Writing Feedback / Young people admire sports stars though they do not set a good example. This is negative or positive [5]

Vy, your total essay is a mess of over reaching vocabulary, improperly structured sentences, confusing topic sentences, and basically, an extremely stressful read for the examiner. Your essay is difficult to make sense of because you are not properly developing your sentence presentations, have poor control over grammar (specifically the use of "a" and "an") along with the lack of proper transition sentences.

Don't just use complicated English words such as "paradoxically" just because it sounds nice and applicable. You need to make sure that the "big" words you use are actually applicable to the sentence topic you are discussing. In this case, it wasn't and you could have chosen a simpler English word to represent what you wanted to say.

The task 2 essay is not a test of English vocabulary. Nor it is a test of how many English words you know. This is a test of English proficiency. As long as you use proper words in a manner than properly explains what you are trying to say, the examiner will be able to score you properly. Confuse the examiner and write directionless statements such as the above and you will end up with a failing score.

A word of advice, write in simple English sentences using basic vocabulary for now. You are not yet capable of using advanced English words in the proper manner. Your sentence development ability is only at the beginner stage at this point. Don't try to write anything beyond your actual English writing abilities. You will still get a good or even passing score when you write simple texts. What matters is that you are clearly understood. At this point, this essay clearly shows that you cannot easily be understood by a native English speaker and that, is bad for your final score.

FYI, Batolle is a soccer player, not a soccer. Soccer is the sport. Soccer ball is the instrument of the game. A soccer player plays the game. See what I mean by you are not familiar enough with the English language to compose even a basic English sentence? That is the reason why you have a greater chance of failing rather than passing this test at this point.

Practice simple English sentence writing before you continue to write practice essays. You need to do that if you want to stand a chance of even writing understandable simple English sentences at this point.

Writing Feedback / [Writing task 2] The decline of face-to-face communication due to the rise of technology [4]

Tuan, this being an extent essay, you must respond to the question being asked in the manner expected. This is not a simple opinion essay. This is a measured opinion essay. Therefore, to respond by simply saying that you believe in something related to the discussion topic is incorrect. You need to respond by not only paraphrasing the original prompt, but you must also mention the measurement of (dis)agreement with the statement. The thesis statement / prompt response for this essay, based upon what I read in your final paragraph, it appears that you agree with the given statement. However, you are not in total agreement with the statement either. This is where the problem with your essay comes in.

You are actually delivering a confused statement here. You cannot be both in agreement and disagreement with the given statement. You need to pick one side for the discussion and stick to it or, make it clear from the very beginning that you do not fully agree by stating that; "I partially agree with the given statement due to a number of reasons." Without that extent statement of partial agreement, your total essay fails to make sense as it does not properly respond to the task requirements.

Consider defending only one side of the discussion as part of your extent statement in order to avoid confusion next time. If you think about which side you truly support more, you can indicate that you strongly, totally, or unequivocally support a particular discussion side. This makes it easier for you to write the essay because you avoid the need to do a comparison discussion which, in your case, created the confusing point of view and lack of proper extent statement at the start of the discussion.

Don't get me wrong, you show that you understood the prompt topic but not the discussion instruction. Your discussion paragraphs also show that you are capable

of properly thinking of supporting explanations and appropriate examples for your statements. Those are the positive points that you can take from this particular exercise. The problem is that your unfamiliarity with the discussion style caused you to not respond to the prompt instructions in the expected manner. That is why this essay will most likely have a difficult time getting a passing score in an actual test setting.

There are more than enough examples of extent essays at this forum that you can refer to in order to learn how to better address the various Task 2 essay prompts. I encourage you to read those essays along with the advice given for the correction so that you can learn and apply the lessons to your future work.

Scholarship / Networking Skill as Powerful Weapon at Work_ Chevening Scholarship [2]

Sherly, this is an example of a competitive networking essay. It really showcases your national networking skills to a point that shows how you could use the network and the information gained from it to help in the development of your country. While I have not read your leadership and influencing essay, I believe that you could use this networking essay to strongly support any claims you will be making in your leadership and influencing essay. I just hope you will not be repeating information in the leadership essay because Chevening rejects and application that has repetitive information in the application essays.

If you want to further improve this essay, you will need to add a transition paragraph that creates a connection between your first and second networking narratives because they seem to have some sort of professional connection on your part. The problem is that you have already written 497 words at this point so you will need to edit and shorten each paragraph you currently have in this essay in order to allow you to have at least 100 words free to create the transition / connecting paragraph. The connecting / transition paragraph should go between the current first 2 paragraphs of the essay. So the connecting paragraph will become the second paragraph, the bridge that helps the reader realize the connection between the two networks in your presentation.

The transition paragraph should clearly explain how you create your networks and why these networks are important to the performance of your overall tasks. Consider which of your networks have been of the most help in the performance of your duties and explain how you established that network. If you still have the space, discuss other methods of networking that you have used (excluding social media) such as inter agency cooperation and public sector networking (for the banking and other business industries). That should help to limit the need to explain how you created your network based on a work related requirement basis. Just make sure the networking you did ties together both activity A and activity B in the essay presentation and your essay should be alright.

Writing Feedback / Describe a favorite class you had in school. What made it your favorite class. (250-350 words) [2]

Kushboo, one particular activity in this class is not enough to make it a favorite class. Memorable? Yes. Favorite? No. A favorite class should be related to a subject that was taught in it that inspired your ambitions for your future. So, if you liked drama class, then that means you are trying to become a theater major right? There should be a relationship like that being told in your story.

I learned more about Mr. Jaffery in this essay than I did about why it became your favorite class. Don't describe the one activity that you enjoyed very much. Explain why the class was something you enjoyed. Aside from it being an academic ice-breaker, why else did you look forward to this class? Did it offer some sort of avenue of release for you in relation to academic stress? Did it signify the start of your down time from academics to extra curricular activities? What? The story you told doesn't really describe why this could have become your favorite class. I can understand why it would be a class you still remember today, but your narration doesn't explain why this would be a favorite class for you. There is a missing central theme/topic/realization/inspiration to the story.

Scholarship / Chevening Leadership and Influence essay - Establishing a cost-free learning center [4]

Go with the learning center since that is where your biggest accomplishments in terms of leadership and influencing. Bring it up to date with more current leadership and influencing mentions since you are the founder of the learning center. That may be the best way for you to approach this essay.

