Another Great Story from BEC Meet Up

Ollie Salsabeela, founder of Nulisbuku.com, shared her tips on writing in English

As we mentioned on our previous post about the Meet Up, today we will post Ollie’s Materials during the Meet Up. She shared about how to write in English confidently. As a blogger herself, she said actually there is only one thing to do so, WRITE. Yes, just write.

However, in order to have good writings in English, she gave us tips that she uses herself daily. These are 10 tips on how to (start to) write in English (more) confidently:

1. Starts with WHY

The first question to start is WHY. The very reason why do you want to write in the first place. Whether it is just for fun or something else. So when you get bored writing, you will remember this reason and it will help you to keep on writing.

2. Communicate first, grammar check later

Most of Indonesian are afraid of making mistakes in English writing, especially in grammar and end up not writing at all. Just forget about the grammar first and write your thoughts, deliver it to others, that’s what Mba Ollie said.

There are many tools to help you check on grammar or vocab, such as Google Translate, Grammar Check, proofread tools on WordPress and you can even ask your grammar nazi friend. A Grammar Nazi should be someone who dare to tell you: “This is wrong! ” or “Your sentence doesn’t work”, even if you consider she/he is your friend. A writer should be friends a grammar nazi right? It will help you a lot.

3. Read out loud

After you wrote, read it out loud and ask yourself, do you understand what you’ve written about? If not, re-write it! If yourself can’t understand it, how would anyone else who read it.

4. Read excessively

To get many English vocabularies,  you need to read, read and read lots of English books and or materials. This is what she does so she can write better in English. She told us that usually she reads two books a day though not necessarily from cover to cover.

5. Nurture writing habit

Ollie Salsabeela shared her story. You can tell how excited she was.

Everyday, spend time to write, about half an hour to one hour. If you do it, automatically, when you don’t write, you will feel the ache inside.

6.  Know what sparks your excitement and enthusiasm

Wrote things that you love. Just like her, she wrote about things she like, such as travelling, spa, writing itself, IT related, etc. Because this would help her wrote more effectively.

Whatever that comes from something that you love will attract people’s attention. Most likely what you want to say will be delivered perfectly.

7. What’s your story

Tell your story, not his, her or them. This is about you. So let people know about your story, on your own way. We remember that during the event, Mba Ollie also asked us to have a short workshop called “write your story” (Participants are paired up and interviewed each other. After that each one of them was asked to write his/her partner’s story using own style). Apparently there are so many interesting and touching stories to be told.

Deva and Mba Dewanda was so serious wrote their interview

Interview between Nadia and Nia

Dwi, did you have trouble in writing Dani’s story?

Mba Fajar was telling a love story.

Mak Etty was telling Lia’s story.

8. Hang out with the optimists & the positives

Keep your circles positive and optimist all the time so that you will be a positive and optimist person yourself. Joining this BEC is one of the positive things to do.

9. Practice. Practice. Practice

This is very important. To be able to write in English confidently, apparently you need to practice, practice and practice. Nothing pays more than a practice. She also showed us how to practice in the workshop we told you earlier.

10. Talk to people, share your thoughts in English

Try to talk with some one, share what’s in your mind, maybe someday they will help you by reminding you about it.

Those are the tips from her to write in English confidently, which are useful and easy to do, hopefully that we can make them as a habit. We also notice that the tips also same like those what mentors always told in Learning Group. So, are you confident enough to write in English now?

IdCaster team plus one admin

By the way, as you all know, the event also supported by IdCaster for the live streaming so members who were not able to join the event can also see it live. Even though there were problems during the live streaming, IdCaster team did an awesome job connecting us, all members together, even mentors such as Mba Yo, Mba Mikan, Mba Nana and Mba Eva who lived abroad.

Thank you so much for your support IdCaster team, and as promised by them, the offline video are ready on their web. You can access it on their website about BEC Meet Up.

Yayyy…. happy watching all, but please do remember, the event was 2 hours period. Be ready with a stable internet connection.

NB: all pictures are courtesy of Wirjawan, please don’t remove the watermark.