Write AMAZING English | English Listening Practice
English Writing Mistakes & How to Fix Them
Welcome back to another episode of the Peach Teach English Podcast! In this episode, I’m joined by Suzanne Davis, a professional writing tutor with over 20 years of experience helping English learners succeed in academic and professional writing.
We dive into the most common writing struggles, like run-on sentences, weak organization, and limited vocabulary. We also share practical tips to help you fix these problems and write more clearly and confidently.
Whether you’re preparing for IELTS, writing essays for school, or just trying to sound more natural in English, this episode will give you simple tools to improve your structure, grammar, and word choice to take your English writing to the next level.
This episode + transcript is ideal for intermediate and advanced English learners who want to build strong writing habits, understand academic expectations, and develop real-world writing skills for school, work, and beyond.
Watch & Listen to the Peach Teach English Podcast:
📝 Episode 36 Transcript:
00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
Welcome back to the Peach Teach English podcast. I'm Frankie Mesmer, your host, and today we're gonna be talking about writing tips to help you improve your English writing skills. So I have invited Suzanne Davis, who is a writing tutor.
Can you go ahead and introduce yourself, Suzanne?
Hi! But first, thank you, Frankie, for inviting me on. I'm really excited to be here.
So, I am Suzanne Davis, and I am an academic writing tutor. I also help people prepare for college writing. I've actually been teaching—I'm afraid to say how many years—but it's over 20. So I've been teaching writing and English to speakers of other languages for a really long time.
00:46 Writing Structure & Thesis Statements in English
My first question for you is: what are the common struggles that people have when it comes to English writing, and are those different for non-native English speakers?
Well, there are some differences for non-native English speakers. So, the first one that I'm thinking of is writing organization.
Because a lot of times, if you're a native English speaker, you're very familiar with this essay format—writing the introduction, what you include in the thesis statement, and all of those individual cases. But a lot of times, when I work with non-native English speakers and they're learning how to write for university or academic writing in English, they come from a country or a culture where there's academic writing, but it's just another format. It's another organization. So, understanding some of those pieces can be a struggle.
The idea of what a thesis statement is. And so, that's writing what you're going to prove or show, or explain about a topic.
An example of a really general thesis statement would be: High schools should have later start times for students. And to make that a thesis statement, you would want to explain why. So I always tell people: add the word because.
So here it could be: High schools should have later start times because many students are sleep deprived, and it's affecting how their brain develops and operates in learning.
And that's something that is one of the first things they taught me, I would say, in high school. But once I got into university, it's something they really taught us—like, you have to have strong thesis statements, and we're gonna show you how you can build one.
It's basically you're telling your reader what the whole essay or paper is gonna be about, and having that strong organization makes that clear for them.
03:00 Use Commas, Periods, & Semicolons Correctly
Something I noticed, Suzanne, from a lot of my students — I would say definitely coming more from a Spanish-speaking background — is that in Spanish, it's common to write with a lot of commas and kind of go on and on and on with details. While in English writing, we would probably call that a run-on sentence.
So, a lot of Spanish speakers write run-on sentences with many commas, not as many periods. I would even say one time I was reading this book in Spanish. I don't remember what it was, but the whole first page was one sentence. So, this is more common in that language, but in English, it's not.
Would you agree?
I would say that we definitely have more of a blend of the shorter sentences in with the longer sentences. I do notice that with commas, one easy trick is: if you have a run-on sentence, so that's one whole sentence, an independent sentence with another independent sentence, and you only add a comma there, a lot of times, instead of the comma, you could just put a semicolon there. Or that is a good place to just end the sentence and start a new one.
What is a run-on sentence? Could you define that?
A run-on sentence is when you have multiple independent sentences put together all as one, and there is no word to connect them, or you're just using a comma to connect them, and it's not a strong enough way to combine the two sentences.
Exactly right. So when we have those two independent sentences, which means we have a full idea with a subject and a verb, and then another one, you cannot just throw them together with no punctuation. Even just throwing in a comma is not the correct way to break that down either. Right?
