143 How to Improve Your Writing Skills

By the time you reach this page， you will have studied 142 lessons of this book. You will have learned many new words， idioms， sentence structures and quite a bit of grammar. You will have come to a stage where you might be asking yourself， How much have I improved， if at all？

Why not give yourself a simple test？ Read a short text. Read it carefully， then try to rewrite what you have just read， in your own words. After that， compare what you have written to the text. This is called paraphrasing^{1. In face， it is a good way to improve your writing skills.}

spoken English 口語英語 wirtten English 寫作英語 writing skills

carperter 木匠 He is skilled in carpentry.

By the time 到時候

kick the bucket 俏皮話 pass away 去世

I've received a sentence of five years.

He was setenced to five years.

flunk^{2 or fail}

How many girlfriends do you have， if at all？