Do you want to know how to improve reading and writing skills?
If your answer is yes, then come along with us.
Reading and writing skills are important for you to function properly in the world today.
They enable you to understand the materials you read, and also write in a way that others will understand.
If your reading and writing skills are poor, you will have a hard time communicating with people through written communication.
Also, you will find a hard time understanding people’s written messages to you.
Hence, you need to work to improve your reading and writing skills.
In this article, we will share amazing tips and information that will enable you to improve your reading and writing skills.
So, we advise you to carefully follow us to the end.
To begin, we will be looking at what reading skills are…
What are Reading Skills? – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
The skills that grant people the ability to read, decode, comprehend, and interpret written texts and language are called reading skills.
Great reading skills come with great benefits.
They allow a person to assimilate and respond to written communication such as messages, emails, letters, and so on.
Possessing great reading skills helps to ensure that misunderstanding or miscommunication does not occur with written communication.
The following reading skills ensure that you understand written communication:
Decoding
Decoding skills enable a person to pronounce words they have not seen written but have heard.
It greatly relies on a language skill known as phonemic awareness.
Phonemic awareness skill enables one to hear different sounds, manipulate them into words, and then connect them to written symbols.
Being able to make connections between letters and the sounds they make is an important step in decoding words.
Vocabulary – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
Vocabulary is mostly about decoding new words’ meanings.
It is the skill that allows a person to understand a word’s meaning, definition, and the right usage or context.
When a person can understand new words’ meanings, and understand their relationship with other new words or vocabulary, it will help them to form ideas.
Generally, it will help them to understand the text they read better.
Fluency
Fluency is all about being able to read with ease.
To achieve this, one has to be able to quickly decode and understand new vocabulary while reading.
Your skill to read clearly, greatly influences how well you will understand written materials.
Inference – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
Reading does not stop at just understanding what you read.
It also involves connecting what you understood from a text with your idea or opinion.
This helps you to better identify that text’s meaning.
You can make inferences about what you know about a certain topic you read about.
Inferring occurs when you read a material that does not completely state its meaning and purpose.
Your ability to make inferences increases your retention ability.
Retention
Your ability to remember what you read helps to build up your reading abilities.
It helps you to fully comprehend, and retain things you read.
The best way to improve your retention ability is by practicing summarizing things you read.
What are Writing Skills? – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
The skills that enable a person to a person to express ideas, thoughts, and opinions through written words are called writing skills.
These skills include:
Research
Research skills help you to research what you want to write.
They enable you to gather the right information and figure out what should be included in your content.
Also, they help you know the type of style to make use of in writing out your content.
Hence, they are a necessity.
Outlining – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
After you carry out your research, you need to plan how you will arrange the information you have gathered.
Knowing how to outline is what will make this possible.
Hence, outlining is all about creating structural plans and a flow for your writing piece.
If you possess good outlining skills you will compellingly organize your paragraphs and sentences.
Understand that when you can make this possible it positively influences the way people perceive you and also understand your points.
Clarity and Grammar
Correct and appropriate usage of grammar is necessary when writing.
This is because grammar governs language usage.
It is a guide for how everybody should communicate to ensure that there is understanding.
Different languages come with their grammar.
So, you have to ensure that you know at least the basic grammar of the language you are writing in.
Apart from grammar, you also need clarity.
Clarity ensures that you construct your grammar in easy-to-understand sentences.
This way, your written piece will not have any unwanted ambiguity.
Check here to discover 10 effective tips for clear and concise writing for business professionals.
Editing – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
Editing skills help you correct and make adjustments to a written piece of work.
The changes and adjustments are often done to the content, structure, or organization of a written piece.
To edit a piece of written work, one has to proofread and check for misspellings, typos, and grammatical errors.
In some instances, you might even have to tweak paragraphs or sentences, to make the piece reflect certain tines or flow better.
Editing skills ensure that your written piece has little to no mistakes.
