Writing Feedback / Teaching foreign languages at primary school should be optional rather than compulsory. Ielts task 2 [5]

Adam, I am not sure where you got the idea that you can present your opinion in the concluding statement. That is the wrong approach. The personal opinion is always presented in a separate paragraph because the rules of academic writing state that no additional or new information can be presented in the concluding statement. To be precise, the concluding statement should be comprised of 3-5 sentences that do the following:

1. Present the restated prompt discussion.
2. Offer the two opposing points of view.
3. Reiterate your opinion.
4. Offer a closing sentence to conclude the essay.

Also, the proper format for discussing this type of essay, in my opinion is as follows:

1. Paraphrased prompt, two opinions, your personal opinion.
2. Opposing point of view discussion
3. Supporting point of view presentation
4. Your personal opinion in support of the third statement
5. Concluding statement

I find that the aforementioned format for a discussion or compare and contrast essay works best for most essay presentations.

Undergraduate / Soak up knowledge - University of Washington Personal Statement 2017 [4]

Lin, there is a discrepancy in your opening statement. You claim that you enrolled at Seattle Central College to study Korean. Then in the same paragraph, you also state that they do not teach Korean at that College so you moved studied Korean at UW for 2 semesters instead. Exactly how were you able to enroll in a non existent major at Seattle Central College then? That is a confusing statement. Think of what you want to say again and try to present it in a more understandable manner in that paragraph. Kindly review my previous advice again. You missed a number of important points that are required in the presentation of your essay. So far though, this is an improved version, but still a work in progress.

Undergraduate / My most memorable experience: 21st November, just after my birthday; Colony Cricket League [6]

Hi Jnanam, it certainly feels good on our part to know that you are confident enough to say that you can now spot your mistakes and also correct them on your own. We are always happy when we are able to help the students even in the smallest way when it comes to helping them improve their written English work. Don't forget, we are always going to be here for you even if you think you don't need us anymore. Just in case, you are still welcome to post your future written work for our comments and review. If you constantly have your written work reviewed, you will find that your writing skills will continue to improve and you will be learning writing styles and tricks that you did not know before. Just a friendly reminder. I for one am very excited to see the marked difference in your writing styles. Maybe I will have that chance some day soon.

Writing Feedback / Teaching foreign languages at primary school should be optional rather than compulsory. Ielts task 2 [5]

Adam, your essay is flawed in more ways than one. For starters, you are never to present a question in the essay. That is not an acceptable mode of discussion for an essay that is to be based on personal opinion and other facts. Then, there is the even bigger problem of you not presenting a validly developed personal opinion paragraph in the essay that could accurately present your thoughts on the matter. You cannot take the discussion of the two sides individually and pass that off as your own. You need to have a separate paragraph to represent your opinion. You can present that as the second to the last paragraph in your essay. At this moment I am not sure about whether or not I should give you a band score for this essay because of the problems in it that I am sure you can correct once it is pointed out to you.

Writing Feedback / Development and rapid expansion of supermarkets make many local businesses unfit to compete [4]

Kapila, when you are asked to write this sort of essay, it is important that you follow the prompt. That is, you either have to agree or disagree with the statement. You cannot be in agreement with both sides. This essay instruction is quite clear about it, only one side must be presented in the discussion throughout. So this means that while you mention both sides in the paraphrased introduction, you will need to end that paragraph with a clear statement about your agreement or disagreement with the presentation. From that point, the essay should only justify your opinion of the matter. The succeeding paragraphs need to present a clear line of thinking and relevant evidence either from personal experience or knowledge, that will help to further strengthen your stance. Remember, this sort of essay is meant to test you analytical discussion skills. That is why you are being asked to take one side of the issue to defend. Therefore, your essay does not meet the prompt requirements and as such, would not get a passing task accuracy score. That in turn, will endanger the possibility of you passing the test. Your current essay discussion would only work in a discuss both opinions with personal opinion statement, which this is not.

Graduate / Motivation Letter for Master in Business Administration to Radboud University [6]

Hrasky, you should present your work experience before you present your motivation in terms of why you want too study Business Adminsitration at Radboud. By the way, double check the country reference in your statement. Radboud is located in Netherlands, not Indonesia. You accidentally referred to Netherlands when you meant to reference Indonesia. Correct that mistake in order to avoid confusion. Don't bother talking about your thesis and its subsequent publication in the motivation letter. That is information required in the statement of purpose. So in order to avoid repetition of information, just remove that reference in this letter. Also, avoid mentioning your 5 year career plan in the motivation letter. That is also information required in the statement of purpose or post study goals essay. Basically, the paragraph format should be as follows:

I have done my internship in Director of General Tax...

My career goal is to pursue career in the academic field and become a researcher... (delete the reference to the 5 year career plan but keep the discussion about why you feel you need to become an educator and researcher). I also want to empowered Indonesian ...