There is a caveat to this advice though. You have to make sure that somehow your narrative will tie in with your masters course interests. If you are applying for a scholarship in relation to your job, then you must use a professional leadership and influencing example that comes from that field. If you are studying to develop your learning center, then use the learning center. It all depends upon what your actual professional goal is for studying the masters degree courses. It is better to use related information so that the reviewer will not question why your experience is in an unrelated field when it comes to your Study in the UK essay.

Since you are an active teacher, then try to use a leadership and influencing example from both areas with the highlight on your learning center. The idea is to show a personal and professional leadership and influencing ability that ties together, regardless of the area where you apply your knowledge as a masters course graduate. I want you to highlight the learning center because that shows a community based leadership and influencing skill that can be expanded to a national purpose, which is the point of the essay. To find a person who can lead his or her country in the future based on the work he or she has done at the moment.

Writing Feedback / Write an email to community picnic organizer [3]

Han, once again, your lack of familiarity with the English language has hindered your writing abilities in this letter. You are writing sentences that make no sense. Almost all of the text you have written is difficult to understand because you are using the wrong words in your writing. Your vocabulary is severely lacking when it comes to the English language which is why you cannot write coherent sentences at this point. Mistakes include:

1. Form my appreciation- When you say "form" you mean creating or making. What you are saying there is that you are "making" an appreciation towards the event. What you want to say is that you want to "express" you appreciation. Express means to say something about a topic or event.

2. Indirect incident - What are you talking about? An indirect incident is something like an accident indirectly caused by something at the event. The prompt already told you this is about allergic reactions and people with allergies. Why did you not use those terms instead? Keywords are always offered in these essays so you should learn to use them.

3. Allergies statement - At a potluck, people bring food, they do not list allergens because it is not a requirement as these are not commercial food products. All you should have said was "People need to be aware of the ingredients in the potluck because of possible allergies or allergic reactions."

4. Reach your noticed - You mean NOTICE. Use the present form. The action you are taking is currently ongoing.

There are even more errors in your writing that need to be corrected. I chose to point out only a few of these because this letter is making my head hurt every time I read it. Please, download an English dictionary app and familiarize yourself with English words and their meanings. That way you can understand when and how to use English terms when writing letters. Your vocabulary needs a tremendous amount of work if I were to base your English writing skills on this essay.

Scholarship / University environment is a representation of our world. [2]

Nicole, you have written more than the 500 word maximum for this essay even without the mention of the actual university names and other information. You n eed to cut back on some information in order to meet the word count. Believe me, providing up to 450 words will be more beneficial to your essay as opposed to writing 500 words. The reviewer should only read relevant details in the shortest time possible due to the volume of essay considerations he must complete in a day. Write a short but memorable essay.

Try to shorten the motivation statement. This is running extra long because you are mentioning information that should be in the post study plan such as the High Commission that will be opened Actually, this whole statement can be relegated to the post study plan in its entirety because your discussion is for future rather than present plans. Also, in order to meet the word requirement, immediately presenting the course and university helps a lot. A single sentence referring to your motivation for applying to the course is normally acceptable enough as it is your credentials to succeed in this course of study that is more important, which is why your related past and professional experience is being highlighted in the prompt.

For your choice 2, leave the mention of FB and the class size out of the discussion. That is the least important information that you should be mentioning here. The removal of that reference actually makes the paragraph more convincing and authoritative in presentation. It has a clear and strong focus on academic learning in relation to your profession and future plans.

Choice 3 sounds like you just threw it in there for want of a 3rd choice. There is very little information to convince the reviewer that your current profession or past academic studies have any relation to this course and that it is relevant to your current position or work title. It doesn't matter that there are a high percentage of graduates in this course. How does it relate to your professional prospects? What previous experience do you have that is relevant to this course? Why will you become a better professional because of it?

I see some potential in you with regards to your future career plans and why this course of study is relevant. You just need to develop the information a little bit more in order to strengthen the presentation and sound more convincing to the reviewer.

Undergraduate / Why Tulane Essay: "finding a school that shares your values" [2]

Molly, you have pretty much addressed everything that relates to your personal goals in choosing a university. What is lacking at the moment is your academic goal in relation to your choice of university. Sure Tulane allows you to learn in an open setting, without any class restrictions. That could also mean that you will be a permanent fixture at the university because you do not have any academic ambition.

Even as you enjoy the open educational system, you need to be able to relate all of those studies with an academic goal on your part. What do you look forward to learning at the university or each of the 5 buildings and why? If you haven't chosen a major yet then work that into the academic goal. Explain that you have 5 different interests that you look forward to pursuing at the university with the hopes of having a solid academic goal by the time you reach your junior year. That way you imply that you have academic goals, you just need to understand each area you have chosen to figure out which one you want to be certified in through a graduation certificate.

At 265 words, you don't need to worry about going over the word count. In fact, I insist that you write more than the maximum so that you will have enough room to play around in during the drafting process. You will find that writing more words will be better than writing just the write number of words.

Scholarship / Leadership & Influence Question - Leadership is a life time journey [3]

Joana, the first thing you have to change about this essay is the title. By titling it "Leadership is Not a Qualification" you are implying that the Chevening requirement for this particular essay is not important. It could have an adverse effect on the reviewer. Change it to something more positive like "Leaders are Created" or the one you used above "Leadership is a Lifetime Journey". Those sound more positive than "Leadership is not a Qualification".

Next, your actual narrative based on your AIESEC EXPERIENCE isn't impressive. Virtual leadership of an academic organization does not have the same problems, leadership requirements, influencing necessities, and task delegation abilities as physical leadership of a professional team or organization. While your work here does indicate leadership, it is nothing but foundational leadership, or the basis of your current leadership skills. It is not actual leadership in the context of being a future leader and influencer in your country based on either a strong sense of community service or professional ambitions.

Your presentation can be admired on an amateur level. It is not competitive enough for a cut-throat, competitive scholarship program like Chevening. This will be viewed as a good read, but not really qualified on the basis of possible national leadership and influencing abilities on your part. There needs to be a sense of you being able to apply the leadership and influencing skills that you learned in college within a larger, national or local community scope. At the moment, this only applies within an academic setting so it doesn't work in terms of application requirements.