You either need to put in a period, maybe a semicolon.
I think that is a big struggle for people who are trying to improve their English writing, especially if you are doing it more for the academic level or professional. When you are writing text messages, it is probably not a big deal. But yes, if you want to work in English or you want to go to a university, you really have to get that punctuation down.
05:39 – Expanding Vocabulary with Word Families
Do you notice any other struggles from people writing in English?
The funny thing about English is, in our conversational English and just everyday communication, you can learn a thousand words, and that's gonna take up 90% of knowing English.
Then, when it comes to reading something that's academic or writing something that's academic, there is a whole bunch of other words that you need to understand. That's gonna make it easier to read and easier to write.
There's a really good list that a professor in New Zealand came up with. She did research looking at all of those academic articles and everything that people publish, and she found that there's 570, what they call word families. A word family is where you would have a root word, like the word "analyze," and then you would have words that have that same root word, but maybe a different ending or a different beginning.
So "analyze" could be in the word family: analytical, or analysis, analyzing. Starting to get familiar with words like that can really help you feel more confident with your writing and being more fluent in academic writing.
And so I agree — using those word families. So we're talking about: what is the verb form? The noun form? The adjective? The adverb form?
Are there a variety of noun forms? Because it could be the idea, the person, maybe the thing. It depends on the word, of course. So, really trying to understand all the different parts of speech that can be used with that word.
It's actually one of the easiest ways to expand your vocabulary, because you probably already know one version of that word, and now you're just adding to it.
And oftentimes in English, there are patterns like "happiness," "sadness," so you can start to learn them even faster, because you already have these two parts of the word, and you're just putting them together.
Then, like you also said, the word maps — it's a great way to find synonyms and grow your vocabulary, which will enhance your academic writing very much.
08:07 – Read Essays & Ask Questions to Build Writing Skills
What other skills and strategies do you have to help students improve their writing skills?
To read other essays — to read other pieces of writing — and then to take notes on them. Do you see where there's a thesis statement? Underline that. Do you see where they're explaining a piece of evidence? Underline that.
And then afterwards, write in either a reading journal, or maybe just even on the page that you're reading, a few sentences about what you liked that the writer did, or what you think could be improved, or what confused you. That can be really helpful.
Do you have another strategy to help them improve?
For the ones that really have a hard time with an outline, what I do is I give them questions that will make sense for the outline, so that they're just writing whatever notes they have that respond to that question.
9:09 Use Connectors to Write Complex Sentences
Another thing that I think is really important that students need to do to move their writing to the next level is the sentences do need to be a little bit longer, as we would call them, complex sentences.
Do you have any tips for that?
There's a tool, and I forget the name of it, where you can put in your writing and it identifies where you have simple sentences, then complex sentences, and you can see kind of the variety and measure your writing. And that's really helpful because if you see all these are all simple sentences, you can look, “Oh, can I combine them together?”
I think what's key to writing those more complex sentences is knowing connectors, right? So when you are a more beginner or maybe lower intermediate level, you probably can use some words like "and," "because," "but." But when we do get to the more advanced level, you're going to want to use more variety.
You don't want to say "because," "but" every two or three sentences. So, it's nice to start using words like "nonetheless," "however," "besides."
Can you think of any more good connectors?
Um, you stole "however."
"Nevertheless." I like "thus."
"Thus." Yes. Because that's a good one to say "therefore."
"Additionally." You have a list of them, and that's really the tip here. Look up a good list of these connectors. I can also leave a resource to that. Here in the comments, someone says "consequently." Yes.
There's really a long list, and as you become more familiar with them and practice using them — and really practice using them — choose some kind of topic and get more experience using these more academic words. I would say they're definitely more academic, though. We're not using them a lot in everyday speech, but that is the difference between a lot of speaking and writing — we are trying to sound more professional.
Would you agree with that, Suzanne?
Oh, definitely I would. A lot of times in speech, instead of saying something like "additionally" or "in addition," I'm saying "anyway."
