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.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
My common grammar mistakes
I have learned English as a second language for years. It is an interesting but tough process. After completing 2 writing assignments in EG1471, I identified 3 major grammar mistakes appeared in my essay.
First of all, wrong verb tense occurred quite often in my essay. For example, there is one sentence in my essay: “but in practice biofuel is not as environmental friendly as they claimed.” Here what I mean is that biofuel is not as environmental friendly as its supporters claim. I thought the action of claim was already happened in the past, so initially I used simple past tense. Simple past tense indicates that an action occurred in the past and is no longer true in the present. It contradicts my original meaning of claim. So I changed it to simple present tense: but in practice biofuel is not as environmental friendly as they claim. There are total 12 different verb tenses in English grammar. To understand their differences and similarities is very vital in English writing.
The next mistake I noticed is lack of transition signals. In the body paragraphs, my topic sentences come out without transitions which make me feel abrupt. Take last paragraph as an example: Biofuel is renewable and sustainable compared to fossil fuel. I corrected it as: Lastly, biofuel is renewable and sustainable compared to fossil fuel. Use of transitions gives readers a sense of hierarchy and helps readers understand articles smoothly and logically. My weakness is I do not have the sense of using transitions probably because my limited vocabularies. I used to write simple sentences but the connection between each other is plain and not coherent. In order to improve on it, memorizing of frequently used transitions is beneficial.
Lastly, I found a lot of missing articles in my essay. It is really unbelievable that I have made such a lot simple mistakes when I re-check my essay. But actually I do make those mistakes. I think it is because I do not take good care of nouns. Typical examples are as following: the 21st century, in the current situation.
In summary, verb tense, transition signals and articles are the building blocks of English sentences. They are vital and have different roles to play in English language. The appropriate way to strengthen my weakness in writing is to maximize vocabulary and take special attention to those common mistakes I usually made.
First of all, wrong verb tense occurred quite often in my essay. For example, there is one sentence in my essay: “but in practice biofuel is not as environmental friendly as they claimed.” Here what I mean is that biofuel is not as environmental friendly as its supporters claim. I thought the action of claim was already happened in the past, so initially I used simple past tense. Simple past tense indicates that an action occurred in the past and is no longer true in the present. It contradicts my original meaning of claim. So I changed it to simple present tense: but in practice biofuel is not as environmental friendly as they claim. There are total 12 different verb tenses in English grammar. To understand their differences and similarities is very vital in English writing.
The next mistake I noticed is lack of transition signals. In the body paragraphs, my topic sentences come out without transitions which make me feel abrupt. Take last paragraph as an example: Biofuel is renewable and sustainable compared to fossil fuel. I corrected it as: Lastly, biofuel is renewable and sustainable compared to fossil fuel. Use of transitions gives readers a sense of hierarchy and helps readers understand articles smoothly and logically. My weakness is I do not have the sense of using transitions probably because my limited vocabularies. I used to write simple sentences but the connection between each other is plain and not coherent. In order to improve on it, memorizing of frequently used transitions is beneficial.
Lastly, I found a lot of missing articles in my essay. It is really unbelievable that I have made such a lot simple mistakes when I re-check my essay. But actually I do make those mistakes. I think it is because I do not take good care of nouns. Typical examples are as following: the 21st century, in the current situation.
In summary, verb tense, transition signals and articles are the building blocks of English sentences. They are vital and have different roles to play in English language. The appropriate way to strengthen my weakness in writing is to maximize vocabulary and take special attention to those common mistakes I usually made.
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