Scholarship / An ever-growing professional network - regular contact with the professional analytical chemists [2]

@Urca your essay is practically seamless. It is near perfection, but does not showcase a real situation that shows how your contacts worked for the betterment of the company you work for. You are too busy showing off your contacts and how it is very easy for you to maintain these that you forgot the most important part of the essay. You did not give a detailed example of how you created the network that you used, why you thought of using it, how the help of this network contact was attained, and what you had to do in order to show gratitude to the network contact. You are too glib for your own good.

The essay could have been more informative if you focused a whole paragraph on the explanation of the SON situation rather than enumerating the unproven contact list that you have. One of the most effective networking essays that I read here, which won a scholarship for the applicant was the one where the student focused his essay on showcasing just one of his most important contacts and how this contact helped him solve a problem at work that led to his subsequent promotion. His presentation showed a clear , verifiable, and proven mode of networking which helped the applicant catch the attention of the reviewer and the screening committee. I suggest that you think of something similar and present it in this essay.

Paragraph 3 is a redundancy in this presentation. The most effective explanation of how you plan to promote Chevening and how the scholars can benefit from your contacts is presented in the 4th paragraph. Revise that presentation to remove the word "Similarly" in the presentation so that it becomes the only reference to networking promotion within Chevening in the essay.

Writing Feedback / Birth Order and Stimulation (Argumentative Task essay) [2]

Javad, your score would most likely fall under the range of 4 for this essay. The reason that I gave you this score is because you are not really showing an effective analysis of the given information. You have taken the most obvious reasoning in the essay and used it as the consistent flaw of the essay in every paragraph rather than looking for other reasons that could be another response or explanation to the given discussion.

When you finally present a different explanation or justification for the results, you present it at the very end of the essay, by which time it is already obvious that your essay lacks significant content in terms of proper discussion analysis. You should be looking for other reasons that could disprove the writers theory in every paragraph of the essay. What you ended up doing was merely summarizing the essay in every paragraph, without really offering a strong argument against the author's ideas. That is why I could not increase your scoring consideration for this essay.

Scholarship / Work experience as an assistant laboratory technologist has helped in grounding my leadership skills [3]

Amos, you have glossed over too much information in reference to your leadership and influencing skills to the point where the reviewer will not believe a single word you have written in this essay. While you did enumerate your duties and responsibilities, these do not translate into a leadership nor influencing skill. There was no incident in this essay that truly defines your leadership and influencing style. That is because you only make references to your job tasks rather than leadership and influencing skills.

Try to write at least a 250 word essay that somehow embodies an example of your leadership and influencing ability in action. Perhaps discuss how you had to train your co-worker? As a person with more experience on the job, you would have had an automatic leadership role during his training and your influencing style would have become evident as you taught him the ins and outs of the job. That is what this essay lacks so you will need to create that presentation. You should not use this essay at all. Not a single part will work for a Chevening leadership and influencing essay. This essay version will not work. You have to create a more appropriate essay that best exemplifies your leadership and influencing skills.

Writing Feedback / The amount of 4 different types of food that were consumed in a European nation in 25 years [3]

Tran, this is a very comprehensive analytical report based on the graph you were given. However, at 228 words, you have written too much. Please remember that editing could spell the difference between you limiting your mistakes so that you can pass the test or not being able to edit the work and submitting it with errors in writing that can make you fail the test. Try to limit your writing to only 200 words at the most. 175 would be the ideal number of words.

The main problem I see with your writing is that you are over-explaining the graph rather than just indicating the data that was indicated in the graph. When you explain too much about the graph, you gain more words, but lose more time during the writing process. Don't be too wordy because the LR section is only one part of the 4 scoring sections for this essay. Do not focus on only one aspect of improvement.

Based upon your writing, I am confident that you will be able to explain the graph very well with less words. Try to leave at least 5 minutes towards the end of your writing to leave room for revision and editing. If you can do that, I am sure that you will gain a very impressive final score for any task 1 essay that you write.

Writing Feedback / People should spend their money on lessons which help them to maintain in healthy condition [3]

James, you cannot strongly agree with an opinion and then have reservations about it. Your approach to the response is wrong. When you wish to discuss 2 points of view that you "agree with to a certain extent", you should use the term "I partially agree" in response to the extent question. That way, you can discuss both points of view in the essay. The way you have your response currently set up only allows for a single point of view discussion.

Due to this TA error, you will not get a very good score for that criteria. Along with that, your essay will only be scored based on the parts that support your given opinion response to the question in the essay. So you will lose additional marks for not writing within the 250 word minimum for the essay. To put it bluntly, the format of your essay, along with additional mistakes in the C&C, GRA, and LR sections will result in a non-passing score. This all happened because of your mistake in the TA section.

Undergraduate / It is my first time writing a personal statement about myself can you guys review it ? [3]

Diyar, since this is a personal statement for an advanced degree, you do not need to present your information in the personal statement in this manner. The focus of the masters degree post graduate course is totally different from what you have here. The discussion should start with your college studies. What subjects you excelled in, any awards you received, and how your career was directed by your degree. From there, discuss how your professional interests in computer science developed. Most importantly, discuss your current educational and professional goals and how the university can help you achieve it. Be specific about the programs and classes, or training that the university offers which you plan to take advantage of.

Now, you won't be able to use all of the information in this essay. However, you can use some of the information here. I suggest that you retain the use of paragraphs 4,5 and 6. BTW, please be more specific about what university you attended in college and what your course major was. These changes should help you create a better draft for your personal statement. Any changes to be made from there will depend upon the additional or new information you present in it.

