English Writing Course in Singapore
English Writing Course in Singapore
I had the pleasure of attending an English writing course, Communicative Writing Skills, 3 years ago.
This course was conducted by Mr Barry Johnson who hailed from UK. Mr Johnson relocated to Singapore decades ago after accepting a job offer from a very senior and well-respected minister in the government. His primary task was to improve the quality of English writing skills of our officials. According to him, the standard then, was simply atrocious.
Outline of Writing Course
As the name of this writing course suggests, each piece of writing has to communicate effectively to the reader, regardless business writing or emails. To achieve this, the writing must be concise. The writing course covers:
1. Grammar
Oh yes, it's back to days to Primary English of present tense, past tense, nouns etc. Well, these are the fundamentals after all. There will also be a special mention to avoid writing Singlish hor...
2. Sentence Structure
This covers building coherent sentences with the use of conjunctions. Definitely not a good idea to confuse the reader with jumbled thoughts.
3. Concise writing
Fog Index is introduced where each sentence is preferably contained by a word limit. It encourages short sentences for ease of reading and understanding. This part of the course also shares common mistakes like duplicating words in phrases eg: red in color, reverse back, repeat again.
Course Review
Sounds extremely boring, right? No chance to snooze. Trust me. You will be 100% awake with Mr Johnson's rapid-fire quizzes and tons of worksheets.
At the end of this grueling English writing course, you will emerge feeling the power of your new-found "powderful England".