Essential Vocabulary to Improve Your Writing Discover how to improve your writing skills . There are various forms of vocabulary required for good academic writing . Firstly, you need the correct vocabulary to structure your writing task response or essay. This vocabulary will make your writing organized, coherent and cohesive. What’s more, you can use this vocabulary again and again in different tasks because it is not topic specific. It’s not necessary to learn all the phrases and vocabulary – concentrate on learning a new word or a few new words for each purpose and learn to use them correctly and appropriately in your academic writing. Doing so will improve your vocabulary for writing assignments, college papers, and writing tests. [Click on each writing vocabulary phrase to see an example of how it is used in an essay answer] How to Write Better in English Sentence Starters - Presenting an impersonal point of view/opinion It is often said that It is ge...

Want to improve your writing instantly? Learn to use some of the essential functional sentences used by native English writers in writing. Here’s a list of 50 key functional sentence structures which you can use to instantly improve the quality and organization of your writing. Functional Sentences You don’t need to learn all the sentences (if you don’t have much time) – pick the sentences you think you can apply most frequently to your writing tasks, for presenting arguments, opinions, contradicting, etc. Then, practice using these essential sentence structures and see the quality of your writing increase quickly. Use them to describe data/information in graphs, charts, tables, diagrams and for introducing and organizing opinions, arguments, counter-arguments, conclusions and summarizing in reports. Download 50 Functional Sentences for Writing To introduce an example: For instance, / For example, / Take the case of / Su...

Planning and Starting your Dissertation or Thesis The importance of good planning in dissertation or thesis writing cannot be over emphasized. Research has shown that in many cases dissertation writer, especially those whose first language is not English, invest too much time initially in the mechanics of writing (grammar, sentence structure, word selection, etc.) instead of focusing on the meaning of what they want to express, and then refining this through the organization of paragraphs and sentences until the ideal structure and words are determined. Simple Writing Process Guide The result: the bigger picture or ideas is often lost or lacks support and certain sections of text may even seem to be irrelevant or disconnected even though their technical structure may be well formed. One way to solve this problem is through a continuous process of writing, revising and editing of the text as it develops so as to avoid the production of blocks of unconnected text. Writing ...

Dissertation Writing – Metatext & Signposting If you are an international postgraduate student, you may have limited experience of extended writing such as that required for a dissertation. You may also find it a challenge to determine the research topic if you have previously been assigned these by tutors or supervisors. This is why initial planning of your dissertation or thesis is so important, as discussed in a previous post . A key point to remember that when producing such a lengthy piece of written work, you have a responsibility to the reader – it is your responsibility to guide the reader through the text and ensure they understand the significance of each section in relation to other sections so they can comprehend the foundation and logic behind what you argue and also how the flow of what you present logically arrives at the conclusions made based on the research findings. This requires a degree of explicitness in writing which many students do not possess or may st...

How to describe data presented in a table This is an example of how to describe data given in tabular format based on an Academic IELTS Writing test task 1 question, shown below. IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 You should spend about 20 minutes on this task. The table below shows the proportion of time different age groups spend on various internet activities. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features , and making comparisons where relevant. Write at least 250 words. Academic Writing - Describing Information in a Table How do you describe information in a table? The table provides information about the proportion of time people of different ages spend on different activities on the internet. The people are divided into 6 age groups which range from 10 to 50 years old and over. The categories of activity on the Internet include online shopping, browsing news and sports sites, game playing and social media use. The information show...

IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 Describing information in a graph IELTS Writing Task 1 Sample Answer The graph shows information regarding the income trends of four cafés over the previous 12-month period . There are two basic general trends: downward and upward. As regards the first, the earnings for the Tea Room were down over the year, falling significantly from almost $160,000 earnings a month to just under $50,000 in December. By contrast, the income for the other three cafes went up by varying amounts. There was a rise In Café Cool’s sales over the first ten months, followed by a sudden increase to $120,000. Furthermore, the income for both Internet Express and the Wi-Fi Café also ended the year up in December. The former experienced a steady fall to June, but after that, income rose steadily ending the year at approximately $130,000. Likewise, the trend for Wi-Fi was upward. Between January and July, earnings doubled from $50,000 to nearly $100,000, and t...