Writing Feedback / IELTS - The internet allows people to communicate with one another more easily [3]

Nguyen, this is an extent essay so you cannot simply agree with the statement. This is not a yes or no question. You need to indicate an emotion such as "completely, totally, strongly, or partially" to indicate the "extent" of your (dis)agreement. Now, while you seem to indicate an agreement with the statement, even without the extent part properly responded to, your overall discussion in the body of paragraphs is faulty.

Since you did not indicate a "partial" agreement with the statement, you did not leave any opportunity for you to discuss both points of view in the essay. Only a "partial" agreement / disagreement with the statement can discuss both points of view. When you indicate a one sided response to the discussion question, then the overall defensive / supporting discussion should be solely from one point of view. The point of view that you agreed to support in the statement.

That said, your essay will be considered only partially responsive to the task and will receive a score only for the portions that support your point of view in the essay. That will be bad for your overall score because you will not be scoring highly in the overall portion due to additional errors in the remaining scoring considerations.

Writing Feedback / [IELTS] A line graph of books read by both sexes in certain years. Academic one. [5]

SG, this is a good attempt at writing this essay. However, you did it without any guidelines that could help you in better presenting the information from the graph in your report. So I will focus my advice on helping you create a summary overview that will help you outline the essay report. That way, you will always have a guideline regarding the proper information for presentation throughout the essay.

So, let's start with the first paragraph. This paragraph is called the summary overview and it is comprised of the following information (in sentence form):

1. Topic for discussion
2. Type of illustration presented
3. Measurement method
4. Other information sources (optional)
5. Trending statement

In this essay, your mistake in the summary overview was that you did not indicate the colors of the line graph that represent each gender involved in the measurements. That is why you had that slight confusion when you discussed the number of books read by each gender. Had you indicated the color guide in your presentation, you would have created a very specific method of studying the graph that would have also helped you keep track of the numerical movements in the chart.

Now, the rest of the essay should present the information and comparison discussions within the remaining 3 paragraphs. Don't worry about creating a concluding presentation since this is a report, not an opinion essay.

You are still using words whose meaning you do not understand. Insignificant means that something does not matter in the presentation. However, in a Task 1 essay, all of the information is important. Nothing is ever insignificant. Keep your vocabulary simple. Do not try to use advanced vocabulary at this point. You are not yet ready for that. The most complicated words you should use in these essays should never be more than intermediate in complexity.

This is a pretty good start. Your trial is impressive in a simple manner, but has mistakes that have serious repercussions for your score. Be careful with your presentation. Read the Task 1 essay samples here to help you get ahead before you write another Task 1 essay.

Undergraduate / Education - the key to freedom. An attempt to write Statement of Purpose essay for UT [4]

Callie, the University of Baylor discussion takes up too much of the essay even though you are not transferring to that university. There is no sense in going into great detail about why you did not end up at that university in this essay since you are applying for admission as a transfer student to UT-Austin. It will be best if you summarize the fact that your parents could not afford to send you to your dream school, University of Baylor, which is why you ended up at your current university. Then continue to discussion as to how you modeled your curriculum after the nursing program of that university.

At that point, you can explain that you are now financially capable of enrolling in Nursing school, with the full confidence that you will no longer be deterred by the full tuition bills when you receive it. Then continue to indicate that the reason why you chose to transfer is because of how UTA will allow you to continue your education in the field of study you desire, without breaking the bank the way that Baylor would have done.

Try to be more specific about the reasons why you chose to go to UTA instead of Baylor at this point in time. What stood out for you as a potential nursing student at UTA? Be specific about what made you decide to go to UTA for these studies. These will be the listing of purposes as to why you have decided that UTA will best serve your academic interests at present.

Writing Feedback / TOEFL: Physical education or art and music course: which one should be excluded first ? [2]

James, due to the totally unrelated discussion of tasks in the second paragraph, you really confused the reader. That portion had irrelevant specifics which caused a questionable response to the task. As far as I am concerned, that paragraph focused too much on the unrelated food discussion when you could have used the actual prompt topic for the discussion, thus keeping on track and not including useless presentations that strayed from the topic of discussion. That is why I had to score this essay as a 1.

Paragraphs 1 and 3 were definitely helpful to the discussion as based on the original prompt presentation and were really informative. However, your paragraphs have sentence structure and spelling errors, as well as wrong vocabulary usage. All of these factors added to the reasons why I could not score you higher based on the overall consideration for your essay.

Writing Feedback / TOEFL: Children over the age of 15 should be allowed to vote. Do you agree or disagree ? [2]

James, based on your work for this essay prompt, I believe the best score you can get is a 2. That rating is based on the lack of clarity in your explanation, confusing opinions, and irrelevant examples. You never did say whether or not you agreed or disagreed with the statement indicated in the prompt. While you did say that you believe anyone over the age of 15 should be allowed to vote, you also said in your actual discussion that people at the age of 15 should be given the right to vote since you implied that they can already get pregnant at that age. You should have clearly stated "I disagree/agree with the given statement". Unfortunately, your response was neither here nor there in position. So your essay ended up without a real discussion point in the presentation.

You also have a misconception that "children" fall under the age of 15. A 15 year old is a teenager, a young adult. Definitely not a "child" so your discussion that insists a 15 year old is a child is flawed and unacceptable in this discussion. A 15 year old is already allowed to make simple to semi-complex decisions for themselves. So the question becomes, can a 15 year old be allowed to vote ? Do you think he understands the reasons why he has to vote and how to choose the side of the discussion or candidate to support?

You show a lack of familiarity with English reference terms in this instance, which means you did not really understand the question and its applicability to a discussion either. These are the reasons why I could not score you higher than a 2 for this essay discussion.