Writing Feedback / First college essay, 10 years since high school. Descriptive essay for basic English 101 [4]

Hi Jeremy, in answer to your specific question, the answer is no. You do not have to write island as a capitalized word if it does not accompany a proper noun. The term "island" is general while " Parris Island" is the name of a specific place, which happens to be an island, so both words are capitalized in that instance.

In the second sentence of your essay, place a comma after the word "However". In the quoted dialogue "Here we go", you need to place a period at the end of that statement as that is a complete thought that is not part of the regular sentence. Punctuation marks are still used on quotes, thoughts, and dialogues within an essay. Physical fitness test does not need to be capitalized as that describes an action, not a noun.

For the second paragraph, place a comma after the word "noticed", then also after "chaos". The additional corrections are:
1. A comma must be used to separate the words " musky and humid smell..."
2. Correction: ...never to be found again, presumably eaten by...

Third paragraph:
1. The correct way to write it is "Ready, go!" Quoted dialogue is considered a stand alone sentence and follows its own set of writing rules.

2. "Drill master shouted. I stood up and went to my canteen. "

Paragraph 4:
1. The asterisks in this section were written properly.
2. Use a period in "Congratulations Marine."
3. "Ladies and gentlemen..."

Paragraph 5:
1. ... through blood, sweat, and tears...

Consider shortening some of your paragraphs by compressing them into shorter sentences. The essay becomes a bit boring to read because the descriptions seem to drone on and on. Combine actions in sentences where it will be possible. Shorten the essay otherwise you will lose the reader midstream due to lack of interest.

Scholarship / Fight against diseases. 2017 KGSP Graduate Program - Letter of Self-Introduction [2]

Carolina, you need to balance the content of your essay in order to create a more relevant presentation of your responses to the reviewer. Most specially, you need to better develop the reasons that you have for wanting to pursue master studies in Korea. I have some ideas as to how you can better accomplish this task, if you will be open to my suggestions.

You should provide the first half of the paper to discuss the following:
1. Family background
2. Early interest in medicine
3. college education
4. Relevant Work experience

Then present a transition sentence that discusses the main problem in your line of medical treatment that you feel requires additional training and theoretical know how on your part. Explain that these are the reasons that you decided to pursue masters studies in Korea.

The next half of the essay should show evidence of your knowledge of the field of medical science in Korea. The discussion you present in that paragraph will show the reasons why you decided to pursue higher studies in the country. Look at the current research of treatment based on your medical field as undertaken in Korea. Explain how you want to be a part of this limited opportunity to be trained by experts in a field using technology or treatments not available in other parts of the world yet.

By treating your essay in this manner, you will be able to create a better discussion that clearly relates your academic background with your interest in studying in Korea. It will be a thorough approach that will show the reviewer that you are not just interested in the social life of Korea or changing your country of residence for a few years, but that you actually have a specific, useful, and world altering purpose for wishing to study in Korea.

Undergraduate / Soak up knowledge - University of Washington Personal Statement 2017 [4]

Lin, the prompt is asking you to discuss your college path. Therefore, including a presentation about how you got interested in Korean at the age of 14 is irrelevant to the essay. Your focus must be on the development of your interest in this major in reference to your original major. I say original major because it seems that you were not enrolled in Linguistics (?) in your previous university. So, if you had a different major, you should explain why you were enrolled in that major, why you opted to originally enroll in that university, and then add the development of your interest in Korean and how that led you to take classes at UW. This revision, if applicable, should help to shorten the content of your essay. Make sure that you mention what your original major at UC Davis was just to make sure that the reviewer will be able to follow the discussion in an informed manner. By the way, please be clear about whether or not you will be able to attend UW in the upcoming semester. You did not respond to that question either. Also, aside from offering cutting edge Korean language classes, what other reasons do you have which can be considered compelling enough for you to wish to switch schools? Maybe some language training programs of interest to you, internships in relevant companies, or a semester abroad that you can spend in Korea. Those are the kinds of familiarity with the university and course curriculum that can help to enhance your application.

Writing Feedback / IELTS Writing Task 2 - Punishment for Children and impact on their development [4]

On the contrary, since the word corporal isn't part of the keywords provided in the essay, she could use the term corporal punishment in the wrong context and as such, lower her lexical resource score. It is best to prove English comprehension and lexical skills by first using the keywords in the essay in the proper manner in a sentence. Now, since she has no reason to use corporal punishment in her essay as she is not familiar with the term, it would be best not to use it. An alternative is sufficient. Sometimes, simply proving you understand the question and can discuss it accurately when when using simple English words can gain you a higher score than using complex words in the wrong way. It's all about how comfortable you are in using what you know of the English language, which helps you express yourself clearly that matters the most which can increase your score. Using the term physical punishment is enough in this instance because she knows how to properly use that term.

