ZALEG Tools and Exercises for developing
your ENGLISH WRITING muscles:
All languages are different, particularly in their grammar. You cannot translate from one language to another by just translating each individual
word. There are different grammatical rules and sentence structures.
Some words or expressions in one language have no equivalent in another
language. Verbs are different and used differently. For example, if
we do literal translation from French to English we may get a translation of
"I have hunger" for "I am hungry" or "It
does hot" for "It is hot". Use of the articles
"a/an" and "the" are different from one languages to another. It takes a lot of time to learn to use prepositions
correctly in a new language..
So, if you are learning to write in English as an adult,
there is likely to be a tendency on your part of using some peculiarities
of your own language in your English writing. You will always be thinking
in your own language first and then translating them into English. You need
a lot of practice to overcome this. We give below some tools and
exercises. Hope by using them regularly, as suggested, you will be able to develop
your ENGLISH WRITING muscles and will write correct English.
Level 1: Tools and Exercises for developing
the muscle - Writing for self
First, you should learn to write for yourself. To achieve that, you
should do the following exercises with the tools suggested below.
1. Get hold of the book Essential
Grammar by Raymond Murphy. There are more than 150 units or chapters in
this book.
- Do all exercises in each unit and compare your
answers with the given answers at the end of the book.
- Set aside a fixed time each day, say 30
minutes to 1 hour, to do exercises from this book. Start
with a small number, say 2 units per day.
Gradually increase the number of units you complete per day or
session. You will see that in time you will become more familiar
with this tool and will not mind doing the exercise. You will not find it
difficult to do new exercises. You should aim to complete at least 10
units per day.
- Aim to complete the entire book by a given
date - one month or three months depending on your
standard. If you do the exercises only once a week for 30
minutes, it is not going to help you. It will be like going to a
physical gymnasium once a week to develop your arm muscles! YOU HAVE TO EXERCISE DAILY.
- Keep a diary of how many mistakes you make in each
unit.
- Once you have completed the book, check the diary
where you kept records of your mistakes. If you made a single mistake in
any unit, then repeat the entire book. You may use some other
technique to ensure that you have learned all the rules of writing correct
English as shown in the book.
- If you make no mistakes the entire book, then you
may leave the book aside for some time. You may come back to it
again after a period of time, say 6 months, to check if you forgot any of
the rules that you had learned earlier.
2. Start maintaining a daily diary. At
the end of each day or any other suitable time, when you are alone, try to
recollect what happened during the day. What were the significant events
or things you did or saw or thought etc which you would like to tell someone or
remember. Using short or medium sized sentences, following the rules you
learned in Murphy's book write down some sentences and paragraphs capturing
those memorable moments of the day. Try organising your sentences and
paragraphs well. After completing your diary for the day, pause for a
while. Then read out loud the diary and see how the sentences
sound. Ask yourself the following:
- Are all spellings correct?
- Have you used all the right words in the right context?
- Are the sentences grammatically correct?
- Are the sequences of sentences OK?
- Does the writing manage to convey your thoughts or
describe the event in full, clearly and accurately?
Make any changes to your writing, if necessary.
The next day, before entering your diary entry for the day, you may go through
your writing of the previous day. By doing so , you will become the
reader or receiver of that writing. Read the entry critically and make
necessary modifications, if necessary.
Make this a regular habit. You will soon notice how your English writing
muscles develop. Others will start noticing them and commenting on them.
3. If you go on a holiday or come across a noteworthy event, note
interesting points in your daily diary. After returning from your holiday,
write a descriptive story/article of your holiday. Give it a title and
write the story as if you were preparing it for others, i.e. as an assignment,
something for your friends to read or for submission to a newspaper or
magazine for publication. You should describe everything in a way so that
the reader can visualise your journey and events. By reading it, the reader should feel as if he
or she was physically present there or the event happened to him. If it
is not out of place, try to add some humour to your writing. Also,
include your musings, thoughts and comments along the way.
If you do the above ZALEG exercises, you will soon notice that your ENGLISH
WRITING muscles are developing. You will start feeling more confident in
writing in English for self. You will start enjoying writing just for
sheer personal pleasure.
Level 2: Tools and Exercises: Developing
the English Writing Muscles - Writing for a closed group.