Writing Feedback / Frog & Mouse - I wrote a story and I need to be checked [2]

Salsabeel, if this is only for English language writing practice, then I would say that you did a good job. The story was engaging and informative. It was almost like reading a fable except that the lesson at the end was not as clear as it should be due to lack of creative explanation coming from the squirrel and regret from the mouse.

The story could use more of a creative flair in its presentation. As a reader, I would be better engaged in the narrative if you had transported me to the setting the story was taking place in. If I become part of the story as an observer, almost at the status of the squirrel, then I would be more emotionally involved in the story. Case in point, when you were depicting the death of the mouse, I wasn't really involved in it. I did not feel like I had to care that the mouse was being drowned at that point. Maybe because the relationship between the mouse and the frog felt rushed and without a strong foundation.

Anyway, those are just my observations. I hope you can apply some of it to your revision if you are still in the draft writing process.

Writing Feedback / TASK 2: CURRENT PROBLEMS OF OVERUSED CARS AND WHETHER CARS SHOULD BE OPPOSED [3]

Linh, your possible score for this essay will be a 4. There are problems with your essay based on the overall scoring considerations. Your TA score is definitely what pulled down your score because you did not properly format your response in the expected manner.

For the TA, you should have given a direct response in your opening paraphrase. The direct response is a requirement for these direct question essays. So your last 3 sentences should have indicated 2 problems and one solution in order to have gotten a better TA score. The response should have been similar to:

People use cars in all aspects of transportation. The problem is that the constant use of cars cause health problems due to the aggravated air pollution problem stemming from the unlimited use of gasoline powered cars. As such, I believe that the use of cars should not be fully discouraged but rather, curbed among its regular users.

You will notice that I presented 2 connected problems in the prompt paraphrase. I did that because for the body of paragraphs, there should be a representation of 3 discussion points based on the 2 related problems:

1. Health problem caused in humans such as Asthma (breathing problems)
2. Pointing out that the main cause of Asthma is the increasing air pollution coming from unlimited car usage.
3. Explanation why my belief that limiting car usage to a certain extent will help reduce the 2 problems indicated.

By presenting supporting discussions in a 5 paragraph format, I will have completely and clearly addressed all of the prompt requirements which include a possible solution to the problem through the limitation of car usage.

You have an acceptable approach to the discussion but you lack clear explanations and examples that can fully support your stance. Your language becomes a bit unclear because you use terms such as "impregnate" which is not usually used to describe air pollution or its effects. While the other meaning of the term is to soak or saturate using a substance, the succeeding explanation in your paragraph was insufficient so it did not really explain why you used that term to describe a health issue related to pollution.

Word choice matters in these essays. Do not use terms such as "etc." because that connotes an informal discussion. End the sentence with a period instead and work on developing your supporting explanations in a clear manner.

Remember, the concluding summary should close the discussion by recapping the previous body of information. You should not continue to address solutions to the problem in that paragraph because you will create an open ended essay and lose more TA points.

Scholarship / I've learnt that leaders can change everything if they have that passion towards their goal and aim [4]

Meka, you have a string of academic leadership skills. All of which are impressive in a non-professional extent. When it comes to your profession, it appears that you are limited or do not have any actual leadership and influencing skills. Basing your leadership and influencing skills on your academic approach alone will not be sufficient for this essay. This shows a lack of development on your part.

The development that I speak of is your professional development, You stop your presentation in 2016, as a host for an academic fundraising event. This is not as impressive as say raising 10 thousand rupees for a community organization that helps your people on a wide scale basis. By the way, such a reference should be made in your networking, not leadership essay.

Going back to your professional development, these sorts of essay are always helped by an indication of how you ascended the leadership ranks in the corporation, with a focus on one specific leadership and influencing instance. However, in lieu of that, the Chevening network will also accept a more recent and relevant community volunteer experience as a leadership and influencing explanation. The academic leadership experiences do not carry any weight in the application as these do not truly reflect on your leadership and influencing abilities in an uncontrolled setting.

I do not believe that this is the essay you should be using due to its lack of potential to describe your adult / mature leadership skills in a free for all setting. By a free for all setting, I mean a situation where your leadership and influencing skills have real complications and the wrong decision can result negatively for your objectives. It would be in your best interest to try and develop a more relevant and impressive leadership and influencing essay in relation to your application.

Scholarship / My network include several politicians; members of Congress and ministers, as well as public figures [3]

Valeria, this is just a summary of your networks and networking skills. You did not amply develop the supporting facts that would indicate a strong working network on your part. The best networking references you can make in this essay are those that relate to your work a s a government press secretary. All the other references may be omitted / deleted from this presentation. With that said, you still have some major editing work to do with this essay.

Referring to your work as press secretary, there is actually only one presentation that this essay should focus on as this is the one incident in your professional career that totally encompasses all of the requirements of the Chevening networking essay. Build up the discussion about the meeting between the director of the Latin American RZIM and the president of the commission of production. There are two things that you will have to explain in order to fully utilize this presentation for the networking discussion:

1. Explain what sorts of contacts you had to use. Be specific about the name and position of the contact. Describe a brief history of how you developed these contacts and remained in contact with them.

2. Narrate the reasons why you had to call upon this contact, what the contact did for you, what you had to do for your contact in order to use his influence (if any), and how the contact put you in touch with people or assets relevant to the completion of your task.

From these two points, your conclusion should be an explanation of the results of the networking. For example, you mentioned that the conference took place, what was the result of the conference? Why do you feel that without your network, the conference may not have taken place? As a concluding statement, hypothesize about the reasons why Chevening should take note of your network and its usability for the scholarship members in the future.