Go beyond virtual reality. Discuss a real time physical event that you had to handle that had significant repercussions for you as the leader of the team. Go professional of national in scale. Leave the virtual academic side where it is, in the past. As a leader, we need to see you in the immediate past or present accomplishing leadership and influencing tasks and goals.

Writing Feedback / IELTS PART 1:...how selected age groups bought concert, cinema and theatre tickets online [2]

Ly, the first thing you have to remember is that there is a big difference in writing the Task 2 and Task 1 essays. Task 2 essays require a conclusion at the end because you are being asked to deliver an opinion regarding a discussion topic. Task 1 essays do not require a conclusion because you are not discussing an opinion. Rather, Task 1 essays require a trending statement as the images supplied require you to explain the end result of the measured study of the image presented. Next time you write a Task 1 essay, remember, use a trending statement, not a conclusion.

Your overview information is incomplete and thus, inaccurate. You neglected to mention the following:
1. Type of illustration - Bar graph not chart
2. 2 sets of age ranges - 25-44 and 65+
3. Countries for comparison
4. Measurements conducted - Age of people who buy concert, cinema, theater tickets online and most common means of ticket access
5. Trending statement

You are inconsistent in your information presentation. For every age group, a specific measurement was made but you did not compare these data. In fact, you even placed the age groups in a parenthesis when it should be part of the complete presentation. A parenthesis means information is optional, which in this case, isn't. Actual measurements were used in the graphs and yet you rarely referred to these information in your writing. When presented with measurements, mention them. That is the best way to accurately summarize your discussion.

Scholarship / Chevening Leadership and Influence essay - Establishing a cost-free learning center [4]

Fitri, this is not a leadership and influencing essay. What you have written is a personal statement that does not really align itself with the leadership and influencing expectations of a potential Chevening scholar. Your experience is too far back to become relevant to your current leadership and influencing skills. While I would rather have liked to see a more professional presentation of your leadership and influencing abilities within your profession, your chosen narrative works well since it is within a community setting.

However, the weakness of the essay is not in the leadership part but rather the influencing part. In this essay, you appear to be a one woman teaching machine, doing everything by yourself and merely appointing tasks to your volunteers and students. There is no notable influencing practice taking place. You need to be more experience specific when it comes to the influencing part. That is where the weakness of this essay lies. You said that:


The encouragement part is where your influencing skills lie. It is also the part not properly developed in this essay. Develop that part in relation to that paragraph so that your essay will have a clear example of your influencing skill rather than just having notable leadership skills. You need to present a strong ability in both aspects, not just one.

Writing Feedback / IELTS Task 1: Occupied and available types of living accomodation in London [4]

Hang, there are major problems with your presentation because you failed to identify the proper information for presentation in your opening summary. The opening summary is the outline of the discussion that you will be presenting in the 3 body paragraphs. part of the requirement for the opening summary is an identification of the information that you will be discussing. Assuming that the reader will not have any access to the illustration, since you are writing a report about the images you were presented, then the information to be presented in the first paragraph are as follows:

1. Type of image or images presented
2. Measurements used
3. Measurement representations
4. Discussion purpose
5. Trending statement

The 5 subjects listed above can be mentioned in the essay in no particular order. Let me show a sample of how I would have presented these information for a more effective opening summary:

This analytical report will deal with the measurements representing 2 surveys regarding the living arrangements of 25 year old people in London during the years 1190 and 2010. A comparison analysis of the pie charts will be done representing those whose residential status is either alone or shared in a house, flat, or with parents. A chart has also been provided to compare the available housing in the same area starting from the 1190's - 2010 onwards. These are measured as 1-2 and 3-4 bedroom houses.

There are 2 trends to be derived from the presented measurements. For the 25 year old's residing in London, the 1990's and 2010's showed that more of them lived alone in flats. As for the available housing, both the 1990's and 2010's showed that more people lived in 3-4 bedroom homes.

The main problem with your writing is that you are still in Task 2 writing mode. Meaning you are trying to create an opinion and discuss it within the essay instead of simply reporting the facts as they come from the images provided. That is why you are finding it difficult to create the Task 1 essay. This is actually the simplest essay to write because all of the information you need to present and how it should be presented is given to you in the instructions. You just have to take the obvious data and present it in this instance.

I hope my example above can help you develop a better writing style for yourself with your next essay. I do not feel a need to score this essay for now because you did not do a good job at it and I want to give you a chance to show me your actual Task 1 writing abilities now that you have an example of how to write this essay.

Remember, the summary tells you how to write the body. That is the only guide you will need. The instructions already tell you what information to report about based on the images. Just write about what you see, don't try to form an opinion, but you can analyze the information for comparison purposes when such things can be done.

Scholarship / An intriguing concept, theory, or topic you have explored; fascinated by geography [2]

Anthony, your essay is good, but lacking in terms of response to "How do you want to further explore it?". Surely there are other ways of feeding your fascination for geography by say, joining appropriate clubs, memberships in relevant organizations, or, using your time at college to acquaint yourself with the geography of the place where you will be spending the next 4 years of life at. Wouldn't those count as other ways of exploration? There may even be school sponsored trips that you could take in relation to this interest.

Here's an idea, why don't you look further into the extra curricular clubs or geography classes that could be considered common among the universities that Questbridge normally submits to. Find out which programs they have in common that you could take advantage of as a student. That way, you will be showing your imminent future plans rather than your 20 years down the road plans for exploring your geographic interests further.

Scholarship / For me, the leadership isn't just a tittle but it is an ability to lead people to reach their goals [2]

Aju, this is definitely not going to be able to compete for a Chevening scholarship. The writing is weak. The presentation is not good enough. There is a lack of focus on developing a proper leadership and influencing example, and you are not really developing your recent work representation in a manner that shows off your leadership and influencing skills.

You must remove the definition of leadership and influencing as the opening statement. You are not being asked to define leadership and influencing. You are wasting the reviewers time and he may opt to not continue assessing your paper if you waste too much of the words presentation on an irrelevant presentation. You are asked to clearly present and example, not define a word. Don't confuse the two.

