A Step to Better Writing

I will never forget the day in my 12^th grade English class at Catonsville High School when my teacher told us how important our writing skills and our writing assignments would be to our future and to our professors in college. Ms. Hamill, my teacher, always had something to say. However, it was usually when our class as a whole did something wrong. She was a rather stubborn and a strict woman throughout that entire fall semester. Ms. Hamill’s intentions were good, but she didn’t express them in a way I found beneficial because she would always scold or criticize us. In her class, she would always go on particular rants, describing what us as a class needed to improve on and never talked about what the positive factors of our class were. However, there was one particular speech she gave to us that was different. She calmly explained to us that being able to write well would be essential in any particular class and that the professors would be expecting more from us as writers. I was rather intrigued by her words and her opinion, which caused me to think about what I could change about my very own writing to improve it and make it more suitable at a college level. Up until then, I had always enjoyed writing. I never encountered problems of finding points to discuss or of running out of things to talk about in my papers, but one thing I had always struggled with in my assignments was the word choice. In every assignment, I would try to use only the most common and basic words and didn’t like to use words out of my “comfort zone” After I realized that I needed to change my writing, I approached the teacher with my idea. I will never forget when she told me that, “Teachers and professors in the future will be impressed if your vocabulary is more advanced and efficient. It’s a great idea.” From her statement, I realized that for me personally, I would have to take the initiative and start thinking about better word choice in my writings in order to make my papers enhanced. I began by using the Thesaurus . Not only did I find other terms for the words I wanted to change, but I figured that the words I found in the Thesaurus were stronger and more appropriate than the words I had used in my papers. As a result, the Thesaurus became a necessity for me when editing a paper or trying to find a word more fitting for my paper. I believe that by using the Thesaurus, I greatly improved my ability to express my ideas in a more complex and elaborate way when I wrote. Rather than using simple, basic words, I could take just a little more time to go to the Thesaurus and find words that sounded distinct and clearer. Writing is the key to success.

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