These steps will help you better direct your networking essay to the point where it just might become a competitive presentation when considered along with other applicant networking essays.

Scholarship / Leadership is a quality that has always been present in my life. Chevening. [3]

Valeria, remove the references to your family leadership traits and explanation. The reviewer is not interested in that. Start immediately with a presentation of your community project instead. Include the name of the project, the inclusive dates of the project and the location. Now, paragraph 4 should be removed from this presentation as well as this refers more to your networking skills rather than your leadership and influencing traits.

I feel that this leadership and influencing essay is not very strong in the sense of professional leadership. This incident is based more on an adventure than an actual problem that required resolution using leadership and influencing abilities. The whole story is so gentle and mild that it will not stand up to a comparison test with another applicant who has had to lead and inspire his team during far more trying times within the performance of their tasks. Perhaps you can shift to a professional narrative instead that shows more of a strength of character, resolve in your beliefs, and empathy for your team that you used to lead and influence them to keep going until the project or objectives were completed?

Writing Feedback / Cement making process/using of concrete - IELTS Academic Writing Task 1 [2]

RCH, you are taking too many liberties with your report. Remember that the assumption for the Task 1 essay is that you have to report the full procedure to the reader, who will not have any access to the illustrations you were provided with. Therefore, you should be writing an informative essay that does not hold back on representing actual measurements and procedures in the presentation. Doing so means you are delivering incomplete an inaccurate information which can affect your C&C score negatively.

There should have been a transition sentence at the end of the cement creation process that led into the concrete production discussion. Such transition sentences are important when you are reporting on two related procedures. In this case, from cement to concrete since cement is one of the primary requirements for the creation of concrete.

Always indicate the actual measurements needed in the procedure when you are given actual data in the illustration. Estimates such as "a quarter" and "the rest" will only be somewhat acceptable when actual measurements are not involved in the presentation or are merely estimated in the given illustration. The illustration indicates precise measurements which need to be represented in the actual report. Otherwise, the measurement of ingredients in relation to the procedure becomes incomplete. The reader, should he follow your instructions for the creation of concrete will not be able to do so because of the missing measurements for 2 materials in the creation process.

Look out for those tricky past tense words. In this case, the dry powder was "ground" to a soft powder that created cement. In your presentation, you merely said: "soft powder - cement". You need to indicate that the soft powder created is cement. That is not clear in your presentation so the reader doesn't have any idea what cement has to do with the presentation. However, the same style can work for the concrete mixer reference as you explained beforehand that this was a mechanical device used in the process.

Scholarship / It is said that computers are the most essential man-made divices of the last centuries. [2]

Tran, you completely misunderstood the prompt and discussed a prompt so unrelated to the task that you will automatically get a failing score for this essay had you written it in an actual test. You need to practice your English comprehension skills. Learn to identify what the question being asked is and how to approach it in your response. Let me outline it for you here:

Original Question: To what extent do you agree or disagree with this statement?
Your Response: his essay will show my attitude about this problem.

Where exactly in the original question were you being asked to discuss your attitude about the problem? This is an extent essay that asks you to either totally or partially agree with the given statement and then defend your reasoning. You are not discussing anything in relation to the prompt requirement. You are discussing a comparison essay to a certain degree in this presentation which clearly shows that you have no idea what the instructions for this discussion are.

The best thing for you to do at this point is to stop writing practice essays. Instead, peruse this forum and familiarize yourself with the various Task 2 discussion methods and how it is presented in the essay. That way you will become familiar with the essay requirements and the discussion approach required for it. That is the best way you can learn, by seeing the mistakes of others and how they corrected themselves so that they could pass the test.

Scholarship / Leadership can change everything with passion - for scholarship [3]

Rimz, you are explaining amateur leadership skills. Are you not yet working in a profession where you are called upon to be a leader or influencer of sorts among your peers? Your presentation is too outdated and irrelevant to the scholarship you are applying for. As the prompt indicates, Chevening is looking for future leader and influencers in their field of work, not in the academic field of study. They are not looking for student leaders or community youth leaders, they are looking for high ranking professionals who embody a unique type of leadership. Sadly, this essay tells the reviewer that you do not embody what they are looking for due to the naïve nature of your leadership experience and lack of plausible influencing skills.

It will be best for you to present an essay that portrays a leadership and influencing style that is more current and work related. That way your presentation will not be outdated and it could still possibly relate to your current leadership position in your company/corporation/department. At the moment, this essay version will end your quest for a Chevening scholarship.

Scholarship / Being a leader for challenging situation - those experiences have given me problem solving skills [3]

Sherly, your definition of your leadership skills is unwarranted in this essay. Instead of that opening, you might want to reformat it to relate your leadership ascension in the government agency instead. If you can show how reliable you are as a leader and that you have an admirable leadership insight that has led you to be a strong influencer from the start of your career, then by the time you become the leader of the Data Processing of Semester Survey under SUSENAS, you will have established yourself as an upcoming leader in your profession who is admired by your co-workers and relied upon by the higher leaders.

Your influencing story is a bit incomplete. Surely you had to do more than just give feedback and rewards to those who performed well on your team. You might want to consider telling a story about how you motivated / influenced one of your subordinates who was underperforming or proving to be a problem in achieving the group goals. That would sound like a stronger influencing story in relation to your leadership abilities that what you have presented at the moment. Right now, the influencing skills are very weakly implied in your essay.

Your closing paragraph is acceptable and works well as a strong conclusion. You just need to strengthen the aforementioned parts of your essay in order to create a very strong presentation.