Work with your 2015 leadership role if you cannot find a more effective and more recent work leadership and influencing topic. Although a few years back, I think the 2015 project will be your strongest bet since that work was published for others to read and learn from, thus proving you have a leadership and influencing style that has the potential to have a national impact.

Present the difficulties of the task from managing people of different personalities, their questioning of your abilities, some problems that prevented the team from cooperating, anything that would show how you lead under pressure and influence the team when problems seem insurmountable. Your essay, based on that project seems to have the best potential to prove those things to the reviewer. So build up to 500 words in that alone. Don't define, don't try to present too many samples. Just focus on the one that best responds to the prompt requirement.

Scholarship / Study in UK academic or professional experience and your plans for the future [2]

Aju, this is a Chevening study plan essay. This essay in its totality is not applicable because you are not responding properly to the prompt requirement. The requirement is that you discuss 3 university courses along with 3 university choices or 3 course choices at 2 universities or 3 courses at a single university. You have to present the university choices because Chevening needs to double check and make sure that the universities you have chosen to study at are Chevening accredited. It isn't just a matter of course choices, everything needs to match for consideration. That is regardless of whether you already have acceptance to a university or not.

Your university course needs to correspond with your academic and professional experience. You have to explain how the course can help you improve your work skills or prepare you for a potential shift in your work responsibilities. Other successful applicants referred to how the course can help them train for their target work promotions or spin off careers. Your essay doesn't do that at all. Read the sample essays here if you are confused about how to properly respond to a Chevening essay prompt. Those will be most helpful to you. I am sure of it.

Also, the tone of your essay sounds like you are addressing a fellow worker instead of a respected interviewer. You may want to use a less casual and more formal tone in your writing. This sounds like you are writing a college application essay instead of addressing an esteemed educator who is considering you for a sponsorship.

Writing Feedback / Is My Life Worth Saving Someone Else Working in Law Enforcement? [2]

Nechee, this is a very timely piece of writing here. Your personal insight into the life of a police officer and what the job entails is enlightening and allows us to see the job from the other side. I wish you had included some insight into how police officers handle the current refusal of service and pigs in a blanket scenarios. Being on the inside, it would have been a learning experience for the reader to learn how the police officers feel and what they think about the ongoing harassment of police officers. Even without those parts though, this is one essay that you must be extremely proud to have written.

Aside from some grammatical errors that any word processing program can detect and automatically detect for you. I do not see any need to revise the content of your essay.

However, I do not really see a personal response from you regarding whether you believe that saving someone else's life as a law enforcement official is worth it. I heard from every one else and even got a nice quote at the end, but I never did hear what you personally think about putting your life on the line everyday for complete strangers and their safety. Maybe you can still add a sentence or two that reflects your personal take on that question?

Let me close by telling you something that I hope you hear everyday while you work to keep the community safe, "Thank you for your service."

Writing Feedback / Essay about whether government should be responsible for education and healthcare [2]

Zeng, you are using too many memorized phrases in this essay for it to be considered a piece of original work. You use the same template for each discussion paragraph and only change a few key phrases so that it represents one of each discussion points. Easy for you to write? Yes, good for your scoring? A big fat NO! You are proving to the examiner that you can only memorize key words in English but you are not capable of varying your presentations in order to prove a strong English vocabulary.

Your opening paraphrase alone sounds like it has been memorized many times over from your book lessons rather than you learning how to properly develop original sentences. This essay is not presented in a manner that will get it a passing score because you did not put much effort into writing it. While your reasoning is good, the way you presented it shows that memory work was involved rather than analysis and thinking.

This being your first essay here and due to the memorization feature of your presentation, I am not going to score this essay. You know what your possible score for this will be. I will score your next essay, the one that shows more variation in writing skills and other scoring considerations. This one, just shows a lot of memory work in your writing.

Writing Feedback / Building a large gym facility on the company's premises, or to pay employees to sign up elsewhere? [5]

Han, this is still an opinion essay. That means you need to take only one stand and defend it. You don't need to make a comparison then explain your decision. The options are meant to help you make a decision based on the available information. So you should be discussing this from a singular point of view only. That way you won't find yourself running short on words based on the maximum word requirement. For example, I would have said:

My office tends to experience work related accidents which can be attributed to the lack of physical abilities of a person. The HR department believes that by promoting an interest in a healthy lifestyle, these accidents can be prevented. However, they are unsure as to whether to build a gym at the office or if the company should just pay for offsite gym memberships. I tend to support the latter choice.

By paying for an employees gym membership the company...

Finally, the company sponsored health club membership...

Focus on discussing what is important in the essay. That would be:
1. The topic
2. The reason
3. Your decision
4. Supporting statements for your decision

These can be represented in 4 paragraphs at the most using a 5 sentence format per paragraph. Don't confuse yourself by trying to discuss the 2 POV's. That is why you ran out of words to use.

Scholarship / Embassy track - SCHOLARSHIP Personal Statement [4]

Shahriar, since you have a friend who is a KGSP passer, I thought you did not require my professional help. From my experience, the students who are applying for this scholarship who happen to have KGSP passer friends tend to argue with the advice that I give them because they ask for the opinion of their friend regarding my advice. Hence my decision to ignore your essay. Not only that, but you also chose to say, in an indirect manner "thanks but no thanks for your advice" to Narayani who was only trying to help you with some pretty good advice. All the more reason that I am apprehensive to help you. It is obvious that you have your own mindset when it comes to what you want to tell the KGSP reviewer and what the prompt information is asking for. Your essay reflects that total disregard for the required information from beginning to end.

Do not write that you want to say. Write what the prompt requires. It would be better for you to discuss your academic accomplishments from high school because that is when your real character as a person and as a student begins to take shape. That is when your ambition in life becomes more solid, believable, and doable as well. Or, since it appears that you are going for a secondary bachelor degree, your accomplishments as a first major bachelor degree student. That would sound more impressive. The motivation for your study in Korea is not optional nor should you disregard it as you explained in you response to Narayani. Explain the motivation from the aspect of why a Korean education would be best for the major that you wish to study.

Delete all the references to your not passing the first time you applied for this scholarship. That is an unnecessary and wasteful use of the word count. Your whole essay must be rewritten. Write a totally new one that responds to the prompt requirements as indicated. Not what it is you want to tell the reviewer.

