I have been studying English almost for ten years. I’m interested in English. But I always have some troubles in writing. Could you tell me how to improve my writing?
我学英语已经快十年了。我对英语有兴趣，但我在写作方面总有一些困难。您能告诉我怎样才能提高写作水平吗?
There are two basic things you have to do to write good English:
1) You have to understand that English is ‘a word-order language’. This means that word order is essential to the meaning of everything we say and write. The word order of an English sentence is fairly inflexible. With just a few variations, it follows this pattern:
Subject ｜ Verb ｜ Object ｜ Manner ｜ Place ｜ Time
In inflected languages (that is, languages in which the form of a noun tells us whether the noun is subject or object) the word order is unimportant. This is not the case in English. If we write ‘The policeman arrested the thief’, the meaning is very different from ‘The thief arrested the policeman.’
Changing the nouns round radically alters the meaning. In an inflected language, this change in word order would not have this effect. So you have to train yourself to follow the sequence S/V/O/M/P/T when you write.
2) To write good English sentences, you have to master sentence structure. Sentence structure is the way we show the relationship between ideas and events. This means you have to learn how to control three different types of sentence:
a) the simple sentence, which contains a subject and a verb: The taxi has arrived. My sister answered the phone. etc.
b) the compound sentence, where two or more simple sentences are joined by conjunctions like and, but, or, etc.: I phoned a number of times. No one answered. → I phoned a number of times, but no one answered.
c) the complex sentence, where two or more simple sentences are joined by conjunctions like since, when, as soon as, etc.: We realized that something had gone wrong. We saw him run towards us.→ We realized that something had gone wrong as soon as we saw him run towards us. Of course, there are other ways of making complex sentences as well. For example, we can use the -ing form: Seeing him run towards us made us realize that something had gone wrong. But the mastery of the written language depends on how well you can control its sentence structure.
要想写好英语，你要做到以下两个基本点：
1) 要知道英语是“一种词序语言”。这就是说，我们要说要写的意思，是通过单词的排列顺序来表达的。英语句子的词序是相当固定的。主要遵循如下次序(有少量一些变化)：
主语+动词+宾语+方式+地点+时间
在词形变化语言中(即在这类语言中，名词的形式可以显示该名词是主语还是宾语)，词序不重要。在英语中不是这样。如果我们写出The policeman arrested the thief，意思与The thief arrested the policeman迥然不同。
改变名词顺序使句意大相径庭，但在词形变化语言中，词序变化不会有这种作用，所以写作时你应掌握主语+动词+宾语+方式+地点+时间这一顺序。
2) 要写好英语句子，你需要掌握句子结构。句子结构是我们表示思想和事件之间关系的方式。这意味着你应学会如何掌握以下三种不同类型的句子：
a) 简单句，包括一个主语和一个动词：The taxi has arrived. My sister answered the phone.等等。
b) 复合句，由两个或两个以上的简单句通过and, but, or等连词组成：I phoned a number of times. No one answered.→I phoned a number of times ,but no one answered.
c)复杂句，由两个或两个以上的简单句通过since, when, as soon as 等连词组成：We realized that something had gone wrong. We saw him run towards us.→We realized that something had gone wrong as soon as we saw him run towards us.当然还有其他的复杂句组成方式，例如，我们可以用-ing方式：Seeing him run towards us made us realize that something had gone wrong.掌握一门语言的写作要看你对句子结构的掌握程度。
文：路易亚历山大 新概念英语作者