How To Improve Your Writing

Teaching critical thinking

Tutors can teach critical thinking to all students, and it is best to introduce it from the start of their university journey. Offering skills training at the beginning of the course provides a framework for students who are new to critical thinking and helps more experienced students to achieve highly.

Thinking about the active and passive voices

Even if you feel safer with the passive voice, consider how you might use the occasional active sentence to liven up your writing.

Getting writing done

Ten-minute bursts aren’t miracle cures for writing challenges, but they are powerful, uncomplicated tools in the writer’s armoury.

Finding your faults

When we edit, most of us simply read the text, line by line, correcting as we go. But it can be more effective to read for one kind of fault at a time.

Make your writing flow

Flow is never a problem if you know what your argument is, you can identify the points and you know which order they should take.

Stuck in a rut?

Ideas tend to come when we’re not racking our brains. They surprise us when the mind is relaxed and wandering over our material.

The art and craft of editing

Use focussed tasks to turn editing from a fuzzy, depressing process into a proactive, task-based operation with clear goals.

Writing for visual thinkers

Academic writing is a significant challenge for predominantly visual thinkers. Here are some ways to help them to convert an explosion of connected ideas into a linear format.