This is all advice coming from someone who has successfully helped numerous KGSP applicants get their scholarships through this forum. My advice should be taken as is or not at all. The choice is yours.

Writing Feedback / Task 2:Universities should accept equal numbers of male and female students in every subject or not [3]

Nguyen, you have a TA response problem in your prompt paraphrase. The question is not whether the university should provide equal opportunities to study in each major. The question is whether an equal number of genders should be admitted in each course. There is a difference between equal number of students and equally provided opportunities. One refers to people and the latter, refers to the courses. The question refers to the number of people per gender in each course.

Major LR problems as well, a lesion is a region in an organ or tissue which has suffered damage through injury or disease, such as a wound, ulcer, abscess, or tumor. You are referring to a lesson which is an amount of teaching given at one time; a period of learning or teaching.

Your overall discussion is not in accordance with the prompt requirements. Your discussion is way off base. It is incorrect and, due to the severe errors in all 4 aspects of scoring consideration, what you have here is a failing piece of essay writing. It will not get a passing score in an actual test. Why? Your essay does not begin to properly respond to the prompt requirement until the 3rd paragraph. Which means you have written an essay that is also lacking in the required word count because most of your discussion is unrelated to the task.

Scholarship / The context in which you have grown up, formed your aspirations, and accomplished your successes [3]

Anthony, the essay is strong, but with a lot of grammatical errors that requires professional editing in order for you to see paragraph improvements. You may also want to consider increasing the explanation about how the environment in Charlotte influenced you to look to your college days at such a young age. What was it about the community that you so obviously wished to get away from so you created many life ambitions for yourself at the age of 10? That would help to further explain the type of personality you developed. which is independent and feisty, and why theater became a release from that stress for you eventually.

I know you have a limited word count so you will need to revise the content of your essay to remove the unnecessary information such as the quote at the start of the essay and the focus on your grandmother. Open with a focus about yourself in relation to your grandmother instead. You are the focus of the essay after all. Don't use quotes, other people's words will never help to properly portray who you are. Only your own words will accomplish that.

By the way, you may want to mention your relationship with your father as part of your personal development explanation. Surely he had some form of influence in your life. If not, then mention that too. After all, your mother moved to be closer to him for your sake. So there is some sort of importance to that relationship. Discuss it in order to complete your development picture.

Scholarship / "Senior Developer" - Chevening Leadership essay question draft answer [3]

Wafaa, this is not a leadership and influencing essay. This only a paragraph form of your resume. This is not applicable in content and purpose to the Chevening leadership and influencing essay. This essay is not meant to be a listing of your work accomplishments, skills, and memberships. This reason you are being asked to write this essay is because you need to prove that you have clear leadership and influencing abilities that has the potential to create a positive impact upon your country. Right now, your presentation sounds like you have written a cover page for a job application letter. I can't even begin to review this because it is nowhere near a proper leadership and influencing essay presentation. Kindly take the time to read the application essay samples for Chevening here before you start to write a new essay. One that focuses on your most notable leadership project that led you to a career advancement and displays your ability to influence a team in a proper manner. Do not just narrate your work history along with its duties and responsibilities. That is not a leadership and influencing essay that can help your application.

Writing Feedback / Building a large gym facility on the company's premises, or to pay employees to sign up elsewhere? [5]

Han, there is a thoroughly confusing statement in your first paragraph. When you said; " I think the recommendation of being a neighborhood with the fitness center is the better idea.". A neighborhood with a fitness center? You are not talking about the place of residence of the employees, you are talking about their place of work. The proper term to use is "workplace with a fitness..." The workplace is where a person works while a neighborhood is where he lives.

Paragraph 2 should have been spilt into 2 paragraphs. The first paragraph will be all about the benefits of option B. The second paragraph should address a justification as how Option B will help to reduce the accidents in the workplace. That part of the essay is severely under explained.

Your concluding paragraph need not be a continued comparison of Option A and Option B. Rather, you should have simply indicated that due to the previous discussion paragraphs, you are strongly convinced that Option B is the best choice for the employees.

Graduate / Statement of Goals for PhD in Geophysics, why C University would be the best place to achieve them [3]

Liu, the first thing that I noticed with your essay is that it is heavy on the professional goals but without a personal goal representation as indicated in the prompt for this essay? The influence of your father and grandfather does not represent a personal goal for yourself within the profession. Perhaps a personal goal for yourself will be to use this PhD course as a networking tool in order to gain more friends whom you will have a strong commonality with? Or this could be your way of continuing the legacy of your father and grandfather? I think the latter would be a very good personal reason for doing your research. Explain what kind of work they did, how it merges with yours and why you believe it is important to continue their work.

As for paragraph 3, you should be speaking of these qualities in a manner that explains how you would inspire or assist students as a TA or RA. Refer directly to the task that either of the 2 titles actually requires you to perform in assisting students and then relate those to your current background, experiences, and theoretical strengths. You have some pretty interesting information presented there. You just need to reformat it to more properly refer to the instructions you were given.

Finally, I don't see any actual reference to how C university can help you become a better PhD holder in this field. You are only referring to publicly known information which does not convince the reviewer that you actually know more about the university other than the obvious. You need to be more specific about the information in this area in relation to your chosen PhD course and how you plan to fully utilize the university tools in the pursuit of your academic goals. Your study plan presentation could be used to beef up this statement in reference to how you plan to do the research with the support of the university.

I believe you have a very strong draft at this point. A little adjustment to the content and presentation and I believe this essay will be good to go. I mean, you can use it for your application already.

Scholarship / Strong professional relationship building skills; respect to others and managing personal emotions [2]

Miguel, it appears to me that you accidentally titled this post "networking" when it is clearly a leadership and influencing essay. I strongly urge you to tweak the content of this essay for the latter essay because it does not represent a networking skill in any way. This is something that shows off your ability to be a team leader and to work with a team, despite differences. These are the qualities of a strong and influential leader and the reviewer will definitely notice that when he reads it. This is not a networking essay so do not use it as such.

A networking essay highlights your training as a professional, your professional contacts and how you created them, and how useful these contacts are to you. It showcases how you have climbed the office hierarchy of your company through the years through your representation of the company in seminar, training programs, and other related events where you cooperated with other people from the same field in order to attain a professional goal for yourself and vice versa. There is nothing in this essay that represents that.

