11 Wrap Up
When you write in English, there is a lot to remember about vocabulary, grammar, composition, and mechanics. This includes simple formatting like margins and line spacing, but also more complicated things like the organization of an essay that meets the expectations of your college instructors.
One quick way to immediately improve your writing is to focus on the four most common errors in ESOL writing:
- subject-verb agreement
- comma splices
- fragments
- run-on sentences
From there, it’s important to remember that writing is a process. “Good writing comes from rewriting” is the saying, and it’s true for everyone. However, editing and proofreading are not easy skills, so you will continue to practice them throughout the course. You will also continue to study vocabulary and grammar — the nuts and bolts of good writing.
Topic selection is also a very important first step in any writing project. If your topic is too large, you’ll write a whole book (or, worse, write only something very vague and superficial). If your topic is too small, then you won’t have much to explore in your writing; if your topic can be explained in only one sentence, then it’s probably going to be difficult to expand into a longer essay. And, finally, at least in this course, it’s important for you to choose topics that interest you. Writing about ideas that are important to you makes writing and research not only more useful and meaningful, but it also makes it easier!
As the title of this course suggests, all of these things will begin to coalesce — that is, they will begin to come together and make sense as a whole.
