My improvement in writing skills

Writing is the way by which a person can express his thoughts to others. At university the language plays an important role in every student’s life, and every student is expected to have good writing skills to be on par with the university’s standard. A good command over English writing skills are important for making thesis and other report writings.

The main writing difficulty that I have faced in the university is in the organisation of a report or an essay. This has been a major issue for me since secondary school. It was noticed that most of the essays I wrote in the past had a poor introduction, an inappropriate body and conclusion. Even in the writing assignment 1, my conclusion was not at all related with the main topics. However, learning the EG1471 module has helped me in getting accustomed to writing and has learnt new concepts like idea generation, outlining and writing different drafts before I write and publish the main essay. This different process involved in writing essay has also helped in noticing the common errors that I make while writing essay.

Another major issue is the grammar mistakes that I make in the essays. Although the common grammar errors are easy to understand and avoid, there are some grey areas in the English language where I continuously made mistakes upon. These errors in writing made the readers unclear of the idea that I have tried to express. But being a part of the university and the good practice in writing assignments as well as other blogs has helped to gain a good control over the use of words and to rectify the common errors that I used to make. Many grammar exercises were done in classes and out of them. This regular practice has helped to understand the common errors that I make in English and helped to be aware of the mistakes while I write essays.

While taking the English module, I have read many articles by renowned authors and understood how information regarding engineering practices was presented in their works. My writing skills were improved and I have become confident in the work I do while writing in English. Moreover, I will continue to work on sharpening my use of English language, since it is the only language that is regarded as a global language.

My common grammatical errors

Mark Twain once said, “Ignorant people think it is the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it isn’t so; it is the sickening grammar that they use.” Grammar is the foundation of all English writing and communication. I have noticed that there are three different kinds of grammar mistakes that I make. They are the usage of modals, pronoun reference and articles.

Modals

One of the errors that I tend to make is in modals. They are used commonly to express ability, degrees of possibilities, advisability, or necessity or lack of necessity. They are mostly accompanied by other verbs. The most common error that I make is the improper usage of verb form after the modals. It is required that a modal should be followed by the base form of the verb.

Incorrect: John could heard the bell

Correct: John could hear the bell

The second error that I usually make is the improper usage of infinitive along with the modals.

Incorrect: You must not to use that pencil

Correct: You must not use that pencil

Articles

Articles are used only with certain categories of proper nouns. They consist of the nonspecific articles (a/an) and specific article (the). Among these articles the one which I misuse the most is the usage of ‘the’. ‘The’ is used when something is specified properly. The example below gives a better explanation of the errors that I tend to make in articles.

Incorrect: People who own the laptops say that they can save a lot of time.

Correct: People own laptops say that they can save a lot of time.

Prepositions

The final and the most common error that I make is the usage of prepositions. Prepositions are used to link the nouns, pronouns and phrases to other parts in a sentence. They indicate temporal, spatial or logical relationship of its object to the rest of the sentence. Prepositional phrases are built with a preposition followed by a pronoun or noun. The usage of different prepositions are ambiguous and the common examples of prepositional errors are the following.

Incorrect: The dog is hiding in the porch because it knows it will be punished.

Correct: The dog is hiding under the porch because it knows it will be punished.