Scholarship / "There is no miracle in real life" Self-introduction for Korean scholarship [5]

Oyunomin, the biggest problem that your essay contains right now is that it does not make any reference as to why you chose to study in Korea in a manner that personally relates to you. The program demands that you live in Korea for about 5 to 10 years with the first year dedicated to social immersion and integration through the learning of the Korean language. Then, 2 years of actual study, and then a number of years working in the country. You say you have a child, so you will be separated from the child for at least a decade based upon the academic and work demands of the program. Justify why you can do that. What is it about Korea as a country and people that attracts you to go there over your maternal instinct? Why can you sacrifice your life as a mother and your relationship with your child for the possible opportunity to study in Korea ? Defend that stance in relation to your desire to study in Korea so that your essay will be complete. The response I hope to help you develop to that part of the essay will make your written work stand out from the other applicants. Once you perfect that response, we can work on coding the other problem aspects of the essay. Focus on the missing and highly important element of your essay first. The rest will be easy to fix.

Scholarship / Reason to study in Korea - Self Introduction : My name is Muhammad [9]

Don't lose heart. If you know you don't qualify, then don't apply for this scholarship. Look for another scholarship that your experience and background might be better suited for. The KGSP grant is not the only scholarship out there. You can try to qualify for others. Just run a Google search for scholarship programs in your region and look up the qualifications and application deadlines. I am sure that if you just do the legwork, you will find the scholarship that you are best suited for. All of the scholarship applicants here try to apply for at least 2 or 3 scholarships in order to have a better chance at a grant. You should strive for the same thing. If you give up now, then you will never have tried. You can only say you tried hard after you have succeeded in getting yourself a grant.

Scholarship / Reason to study in Korea - Self Introduction : My name is Muhammad [9]

Ali, the essay is not meant to be your autobiography. Rather, it is to be a reflective look upon your life so far in relation to your future plans. So the first part should be contemplative in approach. Think about your life, but not all the way back to the age of 3. Instead, talk about your family unit. What kind of family do you come from? Are they all supportive of your plans? have they always been that way? Is their support what helped shape the person you are today? How do you view the world today because of the kind of family that you came from? How does your world view inspire your future ambitions and hopes? What kind of contribution would you like to make in the future to the world in general?

Then, transition that point of view to how you were influenced to take your college major. Discuss your academic strengths, accolades, honors, recognition if any. Contribute some information about how you spend your extra curricular time. That would be all about the non-academic related activities such as club memberships or community service via organizations. Transition those experiences into an explanation of how you found yourself doing your current job, if there is a way to relate the said information.

Please mention the specific name of the company that you worked as a senior executive for and how long you worked with them. Explain how you feel that while you were performing your job, you came to realize that your college training would only help you accomplish the job to a certain degree. So you decided that it was time to seek higher academic and practical training via advanced courses in a masters degree in Accounting.

You do not have real motivation for wishing to enroll in this program that will be notable to the reviewer. You do not display and background or interest in the Korean culture and traditions that will help you settle in the country during your first year as a language student. I am not sure if you know this but there is a one year Korean language training program before you can start the 2 year masters degree program. The statement you created pertaining to that sounds more like you are looking forward to socializing and partying instead of actually studying and applying yourself in a more serious manner to the program.

That is another thing, there is no call to tell the reviewer that you require the scholarship because you want to concentrate on your studies. That is obvious since you are applying for a scholarship. Repeating it in the essay makes you come across as trying too hard to win the scholarship.

Basically, this essay that you wrote does not work very well for your application. You need to write a new one based upon the suggestions I made above. If you need more solid examples as to how to revise your essay, just look at the completed KGSP essays that are posted here for your reference.

Finally, double check the way that you wrote your essay. Make sure that you followed all the rules in writing proper nouns in reference to capitalization. Also, double check the punctuation. These are things that you can do as you revise your content. It should be automatic on your part because you are supposed to proof read the essay before you submit it for another review here.

Letters / Statement of Purpose - My Motivation to Join Information System in University of Melbourne [9]

This is not an essay you can use for any masters degree requirement. If you were applying to college, then you can use parts of this as a foundation for some specific common app prompts. Do not try to use this essay as a motivational letter as it doesn't contain the required elements for it either. A motivational letter presents a problem that you hope to solve in your home country and how you expect masters studies to help you develop the hypothetical solution that you have in mind. If you need to write a motivational letter, post it as a new topic , in a new thread and I'll help you develop it there. This thread is meant to discuss your statement of purpose. I will be unable to advice you regarding any unrelated essays posted in this thread.

Letters / Statement of Purpose - My Motivation to Join Information System in University of Melbourne [9]

Iwan, the first thing that you have to know about writing a statement of purpose is that it is to be written in an essay form, not as a letter. So the format that you have at the moment is incorrect. The only letter type essay to be written in a masters degree application packet would be the motivational letter. Revise the essay to present an essay format instead. That said, you have a tremendous amount of unnecessary information in this statement. You actually only have to respond to 5 basic questions in order to create an informative SOP. These questions that require your response are as follows:

1. What is your current occupation? What is the masters degree that you are interest in taking up? How will completing this degree help you to advance your career? If you are discussing a career change, explain why you want to switch careers and why you consider it important for you to do so.

