Improve English Writing | Simplify

Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A.J. Hogue, where A.J. 's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills. Here's A.J.

with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly. Hi, I'm A.J. Hogue, the author of Effortless English, Learn to Speak English Like a Native.

Go to effortlessenglish.com. Enter your email for a free copy of my audiobook. Writing. Writing is important. You're looking for a job, a new job. You need to write a cover letter or an email to the company.

In that letter, you need to look great. The writing needs to be perfect. No mistakes. The writing needs to be powerful. In that short letter, you must sell yourself.

You must convince them to call you for an interview. Now, once you get a job, if you're working in an international company, if you're working with international team members, you may need to write in English at the job. You may need to write proposals.

you may need to write summaries certainly you'll write emails you might have to write large reports and again your writing needs to be great if your writing is bad you will look bad you will not look professional and of course there are the tests the TOEFL and the IELTS and they have writing sections

and you have to write essays and again you know they're looking for every little mistake so it can be a bit stressful writing the reason writing can be stressful is that it needs to be perfect in some situations if you don't succeed if you write badly in those situations

The failure can be quite bad. You can fail to get a job that you really want simply because your writing's bad. You'll never get an interview if your first email, your first letter is terrible. They'll look at it, they'll see mistakes, and they'll immediately throw it away.

You never get called for an interview. It's no fun. It's stressful. And then you might have to take a worse job simply because your writing's not good.

It's no fun to get a low score on the TOEFL test or the IELTS because your writing is bad. And it's no fun to be in a job to write a report and then have your boss come back and tell you that the writing's terrible and you need to do it again. It's embarrassing.

On the other hand, the rewards are big. If your writing is great, then you have a big advantage when you're job searching. Because you can write those great cover letters. You can write those great emails.

You can get the attention of good companies. You can get a lot of calls for interviews because of your writing ability. Same thing on the job. When your writing ability is good, when you have great professional writing, you look more professional.

You look more skilled. You look better. You get better respect. You get more respect. And it helps you get higher scores, of course, on tests and things like that.

Now, I remember I was teaching in San Francisco. And it was one of my first classes in San Francisco. And in this class, we were supposed to do some writing. So I gave an easy assignment to my class.

And I said, OK, please write an essay, just one page, one page essay. Really simple. Just tell me, you know, something about yourself. Where are you from?

And, you know, why did you come to America to study English? That's all. This was a high intermediate class. That's what they told me. High intermediate.

And so everybody, you know, they all started writing their essays. And I gave them, I don't know, I remember 30 minutes, something like that, to write the essays. So everybody, oh, writing the essays, writing the essays, writing the essays.

Worried faces, everybody looks so serious. I was telling them, just relax, relax. You know, this is not a serious academic paper. Just, yeah, just tell me about yourself and tell me why you came to America.

That's all. Really simple. This should have been A very easy assignment for their level. It should have been very, very easy. But I was shocked. So they all handed me the essays.

I told them to do some reading while I reviewed the essays. And I could not believe how fucking terrible they were. They were horrible. And when I say horrible, I mean I could not understand them.

I'm not exaggerating. I would pick one up and start reading. And I'd read about four or five sentences. And the sentences were so confusing that really I just didn't even know what the main idea was.

I didn't understand what they were trying to say. The sentences were super long. And they used the most difficult vocabulary they could remember. I thought, maybe it's just one.

I put that one to the side, picked up the next one. Same exact thing. Super, super, super complicated. Long, long running sentences. And then all these very academic vocabulary words, which were not used correctly.

And it was just confusing, confusing. I could not understand their ideas at all. It should have been so simple. Just tell me why you came to America. It's really simple.

If I had asked them, if we had just chatted, no writings, If I were just sitting at the table and I kind of said one by one, hey, tell me, speaking, just tell me, why did you come to America? Where are you from?

Everyone in that class easily could have done it. They would have spoken in nice, clear, short sentences. Their ideas would have been clear. Yes, maybe they would have made some mistakes, maybe a few grammar mistakes, a few vocabulary mistakes, something like that.

But their meaning would have been clear. No problem. They could speak. They could communicate very, very clearly with speaking. But something happened in their brain as soon as they picked up the pen to write.

It's like their whole brain just stopped working. Well, actually, it's quite the opposite. It's like their brain started working too much. And that's what really happened.

They started overthinking everything, trying to make everything so complicated, so advanced, like they were trying to write a PhD thesis or something.

And it was incomprehensible. Incomprehensible. Here's a new word for you. Comprehensible means understandable. Understandable. can be understood, easy to understand.

It's comprehensible. Now, the opposite of that word is incomprehensible. Put the in at the beginning, it makes it negative. Incomprehensible, not understandable, cannot be understood.

That was their writing. Weird, really weird, strange. So what happened? Why? I just, you know, it took me a while. They went, they left, and, you know,

class ended and i went home and i just i just kept thinking about it really bothered me i was like why what happened you know i couldn't figure out for a while like what happened how can they speak so well but their writing is so terrible i mean why don't they just write the same way they talk and then it would have been fine would have been clear perfectly fine well the problem is the school system

our old friend, our old enemy, I should say, the school system, right? Because here's what I found out. Because I started talking to them. I started asking them questions.

Because the next day I said, guys, you know, I'm nice. I don't yell at people for mistakes or anything like that. Mistakes are fine in life. That's how we learn.

But I just told them, I said, guys, you know what? Your essays really suck. I'm sorry, but they're horrible. I can't even understand what you're trying to say.

I can't even understand the main ideas. They're so horrible. And then I told them, I just told them my problem. I said, but I don't understand because when I talk to you, you easily communicate and you communicate clearly.

