One does not become a great writer overnight. One needs to work hard and practice constantly on a regular basis to perfect their writing skills and build their vocabulary. To be able to write well, you need to first have a good vocabulary and grammar sense. Vocabulary simply means knowledge of words; it makes writing more powerful and effective and helps deliver the meaning you intend to convey. Learning how to write well will help develop your communication skills as well. As a student, you will certainly have to write different types of papers; essay, speech, comprehension, thesis, research papers, and lots more. Hence, you have to keep performing various writing exercises to hone your skills and build your vocabulary to keep the creativity flowing.
In this article, the essay writer help has discussed creative exercises to help improve your vocabulary and writing skills.
5 Creative Exercises to Develop Your Vocabulary and Improve Writing skills
There are a variety of exercises and writing prompts that can help you write well. Writing exercises help discover your style of writing, write in a particular tone, generate ideas, hone your skills and enhance your creativity. Some exercises are discussed below:
Develop the habit of reading more
The research paper writer recommends nurturing a habit of reading different types of writings or forms of write-ups. You may read books, articles, newspapers, blogs, etc., on a daily basis. Reading any kind of book will do, and bear in mind when you read something, read it out loud to understand the meaning. While reading, you will come across words and phrases that you are unfamiliar with, keep a thesaurus and jot down the words with their meanings. Practicing reading is the most useful and helpful way of developing writing skills.
Clean up your grammar
Although you don’t need to “learn” grammar, your English writing will improve significantly if you work on grammar exercises. Also, remember that grammar is more important when you’re writing than when you’re speaking because it’s usually more formal and structured.
Carry a dictionary
Carrying a dictionary or thesaurus will beef up your vocabulary while you’re on the go. You can also download online dictionaries and they will be resourceful and easily accessible. You can use a dictionary to look up words you are not familiar with. You can look up obscure words that are unclear to you that may come to you as you go about your day. You can look up any word and find the meaning, antonyms, related words, root words, and also examples of how that word can be used differently.
Practice freewriting frequently
Free writing implies writing down anything that comes to your mind without thinking about the conventions, rhetoric, grammar, spelling, or any other rules of writing. Free writing helps you get into the practice of daily writing. Take any topic of your choice or write something about yourself, write how you spent your day, that’s all. Take out 20 minutes or so and write something that comes to your head. This allows your brain to start thinking efficiently and quickly whenever you get down to write. You will also have tons of ideas to write about if you are assigned an essay in school.
Learn a new word every day
This is a great trick to improve your vocabulary and this is quite interesting too. Create a list or Word of the Day calendar and look for words in the dictionary, or while you are reading something, or you can even look them up on Pinterest, or online sites. You will be amazed to come across words that you have never heard of before. Have you come across the word “Tatenda”? It is a noun, which means things are better left unsaid.
Diversify your reading list
Try to diversify your topics and try to integrate different subjects, fictional, non-fictional, contemporary literature, science, social science, politics, or another domain that seems interesting. You may even check out different writers’ works to understand how they have written and try to grasp their tone and writing style. As per the paper helper, you are not exposing yourself to a variety of words or vocabulary if you tend to go through the same sort of readings day in and day out.
Observing others
When you go out in a public place, or while you are traveling in a bus or train, observe the people around you. Visit a park or another place, or take a trip to a place nearby, visit a museum, and observe things and people. At the end of the day, write down the things you took notice of and whatever your imagination stirs up. This is a good exercise to help spark your creativity. This will help you think imaginatively and bring out the artist in you as writing is an art and you have to foster the skills to shape yourself into a creative writer.
Use script commands
A writing prompt is an idea that starts the writing process. The prompt can be a short sentence, paragraph, or image, but the goal is the same—you’ll start writing to spark your creativity. Writing prompts can help you when you’re stuck writing a book. If you work on a writing line for ten minutes, you can go back to writing the book to get to work. It generates ideas for the writer and frees the creative process.
A map of emotions
It is not easy for all of us to express our feelings either through a communication or in writing. However, even if you don’t want to write a novel, it’s important to learn how to do it. It helps you know yourself better and communicate better with others. The “Emotional Map” exercise is to describe your feelings. The difficult part is that you have to do this without using clear words, repeating the simplest sentences used for this purpose, or using clichés. To make things easier for yourself, create a map or list of the feelings you want to describe, and then start writing. Describe your mental and physical feelings and try to use adjectives as much as possible.
Write a story
Each has its own story. You can write a creative story (whether it is your own invention or rewriting a famous book) or your biography. Writing stories is a great way to improve your English skills and improve your fluency because the process forces you to use and expand your vocabulary. In addition, it allows you to explore the intricacies of the English language at your own pace. Conversely, you may find it difficult to stay on your feet during a conversation. You can always look through the Story Prompts for ideas and inspiration. Alternatively, you can use websites like Reverse Context to expand your vocabulary as you write. Unlike other sources, Reverse Context provides context when translating words or sentences.
Word association
For this activity, start by writing vocabulary words on the board. Go around the class and ask students to share words that match the words on the board. List words, synonyms, antonyms, and examples to create deeper meaning with dictionary definitions. This exercise is useful for connecting the definition to students’ prior knowledge and background information. This helps students make a deeper connection with the word and develop a stronger understanding.
