Boost your English writing skills for Chevening

Improve your English writing skills as you get ready to apply to Chevening or prepare for life in the UK as a Chevening Scholar.

As with any skill, the secret to becoming a better writer is practice – lots of practice. We’ve put together some guidance and ideas for how you can improve your writing skills as you prepare for your life in the UK as a Chevening Scholar.

This will also help you prepare for your Chevening application and any English language tests you may need to take as part of your UK university application.

Developing a writing habit

Developing a ‘writing habit’ in English will help you boost your confidence before you arrive in the UK and improve your fluency in writing. This doesn’t mean you have to write essays every day. As with any skill or exercise, ‘little and often’ can really make a difference.

Click on the expanding arrows to uncover some simple ways you can practice:

 

Lots of people who want to become professional writers do this, but it’s just as useful when preparing for Chevening. It can be anything you like – your first thoughts in the morning or last thoughts before you go to bed, something that’s in the news – anything! Set a very small, achievable daily goal to start with – maybe just 5 minutes a day – and mark every day that you write something on the calendar. Try to keep it up for a month. You may be surprised by how much it helps!

This can give you another reason to practise every single day. Incoming Chevening Scholars will be invited to join the official Chevening Scholar Facebook groups in the summer before they arrive in the UK. Start chatting to your fellow Scholars there!

Writing your to-do lists, notes to yourself or family members is a free, simple, and effective activity to get you thinking and writing in English every single day.

Put your screentime to good use by using it to immerse yourself in the English language. If you have a maps app on your phone, change the voiceover to UK English to get all your directions in English.

There are online review sites for everything – shops, restaurants, airlines, you name it! If you use Google maps with your location on, you can set it to ask for your feedback wherever you go. Next time you have a good or bad experience, why not write about it in English?

Using a more formal style

Being a Chevening Scholar in the UK will usually involve writing academic essays or reports. And if your UK university requires you to submit an English language test score like the IELTS or TOEFL, there is likely to be a part of the test where you need to be able to write in a more formal register. This is also important for your Chevening application form.

But what does formal writing actually mean in English?

Compare these sentences:

  • Not so many people went to watch football in January. Teams made less money. That was because of bad weather.
  • There was a significant drop in attendance at football matches in January as a consequence of poor weather conditions, leading to a decrease in revenue.

While both sentences convey the same information, you probably spotted that:

  • The first example is made up of short, simple sentences, not linked in any way. The second example is one long, complex sentence.
  • The vocabulary used is different. The first example uses simple words and expressions – a lot, people went to watch, less money, because of bad weather. The second uses longer, more professional-sounding vocabulary – attendance, significant, as a consequence of and so on.
  • The first example uses more personal subjects with verbs – people went, teams made. The second example uses impersonal noun phrases, made up of a noun or adjective + noun followed by a preposition, as in a decrease in revenue or a significant drop in attendance.

These are just a few examples of the differences between formal and less formal English. There are others – formal English is more likely to use the passive voice, for example – but these are some of the most common differences.

Practice task

You can start practicing writing in a formal style now. Try to rewrite the following sentences to make them more formal. Think about the vocabulary, joining sentences together to make longer ones, changing personal subjects for impersonal noun phrases and any other changes you feel are necessary. Use the words in brackets to help you.

  1. A lot more people own computers now than ten years ago. (ownership, decade)
  2. The best thing about solar power is that after you install it you don’t have to pay any bills. (advantage, installation)
  3. People from different cultures can contact each other more now because of globalisation. That’s because travel has got cheaper and safer. (Due to, result in, increased, become)
  1. Computer ownership has increased considerably over the last decade.
  2. The greatest advantage of solar power is that you don’t have to pay any bills after installation.
  3. Due to globalisation, travel has become cheaper and safer, resulting in increased contact between people from different cultures.

These are just a few of the ways you can incorporate writing in English into your daily life and improve your formal writing.

For more English writing practice opportunities, check out the British Council’s LearnEnglish website, it includes many free English language lessons.*

*Please note this is an external website and resource, the Chevening Secretariat is not responsible for its contents.

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