Right. Which is not exactly what you want to say.
Not in a college essay.
Not in a college essay.
Whatever.
Yeah, whatever — those types of things. But Grammarly has a blog — so the company Grammarly that does the spell check and grammar check — if you go there, they have a blog, and they have a post that you can search for. And it's all different connectors.
12:05 How to Punctuate Complex Sentences Correctly
But we have to be careful with the connectors because there are certain ways to punctuate them when they start a sentence, when they go in the middle of the sentence, and it depends on what that connector is.
So, really studying those punctuation rules is important. Do you have any tips for the punctuation rules of these words?
Get to be friends with that semicolon. So if you're starting with one of those connector words, maybe in the beginning, then usually all you need is a comma. But a lot of times, when you've got something in the middle and you're connecting one sentence or one idea to another, you want to have that semicolon.
So that's where you have that dot with the little comma symbol underneath, and then the word or the phrase, and then follow it at the end with a comma. You want to kind of close that in.
Exactly right. So it would be: semicolon, however, comma. Right? To be able to punctuate that correctly.
And usually when you start the sentence with it, like "consequently," you would just put a comma, and then you can continue the rest of your idea.
But be careful. It's not very common to start a sentence with "and," "but," or "because." We often use these more academic connectors in those cases. Would you confirm that is correct, Suzanne?
Yes. I mean, I'm starting to see it more that people are starting things with "because," but a lot of people, including me, are like, oh no, don't do that.
A lot of professors will say, "Oh, no, no, no. Don't start a sentence with the word 'because.'" Even if it is grammatically correct, you just don't like "and," "but," and "because."
Yes. It's just like the rules of English writing, at least academically. So, it's good to become familiar with these different rules.
So we've covered organization, writing more sentences. Someone's asking here, what about using dashes?
I love writing with dashes. In academic writing, you don't want to overuse dashes. So a lot of times you can use a different form of punctuation where you'll have a dash. I think it's okay if you use it maybe once or twice in an essay.
But if you find you're using it a lot, you can get into trouble. One, because if you've ever checked ChatGPT or some of the AI things, you'll notice that they use that dash a lot in writing. A lot of professors look at that and say, "That's AI," just because they see so many dashes.
14:47 Build Writing Fluency with Focused Freewriting
The next one I would say we can look at in terms of skills and strategies is—I think just a great way for students in general to start developing better writing skills—is to challenge themselves to write about their opinions or analysis on a topic, and look up research and statistics to support that idea and really think of examples to support your opinion.
What I recommend is what we would call focused freewriting, and there's been a lot of research with this, particularly with non-native English speakers in reference to learning English and how it helps them with their writing skills. And so, it is where you would have a topic or a prompt—and a lot of times it is something you might be debating—but instead of going and looking up the answers, you're just taking that topic and you're just writing about it without stopping.
You do this for maybe 5–10 minutes a day. If you get stuck and you think, I have nothing else to say, just write, I don't know what to say, and write about that until you finish.
What you'll find is you start to become better at coming up with ideas and reasons to support something or describe a topic, and your writing becomes more fluent, just because you're doing it almost every day.
16:20 How to Brainstorm and Organize Your Ideas
Suzanne, that made me think of something. It is brainstorming.
Yeah.
Yes. We use it a lot for brainstorming.
For brainstorming, one of the things is that you'll take a topic and you rewrite about it, and then you'd look back on your rewrite and you'd say, Oh, I like that idea. And you do what they call looping—you take out that idea and rewrite about it to get deeper into things.
So, it's very similar to brainstorming. Some people say it's brainstorming for people who find it easier to just write instead of listing.
And Suzanne, do you think it's better to brainstorm before you make like an outline, or the opposite? What's your advice on that?
I like to start with brainstorming or any kind of pre-writing. So maybe that would be doing what we call a web or a mind map.
