like: "Sorry". "Sorry" is a little bit more informal,
whereas the word "apologize" is more formal. So, it's very important when you're choosing
your words because a lot of words fit either into this category or this category,
and some words fit into both. It's good to know the level of
formality for the words you're using. Now, if you're having a lot of trouble with
this and you're thinking: "How am I going to know if the word is
formal or informal?" There's a quick tip you can try; it doesn't
always work, but in general, longer words in English are
often more formal. So, the longer words are
usually in this category. It's not always the case, but just if you
really don't know, it's a good way to guess. And they're usually... They come from Latin. So, for anyone who's watching who's from France,
from Spain, or South America, or Italy, or who speaks a Latin-based language, if you
have a word that's similar in your language, it probably is a formal word in English or it's probably
something you can use in a formal setting. Okay? So usually the shorter words
are the more informal words. So now let's look at some other ways we can
look at formality; formal versus informal. Okay, so when we're talking about formal and
informal writing, another thing to think about is contractions. So, what's a contraction? A contraction is a short form of a pronoun, like:
"I", "you", "he", "she", "we"; and usually part of a verb, like:
"am", "would", "will". So, the short form is, in this
example: "I am" becomes "I'm". "I'm" is a contraction. Or: "you would" can become
"you'd", and that's a contraction. "We will" becomes "we'll" for
short, and that's a contraction. So, contractions have an apostrophe here, and
it's where some of the parts of this word we just remove and so
it becomes "will". So, these contractions, and there's many in
English, we use them in informal writing. So if you're texting someone, if you're writing
an email to a friend - this will make you sound more informal. Now, compare this to if you're writing an
essay or a thesis at university, or you're writing a report - we don't want to use
contractions because these are informal. So, if we're writing something formal, we
would use something more like this; we do not use contractions
for formal writing. Okay? So that's another reason why we need to know
what we're writing in advance, because we want to decide if we'll
use contractions or not. My next point is about sentence
types and sentence lengths. When we're talking about formal versus informal,
you'll find things that are usually informal are short. We usually use
shorter sentences. And in formal writing, you'll find
sentences tends to be longer. Okay? So, we can call this... For informal we can talk about simple sentences,
for example, a simple sentence: "Students are stressed." It's a short sentence that if you know about
clauses, it only has one clause; if you don't know about clauses, don't worry. The point is it's shorter. Now, compare this to
something more complex. "When a student begins university,
they often report feeling stressed." This is more of a complex sentence, it's longer,
and you'll notice there's a comma in the middle of it breaking it up into two clauses; and
again, if you don't understand clauses, that's okay. The main point here is this, complex or longer
is usually in formal writing, whereas simple structures or simple
sentences are more informal. And again, you know, it's not always the case,
but in general you'll find longer sentences or more complex sentences
are more formal. You'll also find informal writing
we use relative clauses more. So, if you don't know what a
relative clause is, that's okay. These are, for example, they use the word:
"who", "which", "that", "when" within the sentence. So, an example of a relative clause would be:
"Jane Goodall, who works with chimpanzees, is a wonderful woman." So, if you don't know about relative
clauses, I recommend looking this up. In this video we don't have enough time to
talk about them, but they can really help your writing, especially if you're
writing something in a formal situation. All right, now let's look at some more
tips on how to improve our writing. Okay, so the last thing I'm going to say about
formal writing versus informal writing, and I'm talking a lot about this because it's
actually a very important part of writing, is I'm going to talk a little bit about slang,
swear words, exaggeration words, and text words, and when to use them. So, slang, it's words we use with our friends,
words like: "cool", I was going to say "groovy" but nobody says that anymore, so, you know,
there's all sorts of different types of slang. It's a word that's very popular or an expression
that's popular, but it's not a formal expression. So, "cool" is a really good one,
or "awesome": "That's awesome". So, slang we use informally. Same with swear words. Okay? So if you say a bad word, you know, sometimes
you might say something to your friend, you might use different swear words when you talk
to your friends, hopefully not with strangers, but with people you know well, but you would not
use swear words in a formal writing situation. So maybe you might use it in a text, but you
wouldn't use it in a formal writing situation. Also exaggeration words. What's an exaggeration word? "Very" is a good example. "He is very funny", "She is very pretty", "He
is really handsome", "He's totally hot", okay? So these types of words: "very", "really",
"totally", we usually save these for informal writing. So if you're in university and you want to
say something is "very", don't use the word "very"; there are better
words, like, you know... There are a lot of other words you
can use as opposed to these ones. Another thing I wanted to say is there's a
lot of words we use now, they're short forms of words, like, for example: "lol" for "laugh
out loud", "b4" for "before", "LMAO" for "laugh my ass off", these are
words we use informally. Okay? We do not use these in formal writing, so
it's important in formal writing to always spell out the word correctly, to use proper
spelling, and to avoid some of these words you might be seeing a lot on the internet
or in text messaging or on Facebook. Okay, so we've covered about
formal and informal writing. My last tip for this video is about the importance
of using variety in what you're writing. So what do I mean by "variety"? Well, sometimes when people write, they have
certain words that they use again and again and again, and so there's not a lot
of variety in their choice of words. Or you might have somebody else who uses the
same sentence structure; maybe they learned the present perfect and they love the present
perfect because it took them forever to learn it, so now they use the present
perfect in each sentence. So this is not good because we really want
variety in what we write, because we want it to be interesting. If you use something too much, it makes
what you're writing look boring. So, let's look at an example. I have here a sentence:
"Sales have increased. They have increased
for many reasons. The increase is because people
increasingly like spending money." Can you tell me: Which
word did I use too much? If you said "increase",
you're correct. I used it one, two, three, four. Okay, so that's too much
in a piece of writing. There are a lot of other words we
could be using instead of "increase". We could be using, you
know: "go up", "rise". There are a lot of other words. And if you're not sure of another word for
"increase", a good idea is to check a thesaurus. There are a lot of online thesauruses that can
help you add variety to your word choice. So if you make this kind of mistake where
you reuse the same word again and again and again, try to learn some other
words that have the same meaning. This will really help your writing
and make it more interesting. The other thing I wanted to say is that we
just talked about how you want variety in words. You also want variety
in sentence types. So you want to make sure that, you know, sometimes
you use long sentences, and sometimes you use short sentence, sometimes you use, you
know, maybe words like: "although", "when", "despite", "in spite of", and sometimes
you might have something a bit simpler. So instead of reusing the same sentence type
and the same sentence structure, try to use different tenses and different
structures in the sentences you write. Yeah, so different tenses and try
to have different sentence lengths. That will make your
writing more interesting. So, thank you for
watching this video. I know we covered a lot today, and I have
a lot more writing tips coming soon. So, we've covered a lot and there's a lot
of things you can practice, so I invite you to come visit our website at www.engvid.com, and
there, you can practice what you've learned today. I also invite you to subscribe to my channel;
there, you will find a whole bunch of other resources on different grammar points, you
know, especially if you're interested in how to add variety, different videos on vocabulary,
on writing, on pronunciation, and all sorts of other topics. So I invite you to
check that out. Thank you for watching; and
until next time, take care.