2. Provide a summary of your college background. Did you attend any seminars or internships that would result in your receiving informal training regarding your chosen masters degree? If you are enrolling right out of college, add information about any internship program you might have completed.

3. Explain any relevant work experience that you have that will convince the reviewer that you have the proper professional foundation to help you complete this course.

4. If this is a thesis based course, include your question and the type of research that will be involved in it. How can you apply the results if your research to the problem you want to resolve in your community? If it is a non-thesis course, then don't include a thesis question.

5. Why did you opt to study at this university? Include any information about your interest in their internship programs, research abilities, professors whom you admire, or other relevant information. This should be the point where you close the essay as well.

You can review the essay that you wrote and use whatever portions you can to help you create a new foundation for your revised essay. It would be best for you to use my guidelines for writing the statement rather than trying to make your current essay fit the commonly known expectations of a reviewer regarding a statement of purpose.

Writing Feedback / Task 2 ielts People often wonder whether money brings happiness or not [8]

To, please remember that you need to start a new thread for every question you want answered or essay that you want reviewed which is totally unrelated to the original topic being discussed in a thread. In this instance, you have to do your own research regarding the format. I cannot respond to that question in this thread because this is dedicated to an unrelated essay discussion. If you start a different thread that asks me the same question, I will be able to respond there. I cannot do that in this thread. Don't forget, you can always Google the response to your questions before you write your essay. So why don't you try doing that first? If you feel lost, then start a new thread in the correct forum area and I will assist you to the best of my ability in that new thread. Sorry about that. The mods are pretty strict about that rule and I cannot disobey it.

Graduate / My idea about petroleum. Personal Statement for Graduate Admission [8]

You've got a number of unnecessary paragraphs and sentences in this essay which caused you to go overboard in terms of the word count. The best way to lower the word count to the proper level or less would be to just delete the unnecessary paragraphs which only serve as word fillers at this point.

Paragraph 1 should be completely deleted. Open instead with paragraph 2 but omit the word "So" at the beginning. The essay will be stronger if your opening statement begins with a declaration as to why you have chosen to study in Britain instead. Try to cut down on the personal information to reflect only the most impressive traits that you have which might indicate the kind of graduate student that you might be should you be admitted into the program. Personally, I would focus that discussion on your national service instead. That shows that you were trained to never quit and accomplish tasks, no matter how daunting it might seem. Which is the kind of personality that makes for a good masters degree student. The discussion about your school extra curricular activities don't carry the same impact so it would be safe to skip that part as well. Doing so will help you bring your word count down to a manageable level.

Revise your final paragraph. You have neglected to talk about why you chose this particular university as required by the prompt. That is something that you should indicate as the final paragraph of your essay. Discuss what factors led to your decision to apply for admission to this university instead. Taking into consideration the fact that your country has universities that offer the same masters degree courses.

Scholarship / Programmed to achieve goals. Self introduction-letter for Scholarship [10]

Aisu, this is not supposed to be a research paper so remove the sub-titles in the presentation. This is supposed to be a smooth flowing essay that does not confuse the reader because you decided to divide it into topic paragraphs with titles. Remember how you were asked to write essays in your school before? It was just one solid narrative that used transition sentences, connecting paragraphs, and required information to create a fluid essay presentation to the reader. That is what you should aim to present here. You have a full page to fill at font size 10. Dividing the paragraphs will only cheat yourself because you will not really be fully developing the necessary points in this essay. Like I said previously, you need to add more information in order to fully depict the proper responses to the essay prompts. Simply cutting up the discussion in the manner you have above will not solve the information problem of your essay.

Letters / Study and Future Plan about KGSP program [2]

Julian, you can only post one essay per thread buddy. So I will only respond to the Study Goals essay. You should start a different thread for the Post Study Plan essay. The mods will delete the second essay once they see it so you better act fast and start a new thread for the other essay. I'd hate for you to miss out on useful advice based upon a technicality.

Your Study Goal is too short for this essay. It should at least be a full page long. Depending upon the specific requirements of the prompt, you may have also missed out on representing some other aspects of discussion that the reviewer requires. Do me a favor and post the instructions for the essay so that I can better assess the content of your work? Thanks. The study goal should also present an idea as to why you have chosen to study at a particular university in Korea instead of your home country. Convince the reviewer that your studies can only be served in Korea because of a specific reason. At this point, your essay is too general in content and should only be considered a draft. Additional information, such as the earlier suggestions in my response, are necessary to better build up your response.