Plus, the networking essay should be able to imply or explain how your network should be noted by the Chevening reviewer and the committee because of its potential to be useful to the Chevening community by your addition to the alumna roster. I believe you got confused when you wrote this essay which is why you wrote the wrong title for it. Go ahead and read the networking samples at this forum, I am sure you will learn how to create your most effective networking essay based on the lessons the other writers learned through the advice I have already given them. You will clearly benefit from learning by example in this instance so I hope you take advantage of it.

Scholarship / Trying to apply for the KGSP program - writing essay based on the guidelines below [4]

Nrayani, do not insult the intelligence of the Korean reviewer by downscaling your language. If you wish to be flowery and imaginatively expressive in your essay then so be it. You are not dealing with lowly educated Koreans here, you are dealing with highly educated, sometimes even internationally educated scholarship reviewers in this instance. A majority of them will be fluent English speakers because of the extremely high level of their international education. Believe me, they will not be on the KGSP committee if they are only mid range educated. Lowering your vocabulary standards because you are sure they will not understand you is an underestimation of the Korean level of education in all aspects. Do not, I repeat, do not change your essay to simplify the words. You come across as a highly educated person in this piece of writing even though you are not yet a college graduate and that, is something that you should definitely take full advantage of.

Now, you have a very interesting background presented here. Unfortunately it falls short when it comes to the information about why you chose to study in Korea. Rather than saying that you have an interest in Asian culture, you must focus your response on the reasons why you believe that you will excel in your major of choice. Do not confuse the reviewer by showing indecisiveness on your part through the indication of 2 possible majors. You need to show a sense of conviction and motivation for one of the majors you have chosen. I believe the choice should be Fine arts instead of an English Literature degree since an English Lit degree will best be served by studying its history in a native English speaking country where the history of the language emanated from. However, if you are planning to show some sort of connection between English Lit and Korean history in your study plan, then you can indicate English Lit as your major. Fine Arts would be a better choice as far as I am concerned because there are definitely Korean artists who were influenced by the Western world of arts and that could make for an interesting study / major. Pick one, don't present a half baked essay by saying you are considering 2 majors. The scholarship committee needs to consider your application based on an actual not optional major.

As for the section about your fluency in English, take that paragraph out and save it for your Korean and English study plan. That will be more helpful and better discussed in that essay presentation. That is not a required discussion in this prompt anyway. Just present a discussion based on the prompt provided information list.

Scholarship / Networking is crucial to succesfully fulfilling my job duties. Chevening [2]

You need to rethink this essay. You are trying to overwhelm the reviewer with so much information that he will tend to forget rather than remember this essay. Revise this essay in the following manner, per paragraph:

1. Fully explain what you job title and duties description is at the agency that you work for. Transition into the disaster.
2. Describe the kind of work that needed to be accomplished in terms of rehabilitation of your country after the disaster.
3. Explain your networking method. Indicate how you used this method to gain the attention of the ambassador.
4. What did you manage to accomplish through your face to face meeting with the ambassador?
5. What other local agencies did you network with in order to get the work done? What was the time frame?
6. Remove the reference to the local university interview. That distracts from the more important topic which is your network use during a time of calamity.

7. Never use the term "receptionist". That is not considered a very high title in any profession. A receptionist is not believed to have the kind of networking skills required to help you get the airtime that you needed. Consider a better sounding term for your contact or just imply that you created this media contact in a different way.

8. Explain why you needed to have a media contact. How did that relate to the outreach efforts of the ambassador's country? How was their coverage relevant to your work?

9. Based on the strength of this network and the outcome of the project, what sort of career advancement did it offer you? Were to recognized? Given some sort of award? What makes this networking event important to you career wise?

These revisions to your essay should make it better directed, focused, and relevant in content. Right now, this essay is not very convincing in terms of networking skills but the changes should help create a better and more believable impression of your networking skills. Keep your last paragraph as your closing statement. It works and closes the essay on a relevant note.

Scholarship / I was presented with the Achievement and Leadership award at graduation ceremony. Chevening essay [2]

Nicole, while I understand why you should be proud of every leadership and influencing experience that you have had over the course of your academic and professional lifetime, the last thing you want to do is mention so many of those that your essay becomes forgettable to the reviewer rather than memorable. Why does this essay come across as forgettable? Simply put, you are merely bragging about all of your accomplishments, but not really emphasizing one which truly stands out as the strongest representation of your leadership and influencing skills. While each one is memorable, it is not up to the reviewer to pick one to remember your application by. That is your task as the applicant. Keep in mind that he will be reading hundreds of application essays per day so he won't be able to keep track of who wrote what, unless you write something that he feels you should be remembered for and serves as a notable consideration for your application.

That said, your essay needs to be severely edited. You must pick the one leadership and influencing experience that you believe has the most highlights and recognitions in your PROFESSIONAL career and develop that into the required 250-500 word essay. You don't need to use up the word requirement, you just need to explain the event enough to make the reviewer understand why this is a very strong representation of your leadership and influencing skills. I am asking you to consider your professional career alone because that is what the leadership and influencing essay is all about. Looking for the potential future leaders and motivators in a country and those, are best spotted through their professionalism and career accomplishments.

Writing Feedback / [Writing task2] Punishment to recognize the right/wrong distinction by kids [3]

Minh, this essay will get an automatic failing score during the actual test due to the lack of words written. The requirement is that you write a minimum of 250 words for the essay. You only wrote 214 words. There are points deducted for each missing word leading up to the minimum word count. The lack of word count on your part indicates the following:

1. A lack of ability to write in English
2. A lack of familiarity with English words and its meanings
3. A need to improve your English sentence structuring skill
4. A need for you to do more practice exercises in terms of improving your English writing skills.

The main problem with your writing is that you are always writing less than the required minimum number of sentences per paragraph. Had you written at least 3 sentences per paragraph, you would have been guaranteed at least 250 written words and as such, could have had your essay considered for higher scoring consideration covering all 4 brackets.

The paragraphs lack proper topic foundations and supporting sentences. Adding examples based on personal experience of public knowledge would have also helped push this essay towards a passing mark at the very least. Please remember not to pose a question in these essays. Offer responses in each paragraph instead in order to avoid redundancies. Irrelevant details such as repeated questions tend to affect the overall clarity of the presentation. This is to be written in an opinion discussion format. Therefore, no questions should be posed, only responses to the questions provided. The examiner already knows what the questions you need to respond to are.

