E-Portfolio 7 (Horay!!!! This is the last task)

"What difficulties do you have writing in your universities classes? How do you resolve these difficulties? How will you continue to improve?"

For writing in my universities classes, my difficulties are probably the vocabulary and expressing my ideas. These two factors are important for writing in universities classes.

The language level in university is very high, for my universities classes, I will encounter with unfamiliar terms such as transformers, retifier, and phasor. Sometimes, there are words that have different meaning from the general meaning, for example platform. Generally, platform means "a flat elevated portion used as a stage", however in computer science, it means "the basic technologies of a computer system's hardware and software". Without the understanding of the meaning behind the new words or words with various meaning, I can misuse them in my writing. For example, if I want to write about "black body", "black body can only be found in space" well it's wrong because black body can also be found in earth inside the laboratory. Therefore, to improve this problem, I will read various articles to familiarise myself with many new terms. Also, dictionary will come in handy when looking for words I do not understand.

Another difficulties I have for writing in my university classes is expressing my idea on paper. It is quite difficult to express an idea when I do not understand the concept behind this idea. This could happen because I did not pay attention in class or the lecture is just to fast and before the idea sink into my head, more concepts are given. When an idea is not understand properly, it is hard to explain it to other people through writing. Therefore, for this difficulty I realised I have to catch up with all my classes and understand all the concepts for each topic I have learnt. Also, find more sources for the topics. Then, when writing an idea regarding these concepts I will have no trouble expressing my ideas.

I realised there are many room for improvement in writing an essay. One of my teacher used to say choose a topic that you familiar with and write what you know. Thus, the reader can understand your point of view. Therefore, from now on I will keep learning, reading, and looking for various articles to improve my writing ability in my university classes.

E-Portfolio 6 - My Common Grammar Mistakes

Probably for many people, English is the most confusing language. It has past tense, present tense, and future tense. The grammars have many rules to follow and yet there are times when those rules cannot be applied. The three common grammar mistakes that I do most of the time are verb tense, preposition, and parallel structure.

Verb tense probably is my biggest problem. When writing an essay, I will get confused with the tense. For example, "the known procedure of taking Embryonic Stem cells from an embryo involved destroying the embryo", the "involved" here according to my teacher supposed to be "involves" as the method is not happened in the past, but everytime ESC is taken from an embryo, the embryo will be destroyed. Thus, it should be "the known procedure of taking Embryonic Stem cells from an embryo involves destroying the embryo". The reason I was confused with the tense is because when I write an essay, I will just read in my head and sometimes my head says it is the correct tense. However later if I read out loud then I will find that the tense is not correct.

Preposition such as "in", "on" and "at" is also my common grammar mistakes. For example, "I was always very good in Geography when I was at school". The right answer is "I was always very good at Geography when I was at school". The reason it is "at" is because we cannot go inside Geograpy. We can only be good at something, not good in something. I make this mistakes all the time. I get confused when to use "in", "on" or "at".

Another grammar mistake I make is parallel structure. For example, "Susie not only needs attention but also many compliments", the correct sentence is "Susie not only needs attention but also needs many compliments". This mistake occurs very often because I want to say many things related to a subject. Therefore, if I do not read out loud or if the teacher do not pointed out that this sentence is wrong, I will think the sentence is correct.

Personally, I usually write a sentence based on how I say it. Therefore, sometimes the sentence is informal and the grammar is not correct. In the future time, I will try to be more careful in writing an essay and I will try to read out loud to listen for the mistakes in the essay. I want to be fluent in writing a great essay :D.