Writing Feedback / IELTS Practice task 2 - History education and its importance [3]

Jane, when you are asked to take a solid position in the essay, such as whether you agree or disagree, you should never take a middle position that has you agreeing to both sides to a certain extent. The strength of your essay will lie in the way that you are able to accurately defend one side of the opinion being presented. Note that the essay prompt asks you "to what extent do you agree OR disagree", so you have to pick only one side of the issue to discuss. Pick the side that you feel you can best defend over the course of the essay and build your paragraphs around that. While this essay discussion makes sense, it doesn't really fall within the specific prompt requirement. So the score for this essay will not be a passing one. It will not pass because you did not fulfill the requirements of the task accuracy portion, which asks you to pick only one side to discuss, so the rest of your scores will also be affected.

Writing Feedback / IELTS Writing Task 2 - Punishment for Children and impact on their development [4]

Hi Janice. You really did an impressive job on this essay. I was so impressed by the improvement in your work that I am actually going to score this an overall of 6. the only reason that the score was held back was due to some grammar and sentence structure errors. While you have shown some fluency in English, it does not erase the fact that there were still noticeable errors in sentence development and grammar usage. Although it did not affect the flow of thought and presentation of your facts, the fluency in English still has to be considered. The more fluent and sentence / grammar error free your essay gets in the future, the higher your score will get. I am convinced that you have the ability to gain a sense of fluency in your writing in the very near future. You almost have it, so don't stop practicing and reading English based material. That is the best way to gain fluency in the written language.

Graduate / Losing the moment chasing the goal [8]

The prompt for the self introduction essay for the KGSP program actually encourages you to relate as much as you can about how you developed an interest in Korean culture. Specifically, the prompt asks you to explain your reasons for wanting to study in Korea. Now, considering that there is a one year period before your masters studies when you will be focusing on learning the Korean language, it stands to assume that you are expected to immerse yourself in the Korean culture as well. Therefore, explaining about your Korean vibe and interest in the culture will definitely be of help in your self introduction. This interest in their culture will help the reviewer decide whether or not you have a chance of completing the 3 year program in Korea. Do not forget that you are also expected to live in Korea for a few years after completing your degree. So if you cannot prove that you have what it takes to battle home sickness through your interest in living the Korean way of life to a certain degree due to your interests in the country and culture, you will place some doubt in the mind of the reviewers regarding your ability to complete the program.

Writing Feedback / Task 2 ielts People often wonder whether money brings happiness or not [8]

Hi To, I have to say that you really took the outline I provided you and memorized it. You have presented a very well discussed essay here. You did not miss any discussion points and you have done your best to prove that you have adequate vocabulary when it comes to English words. You have managed to create an understandable essay that, although suffering from some grammar problems, does not impede communication with the reader. That said, you have, in my opinion, managed to increase your possible essay score to a 6. The task accuracy was perfect in this instance but the sentence development and lexical resource problems existed in a marked manner in the essay. So those errors forced the lowering of the lexical resource score along with the coherence and cohesiveness aspect. Keep practicing. You should be able to improve some more over time. You already have a passing score, let's see if we can increase the score over time. Try to use a different prompt requirement next time so that we can find some other weak points to correct in your work. Just remember that the format I gave you is applicable to almost all of the essay prompts you will be reading.

Writing Feedback / Wrtiting Task 1 IELTS The title of population in developed countries and developing countries [6]

Dayat, this chart is very haphazardly written. You were supposed to create a comparison summary of the histogram and line chart. All you did was write about the information in the line chart. This would be an automatic failure in an actual test because you did not properly summarize the charts provided, which shows that you failed to understand the information provided. That is too bad because you show such potential in writing summary reports. The lack of histogram comparison created a gaping hole in your summarized report. Had you just properly applied the information from the two charts, you could have presented a clearer and more informative summary. Your line chart is very incomplete and does not actually serve an informative purpose because of this.

Writing Feedback / Pie Chart Task 1 IELTS Sample: typical house spendings in Japan and Malaysia [5]

Baso, while you presented the minimum 150 word requirement in the summary report, your essay is not as solid nor informative in presentation. The reason that I came to this conclusion is because of the missing data in your second paragraph. You explained that transportation was the second lowest expense in Japan and Malaysia, you neglected to include the actual figures as indicated in the pie chart. Therefore, the information that you presented cannot be considered complete once considered overall. The most informative summary report is the one that presents all of the pertinent information from the charts provided in the summary. While it may sound mechanical at times, it is important to give the data in order for the reader to be properly informed regarding the information you are presenting. You need to find a way to sound more creative in the presentation of the information. Right now, you are just relating the information as you see it in the chart, which does not really present a clear idea as to your comprehension skills, which is graded in the cohesiveness and coherence section of the band score.