So, you might have your topic, but you don't know—Gee, what am I going to do with this topic? How am I going to narrow it down? Or what am I gonna say about that?—and you can just go to a place where you feel comfortable and focused, and just write down that topic, put a circle around it, and everything that comes into your mind related to that, you just draw a line to another circle. And then, if another idea comes up with that idea, you'd draw another line to another circle.
That makes sense because you're seeing the bigger picture—all of your ideas—and then you can kind of cross out the ones where you're like, Maybe that's not the best for this situation. And then really choose what are your strongest arguments or points for your essay, and then you can organize with something much stronger.
18:12 Writing Games & Activities
We're gonna talk about next, guys, like what kind of activities or games you can do or play to improve your writing skills, 'cause obviously, to become a better writer, you need to write more often.
So what's one of your first activities or games, Suzanne?
So the first one is just look at a picture, write a story about a picture, or write a description of that picture, like a postcard.
Another one that I like is "Would you rather," and so it'll come up with something kind of crazy, like, "Would you rather live in a castle under the sea or in a space colony on another planet, and why?" Think of everything that comes in your head.
Another one I like to play with is called the action of a sentence. You kind of write wacky sentences — three parts to it.
The first part, you write a list of 10 nouns. Then the second part, after you view 10 nouns, is to think of an occupation like teacher, English teacher, or Spanish teacher. Then think of 15 verbs related to that occupation. So sometimes that takes a little bit longer. And then after you have your list of nouns and your list of verbs, write sentences combining those in different ways.
So one of your nouns is "mouse," and one of your verbs is "read" or "swim reading" or, yeah, you would be writing a sentence about a mouse that's reading something. It's really a good way to get your sentences to have more action to them — to be what we call active sentences.
It's easy to do, and I like to, if you have somebody with you, just share them out loud.
Yeah, it's probably funny.
Another one I like is called "writing off the page." This one is where you take a poetry book, or even you could just do any book, and you open it up randomly, and you look at what's on the top of the page, and you write that down, and then write whatever is in your mind that comes after that.
So it could wind up being a poem, a song, or you're just writing a story using that sentence.
Do you have any other games or activities?
I remember — so this is where I take five minutes and I start with the words "I remember," and I write a memory. "I remember" memory, "I remember" memory. And then after five minutes, I look at that list, and I just pick one, and I start writing about that for however long I want to set the timer for.
This is another tip, right? Really think about your senses — answering those right? Who, what, where, when, why, how questions — to try to develop more ideas and a more complete picture in your writing.
Yes.
I took a creative writing class at university, and I really loved that. We had to write something every week and share it. Getting the feedback — you have to be very humble — but it really helps you become a better writer.
Another thing that I really like to use is morning pages.
Right? I know. I loved your video on that.
Aw, thank you. Yeah, you guys can watch that video, but yeah, morning pages comes from the book — what's it called? The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.
And basically, this book is made for people who are writers, and it's to get their ideas flowing in the morning. Because, unfortunately, we're not inspired every day, but we still have to write.
Yes, so the idea is you write three pages in the morning of stream-of-consciousness writing, so you don't really think about what you're gonna put on the page — just what comes in your head, you put it there on the page.
If you're not advanced in English writing, it's okay to start with just one page, and I really recommend making this a daily habit.
As a result, you'll start to have stronger ideas in English. You'll probably improve your spelling as well, and I really recommend writing it.
I think we get really dependent on spell check, and this can affect us when we have to write a paper in real life and we don't actually know how to spell the words.
I think even because of spell check, I'm forgetting how to spell some words, so we have to be careful with that.
Have you had that experience, Suzanne?
Oh, yes. I'll know I'm spelling something wrong, and it's always in front of somebody else. Like I was in a meeting yesterday, and I had to spell a word, and I knew I was spelling it wrong because I was used to spell check showing me how to fix it.
Oh, it was so embarrassing.
You start to second-guess yourself a little bit there.
So of course, they are great tools to proofread and everything, but try to do some writing without that just to really test your level and your skills.
