My name is Emma, and in today's video I am going to teach you some great writing tips.

These tips are for both academic writing and non-academic writing.

Okay?

So it's for writing in general.

Now, this video is going to be in two parts, because I have so many tips, so I'm going

to give five tips in this video and five tips in the next video.

Okay, so let's get started.

So, there are so many different ways...

Or so many different types of writing we do in our lives; we write emails, we write essays

if we're a student, we might write a Facebook post, or we might write a resume or a cover letter.

So it's very important to develop your writing skills because you will be writing throughout

your life a lot.

So let's look at my first tip.

My first tip is: It's very important to think about the genre of what you're writing.

"Genre" is a very fancy word that pretty much means type.

So, a genre of writing might be an essay, or it might be a cover letter, or an email,

or a tweet.

These are all different genres, and each one of these has a different expectation on what

you should include and how you should write it.

So it's very important, first step is: Know the genre or know the type, and know what

is expected of you.

Also important in this is knowing your audience, or thinking about your audience.

So, for example, if you write an email, the language you're going to use and the way you're

going to write will be different if you write an email to your friend versus an email to

your boss.

So it's important to think about: "Who are you writing to?" because this is going to

help you decide what to write and how to write it.

Same with, you know, if you are on Twitter and you write a tweet, or on Facebook a Facebook

post, you know, it's important to think about your audience.

You know, are you writing this post for friends to see, or is this a post your boss might

see, or members of the public?

You know, and that could be a problem.

So it's important to think about, especially with this and on other social media, too:

Audience.

Who will see this and what will they think about it, and what are their expectations?

You know, some people work for companies where they're responsible for social media, so it's

important, too, the type of wording they use when they're writing on Facebook.

If you work at a company and you're writing for your company, it's going to be different

than if you're writing for your friends.

Same with an essay.

An essay has a certain structure, you know, it's supposed to be a certain amount of pages,

it has a certain organization to it, and so knowing what's expected of you when you write

an essay will help you because it's going to be very different than, for example, a

Facebook post.

Same with in business, business reports.

Understanding the format of a business report is important if this is something you're going

to be writing, and thinking about your audience.

Same with executive summaries, which is a type of thing businesspeople write.

If you're not in business you might not ever write one of these, but if you are in business

you need to realize that audience is important because professionals are going to be reading

this, and these people are busy, so, you know, knowing your audience and knowing what is

expected of you is the very first step to good writing.

Let's look at some other tips.

Okay, so we've talked about genre or the type of writing you're doing, and part of this

is knowing the expectations for how long what you write should be.

Okay?

So you want to know a bit about length expectations before you start writing.

This is really important, especially in university where you often have a number of pages you're

allowed to write.

It's important, you know, in the workplace because sometimes, you know, you can't write a lot.

And it's important, you know, on Twitter because you have a certain number of characters you

can use.

So length is very important because that's going to help you decide what to include in

your writing.

Okay, so let's look at this a bit more.

When I was younger I used to think long, meaning a lot of writing, was always better, but this

is not the case.

You know, the more you write, maybe you can include more detail, but a lot of the times

the person or your audience who's reading what you write does not have a lot of time,

and so they don't want to read long pieces of work.

Okay?

So it's important to know expectations.

So, for example, I have here the word "short" and "long", and so this is kind of like the

scale.

If you write a tweet it's going to be something short; a Facebook post might be a little bit

longer; a paragraph, you might write something like five sentences if in school you have

to write a paragraph on something; an email might be a little bit longer than this; a

cover letter you might use a full page; a resume maybe you might use two pages but nothing

more; and then you might write an essay which might be 5 pages, 10 pages, depending; and

then maybe a report which might be 50 pages-who knows?-depending on what's expected.

So my main point here is that different types of writing have different expectations with

length, and it's really important to follow those expectations.

For students who are writing the TOEFL or the IELTS, you only can use a certain number

of words, so this is very important for you to know and to really think about.

How are you going to get your message across using the right amount of words?

This is a key word we often talk about in good writing, and that's "concise".

So when you are concise, it means you say something with as few words as possible, but

still getting the meaning across.

So you are communicating your idea, but you're doing it in a short way, as short as you can

while still keeping the idea there.

So, in different cultures you have different rules about this.

In some cultures longer is better.

In English-speaking cultures usually we really want to get to the point, so we want something to be...

We want to communicate our idea, but we want it to be in a concise way, so using our words

very carefully so we don't use too many words.

So main point here: Know how long something you're writing should be, and paying attention

to this when you write.