Writing Feedback / The Line graphs of how much people in UK and US to spend on Petrol [4]

Diaz, good work on presenting more than the minimum number of words in your essay. That said, you should have worked on separating the opening statement into at least 3 or 5 sentences instead of presenting such a long thread of information in a continuous line. It is always best to break down the information you are presenting into sentences so that the reader has a chance to really understand and keep track of the information that you are imparting. In the current form, the reader will tend to forget what he is reading about even before he finishes reading the complete paragraph. When you have more sentences in a paragraph, you have a good chance of creating more advanced to complex sentence structures that can increase your grammar accuracy score and also help to increase your task accuracy range because you will show a better understanding of the illustration provided to you as you get to explain more about what you understand than just the obvious data presented.

Scholarship / Scholarship essay to win 1K to help get enough money to enter in Oral Roberts University. [2]

Marisol, your essay is a bit confusing, the first part of the essay makes it sound like you have yet to attend college. Then we find out midstream that you are already attending community college. Then you further confuse matters by making it sound like you have already graduated and are about to enroll in a masters degree. Then you turn around again and say you are looking forward to completing an illustration major. I am afraid you will need to develop a more focused essay that can clearly address the prompt requirements.

In the first paragraph, indicate that as a current 2 year community college student, you are hoping to move to a four year course with the help of the scholarship. The reason for that, is that you need a 4 year college degree course in order to ensure a better chance at employment and also, set the foundation for your future masters degree studies. This will respond to the prompt requirement that asks you to mention your major, as well as your educational career goals.

The second paragraph, should cover the important points regarding your life goals. Just clean up the current paragraph that you have at the moment that relates to you being the first college graduate in your family, don't bother mentioning the high school graduate part as that is irrelevant to the future life goals that you have. While I understand the importance of your dreams for your family, it is more important that you discuss your life goals for yourself. So mention your dreams for your family in a single sentence. Use the whole paragraph to discuss how you envision your personal future instead.

In the final paragraph, focus on explaining why you believe that your future improvements lie in an Illustration major. What are the employment possibilities for you in this field? Why are you confident that this is the way you can improve your financial and social position in life? Make sure that your statement closes on a note of confidence regarding your belief in your future in relation to your chosen major.

Scholarship / Programmed to achieve goals. Self introduction-letter for Scholarship [10]

Aisu, if you are to review the requirements of the essay in comparison to the content that you have written, you will see that your introduction does not respond completely to the prompt requirements. That is because you have an uneven focus on the topics for discussion. This is not a college application essay that asks you to concentrate solely on your academic side. This is a scholarship application with specific requirements that need to be reflected as part of the preliminary interview.

Build more information about your background as a person. Discuss the kind of family that you come from and the community that you belong to that have all helped to develop the kind of person that you are today. Use at least 2 paragraphs to discuss this part.

Then, based upon the upbringing that you related, discuss the kind of world view that you developed. The focus of your comments at the moment center mostly on marketing. You do not really offer an interesting take on how you view the world in general. This is a social, not political, not academic, nor professional point of view. Talk about how your hopes and wishes for the future of the world tie in with your interest in Marketing. This should be around 3 paragraphs long.

Once you have established the aforementioned information, you can present an overview of your college education, accomplishments, and any other related classes or seminars that you have attended. Keep this section brief. One fully developed paragraph should be sufficient enough to deliver the necessary information.

Your discussion regarding the relation of your work experience in relation to the KGSP program is not really impressive. Look into the marketing world of Korea, learn what sets it apart from the rest of the world in terms of business application. Look for similarities with your education, work experience, or personal beliefs. These will serve as your motivation for application. Discuss those in the essay.

With regards to why you decided to study in Korea, the reasons you gave can apply to just about any university in the world. Try to present an actual interest in the country, its culture, and its emerging educational opportunities as the main reason for your interest. You have to be interested in living in Korea for a specific reason in order to strengthen your application.

Scholarship / Understanding maritime industries - essay for postgraduate scholarship award [3]

Starkie, is 2000 characters the maximum character count or the minimum character count? Those are two different counts that have a direct effect on the way that you include data in your essay. Please clarify what the 2000 character count represents. At the moment, you only have 1993 characters, which might adversely affect your essay if the 2000 character count is the minimum. You will need to add a few words to make sure that you meet the minimum requirement. However, if that is the maximum, then you have written enough words in the essay to qualify your content.

There are some major corrections to do in your essay. The first revision you have to make relates to the purpose for your masters degree studies. The discussion you present shows that you do not have a clear direction in mind for your maritime career. Therefore, the reviewer will not have the confidence that you can complete the course. It would be better if you can identify a specific maritime problem related to your country that you wish to resolve through the expansion of your knowledge and development of a solution during the course of your study. That way, the scholarship committee members will believe that you are truly dedicated to improving your skills for the betterment of your country's maritime woes.

Second, you make it sound like you will be attending both universities by including them in a single paragraph. While I understand that the course offerings and classes are similar, there is still an existing difference between the two universities that offer these courses. Find the differences and present those as the reasons why you opted to enroll for these universities. The idea, is that you have to convince the scholarship committee that you will have a positive career outlook regardless of which university or course of study you are approved for / admitted to.

