In Part 1 of this series briefly answers the question: What is Simple English Wikipedia?. In Part 2, after sharing a couple of study ideas, I left off promising to share the most useful way to use Simple English Wikipedia to improve your English skills. So here it is.

The best thing that you can do to improve your English with Simple English Wikipedia is write. Don’t worry if your writing is not perfect. The whole point of Wikipedia is that everyone together will make the article perfect. If you don’t believe me, believe Simple English Wikipedia:

“Don’t be afraid to create and improve articles! If your changes are not perfect, they can always be fixed by other editors.” -from Simple English Wikipedia editing screen

Your participation is strongly encouraged and you shouldn’t worry about perfect grammar. So go ahead and add a new page, or add to an already existing page.

Many of the pages are very short and need more information. At the bottom of every article is an “add to it” link. Read a Simple English Wikipedia article about something that you know well. See if the article is missing any information. Then make your contribution. Adding just one good sentence helps.

You can also create a new article. There are also many things that you could write about that don’t have pages yet. You don’t need to write a long entry either. Many of the pages on Simple English Wikipedia start with just one or two sentences. Give the most important information and let others add to the article later, or go back and add to it yourself when you have more time.

Learn from you errors when others correct them. After you have added or changed a page, you can come back and check the pages “history” to see how your entry has been edited and compare two versions. This is like a free writing and grammar lesson for you. You can see what mistakes you made, learn different ways of communicating the same information, and compare how ideas are ordered and presented in English with how you order and present them.

Writing for Simple English Wikipedia is better than most writing classes because the writing you will do on Simple English Wikipedia is more realistic.

• Your purpose on Wikipedia is to share information. When you write in real life, you write to share information or persuade. When you write in a classroom, you write to show that you understand your lessons.
• You need to consider your audience when writing for Simple English Wikipedia. What does the Simple English Wikipedia audience want? Information communicated clearly and simply. When you write in real life, you will need to consider your audience. When you write in a classroom, your audience is the teacher who, in most cases, gains nothing from reading student writing.

Real experience can be much more rewarding than manufactured classroom experiences and writing for Simple English Wikipedia is real-world writing. Because Simple English Wikipedia articles are supposed to be simple, and don’t have to be perfect, the articles provide the perfect opportunity to get real-world writing practice.

Tomorrow, I will continue this series with specifics on how to write for Simple English Wikipedia.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 at 9:45 pm and is filed under English, EFL, ESL, Study Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.