My English language learning journey
From young, I always knew my English wasn't good. I was often criticized by my family and asked to read more books. However, I felt that as long as I could bring my point across, it was sufficient, so I always ignored what they said.In secondary school, with the help of my family members and English teacher, my grades were volatile. I could go from just passing in one term, to A1 the next. This never really bothered me except during O levels when I scored C6.
Since I did not do well for English, I decided to go to a polytechnic. In poly, English is not strongly emphasize, teachers would not penalise your report for language. Furthermore, a trick I have learnt to tackle plagiarism was to simplify your language to the most basic form. Therefore, for my poly course, there was no improvement for my language.
Now coming into university, I realized that the standard of English that I am at is not enough. I could not write anything without someone to proof read for me or guide me in what I should write. Therefore, while ES1102 is a prerequisite for my other modules, I am also glad that I am here to learn something new and refresh the stuffs that I have learnt but hardly practiced.
1 comments:
Write commentsDear Yina,
ReplyThank you for sharing your thoughts and feelings with us. Everything is a journey, so as long as we continue to strive for improvement, we'll be sure to see improvement.
Let's look at a few items of interest.
1. "From young, I always knew my English wasn't good."
The usual expression is "since I was young" instead of "from young" or "since young".
And when we use "since", we need to use the present perfect: have known. So, "Since I was young, I have always known that..."
Are you familiar with verb tenses? If not, we need to do a crash course. Please see me after class if you need one.
More about verb tenses here: www.englishpage.com
2. "In poly, English is not strongly emphasize..."
"In poly" means you're talking about the past, so use the past tense: "English WAS not strongly emphasizeD..."
3. "... there was no improvement for my language."
Usually "improvement IN something"
4. "Now coming into university, I realized that the standard of English that I am at is not enough."
You wrote "now", so use the present tense: "realize"
"the standard of English that I am at" isn't quite right. Perhaps try "my command of the English language" or "my English language proficiency". So the whole sentence should look like this: "Now, coming into university, I realize that my command of the English language is insufficient."
5. "the stuffs"
"stuff" is one of those words that cannot take a plural-s. So, just write "stuff" instead, even if you're referring to many.
Other similar words that cannot take a plural-s are: staff, equipment, transportation, money, work
Here's more: http://staff.washington.edu/marynell/grammar/noncount.html
Hope this helps.
Anita