During my years as a high school student, books, novels, and magazines formed an important part of my life. Whenever I had stress or anxiety, I used to read a lot because it helped me relax by calming my mind from tension. However, I never believed I could become a good writer who could compose articles, texts, and short stories. Various life experiences, especially linguistic and cultural skills, have shaped me as a writer and improved my literary skills, including lexical sophistication, syntactic features, cultural responsiveness, and cultural immersion.
An excellent writer can transform their imaginative thoughts into text distinctively and uniquely. I began writing more extensively in high school after learning how to write detailed and creative text paragraphs. Nevertheless, focusing on lexical sophistication and diversity significantly shapes a writer because they can get elaborate feedback from their audience or readers (Crossley, pg.2). Thus, using advanced and sophisticated words in writing has improved my text quality and lexical qualities. On the other hand, embracing lexical diversity in my textual works has greatly enhanced my semantic relations in word exploration and meaning.
Writing was a dreadful activity before I learned how to interact with people from different cultures because my language fluency and literary skills needed improvement. However, my immersion in cultural diversity equipped me with profound knowledge and understanding of various traditional values and customs, which later shaped me as a writer. Cultural immersion enables a reader to embrace and appreciate the unique cultural values, perspectives, and customs of readers (Elbow, pg. 10). When I was in elementary school, I used to listen to diverse stories from various cultures from my grandparents which later shaped my creative skills in writing. Nonetheless, immersing myself in multiple cultures enriched my art and storytelling skills nwhich later made my writing text appealing and relatable to readers.
As a writer I have personally improved and developed my writing skills over the years because I was ready to learn and explore more on text quality. Greater writing ability is often associated with excellent textual and linguistic features. Improving and advancing in textual diversity in writing enables a writer to be versatile in lexical knowledge (Crossley, pg.3). Using diverse and sophisticated words in writing samples is a profound indication of linguistic literacy. Nonetheless, embracing textual diversity and sophistication in writing enables my readers to demonstrate greater and elicit responses when interacting with my text. Sophisticated words have the power to draw honest responses from readers because they are easily spotted or recognized in writings.
My attitudes and objectives in writing greatly shifted after I interacted with people from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Different cultures have unique and distinct characteristics that shape a writer by influencing text development (Elbow, pg.12). As such, embracing cultural responsiveness in writing has greatly influenced me to consider diverse cultural perspectives, customs and beliefs in my audience specific works. Consequently, cultural responsiveness has also enabled me to advance my writing skills through accommodating cultures and people from varied backgrounds. Thus, I am able to tailor my writing style and text to suit my audience so that they can relate to my work on a personal level.
I have spent a lot of time writing because I was inspired by the creative and imaginative words I wrote coming to life as a reader interacts with my text. As such, practicing and developing my syntactic features of writing have served as an excellent linguistic experience. The syntactic features of writing include, word order, meaning, paragraph structure and word relations (Crossley, pg.7). Therefore, learning how to create more complex syntactic structures in my text has significantly improved my writing skills. Syntactic complexity is vital when determining the grammatical measures required in language efficiency, production and accuracy.
Becoming an excellent writer is a lifetime journey that requires consistency, versatility, and patience to advance one’s textual skills. Various life experiences especially linguistic and cultural skills shaped me as a writer including, lexical sophistication, syntactic features, cultural responsiveness, and cultural immersion. Any individual aspiring to be a writer should be ready to learn more about features of quality text.
References
Crossley, Scott. “Linguistic Features in Writing Quality and Development.” Journal of Writing Research JWOR, Georgia State University, Atlanta (GA) | USA, 12 Mar. 2020, www.scribd.com/document/596436082/JoWR-2020-Vol11-Nr3-Crossley.
Elbow, Peter. “Speaking and Writing as They Are Used: The Role of Culture.” OUP Academic, Oxford University Press, 1 Mar. 2020, doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199782505.003.0001.
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