The last game I want to recommend that you can do is just pick like five random words. It could be something like turtle, sing, microphone, chocolate, and flip-flop — and then write a story. See what your brain can come up with. And usually, these are pretty funny.
That is a good one. I really like that.
I know we shared so many great strategies, tips, games, activities that you can use to practice your English writing.
24:09 Writing Services & Conclusion
Suzanne, would you like to share about your writing services?
Sure. I do academic writing coaching, so a lot of times what I do is I guide people step by step through doing the types of essays and projects and things that they're doing for classes. I do that one-on-one.
I also help people who are planning on going to college or planning on going to graduate school write the types of things they need to write for their application.
So those are things like personal statements or maybe essays about what they're going to study — things like that.
Yes, and Suzanne has worked with a lot of non-native speakers as well, and so especially if you're someone wanting to move or study abroad and you need to develop your writing skills for university or for work, she will be a great help for you.
And I'll be sure to include all her contact information in the description.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us today, and see you next time.
Bye.
Thank you, everybody. Bye.
✍️ English Writing Study Guide
NOTE: Writing in English isn’t just about grammar — it’s about organization, clarity, and confidence. Whether you’re preparing for IELTS, writing essays, or improving professional communication, this guide will help you fix common mistakes and write more naturally.
🚫 1. Avoid These Common Mistakes
Run-on sentences – using commas, periods, and semicolons correctly.
Weak organization – writing without a clear structure or main idea.
Limited vocabulary – repeating the same simple words (good, bad, very).
Missing connectors – sentences don’t flow smoothly.
Overusing translators – prevents you from developing your own writing voice.
👉 Remember: Mistakes are normal. The key is to notice them, learn the rule, and apply it next time.
🎯 2. Focus on These Core Writing Skills
💡 Structure: Every essay or paragraph should have an introduction, body, and conclusion.
💡 Thesis Statements: Start with a strong main idea and opinion.
👉 Example: Students learn better when schools start later because being well-rested improves their focus, memory, and overall academic performance.
💡 Complex Sentences: Combine ideas using connectors like however, although, because, and therefore.
💡 Vocabulary Expansion: Learn word families (analyze → analysis → analytical → analyzing).
💡 Editing & Proofreading: Read your work aloud to catch grammar, punctuation, and word order errors.
🧠 3. Study Tips to Build Writing Fluency
✏️ Focused Freewriting: Write nonstop for 5–10 minutes without editing.
✏️ Looping: Pick your best idea from freewriting and write about it again in more detail.
✏️ Brainstorming: Use mind maps or outlines to plan before you write.
✏️ Morning Pages: Write 1–3 pages every morning to build flow and confidence.
✏️ Summarize and Transform: Read an article, summarize it, then add your opinion.
✅ These methods help you think in English, expand ideas, and build natural writing flow.
🎮 4. Writing Games & Activities
💡 Picture Prompts: Choose a photo and describe or create a story about it.
💡 “Would You Rather” Questions: Pick one option and explain your reasoning.
💡 Action Sentences Game: Make lists of random nouns and verbs, then combine them into funny sentences.
💡 “I Remember” Exercise: Starting with “I remember…”, describe a memory.
💡 Writing Off the Page: Open any book, copy the first line, and continue the story.
💡 Five Words Challenge: Choose 5 random words and write a story with them.
📚 5. Resources Mentioned
👩🏼🏫 Connect with Suzanne Davis
🍑 Connect with Frankie Mesmer
🌐 Website
📷 Instagram
🎵 TikTok
💼 LinkedIn
📘 Facebook
📺 YouTube
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💬 Engagement Questions
💭 What’s the hardest part of writing in English for you?
💭 Which activity or game are you going to try first?
💭 What will be your weekly writing routine to improve your skills?
Want More Tips to Improve Your English Writing?
If you enjoyed this episode, you’ll love my full blog post “Writing Tips to Level Up Your English (B1 to B2)” — it dives deeper into common writing struggles, step-by-step skills to build stronger paragraphs, and fun practice ideas to take your writing to the next level.