But then when you start writing, what happens? Why? Why are they so different? They actually should be quite close. And then I started to listen to them and they all told me basically the same thing.

And that is in school, in the school systems, they're taught a style of writing that is super, super, super complex. The opposite of simple. Complex. Complex or complicated, similar meanings.

Not simple. They have this idea, the teachers do, that good writing must be difficult and advanced. meaning lots and lots of big words and really long sentences and complicated sentences. That's good writing.

That's what they were taught. All of my students in their schools, they were from many different countries. They were from Asia, South America, and Europe.

And yet all of them wrote the same style, that same overcomplicated style. Just so, so, so bad. And I have since found out this is a common problem all over the world. This is why most English learners, even if they speak very, very well, are just terrible writers.

I mean, quite honestly, horrible writers. But it's because they all have this academic Idea. Academic means related to school. Right. So they all learn this very academic style of writing, trying to write like a Ph.D. You know, someone with a Ph.D., someone with a doctorate degree.

But I've said this before. I'll say it again. I'll say it many times in the future. Most academics, most professors are terrible writers. They suck. Suck means to be really bad at something.

They suck. They're terrible, terrible, terrible writers. You do not want to write like a professor. Don't copy their writing. Don't listen to their advice.

They're horrible writers. Who are good writers? Well, I mean, we all have our different opinions about who the best writers are. But at a basic level, good writers are people who get paid for their writing.

People who write books, for example, and sell books. They're generally pretty good writers. Right? J.K. Rowling, who wrote the Harry Potter books. She's a good writer.

Now, you may like Harry Potter, you may hate it. But in general, her writing is quite good. It's good enough to make millions of dollars. So... That's a pretty good example.

Someone like Ernest Hemingway, whose writing has been popular for decades and decades and decades, even after he has died. Still, people talk about how great his writing is and love his writing.

So professional authors are good writers. And you can find some very good professional writers that write in a very, very simple way. And I always use the Hemingway example. Those of you who watch my show know that he's one of my favorite examples because in general, he's famous for having a very simple style compared to other writers.

Tended, because he's dead now, he tended to use short sentences, simple, direct sentences whenever possible. Even better example for you, because probably you're not trying to write a great artistic novel in English, right? I'm guessing you need more just practical writing, like for business, for general communication. And for that is, you know, nonfiction books, nonfiction books, business books, you know, like, I mean, even my book, right?

This is just, this book, is written in a very simple style, right? I try to use short, direct sentences. Simple, common vocabulary. And a lot of great writers who write books about business, even books about history or science, good nonfiction writers, tend to use a very simple, direct style.

Why? Because it's the most clear. It's the best for communicating information in a clear and powerful way. That's what you want to do. That's what good writing is.

It's not using a bunch of huge vocabulary words. It's not necessary. In fact, usually it's a bad idea. Usually the simplest word is the best. So I'm going to do a few shows about writing because a lot of you

have asked me about writing. And it's a big topic that you want me to talk about. So in this show, I'm going to give you just one little bit of advice for your writing, how to improve your writing.

And then in some future shows, I'll give you other tips. Today's show is just simplify. Simplify, simplify, simplify. As another great writer said, an American writer named Henry David Thoreau.

Simplify, simplify, simplify. Simplify. Use the shortest possible sentence. Instead of writing a paragraph this long, write one this long. Try to put your ideas in the shortest possible sentences and the shortest possible paragraphs.

Short, short, short. If you have a long sentence, break it into two or three sentences. I mean, the most basic, basic, basic sentence in English, subject, verb, object. I hit him, right?

It's a three-word sentence. It's super clear. It's very clear. I hit him. There's no confusion. That's a great sentence. That's a good example of clear writing.

I hit him, not... I reared back my arm and then I swung and connected with his face in a forceful way. Now that might be more artistic, that second one.

And if you're trying to win the Nobel Prize for literature, if you're trying to write a big artistic novel, you can try that second style. But for business communication, for most people,

written communication in life. I hit him is a much more powerful, direct, clear sentence. It's much better writing. So that's the first thing I want you to do.

You're already writing. First of all, practice every day. You can practice on Twitter. One of the good things about Twitter, it forces you to be short.

You cannot be long on Twitter. You have 140 characters. On Gab, you only have 300. It's Gab, G-A-B dot A-I. 300 characters. That limits what you can write.

It forces you to be short and direct. So every day, write on Twitter. Send me some messages on Twitter. Send other Effortless English members messages on Twitter.

Write your opinion about something. Doesn't matter. Short, direct sentences. Twitter can actually train you to write good sentences. Now, a lot of people on Twitter, they don't write full sentences because, you know, they're trying to communicate quickly and they use a texting style.

That's okay, but if you're trying to improve your writing, I recommend use full sentences on Twitter. Use full sentences, but make them short. This is a good way to train and improve your writing, just doing tweets every day. In fact, I would say this is the first thing to do.

So short, short, short. Every time you write something, go back and look at it and think, how can I make this shorter? How can I say the same thing but shorter? How many words can I cut?

Your job is to always try to cut more words. Cut more words. Cut, cut, cut. Don't add words. Cut words. A great writer can say something in one or two sentences.

A bad writer needs 20 sentences to say the same thing. That's why professors usually are bad writers. They'll write for five pages to say something that usually could be said directly with one sentence.

So short, direct. Short, direct. Practice on Twitter. Practice with me. You can send me tweets every day. But use a full sentence. If you're improving your writing, you need to use a full sentence.

Very, very, very short. Simplify, simplify, simplify. For free text for every one of my shows, go to my blog at EffortlessEnglishClub.com. Free text guides at EffortlessEnglishClub.com.

See you next time. Bye for now. Thank you.