Writing Feedback / A group is able to find better solutions that if they were to try to solve the problem individually [4]

Jerry, quick question, who is Teresa and why should I care about her quotation in the essay? How does that relate to the prompt paraphrase? Don't use unnecessary quotes or any quotes for that matter in a TOEFL essay. Just respond directly to the question in a manner that appropriately paraphrases the original topic. Actually, without the quotation, your response to the given prompt is actually very good and offers an insight into the succeeding discussion.

However, your essay is not helped by your multiple examples in paragraph 2. Use only one example that you can fully explain or support in relation to your prompt agreement. That way you end up with a cohesive and coherent paragraph rather than an under developed and little discussed reasoning as you currently have in your presentation.

It would have been better if you fully summarized the presentation using the 3 sentence presentation instead of a run-on sentence that actually changes the prompt discussion because the focus went from agree/disagree to advantage/disadvantage in your closing paragraph.

Undergraduate / "I wanted to become a wizard, but there is no salary for them" KGSP personal statement [2]

Alex, the personal statement for a KGSP scholarship program has a specific set of questions that need to be addressed within no more than 500 words. What you wrote here is a short story with over 1000 words. The reviewer is not going to finish reading this before ditching it. You need to revise this essay to be less of a creative writing exercise and more of a direct to the point interview.

Remember, this is the only qualifying interview you will have for the first round of considerations. If you bore the reviewer with too much fluff, as this essay is prone to do, you will lose your chance. Just respond directly to the supplied prompt questions. You know the word limitations, don't go beyond it. Don't go all the way back to learning the alphabet either. Be in the present moment. Respond in the quickest and more informative manner that you can with reflections of direct mention rather than a novel in the making. That way the reviewer gets to learn what he needs to know about you as soon as possible, without having to wade through so much excessive and irrelevant information in your writing.

Writing Feedback / TOEFL - Beggars money. Giving them or not. Which point of view do you think is correct, and why? [5]

James, based on my experience as a TOEFL topnotcher (I got a perfect score in every aspect of the test) I speak from experience. Using the personal point of view in the TOEFL test tells the examiner one thing alone, you understood the question and are able to present your response based on a personal insight on the matter.

Remember, the prompt indicates:

Which point of view do you think is correct, and why?

The word "YOU" is the keyword here that indicates the need to use personal insight, knowledge, and examples The reasoning for "Why" comes from "YOU". Where else will you get your reasoning aside from personal discussion. It is not informal at all. The informality of a presentation comes from your word usage. Do no use slang English terms and do not use a casual tone for the discussion. Use an academic tone and the personal discussion automatically carries a formal tone. For example, if I said:

I don't wanna do nuthin.

I would be speaking in a non formal and non academic manner as opposed to:

I do not want to do that

which is the formal way of saying the slang version. It is personal, academic, and formal in presentation.

You have to learn to look for keywords or phrases that indicate the need for a personal discussion in a formal tone as opposed to public discussion. I gave you an example of they keywords that indicate this scenario above.

Writing Feedback / IELTS writing 2 - Why people do nothing to protecting the environment and how do deal with it? [7]

@smally01 I am sensing a pattern in your postings that is making me believe that you are wasting our time advising you. It is clear from your previous postings that you know exactly where you are making mistakes when writing your essay. You always have at least one response saying "You are right that I..." That tells me that you knew you made this mistake all along and yet to still posted the wrong essay, knowing very well you will be called on it. Why do you do that? You are cheating yourself when you do that.

By reviewing your essay, this one in particular, you knew you went off topic and did not respond to the prompt instructions, that you wrote run-on sentences, and that your essay would definitely fail in the TA section. Yet you went ahead and posted it rather than correcting it first. It is important that you learn to review your essay with a critical eye or the eye of the examiner during the dry run. Once you get a sense that you made a mistake somewhere along the writing of the essay, correct it immediately. If you see it, then wait for us to point it out, in an actual test you would have already failed.

Nobody will point out your mistake after you wrote the essay and submitted it during the actual test. Learn to proof read, make sure you understood the instructions. Ask for clarifications before you write the essay since you are still in practice mode. The closer you get to the actual test date, the more accurate your prompt responses should be. Unfortunately, that is not happening for you and it makes me worry about how you might perform during the actual test.

Writing Feedback / TASK 2: Agree or disagree - female leaders make society more peaceful [3]

Linh, your opening paraphrase is too short because you forgot to include an explanation of what the original prompt is all about. A more appropriate opening paraphrase for this topic is as follows:

History has shown us that the male leaders of countries tend to lean towards the side of war when resolving conflicts. Women are seen as the more peaceful alternative when it comes to leadership. I agree with this point of view based upon two highly specific reasons.

The first reason I agree with this statement is ...

The second reasons is...

That is why I conclude that ...

By the way, I could not make much sense out of what you were trying to say in the second paragraph. I had a particularly hard time trying to figure out, to no avail, what you meant by:


Where you trying to say that "women have a maternal instinct that prevents them from taking a hardline stance as men are opt to do" ? That means that men have a different tendency to make decisions when compared to women. I think your original sentence made more sense in your native tongue than it did in English.

You may want to use more modern examples for your essay. Elizabeth I is a historical figure who is not known to many outside of Britain. BTW, she also had bloody long wars that she personally led due to power struggles in her country that led to an increased tax collection for her people in order to finance the wars. Try to pick more recent role models so that your essay will have a more up to date and current events led discussion to it.

Writing Feedback / Students should become good people by their parents or their school ? ( ielt task 2 ) [3]

Dang, your opening paraphrase is still too similar to the original to be considered your own representation of the discussion. You should avoid using the same terms as the original prompt for this purpose so "good members of society" should become "responsible participants in the community" and "school is the best choice to make" should become "school is the best educational option for social manners".