Writing Feedback / Tourists visiting rough condition places ( IELTS task 2) [4]

Amal, The good news is that you have proven that you can understand complex English discussion presentations. However, I must stop you from writing practice essays at this point. You have an extreme difficulty in presenting your discussions in every paragraph because of an obvious lack of sentence structure development ability. These sentences all sound like these were translated from your mother tongue into English. Which is why your explanations seem to be confusing. However, the structure it is presented in clues me in on the fact that your sentence, based on your native tongue, probably made more sense.

You must not continue to practice writing test essays until you have gotten a hang of writing in English. That means increasing your sentence development lessons / exercises and reading more English texts. That way, you will learn how to properly develop and present the discussion in fluent English. The sentence development lessons will be most helpful to you since those exercises force you to read, listen, and think in English before you write. These exercises will help you develop the fluency that you currently lack.

I refuse to judge your English writing abilities based on this first essay. This is not really reflective of your actual ability to perform in the test. Only after a specific amount of time doing sentence development exercises should you venture into writing another essay. Practice for about a month before you write another essay. You should be better at developing and presenting your sentences by then.

Undergraduate / "My Best Friend's Suicide" Coalition Prompt of Choice [2]

Matt, there are several confusing references in the third paragraph. Let me outline it for you below followed by the question that I believes needs to be clarified in the presentation.

1. My grades suffered dramatically during the hardest year of high school
- What happened? How did his death affect you academically? Clarify why your academic suffered because of his death. Be convincing because "My friend died so I was depressed and could not perform in school" is not an acceptable academic excuse. Unless you suffered mentally as well because of the death, that reference weakens your essay presentation.

2. ... begin to try and understand the burdens that he carried before his death
-This affected you because? Why should the reviewer care? You are talking too much about Brooks at this point and not enough about yourself. You are the applicant, not your deceased friend. Don't make him the focal point of the story.

3. I spent dozens of hours reading research journals documenting suicide and depression and visited the psychiatric wing of my local hospital ...
- Because? Again, why does this matter? Why did you feel a need to do these things? How does it relate to you handling the death of a friend ?

If you clarify these 3 points, I believe that your essay will be stronger and better presented for consideration. Your essay is basically good, but can be made better. I hope that you can work the points I am suggesting into your next version. Based upon your word requirement, you may need to revise the whole paragraph or a series of paragraphs for continuity and clarity purposes.

Writing Feedback / Task 2: Opinion about video games - more problems than benefits [7]

No, do not use any researched references for this type of opinion essay. As I previously explained, this is a pen and paper test. You will not have any access to computers or internet connected gadgets. Therefore, you must rely on your personal opinion and examples from your own experience or the experience of people that you know.

Disregard the advice of Nicole as she did not know that you are writing an IELTS essay. Her advice is useful for writing academic research papers in a class setting and should not be take authoritatively at this point in relation to an IELTS test. She is unfamiliar with the IELTS essay test requirements. Her advice was based on academic requirements, not IELTS test requirements.

Use personal experience examples whenever required. Never researched information because you cannot do any research during the actual test. Practice as if you are taking the actual test. No research at all. Just use publicly known opinion, personal experience, and / or personal knowledge to justify your reasons within any form of discussion in a Task 2 essay. For this essay, you can say, "Based on my personal experience as an RPG gamer, I found that after playing for more than 4 hours per day, my eyesight..."

Scholarship / Leadership and Influence - the special touch which leaves an impression inside of human soul [3]

Attah, this is an essay that is already usable in its current form. It is complete and truly reflective of your leadership and influencing skills in a manner that will make your application competitive during the screening process. You just need to remove the quote from Mother Teresa as that is only going to distract the reviewer from his focus on reading about your narrative. You need to open that paragraph from the point where you said "I quickly noticed..." because you are not being required to give a quotation about leadership or a definition of leadership. Rather, you are being asked to provide a strong example of how you exemplify leadership and influencing skills within your profession or community service.

Additionally, you don't need to mention that you forgot to take a picture of the awarding ceremony. That is irrelevant. What is important is that you are discussing who gave you the award, what it was called, and when it is awarded. You may want to insert the date of the awarding to that paragraph though. Just in case the reviewer decides to verify your claims, you need to make sure he is properly informed with references. Aside from these slight revisions, the essay is very good in terms of content. The editing should create the final version of your essay.

Writing Feedback / IELTS TASK 2 - Discussion on giving financial or practical aid to developing countries [3]

Shi, I have to say that even though your broken English is a bit hard to get through during the first reading (it took me 2 readings to finally understand what you are trying to say within the whole essay), you are making some very valid and good points in the presentation. I believe that you have a good understanding of the English language, but a difficult time expressing yourself in English. Therefore, you must do more English sentence development exercises such as multiple choice and fill in the blank sentence completion exercises online. These are available for free as apps or on grammar websites.

Just remember that you need to consistently present a 3-5 sentence structure per paragraph in order to create a higher possible score for yourself under the C&C consideration. That means, you should clearly explain a single topic per paragraph. The 3 -5 sentence requirement represents the number of sentences that comprise a complete paragraph.

Basically, this is a unique discussion that, for the first time actually took a stance of unique presentation to the reader. I have not seen an essay discussed this way yet for this topic so, if you can just improve your sentence development skills, I strongly believe that you will score highly in this type of test.

Writing Feedback / Task 2: Opinion about video games - more problems than benefits [7]

Nguyen, this is one essay that should have been approached from a personal point of view / personal experience regarding the negative effect of videogames. Remember, the essay is asking "in your opinion", which negates the need for researched information, which you cannot do anyway during the pencil based test. Now, you ended up over discussing the essay topic to a certain extent because you chose to only present discussion points rather than fully developed essay reasoning paragraphs. This means that all of your C&C requirements in terms of clarity and conciseness were not met in the presentation. Therefore, your score for this essay may not be one that could be considered as passing.

You have the right number of paragraphs for the discussion , but there are certain instances, such as in the 3rd paragraph when you went over the maximum number of sentence per paragraph which is 5 sentences. You cannot present less than 3 per paragraph. As a first attempt, this essay shows your potential but a lack of clear understanding of how the prompt is to be discussed I do not doubt that you will be able to show improvements with your next essay once you read the examples for Task 2 essay writing at this forum.