Connection Between Reading and Writing Skills – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
Language skills are made up of four skills which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
When learning a language you first listen, speak, read, and then write.
If you cannot read you will not know which words to use to pass your message through written communication.
In other words, your reading skills influence your writing skills.
Hence, we can say that one connection reading skills and writing skills have is that they are both classified under language skills.
Also, we can deduce that good reading skills boost one’s writing skills.
Tips on How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
We have looked at reading and writing skills, and also the connection between them.
Now, we will be focusing on how you can improve your reading and writing skills.
We have prepared amazing tips that can make this possible when practiced.
Since we are talking about improving two different sets of skills, we advise that you carefully follow us to know the tips for each set of skills.
Also, we advise you to put them to good use.
1. Read Everyday
To improve both your reading and writing skills make it a habit of reading every day.
Every day set out 10 to 20 minutes to read.
Do not limit yourself; read different books, magazines, articles, and any written material.
When you do this, you will come across different words which will help to improve your vocabulary.
Also, try to read aloud sometimes, this will help you to note how fluent you are, and help you improve your fluency.
As your vocabulary improves it will help strengthen your writing skills as you will know more words to use while writing.
Furthermore, as you read ensure that you read to understand.
With every type of written material you read, ensure that you notice the word choice, sentence structure, tone, and flow.
This will improve your writing skills
2. Preview Texts – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
For every text, you intend to read, ensure that you preview them.
Previewing means looking and scanning through written material.
Doing this helps you to get familiar with a material’s content before you read it.
In other words, previewing a text helps you to form a central idea of what you are about to read.
You can effectively preview by scanning the titles, headlines, captions, and other features of a text before reading.
3. Work on Your Grammar
We have established that grammar is a very important aspect of writing.
Hence, your grammar needs to be good.
For this to be possible, you need to know at least some grammar basics.
So, if you do not know them, then you should brush up and work to know some grammar basics.
In the English language, the basic grammar you need to know includes:
- Proper usage of tenses
- Correct usage of parts of speech
- Proper sentence construction
There are other grammar basics you should know.
So, read books, go online, watch tutorials, or attend classes that will brush up your grammar.
4. Set Some Reading Goals – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
You can improve your reading skills by setting some reading goals and working to achieve them.
Your reading goals should be aimed at developing your vocabulary, improving your reading fluency, and developing your decoding and inference abilities.
So, you can challenge yourself to take note of new words you come across while reading, learn, and understand their right usage.
You can make it a habit of reading aloud often to work on your fluency.
Also, this might sound silly, but after reading a text try explaining in your own words what you just read.
While you do this, the prior idea you have about that topic will be merged into your explanation.
Hence, doing this will improve both your decoding and inference skills.
5. Practice Writing
What better way to become proficient at writing than practicing it?
Yes, we are encouraging you to start writing.
A person’s writing skills cannot improve overnight; it takes work and sustained interest.
So, get interested and write regularly.
You can start by writing something that you are interested in, or your day.
It can either be on your electronic device or a book.
Ensure that it is what works best for you.
Doing this will help you to get over any fear of writing, and also it can help you to develop your unique writing style.
6. Identify The Purpose – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
When you read a text, make it a habit of identifying the purpose of that text.
Discovering the purpose, meaning, or theme of a text can help you to better understand it.
Also, it can help you to enjoy the text better.
Additionally, when you know a text’s purpose, you will be able to search for details and key ideas that back up your purpose for reading the text.
7. Guess New Words Meaning
While reading, you will come across new words.
Getting to know the meaning of these words can help to build your vocabulary.
However, before you check the meaning of those words in your dictionary, try guessing what they mean based on their usage.
For example, if you do not know what optimistic means you can deduce the meaning from a sentence like this; “My business partner is optimistic, unlike my negative friend”.
From that sentence, you can tell that “optimistic” passes as the opposite of negative which is positive.
