How to Improve Your Writing Skills

There are a number of factors that weigh into the assignment of a grade on an essay exam.  Some may be of the opinion that all one really needs to do is just start writing and get all of the ideas one has on paper, and let the proctor decide the merits of those ideas.  This is a grave mistake.  The purpose of this short handout is to suggest some ways to improve your essay writing skills for the purpose of improving your exam grades.

First, organize your thoughts.  We have all heard of the five paragraph essay.  Just in case you may have forgotten, the five paragraph essay is one in which the initial paragraph contains your thesis, and the outline of the remaining essay in sentences, three body paragraphs in which you explain and expand on your reasons to support your thesis, and a conclusion that restates the thesis and the main points of the essay.  Even if you are not officially required to write an essay on an exam, it is presupposed that your response will have some structure to guide your reader to the relevant concepts and topics you wish to express.  Hence, the five paragraph essay format is a good one to use in order to give your ideas and writing structure.  Use it. 

On short answer type questions, you may or may not have a thesis, but some organization of your thoughts is very helpful.  Think of the question as a writing prompt.  Use the structure of the prompt to structure your response.  If you follow that structure, you will make sure that there is no portion of the prompt that you did not attempt to answer.  Also, if your short answer seems a bit disorganized, sum it up at the end of the response.  A good summary is helpful for your reader in that it shows that you can think through all of the details and, at the same time, get the larger perspective as well.  Think of the summary as your last chance to convince your reader of the truth of your position.

Second, we need to talk about how one goes about reporting the views of others.  I really do not know where we all learned this bad habit, but one does not report the views of others in terms of “x believes that”.  Even worse is the following, “x feels that”.  Please notice that for the most part the authors we are reading and discussing are dead.  In what sense can a dead person believe or feel?  These are terrible ways of reporting the views or positions of others. Instead, use something like “x says that” or “x writes that”.  When you use the verb “believes”, this can suggest that you disagree with these views or that the views are somehow inaccurate.  Either you are attributing beliefs to something that can no longer have beliefs or you are suggesting that there is something wrong with these views.  Either way, this is not what you intend when you report the views of others by using the phrase “x believes that”.  So, don’t use this illocution. 

When you use the phrase, “x feels that”, this is even worse.  Feelings are emotional states, like pleasures, joy, hate, anger, elation, etc.  When you introspect your feelings, you do not get anything like the philosophical positions we have been analyzing.  It is also simply inaccurate to say that the author feels this way, because often a philosopher may argue for a position simply for the sake of argument.  The philosopher may not agree or otherwise support that view.  So, claiming that these are the feelings of the author is inaccurate.  The bottom line here is that using either the “belief” or “feels” language is sloppy, inaccurate, and a poor way of reporting the views of another person. 

We do have accurate ways of reporting the views of another in the English language that work wonderfully.  Verbs like “writes”, “says” or “thinks” capture the sense of reporting the views of another without loading these emotive aspects to the report.  Also, if you find it strange to say that “x says that” or “x thinks that”, remember, in these writings we have a record of what they said or thought.  We are not warranted in thinking that they may have actually believed these things.  They may have said them for the sake of argument, and therefore to claim that they believed it is still not warranted.  Another useful phrase is “x holds that” or “x claims that” or “x argues that”.  This last phrase is only useful if you actually have an argument that you are reporting.  One can hold a position without believing it.  One can make a claim that may or may not be entirely accurate, but one that you may advance.  These phrases take a little more practice in using.  But if the goal here is good, accurate writing, adopting these phrases is a sign of improvement.

Writing is a skill.  Careful writing is even more of a skill.  Skills take practice and time to master.  Part of preparation for an in-class writing exam ought to be practice at home with summarizing and writing out your responses.  I cannot tell you how valuable this is.  If you rehearse your essays or responses at home, then come into the exam having already written out responses, the time it takes to answer these is drastically reduced.