Now, your total discussion is in error because the prompt is asking about "good members of society" which refers to the community membership of a person or child. You are discussing business, which is not part of the community membership as referred to in this prompt. A better example to have discussed here would be an anti-bullying campaign or civic participation in a community setting. My assessment is that you did not really understand what the context of "good members of society" meant in the original prompt which is what led to the error in your discussion.

Additionally, this is not a direct question essay so you should not have presented any sort of discussion in the opening statement of this essay. For the POV essay, you just restate the prompt in an original manner with a reference to the instructions provided. You could have said, for the instruction portion:

Both points of view will be considered in this discussion after which I shall comment on the varying points of view. Or something similar to that.

I can see your potential to write good essays for this task. It is understandable that you will make a mistake with your first practice run. I know that I can expect to see improvements with your upcoming practice presentations. Keep writing, you can only get better from here.

Writing Feedback / TOEFL - Beggars money. Giving them or not. Which point of view do you think is correct, and why? [5]

James, the score of this essay cannot be more than a 3 due to several problems with your work. These problems relate to how well you understood the prompt instructions, your paragraph development problems, and vocabulary shortcomings.

For starters, the essay asks you to explain your personal point of view regarding one of the two opinions. In your presentation, you veer from a personal point of view and opinion because you start to mention that a survey was conducted in an Asian country, which means you did research for the paper rather than simply using a personal opinion based on personal experience or knowledge. FYI, you won't have access to the internet at the testing center so don't mention researched sources. You won't be able to do that at the center.

Next, even though your paragraphs make sense, you are not in the habit of using transition sentences or connecting explanations which sometimes lead to a confusing take on your essay. When there is a lack of transition phrases or sentences, the reader tends to get confused and finds it difficult to keep track of the presentation.

Finally we come to the problem of your sentence formation and lack of proper sentence structuring and vocabulary usage. While the examiner will give you some leeway with regards to these problems, you should strive to present sentences that are properly developed and have accurate vocabulary usage. While these problems abound within your essay, which is why I cannot point these out one by one in this post, you have a chance to fix this problem if you just work on doing more English language exercises and further immerse yourself in the language through listening and reading exercises. The reading exercises will help you tremendously in learning how to properly format your sentences and will also help you develop your English vocabulary as you can look up the meaning of words you are not really familiar with but hope to use in your essays in the future.

Scholarship / Networking is a key to develop your personality and a way to enhance your ideas and thinking [3]

Rimz, this sounds more like a college application draft than a Chevening essay. It lacks a reference to professional skills development and asset management / usage in a workplace setting. By asset management and usage, I am referring to how you can responsibly use your professional network to develop your potential as an employee. More importantly, you need to show that you have grown from being a rank and file employee to someone of responsibility with a position of trust in the company. This is most often done by representing two things in your networking essay:

1. How you build your network through management training such as conferences and seminars you have attended. Note the most important conference or seminar that you most recently used as part of your network.

2. The reason why you had to use the network, how you used it, and what the final outcome was for you. If this networking skill led to your promotion at the office or some sort of recognition, that would be the best one to present for the discussion.

With a 500 word maximum, you can write a 250-300 word essay. That is, if you feel that you do not have enough accomplishments in terms of professional networking skills with which to impress the reviewer. Don't forget to explain why these networks will be of value to Chevening and its scholars. Be open about the idea of sharing the network with anybody from Chevening who needs it.

Scholarship / I have achieved in a number of areas where the leadership skills have been displayed and developed [2]

Liwal, there are 2 ways that you can go with this essay. From the way I read it, you have both community and professional (work related) leadership and influencing skills here. However, you somehow do not want to delve into either format with greater detail for this essay. You must opt for one or the other. It appears to me that you might be more comfortable discussing your community leadership and influencing skills in this instance. So let me give you advice regarding that.

For starters, you need to focus on your after graduation from college leadership and influencing skills. So, if you had a situation wherein you had to set up an informal school as part of your community service, and you had some leadership and influencing activities while doing this, then use the community service discussion for this essay.

However, the stronger essay that would be of more interest to the reviewer would be your professional leadership and influencing abilities. As a cultural advisor and linguist to the governor, I am convinced that you had further and far more relevant leadership and influencing experiences as a professional assistant to the governor. Try to recall an instance of leadership and influence that you experienced in your position as a cultural advisor or as a translator. Explain the event and what you had to do in order to accomplish the required task. Exemplify your leadership skills in a manner that convinces the reviewer that you have the potential to be a Chevening scholar based on your leadership and influencing actions.

Please do not use the essay above for your application. It certainly says a lot about you but does not strongly refer to your leadership and influencing abilities at present. This is more of a narration of your academic accomplishments which are not of interest to the reviewer. Your current occupational title is enough to catch the eye of the reviewer. So you need to follow through on that by relating it to your leadership and influencing abilities somehow. You have the time to think about this, so do it.

Writing Feedback / The economical developments are considered to be the most crucial nowadays [2]

Reza, this is a 5 paragraph essay based on the instruction of discuss both points of view and then give your own opinion. Therefore the body should be composed of :

1. POV1
2. POV 2
3. Personal opinion

It is imperative that your personal opinion be developed as a stand alone paragraph prior to the concluding summary as the concluding summary should not include the presentation of new ideas which cannot be adequately explained due to the 5 sentence limitation per paragraph. While your essay does lack the prompt instruction restatement in the opening paraphrase, that error is not as bad as your lack of a definite personal opinion paragraph which is supported by a topic sentence, reasoning, and examples to support your POV.