After you guess the meaning of a new word, ensure that you make use of a dictionary to confirm.
Doing this helps to develop your decoding skills.
8. Work on Your Writing Mechanics – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
If you want your written materials to be read and understood, ensure that you do the following:
Make Your Sentences Different
Your written work can be boring or tiring to read if your sentences have similar structure or length.
Having over similar sentences makes your work repetitive to readers.
So, ensure that you mix things up when writing.
Make your work interesting by varying your sentences.
Make Use of More Simple Words – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
As much as it is fun and educative to learn new words while reading, nobody wants to constantly check the dictionary while reading
If your written work is filled with complex words, it will most likely distract the readers, ruin their focus, and prevent them from enjoying the text.
Also, if you keep using complex words you most likely will not flow and your tone will be disjointed.
This can prevent someone from understanding your point.
So, ensure that you make use of more simple words than complex words.
Avoid Repetition
When speaking and writing, people tend to repeat an idea in slightly different ways.
This can cause the listeners or readers to have wavering attention.
Also, it can make your writing unnecessarily padded.
So, ensure that you avoid repetition.
Make Use of Specific Words – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
It might seem difficult, but when writing try your best to avoid making use of vague words such as “things”
Rather, make use of specific words.
Whatever that “thing” you are writing about is, ensure that you write out the specific word it is called.
This will help to strengthen your writing.
Do Away With Filler Words
Filler words such as “that” and “just” are often unnecessary and can make your writing become a drag.
Before you make use of any adjectives or adverbs, think of a more specific verb or noun that will deliver your message while strengthening your writing.
When you make use of filler words in your writings, it can make you seem less confident while weakening your message.
So, do your best to do away with filler words.
Guide The Readers Through All Your Points – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
When writing, you have to ensure that you move smoothly from one point to another.
To do this, you have to ensure you create a transition.
When you bring up a new point, ensure that you make it known to your readers why you are doing that.
Also, let them know how it is connected to your main topic.
This way, your readers will not get confused trying to understand your points and overall message.
9. Proofread
Regardless of how good you think you are as a writer, ensure that you proofread every time you write.
Proofing reading helps you to notice errors and typos, and correct them.
This ensures that you do not stress over a mistake later on.
The best way to proofread is by reading aloud.
Sometimes when you are reading in your mind or skimming through, some words, usage, sentence, and so on, might seem right until you say them aloud.
You can ask someone to also proof read your written material for you.
10. Summarize – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
Summarizing the text you read is a great way to improve one’s reading skills.
It develops your retention abilities as it helps you to remember details and the main idea of the text you read.
When you summarize you make use of your words and unique perception to grab the text you read.
You can try summarizing by sharing what you read with someone else or just speaking aloud.
11. Learn To Outline
As we earlier established, outlining is an important aspect of writing.
Hence, it should not be taken lightly.
Your method of outlining depends on your preference.
However, the most common way to outline is by creating sections.
These sections can indicate paragraphs, chapters, slides, or whatever you are working with.
Then for each section, you make note of their purpose.
This way, you will know the information to share in each of them.
12. Listen to Feedback – How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
Sometimes, you might not know where you are lacking and where you are doing well.
Hence, you should not depend on yourself to know where you need improvement in your writing.
Ask people around you who have read your work, and listen to their feedback.
Ensure that they are people who will be honest with you.
When you hear their feedback, then you will know what to work on.
As a result, you will focus on improving where you are lacking.
This is an effective way of working to improve your writing skills.
So, do not hesitate to ask for feedback and improve based on feedbcak.
Conclusion on How to Improve Reading and Writing Skills
Both reading and writing skills are important language skills that do not only benefit one’s personal life but also professional life.
So, they should not be overlooked.
If your reading and writing skills are poor, then work to improve them.
We have provided amazing tips and information that will enable you to improve your reading and writing skills.
So, we encourage you to take advantage of them.
