SAT Essay Tips: Writing Better for Better Writing

Writing is one of those skills that does not come naturally to most people, for the simple reason that it is not a normal everyday requirement to write regularly or at length in today’s society of short message communication. It is a real shame that we now expend such efforts to make our written messages to be as abbreviated as possible, and condense all of our writing down into the shortest snippets possible, in order to meet the artificial constructs placed on us by social and technology, because by developing your writing skills and using writing as a tool to express yourself effectively, you will also make great gains in your insight into understanding the English language, and that will lead to even better scores for all parts of the SAT Test that are related to language skills.

Through the metacognition that you practice in the process of planning, drafting, revising and editing your writing, you will find that you begin to get a much clearer appreciation of all the elements of the language that you toil away at memorizing in class. Grammar is meaningless as just a set of rules, but through applying the different rules practically to help you express yourself meaningfully, you will see that, in fact, grammar takes on a whole new meaning as it enables more effective communication. Likewise, rote-learning oodles of words to expand your vocabulary really does not achieve much unless you can bring those words out on demand, and apply them at will whenever and wherever you need them. An additional benefit that you will notice from analyzing your own language through writing is that you will be able to better scrutinize and comprehend the writings of others, and this of course brings a lot of advantages to you in tasks such as those you will come across in the reading section of the SAT Test.

In short, writing longer pieces in English is a great way to consolidate your language skills, and it will pay dividends in both the short term and the long run, as you better understand your own and others’ writings. As for how and where you can carry out this practice, the sky is the limit, since despite being the cause of limiting our writing through restrictive short messages and micro-blogs, technology also offers a whole host of other writing opportunities that are there for the taking. You could try writing your own journal that you can keep on a cloud-based service and therefore, can access from all of your devices, any time that you want to add to it. Alternatively, as you gain confidence you could consider contributing to online discussion forums, or else write your own long-form blog, as both of these will give you the chance to share your ideas with others and also let you come into contact with others who share the passion of writing. Just keep it in mind that you may be free to say what you like, but you should always be respectful when presenting your opinions or discussing the opinions of others.