You show a great potential in discussing these types of essays. It is unfortunate that your scored was dragged down by improper paragraph structuring. I trust that you will not repeat this mistake in the future. Your discussions are clear and well developed. Your vocabulary is adequate. So limiting your mistakes in other areas such as the one I mentioned above will help to further enhance your possible final score in an actual test.

Writing Feedback / Too strict rules for young people? What do you think? - TOEFL IBT [4]

Lilo, the discussion is focused on a general perception of rules. Societal rules are not the same as parental rules, which you chose to focus on in your essay. Societal rules have more to do with how one behaves in public and how one deals with his elders or shows respect. It is not part of the rules that your parents have placed upon you.

Your essay is not focused on the correct discussion, a public society regulation as implemented by societal elders. You are focused on the rules and expectations of your parents and relatives instead. I don't think you can score higher than 2 because of this error. You have response to the task is limited in development which uses incorrect examples for its reasoning. There are also word usage and sentence development errors that all added up to this end result.

Writing Feedback / [TOEFL IBT: Task 2] Compare yourself today and yourself five years ago [4]

Nuradia, while I can sense the effort that you have placed in the writing of this essay, I am sad to say that the efforts you made were not good enough. This time around, the possible score for your essay has been limited to a 2 due to several serious problems with your presentation.

While you did respond to the task, it took you so long to get to the actual discussion that you ended up giving a limited response to the task. Since this is TOEFL essay, you need only address the question directly in the essay. You do not need flowery introductions or word fillers to introduce your response. The TOEFL essay does not require you to offer a prompt paraphrase in the way that an IELTS essay does. Do not confuse the two.

Your line of reasoning per paragraph is not completely explained. Although you offer examples to support your topic sentence, there is a lack of connected or related sentences to help explain your reason and example in greater details. In order to accomplish this requirement, you will need to practice using more transition sentence, phrase, and connecting words.

Your error in tense usage and improper sentence structures also created insurmountable problems in your paragraph presentations. It would be better if you can add some sentence building exercises to your preparation tasks prior to starting on your essay practice topics.

Writing Feedback / Writing task 1 in IELTS (the employment patterns in the USA between 1930 and 2010) [5]

Tran, there are a number of inconsistencies in your presentation due to lack of information. The problem started with your incomplete summary overview which was supposed to help inform the reader about the information you will be presenting in the paragraphs. You neglected to list the sectors involved in the graph presentation. You also did not identify the years represented aside from the chart covering 80 years. You should have indicated that it started in 1930 and ended in 2010 as part of the complete information dissemination of the summary overview. That would have helped in the reader understand why your trending statement included the year 1980 in it. The overall coverage of the graph is one of the most important information to be presented in this essay.

You need to learn to use more connecting words. For example in your last paragraph, when you said "... and foresting", you should added the connecting word "by" in order to connect the word listing to the next set of information. Hence, the presentation would have been a more proper; " ... and fishing by nearly 8..."

Since this is an analytical report, a concluding statement is not required. I have to say though, you wrote a good amount of words for this essay. It should have left you with enough time to edit and revise your presentation prior to submission. A practice that I believe you should get used to doing during the practice tests so that you can further improve your scoring considerations during this dry run.

Writing Feedback / Choosing an option between A and B - Task 2 writing - CELPIP test [4]

Han, I think that your proficiency test score would be around a 3 for this essay. I have several reasons that support this opinion of mine. Most of the reasons have to do with your vocabulary usage, coherence, and task fulfillment problems. These are, as far as I am concerned, the 3 areas of proficiency that you need to build up with your next practice essays.

For starters, the essay clearly asks for a personal opinion. However, your reasoning goes for a general discussion of why the public might choose option B. If you read the instructions again, you will see that the question being asked is: "What option that you prefer. Why doyou prefer your choice?" with an instruction that indicates; Explain the reason for your choice." The second pronoun usage all refers to a personal insight with regards to the discussion.

Another mistake in your explanation is that you are speaking of the weather conditions that currently exist. The prompt you were provided did not take the weather into consideration. Merely a general discussion of choices. Therefore, by making a weather based choice, you are running counter to the prompt discussion question. All of these essays should be discussed based solely on the provided information without any additional information consideration coming from you.

The essays mistakes you made are avoidable now that you know what to look out for. Generally speaking, your discussion is good, but not the proper discussion for the prompt. Had the prompt asked for a general opinion and explanation then the least you would have scored with this essay would have been a 4.

Writing Feedback / Questbridge - "What are your career goals" question, and two 35-word essays. Help Requested [3]

Colby, please refer to the following advice on a numerical listing for your responses. You have some pretty good topic sentences but very weak follow throughs on your discussion.

1. You need to address how you developed your career goals for becoming a diplomat. What weakness did you see in the relationship between the US and South Korea that you feel needs to be addressed? How do you plan to address it? Why do you think it needs a resolution? The proper response to this question will requite you to delete the total response in order to write a new response that will address the questions properly. Avoid redundancies. You were asked what your goal is, the response should be "I want to become a diplomat..." redundancies take away from your character count so avoid repeating information that the reader already knows about.

2. Your grandfather did not provide you with inspiration. He inspired you with character traits. Inspiration in this case would be more alongside a mantra, a motto, or something or anything that you look to for help or inner strength when you feel down or troubled.

3. Change the point of view in the second sentence. Rather than having you compliment yourself, use the same words to describe yourself only this time, do it from your counselor's point of view.

These changes should help strengthen your statement responses. If you have any other responses you want reviewed, don't hesitate to post it here. I'll be sure to comment on them.

