England and America share a common language. Or at least that is the theory. Yes I know there are lots of differences in individual spellings – humor and humour , neighbour and neighbour, and all the rest. Then there are differences of use - they walk on sidewalks whereas we use pavements. They eat cookies and biscuits, whereas we eat biscuits and scones.
I have recently joined an international group of women writers. We meet on line once a week in a chat room and share ideas, comment on each others work, make suggestions and offer prompts and ideas for other pieces of writing.
If you are reading this with any degree of understanding then you must have a good standard of English already. What? You don't believe me? Then perhaps what you need is a little more confidence - yes you will make mistakes, but don’t we all? I have a friend who met her husband to be when he visited her home in Peru. He speaks Spanish only in its most elementary form (the kind that requires you have a guidebook in one hand), and at that time she spoke not one word of English. Nevertheless they fell in love. Once his time was up and he had to return to England, she followed him two weeks later and today, perhaps three months later, we received the invitation to their wedding.
Along with millions of others who never pick up a racket from one year to the next I watch Wimbledon. Last night it was young Andrew Murray who finally won though to the next round after a rather patchy match.
There's no better way to build your English vocabulary than to read continually – and to read what you enjoy. We all love stories; they enlighten, entertain, inspire, and teach. In fact, they do all that, and build our reservoir of words too, without us even realizing they're doing so.
When you read a story, you are lost in another world. Your mind transports you to the book's place and time where you meet its characters. Some of those characters are so unique you are absorbed into their lives as much as the other characters in their sphere are.
Some would-be writers think they can dash off an article without learning the basics of grammar. Just as any crafts-person spends time honing his skills to make the perfect piece of craft, so must a writer work hard to write an error-free, grammatically-correct article. True, some errors are typos, but this reflects a certain laziness on the author's part. A writer should closely examine his article before sending it off.