Difficulties in University Writing

It is going to the end of my first year university life. I would like to say that the experience is sweet but also bitter. One of the nightmares is academic writing which varies a lot from my previous polytechnic study. It requires more brainstorming and organization compared to that in polytechnic.

My first problem is that I do not have the habit of pre-writing planning. When I grab a topic, I can straightway start writing without any plan in mind. I write down whatever I think. It is a very bad habit which I recognized it when I learned the module EG1471. Through teacher’s illustration, I found that planning is very vital to writing. Better planning could save a lot of time and help avoid irrelevant stuff. With a rough guideline of what the content is in different paragraphs, it is easy and clear to write an essay without a headache. In order to improve my writing, pre-writing planning is a good habit necessary to keep.

Content is also a very critical issue in writing. The language used and the organization of an essay are no doubt very important, but contents are much more worth of attention. Sometimes during my writing, I have no input but write repetitious words or irrelevant sentences to fulfill word requirement. It is really a bad experience! Lack of content is a weakness that it is not easy to get rid of. It differs from person to person. In order to lessen it, choosing a familiar topic is the first priority. If no choice to change the topic, doing a research related to the topic become more crucial. There is no fixed solution to deal with it. Maybe life-long learning could provide a better solution.

There are two more years to go in NUS. A lot of chances will be ahead for me to apply what I learnt in EG1471. Practice makes perfect, practice makes improvement.