Scholarship / I have chosen three universities in the UK with the same Master program Cyber Security [4]

Rimz, do you think you are writing a letter to a friend here? What is with the super casual tone of your essay? Why are you using terms such as "I got" and "etc." here? You are addressing highly educated professionals in this essay. They expect to be addressed in a respectful tone in a written manner. Revise your opening paragraph as it lacks the serious and respectful tone that the reader of this essay deserves to have. Discuss your college background and how it led to your interest in Cybersecurity. Describe any previous training or seminars related to Cybersecurity that you have attended. Explain why your interest has reached the point where you feel a Masters Degree is now requirement for your job or a personal preference.

As for your choice of 3 universities, you need to develop more precise explanations for your choices. For each university choice you must reflect:
1. Your related academic background
2. An explanation of your current professional position and how taking this course will help you improve your working skills.
3. What specific subjects are offered by the university or any programs that you hope to participate in as part of your hands on education.

Don't go with the obvious and researchable information for the universities. That shows the reviewer that you did not really take the time to seriously consider how each course and university curriculum will affect your future professional plans. BTW, make sure that you choose 3 Chevening accredited universities for your course so that you will stand a stronger chance for scholarship consideration.

Writing Feedback / Some questions about Membership Recruitment [3]

1. You need to shorten this response to indicate what you want to learn, one simple reason why you want to learn how to do it, and how the organization can help you achieve that. You do not really address that in your response. The point of the question is to receive a response that shows how familiar you are with the helpful programs of the organization. Be specific with your plans for improvement through their help. Right now, you could be talking about any similar organization and not this one specifically.

2. Use a comma between the words management and because. Then replace the word "because" with "since" to connect the two ideas leading into "I like organizing events..."

3. Your strengths and weaknesses should reflect abilities that can be useful to the organization you are looking to become a part of. What you describe here are character traits that do not necessarily translate into a strength nor a weakness. Think about what the organization objectives are and what aspects you can help strengthen in the group and what aspects you can help in but are not very skilled in accomplishing. Those are actual strengths and weaknesses. It is all about explaining how you can help enhance the experience of being a member of the organization.

4. Your response is not really considered a failure. What you indicated is more of an apprehension. A failure is something that you actually did which did not turn out to have a positive result. How you overcame that failure explains how you turned the negative result or experience into a positive one. You should change your response to this question to a more relevant one.

Writing Feedback / Response for a memorandum from the business manager of Happy Pancake House restaurants [2]

Hi Chen, your essay can possibly score a 5 with this type of writing. You clearly understood the assigned reading material and presented a logical and coherent discussion regarding it. However, you have problems with redundancy and sentence structure plus punctuation errors that held your essay back from getting a higher score.

In the first paragraph, you started a sentence with the word "Because" which is a connecting word. As you know, connecting words are used to connect 2 ideas within one sentence. That is the main reason why a connecting word cannot be used to start a sentence, there is no other idea to connect at the start of a sentence. Rather than starting that sentence with "because", you could have instead kicked it off with " That is because..." The word "because" in this instance, connects an upcoming reason to the previous sentence, which then creates a connected discussion for the paragraph presentation.

In the second paragraph, you used the same information again regarding the 2% of clients who complained. This is highly similar to the reason in the preceding paragraph, so this presentation is redundant. Try to always compress your discussion into one paragraph for related topics. That way you create a cohesive discussion that avoids information repetition.

Since this is an academic essay, try to avoid slang English terms such as "a lot" instead use the academic equivalent "a number of" or a similar descriptive phrase. Always keep an academic tone in an academic essay presentation.

Writing Feedback / In order to attract good students, many universities spend a lot of money in society activities. [5]

Vate, the essay is not asking whether you believe one point of view is convincing or not. The essay is asking whether you agree or disagree with the given statement. That is, that universities need to spend a lot of money in given activities. This is a direct question statement that you changed the topic for discussion of and in the process, failed to properly respond to the essay. Let me outline the mistakes you made here:

Original topic: many universities spend a lot of money in society activities.
Question: Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? (Answerable by yes/no or I agree/ I disagree)

Your topic: many communities have been heartedly debating on the school's money allocation to attract good students
Reasoning: Some people believe that it is reasonable to spend a lot of money in social activities. While other hold the opposite opinion that this money can be allocated into more meaningful ways to attract good students.

Task Response: Frankly, the latter standpoint, I believe, is more convincing.

You created a 2 point of view discussion essay when this is a single point of view discussion using a direct response format. Therefore, your task accuracy is going to be less than stellar and you will only be scored on the parts of your essay that respond to the task. Since your TA score will be low, it will be difficult for you to improve your score in the final overall consideration due to other problems in relation to the remaining scoring considerations. Never change the discussion requirements of the essay. When you do that, you be creating a prompt deviation that could very well prevent you from gaining a passing score in the test.

Writing Feedback / The honesty is the most crucial thing in a good relationship [5]

James, based on your problem with expressing yourself in English, this essay cannot score higher than a 2 in an actual test setting. You are being hindered by the confusing sentence development and presentation in this essay. You do not use appropriate words in given instances and you have a problem with presenting a clear though process. All of these, plus your mistakes in punctuation and grammar added up to the final score for your essay.

It would be best if you try to brush up on your sentence structure skills. Take the time to truly explain what you mean in short but adequately informative sentences. That way you will be able to explain yourself in a manner that the reader can really understand. Try to explain yourself within 5 sentences at the most and always remember to proofread and edit your essay before you submit it.

Remember, you always need to aim for clarity in your presentation. You do not need too many words in your essay, you just need to present at least the minimum in a clear and concise manner. If you cannot do that then you will fail the test. For this essay, it would have been better if you had simply chosen one side of the argument to agree with so that the essay would have been easier for you to write because your focus would have been on perfecting only one discussion within the given time limit.