After you have started feeling comfortable writing in English for yourself you
may start writing for others and use the following tools and do the
exercises. .
1. Keep on doing the Level 1 exercises.
Once you are satisfied that one of your writings is complete, and you
feel comfortable showing it to others, you may give it to a friend or a
family member to read and and ask them for their comments. Take note of their
comments.
2. Write letters and emails regularly in English to your friends,
relatives and others. Do not use phrases like "I
wanna meet you". You should write, "I want to meet
you", instead. . Always, write complete and grammatically correct
sentences. Use the techniques you learned while using Level 1
exercises. When writing to your friends try to add some humour and
mystery into your writing, if you want.
3. After you start feeling comfortable writing to your friends and
relatives in English and get positive feedbacks/comments from them, it means
that they have noticed yur English writing muscles growing. You should then start volunteering at work to
write reports, memos, official letters, internal and external, in
English. Initially, they may be heavily edited by your superiors. Note
carefully their editing comments and try to avoid the mistakes they pointed out
so that you do not make the same mistakes in your future writings. Try to
reach the stage when there is no editing on your sentence constructions or you
make no spelling and/or grammatical errors.
You should note that even after you have leaned to write correctly and
confidently, you will get some editorial comments on your writing about
content – i.e. something you should have included but left out or you included
something which was not required or you spent too much on one point or the
reverse etc. These are common problems everyone, even expert writers
have. That is why any serious writing goes through an editing process.
Level 3: Tools and Exercise: Develop
the English Writing Muscles: Writing for an open group
After you have written for a closed group for sometime and feel that you have
developed the required muscles, you should start writing in English for an
outside open group. Start with the following tools and exercises.
1. Write a Letter to the Editor for an English newspaper.
The letter can be on a new topic of your interest. It can also be a
response to one of the letters you saw in the Letters to the Editor section of
the newspaper that you read. If it is the latter, you may either write
agreeing with the previous writer and say why and/or where you agree with them
or say what you do not agree with and why. If necessary and convenient,
get it reviewed by someone else who helped you in level 2 exercises before
sending it off to the newspaper. You will notice that even if the
newspaper publishes your letter, the newspaper editor may edit it a little or
significantly.
2. Write articles on topics of your interest and submit them to
newspapers or magazines. After writing an article keep it aside for one
week. After about a week, re-read the article as if you were reading and
reviewing an article written by someone else. Do the necessary editorial
corrections and changes. Try to get it reviewed by someone else before
sending it off for publication.
3. If you are a technical or academic minded person write research papers for
publication for an appropriate journal or presentation at a seminar.
Follow the same review and editing process that you used for other exercises
both at this and previous levels.
4. If you are a good story teller or would like to become one, then
write short stories in English. Give them to your friends, relatives, colleagues
and mentors. Ask them for their comments. If they encourage you to
submit a story to a magazine then do so. If you start enjoying writing
short stories, keep writing, even if they do not get published. You will
soon develop your own story telling style (special muscles) and your story may
ultimately be published. If you do not want to publish your stories just
keep your stories together. You may read them months or years later, and
see how you enjoy them then.
Level 4: Tools and Exercises : Develop the English
Writing Muscles: Editing and editorial writing:
After some of your writings have been published, you are ready to move on to
the next level of tools and exercises. You are ready to develop your
editorial writing muscles.
1. At work you may be asked to review reports and letters written by others,
who may be either your junior or senior. Without taking into
consideration whether you are reviewing writings of your junior or superior
you should do a frank and critical review of the writing and point out anything you do not
agree with. For example, beside doing the standard editing
like spellings and grammar, you should point out if a certain part is not
clear, you find some odd sentence constructions, if anything is missing, if any
part is irrelevant or repetitive, or if you think that the sentence and/or
paragraph sequencing needs to be changed etc.
2. At work or outside work, if you get an opportunity of doing some
editorial work - editing flyers, brochures, newsletters, magazines etc. take
them on and use your critical editing tools that you have and learned to use.
3. Volunteer to do editorial work, whenever you get a chance, from small
to large, including reviewing and editing research papers, journals, reports,
books etc.
© Amin Rahman MARN 0322761