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 No.1561

I am an ESLer. How do I improve my English writing? My grammar, and punctuation is terrible. My writing vocabulary is terrible as well. Sometimes when I write, I take a long time because the right word or phrase is not on my mind. I have a large passive vocabulary, but I don't know how to use it, and turn it into active vocabulary.
I am looking to improve my writing ability to a level where It would be easy for me to write papers for academic journals, and conferences.
If you have any recommendations, please do post them.
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 No.1562

Practice, practice, practice. There's really no shortcut.
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 No.1563

>>1562
This. I will also say if you can use commas appropriately you are better than most native English speakers, as a point of motivation. I've also had professors with quite broken English, that are very successful in their fields.

>journals, conferences

Depends on the field really. Maths? Yeah you don't need to be forming extraordinary sentences. Psychology? A bit harder.

One thing I notice from your short post:
>when listing 2 things, using 'and' to join them you don't need a comma "my grammar and punctuation is terrible" is fine
>however if you list three things you could say "apples, pears, and bananas" and use a comma, but this is preference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma (also called Oxford comma)

Here's how I would write your first section:
>I am an ESLer, how do I improve my English writing? My grammar, punctuation, and written vocabulary is terrible.
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 No.1565

>>1561
I read this on the oxford dictionary blog or something years ago. The experiment was something like: they got a group of people to write an essay, and got an english teacher to grade it afterwards. In the weeks leading up to it, some were told to spend an hour a day writing practice essays. Another group just read example essays for an hour per day. Another group wrote for 30 min, and read for 30 min. The best results were actually from the people who just read and didn't write. So maybe just read a bunch of technical journal aritcles every day? I can't find the blog post though so maybe I'm misremembering
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 No.1566

>>1565(me)
It was a blog post reporting on a study
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 No.1570

Read The Elements of Style
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 No.1575

>>1561
IELTS?
PTE?
IB?
Are you studying specifically for some test, or just want to improve?
Also look up Comprehensible Input theory.
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 No.1618

how do you improve you're grammar?
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 No.1619

>>1561
Start reading "The Economist". You'll get the sense of how porkies think, and it'll improve your English as well.
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 No.1638

keep reading.
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 No.2188

Use a thesaurus for one.
https://www.thesaurus.com/
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 No.2193

>>1561
I recommend reading the great English prose stylists. Google if you don't know them. Also read stuff like from here https://www.aldaily.com/

Pay close attention to how they all write. Good luck.
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 No.2198

>>1561
I am looking to improve my writing ability to a level where It would be easy for me to write papers for academic journals, and conferences.

The hardest part will be doing the research in the first place. Try to work on a project with a native speaker who has already published, doing most of the writing yourself and letting them proofread your work. Several people I know have improved their english this way; it is hard, but the fine things are hard.
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 No.2472

>>1561
>I am looking to improve my writing ability to a level where It would be easy for me to write papers for academic journals
Read academic journals in and out of your discipline. The key to being a good writer is reading reading reading.
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 No.2474

Read, read, read, read
Practice, practice, practice, practice
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 No.3002

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 No.3061

>>3001
>>3002
Why learn Latin? Could I learn Greek instead?
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 No.3063

>>3061
Because Latin makes up like 80% of a our vocabulary whereas Greek only 6%? And those 6% came to us through Latin.
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 No.3066

>>1561
Might sound obvious but read more books? Including fiction (ones that are considered to be well written that is)

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