The best way to approach these changes would be to write a new essay based upon the guide instructions I have provided to you here. You should find it easier to write the scholarship essay once you complete the guide requirements. I hope I can read your revision so I can assist you in finalizing it soon.

Writing Feedback / Parents often wonder whether they ought to let their children spend time on TV, video and PC games [9]

You have the format of the essay all wrong in your second version. There is a particular discussion format that must be followed at all times for a discussion comparison and personal opinion essay. If you can memorize the format, it will be easier for you to write the succeeding essays that require a 2 point of view and one personal opinion discussion. The format is really easy to remember. Just write it in this manner:

Par. 1: Summary overview and presentation of your opinion.
Par. 2: First point of view discussion with supporting information
Par. 3: Second point of view with supporting information
Par. 4: Your personal opinion that supports the point of view and information presented in paragraph 3.
Par. 5: Conclusion which is comprised of a prompt restatement, 2 points of view, repetition of your personal statement.

There are always 5 paragraphs in any given essay for IELTS. The above discussion outline is applicable to the "Discuss both views and give your opinion" prompt instruction. Remember the format. This will make it easier for you to write this essay type in the future.

Letters / My motivation letter for a scholarship purpose - expressing interest in studying at the University [2]

Asma, since this motivation letter is for a scholarship, you need to present the essay in such a manner that it will show the manner in which the scholarship will be able to help you once you are granted the study grant. Right now, the essay is lacking focus, and does not really deliver a clear motivation for your desire to study in Europe. So what can you do to better reflect the requirements of this motivational letter? You can start by narrowing down the focus of your desire to study abroad to only one, highly specific, interesting, and important purpose. It would help if you can indicate a method by which your studies in Europe will help you address a specific situation in your home country that you feel requires proper attention and the application of world-class solutions. From that point, explain your current financial situation that is holding you back from being able to study in Europe without a scholarship. Delve on the reasons that you feel your motivation and objectives for study abroad tie in with the scholarship objectives. That way your motivation becomes supportive of the scholarship and also, offers an idea as to how you might be able to give back to the scholarship after you graduate. These points would make excellent starting points for your revised letter. I hope that we can continue to improve your letter upon the application of my suggestions.

Writing Feedback / Investing more on railways means investing in a safer future for us and our children [3]

Anna, I believe that the overall score for your essay should fall within the passing range of 5. You came up with an essay of an adequate length that shows how you tried to display more complex sentences and also increased vocabulary. While you sometimes failed to accurately present your thought process in paragraph 2, which caused a certain degree of stress for the reader, most of the intentions that you had for the paragraphs were clear enough to be understood. It is actually the second paragraph that resulted in a lower score for your essay because the discussion you presented was not coherently presented. There were some grammar and sentence structure errors as well that definitely contributed to the confusing discussion in paragraph 2. It should be noted though, that you presented a pretty convincing discussion in the parts where the reader could somehow make out what you are saying with less stress than the other points of the essay. That is why you managed to get a 5, in my opinion, for this essay.

Letters / Letter of Recommendation from Supervisor - expressing support for a student [5]

Hey there. Present the paragraph about your work as a research assistant in a separate paragraph. Add more information to it regarding how you participated in the research. What tasks were assigned to you, how you handle the assignments or pressures of the job, and what the end result of the research was based upon your assistance. That is imperative because the reviewer needs to see how skilled you are in terms of research since you are a masters degree student and will probably be taking a thesis based program along with your regular course load. This will serve as evidence of your ability to handle the pressures and demands of a masters degree curriculum and also, offer the reviewer extra information as to how well versed you might be in the field of interest that you are applying for admission to. The rest of the essay just needs some grammar correction later on. Since the grammar problems do not distort the message of the letter, I am not very concerned about correcting it before the final content version is completed.

Writing Feedback / Parents often wonder whether they ought to let their children spend time on TV, video and PC games [9]

You were not able to discuss both points of view in your essay prior to giving your opinion. Always remember to deliver the required elements of the essay in order to score better in the Task Accuracy portion. That means you have to present the opposing side first, the side that you support next, then your opinion in support of the previous paragraph. That way the 3 discussion elements of the prompt at accurately represented in your essay. Make sure that you always refer back to the prompt requirements prior to your submitting your essay for a score. If you miss out on a single scoring criteria, you risk failing the whole test because your overall score will be dragged down by the missing or mistakenly represented portions. In this case, you missed out on a whole discussion regarding why children should be allowed to spend time watching TV and other things because you went directly to your personal opinion before discussing the general supportive opinion of that side of the discussion.

