THE letter "Reverse trend of speaking poor English" by Ms Amy Loh Chee Seen on Tuesday is timely and applicable to writing.
I benefited much from my English teacher at Stamford Girls' School who had little tolerance for sub-standard English.
One of her teaching methods involved making the class recite the present continuous tense, past tense and past participle of many common verbs.
Much time was spent on drilling the different forms of verbs into the minds of young girls.
This method of learning helped my writing later on.
Although English is widely written in Singapore, it is by no means a strong indicator that many people's command of the language is excellent. The messages posted on social media platforms show this clearly.
There are many simple ways to improve or hone our writing skills - one of which is to read extensively.
If one has limited time to make a trip to the library to borrow books, articles in the Opinion and Lifestyle sections of The Straits Times can be a good starting point.
These articles are well written and we can benefit from reading them regularly.
Next, practise by writing a short letter which expresses your opinions on certain matters you are interested in.
Then put yourself in the shoes of a reader to edit your piece to make it grammatically correct and readable.
The above can be applied to writing e-mails at work or online messages.
To improve the standard of English in Singapore, we must cultivate the good habit of writing in proper English among students and working adults.
Lim Lih Mei (Ms)