All right?

Now let's look at my next tip.

Okay, so my third point might be one of the most important points in this lesson, and

that is: When you write something, very important to plan or to think about what you will say

before you write it.

This is something a lot of people don't do because they're busy, they feel like they

don't have a lot of time, or you know, they just don't have any ideas.

And the thing is, though, that this will really help improve your writing.

Okay?

And it doesn't matter what you're writing; planning out an email can be important, just

like planning out an essay can be important.

So let's think about some ways we can plan out what we want to write.

There are...

There are different ways to do this.

Some people like to make a plan by brainstorming.

So, for example, imagine you were writing a paragraph about cats, so you might have

your subject or your key idea here, and then you might think about: "Okay, what's something

about cats?

Hmm.

They make great pets", and then you might write some stuff about that.

Maybe they're quiet, so they make a good pet.

They're cheap.

Okay?

And so the thing is just getting out your ideas.

Okay?

And then you can organize your ideas better.

Or maybe, you know, you're thinking: "Okay, cats, they eat food.

What kind of food do they eat?"

So you can do the same thing with reports.

You can think about: "Okay, what's the main ideas that I need to talk about in this report?"

You know, where you just kind of brainstorm in advance.

I usually do that when I write reports, and I find it very helpful actually, just to get

my ideas down on paper, and then I organize them.

So, this is one method.

Another thing you can do is you can just write down everything, just like this, with a dash.

So, for example, if I was writing about cats in a paragraph, I might just start thinking...

Writing anything I think: "Quiet, cute, Grumpy Cat", okay?

And I might just write down all the ideas I have.

Now, of course, you're probably not writing an essay or a paragraph on cats; you're probably

writing something very different, but the idea is the same.

Okay?

The idea being it's important to plan, and these are different, great ways to get out

your ideas, and to think about them before you actually write.

Sometimes if you're writing an essay you might think in advance about your thesis or what your...

The main topic and the main argument of your essay is going to be.

So, for example, cats are better than dogs.

Maybe that's something I want to argue in an essay.

And then I might organize based on ideas, so I might write, you know, my first main

idea: "They're cleaner", and then I might put some details about that.

My second main idea is that they're great for apartments, and then I might write some

examples or some reasons why.

So, my main point is all of these can work.

Find what's...

What helps you in terms of planning.

There's many different ways to plan what you're going to write, but the most important thing

is to plan and to take some time to think about what you want to say in advance, because

it will really help your writing.

And it's very obvious when somebody hasn't planned what they're going to write, because

everything's disorganized and it's hard to follow.

Planning makes it easier for the audience to understand you.

Now let's look at another tip for how to write better.

Okay, so remember I said that it's very important to think about the type of writing you're

doing, and your audience or who's going to read it?

One of the reasons why this is important is because depending on the type of writing,

you're going to write either in a formal way or an informal way.

Okay?

And I'll explain why this is important to know and how it affects your writing.

So first let's talk about what that means.

Well, when you write something formally, this means that we choose certain words and certain

types of sentences, and we write a certain way, and we write this way because our audience

or the people who are going to read this are usually people from work so we want to be

professional, so we write formally when we're being professional.

We might write this way to strangers or customers.

Okay?

If we work somewhere and we need to write an email, we might use this type of language,

formal language.

And we also use formal language in high school, in university, in college when we're writing

for an assignment or for our homework, or something that our teacher or professor will

read.

Okay?

So we use formal writing mainly in work settings and in academic or school settings.

Now, this is different from informal writing.

Informal writing is the type of writing you will be doing with your friends, so maybe

for example a text message, that's informal; you might use this type of writing when you're

talking to children or writing something for children; and also on social media, so if

you write a tweet or a Facebook post, usually you'll be using informal language; and also

with your family, too, you usually use informal language.

So, I have here some examples of genres or types of writing that you might use the formal

version or the informal version.

So, under formal we have essays, if you do that at university or high school, it would

be formal; a cover letter, if you want to get a job and you have to write a cover letter

then this is going to be formal language you use; a report, if you work at a company and

you have to write reports, you'll be using formal language; or emails to customers you'll

be using formal language.

And there's a lot more; this is just some examples.

For informal, if you write a postcard to your family you'll be using informal language;

a text message would be informal; an email to your friend you would use informal language;

or maybe a birthday card.

Okay?

So it's important to think in advance what kind of language you're going to use.

Okay, so how can we make something formal or informal with our language?

There's a couple of ways to do this.