Scholarship / My experiences as a student and professional. Letter of Self-Introduction KGSP [7]

Hello Julian. Yes, I specifically mean the awards that you won in school, specifically in college because you are applying for a masters degree and as such, must show proficiency and an academic ability to not only handle the demands of the course, but also inform the scholarship committee that you have the ability to excel as a student in this field. Most specially since the demands of a KGSP scholarship is unique and very difficult to accomplish. Try to introduce your non academic interests as well in this essay. The essay looks too much to your academic and professional side so there is a lack of balance when it comes to who you are as a person. The reviewer is also interested in that. Tell him who you are when you are not busy with school or work. What do you for fun? Do you have any social advocacy that you feel can help to establish a side of your personality that could be considered an asset to the program? If you do, then please, go ahead and introduce it to the reviewer. Just make sure it will all fit on the page requirement.

Essays / Scholarship essay on describing career or academic plans [4]

You have me at a disadvantage here Utkarsh. I am not sure if you want this essay to be graded on a TOEFL, IELTS, GRE, or PET level. My indecision lies in the fact that you did not specify this to be an exam essay and also, what kind of exam you are taking.The main components for the general scoring of an essay, regardless of the exam type normally fall within 4 - 7 categories. However, the 7 category judgment is normally used in a PET test, which I doubt you are taking so your essay would be judged on 4 criteria which would (normally) be as follows (Similar criteria for TOEFL and IELTS) : Task Accuracy, Lexical Resource, Cohesiveness and Cohesion, Grammar Resource and Accuracy. The most important score here will be the first one, which is task accuracy since you need to show that you can understand and deliver your work based upon English language instructions. If you fail the task accuracy part, you will find it hard to bring up your score in the remaining levels.

Now, if you asking me how the essay will be judged by a reviewer, then that will all depend upon the qualifications that you present. Nobody really knows how a reviewer judges an essay but it is normally judged based upon merit, the opinion of the reviewer, the school criteria for its applicants / scholars, and the supporting documents that you present. The essay is only a form of pre-interview that, when combined with your other documents creates the basis of the considerations for your essay and possible scholarship.

Writing Feedback / Parents often wonder whether they ought to let their children spend time on TV, video and PC games [9]

It would be best if you can pick only one side to discuss as your opinion on the essay because that shows a clear understanding of the prompt requirement and, that is the usual response expected by the examiner as well. That is because this is not a comparison essay that asks you to compare and contrast both sides of an issue. However, if you wish to discuss both sides, you will need to pick only 1 strong argument in support of each position. Both of which you should present in a single paragraph of at least 3 sentences to justify your opinion. Here is what I suggest, write your opinion on the manner I describe here. I'll read it and tell you if you did it properly or not. Then I'll show you an example of how to write the paragraph in a better manner. I think you will learn better that way.

Writing Feedback / Percentage of different types of energy used and their greenhouse emission in Australian household [2]

Janice, the information that you present is relevant to the pie chart presented. The weakness of your comparison statements comes from the way that you structure the paragraphs. I suggest that you look up a list comparison synonyms online and memorize how to use them in comparison sentences. The is an abundance of examples online for you to refer to. By constantly referring to various modes of comparison within every paragraph, you will increase your lexical resource score and also create more complex sentences with the overall essay. The mechanical presentation of the information will also be minimized as you will be forced to develop more creative thought presentations for the information provided. You understand the information, so focus on improving your comparison sentences for now.

Writing Feedback / Parents often wonder whether they ought to let their children spend time on TV, video and PC games [9]

To, you have written a pretty good discussion of the two points of view in this essay. However, you do not accurately develop your personal opinion as required by the essay. The personal opinion should have been the 4th paragraph of this essay in order to allow you to present all of the supporting data related to your personal opinion. Don't forget that the IELTS paragraph requirement has a maximum of 5 paragraphs. You definitely had the space to better develop your personal opinion in relation to the side of the argument that you support. In the current form of your essay, you are missing an important aspect of the discussion so your conclusion is terribly weak. Your overall score would have to be around a 4 due to the lack of personal opinion development.

Letters / Letter of Recommendation from Supervisor - expressing support for a student [5]

Iwan, when presenting your name, there is no need to include your middle initial. The way you have it written on the page at the moment makes it a bit difficult to understand your name. Removing the P will help the reviewer to understand what your full name actually is. By the way, your letter contains missing information regarding the person writing the letter of recommendation. The missing information pertains to the number of years that this professor worked with you. In order to ensure an authoritative presentation of the relationship, he needs to have been your teacher and adviser for at least one year. Indicate the number of years that he worked with you. Also, the person recommending you needs to indicate his own name in the essay along with his academic position in relation to his introducing you as the person he is writing this letter for. The information in the letter itself is accurate and is relevant to the kind of student traits that a reviewer would be interested in learning about you. Please add information about the 3 years that you were his lab assistant. Indicate the kind of work that you did for him which would further strengthen your background and show the kind of skills that can help you excel as a student overseas. Once you do that, the essay should be good to go.