Writing is an important skill the students are expected to develop as they traverse through their school years. As the students move through lower grades to middle and higher ones, they are expected to progress from basic language usage skills to more and more sophistication in structuring and organizing an argument, present different aspects of a particular situation and develop the knack of separating and presenting essential from non-essential.

Equally true is the fact that we all do write - whatever be the writing sophistication we might have achieved. The key here is identifying our limitations and weaknesses and continuously working to improve the same. Writing is a skill and like any other skill, there is no perfect state per se, you should work to keep on getting better and better.

Here is what you can do to keep sharpenign your writing skills:

1. Read more to write better

Reading helps you expand your knowledge horizon, generate ideas, get acquainted with new ways of structuring an argument and enhance your vocabulary. It also makes you more confident in your abilities to write better.

2. Build an argument step by step

The way you organize your piece is the soul of writing. Start with introducing the idea and the problem landscape. Map out relevant constraints and objective. Describe various interlinkages and relationships. Develop the solution, explain why your solution satisfies the relevant criteria and finally close with a conclusion.

By no means is this the only way to structure a piece. However, it is important that all the ideas be building upon the ideas introduced earlier in the piece and each para should logically flow from the earlier one.

3. Separate wheat from the chaff

Develop the knack of knowing important from the unimportant. Do not fall in the trap of belaboring secondary points thereby shifting the focus away from what's really significant.

4. Use short sentences

Unless you are writing a Shakespearean sonnet, heavily embellished sentences with jargon and impressive sounding words just distract. The idea is not to show how many heavy words you know but to demonstrate how well you can express the relevant idea.

5. Be careful with the language

Spelling mistakes, typos and bad punctuation is a sure fire poison to your written piece. If you have doubts over your familiarity with the language usage, read a book or join a course on grammar. Make sure to proof-read your piece before you deem it final. Remember, how you write reflects what you are.

This is but an indicative list, a starting point. As you go along, you will develop your own unique writing style gain more and more maturity with the written word. Oh yes, it will be great fun too.