Scholarship / Mom's Motorola Razr and My Identity- Questbridge Scholarship Biographical Essay [3]

Aman, your aunt and uncle are not the one's applying for this scholarship. So why are they the focal point of this essay? There is nothing in this essay that should refer to them at all because the text of this essay should solely focus on the foundation of your development as a person in a social and academic context. The idea, is that because of your personal development and in relation to your academic achievements, you have decided to pursue a specific type of career. Which is why you have decided to study a particular course in college.

The reviewer doesn't want to hear about unrelated information. As an immigrant student, you will have to prove that you have somehow managed to immerse yourself in the American culture in a manner that you have been given a rare opportunity to develop a relevant personal aspiration in the pursuit of your personal development. That is heavily lacking in your presentation so I am afraid that this current essay is useless to your application. Remember that as a Questbridge applicant, your essay will be sent out to various universities for possible acceptance of your application. If you fail to properly respond to the required prompts then the university reviewers will pass on your application.

Writing Feedback / What are the most serious problems associated with the Internet and what solutions can you suggest? [2]

Lee, your presentation is way off base when considering the required discussion presentation. You did an introduction to the topic twice instead of a single prompt paraphrase for this 4 paragraph essay. Your 4 paragraphs should be composed of:

1. Prompt restatement
2. One problem reference
3. One solution reference
4. Concluding summary that repeats the information from the first 3 paragraphs in a new presentation.

The biggest writing problem that you have in this essay is your inability to divide your paragraphs into sentences. By using run on sentences in every paragraph, you do not accomplish the required 3-5 sentence discussion structure per paragraph. Without the proper discussion format, your essay not get a passing score in the GRA section.

Overall, because of the combined TA, LR, C&C, and GRA problems in this essay, there is no possibility that this will get a passing score in an actual setting. You have to read the other examples located in this forum for the task 2 essay so that you can get a better idea as to how to develop and present your response essays.

Undergraduate / Emerson College Storytelling prompt - what would you title your story and why? [2]

Hi Annette. Yes, you are most certainly correct, your response is too vague to be considered a story about your life. What you wrote is, in my opinion, more of a freestyle poetry than a short story. The first part doesn't really talk about your life until now and the end, doesn't do it either. So the essay doesn't work in the way that you intended it to. However, there is something good that came out of this essay.

One of the best parts of your work is the last paragraph. The part where you say "My story? It is the Invisible Ink..." It is eye catching and intriguing. You may want to open your revised essay with that paragraph instead. It really sets the tone for the rest of the narrative and gives the reader an insight into what story you are going to be telling. You can really use that as a very strong jumping off point for your revised life story.

Try not to be so vague next time. I know you want to show off your creative mind but you have to remember that this is a formal interview. So, while you are being given creative freedom to represent your response, you still need to give specific and direct information regarding your life in an intriguing and interesting manner. Don't be too imaginative because you could easily lose the interest of the reviewer if he feels frustrated because you did not really offer him useful information in your text. I, for one, did not learn anything about who you are, how you came to be, and where you are in life right now from your first writing. It is so vague that the representation of your response seems to have become non-existent.

Undergraduate / "Breaking Free from the Herd" - Barnard Personal Statement #1 [2]

Hi Camryn, I think you are selling yourself short in this essay. You have a 250 word maximum for this combined prompt question and yet, you were able to whittle your response for both questions down to ne paragraph. Not exactly the promising and impressive response that you could have presented. You are not really offering an insight into how the Barnard way of life can fit into you culture, academic environment, and other interests. Specifically, you are missing out on the opportunity to integrate a Columbia education within your Barnard experience. The content of your essay is too focused on your personal reasons that you failed to develop a response that allows you to weave together a Barnard life using 3 of your specific interests within the realm of culture, academic, and extra curricular interests. All of which you can do as a student at the university. Your explanation as to how you can interweave all 3 aspects of your life into you time at Barnard will explain why the university is a good match for you.

Basically, this essay prompt is a trick question. The reviewer is intent on figuring out how familiar you are with the Barnard academic system and student community. The response therefore requires you to do a bit of research into the university covering various aspects of your like over the next 4 years as a successful student there. Cover the 3 important aspects of a students college life. Only by showing how you can successfully live within the Barnard system, which is not very strongly represented in this current version, will your essay be more informative as a representative of you in written form.

Scholarship / Professional networking has become an integral to modern life-Chevening [3]

Richard, while your networking essay is acceptable, it seems to be highly localized and only references a small network of professionals that you met during your academic years or the office hierarchy in reference to the performance of your profession. It seems too narrow to be of significance to the Chevening community. It does not appear to be the type of network that can help the scholarship program improve its existing network by being useful to the other members of Chevening.

There needs to be a direct reference to another type of networking community and how you built it. Seminars and conferences are normally key in proving your network usefulness and abilities. Use of the network on your part in reference to doing something good for the community or your profession, resulting in something positive for you is also more considerable when referencing a network. Right now, this network is all about "me, myself, and I" which is not a good thing because networks are normally called upon for the betterment of a larger group or endeavor.

It is highly unimpressive to say that you continue to network using social media apps. That is not considered a real network of professionals as there is no clear indication of how such a network can help you in real time. It is always best to omit social media references as these are seen as non-professional forms of networking.

You should add a reference as to how your network can be useful to Chevening and vice versa. That is an important aspect of the discussion as Chevening relies on their members to help one another out in the performance of their duties and responsibilities as high ranking members of note in their various professions. There is no reference to that at all in your essay even though it was specified in the prompt you are responding to.

While you can use this essay as is after removing the social media reference and adding the previously mentioned paragraph, I am a bit apprehensive when it comes to this essay's ability to stand up to a stronger comparison with another student who has a wider field when it comes to the professional network that was developed along with his job skills and training through conferences and seminars. Like I said, this is too localized in content and work specific to your office.

Another point of worry for me is that you are specifically mentioning names of people you worked with. Please make sure that they will be writing your Chevening reference letter as proof that they allowed you to use their names in your networking essay. Otherwise, you should be mentioning them only in an implied form and not by name.