Writing Feedback / Single career or several careers? Both have negatives and positives [4]

You seem to be arguing that having a single career is easier than having multiple ones. However, Simone is right -- the prompt seems more to be asking you to explain if the trend exists, rather than if it is good or bad. You can certainly mention both the positive and negative social and psychological aspects of this trend, but at the moment the first half of your essay seems to be missing.

Undergraduate / "Recognizing my mistake and a way to fix it" - help me with the repetition :) [5]

The experience itself is sort of interesting -- a coincidence of symptoms that awakens with in you an awareness of your own mortality. The significance of that experience needs to be explored in more detail, though. Specifically, you might want to talk about how it inspired you to study whatever it is you want to study, or to apply whatever university you are applying to.

Essays / The Importance Of Parents in Child's Life. [20]

Certainly one can hope that that is the case. I don't know if that can ever substitute for the love a child should get from his or her parents, though.

Graduate / Career objectives for Electonics and instrumentation engineer [6]

Wow, a lot of new posts like this just recently. Give us something to work with, a rough draft of some sort, even if it's really, really bad. Remember the old adage "Forum moderators help those who help themselves." We aim to teach people how to improve their own work, not to do that work for them.

Essays / The Importance Of Parents in Child's Life. [20]

I'd say that depends on the parents, really.

Writing Feedback / True Friendship Essay (living without friends) [12]

Indeed. It is much better for people to learn what errors they have made here, before they hand it in to be marked or otherwise judged, than to find out after the fact.

Writing Feedback / "People of MTV generation have no patience. They want instant satisfaction." [84]


But they are two different questions of the same kind. At one time, people recognized this, and treated them as such (only they called the spaghetti monster "God"). It is amusing that, having cast aside the concept of God, so many cling to the idea of an afterlife. They want the continuation and the bliss without any of the pesky necessity for moral behavior.I suspect that makes New Age-ism dysfunctional, even for a set of spiritual beliefs.

Writing Feedback / How can I play into the hands of my Maker - Sunday Morning [51]


Einstein hated that misinterpretation of his theory.


Electroshock therapy as a treatment for graying hair. I like it. :-)

The ideas you mention actually sound sort of interesting. I would like to closely read the texts you mention -- they sound sort of pseudoscientificky, but that could simply be the fact that you are importing new age terms and associating them with scientific ones.

Undergraduate / 'trauma patient emergency care' - Supplement essay medical school [17]

"It was a rewarding feeling to be able to help the patient recuperate from such a horrific trauma" = "I found helping the patient recuperate from such a horrific trauma rewarding."

Undergraduate / An appeal letter for Business Management Admission ! [6]

Try rewriting your appeal letter using only 60% of the words you currently do, and eliminating every instance of the verb "to be," which includes "is," "are," "was," and "were."

While you're at it, get rid of anything that casts you in a negative light, or that references why SMU would be good for you. Your focus should be wholly on what a great, deserving candidate you are for the program.

Undergraduate / Success could be measured by outcome, effects, or the influences one makes [3]

Yep, verbiage aplenty here. (Isn't "extra verbiage" redundant?) In any event, try to say what you want to say using fewer words. For instance:

Before: "Success could be measured by outcome, effects, or the influences one makes. Simple doings do lead to change, like putting a smile on an orphan's face, be there for an old friend who needs you or to simply treat your younger brother well for a week. These would make a huge effect if made by many, and these are the kind of activities I try to include in my daily life. However, I am aiming at giving the world something to remember me with, and to make a massive accomplishment under a name of a woman, a Saudi Muslim woman."

After: "I try to include in my daily life activities such as putting a smile on an orphan's face, being there for an old friend who needs me, or simply treating my younger brother well. However, while all of these minor action improve the world, I hope to accomplish something bigger with my life."

Do something similar with your other paragraphs, then re-post for more feedback.

Student Talk / Exam passing tips - its my final year [71]

Study hard; write logical, well-thought out, grammatically correct essays; and craft well-written, correct responses to exam questions.

There, that was easy. Now, do you want to ask something a bit more specific?

Writing Feedback / "People of MTV generation have no patience. They want instant satisfaction." [84]

What was the Big Question, again? 6*9? Adams point is that the big question isn't really a question, so much as nebulous cloud of uncertainty about what it all means, laced through with a vague terror that maybe nothing means anything at all.

Writing Feedback / IELTS; SHARE WEALTH AMONG POORER NATIONS [12]


Why would they need to help people who are already content?


The poor could try earning more money. Even if they can't, for whatever reason, this doesn't immediately mean that the rich should help them. If you live in a largish city, try walking around it for a couple of hours each day, giving $5 to everyone who asks you for change. At the end of a month (or two, or three, depending on how wealthy you are to begin with) do you think that everyone would be much wealthier than when they began, or that you would would merely be much poorer? Of course, you may object that you are not rich, but if you have access to the internet and plan on going to university, odds are good that you probably aren't poor. This would lead to the interesting notion that perhaps you should define your key terms, such as "poor," "rich," and "help."


How do you justify this?


"Therefore" implies a logical conclusion. There is no logic here, though, only a series of assertions.


This may be so, but you have not explained why this should be true.

And so on. Your essay mostly says that it would be nice if rich people helped out poorer people, and rich nations helped out poorer nations. This is a common sentiment, and it may even be true, but you haven't provided any logical reasons or examples to back up your points. So, you can either try to tighten the logic for the reasons you attempt to give, or come up with stronger reasons altogether.

Scholarship / 'Bournemouth University has one of the most advance educations in the world' - BU scholarship essay [31]

Yes, you put in a lot of work polishing this essay, and it shows. Good luck, and let us know if you get the scholarship or not.

Scholarship / 'Bournemouth University has one of the most advance educations in the world' - BU scholarship essay [31]

"I have had a course in 3Dsmax tool which I enjoyed." = 'I took an enjoyable course in 3dsmax"

"I also love playing sports and have been a part of many extra curricular activities since school. These experiences have given me a broader perspective to, a good understanding of life and a goal to aim for." = "I also love playing sports and have participated in many extracurricular activities that have given me a broader perspective on life."

Undergraduate / 'trauma patient emergency care' - Supplement essay medical school [17]

"This unique experience has given me a greater admiration for the art of the surgeon as well asand fostered my interest in pursuing this medical field of study."

Scholarship / 'Bournemouth University has one of the most advance educations in the world' - BU scholarship essay [31]


Me too. I certainly didn't go through and cut everything that you could get rid of -- that's your job. I just wanted to give you an example of the sort of thing to look for when searching for things to cut.

Scholarship / I need some advice on ideas - "Why do I deserve the scholarship" [42]

Maybe I'll give the novel another chance, just so I can add more to this discussion later.

Undergraduate / The direction I want to take my education; UWashington Bothell - PS/software systems [8]


How old were you here? You seem to be applying as an older student, who might think of 16-18 year-olds as kids. However, given that most applications like this are written by 17 year olds, the use of the word "kid" seems off, as in this sort of essay it would normally refer to someone much younger, who would certainly not be worried about buying a car.

Apart from that, your essay is well-written, and shows you have a clear sense of what you hope to accomplish at university, which makes it an excellent application essay.

Writing Feedback / Paper about an important movie [9]

You don't need to feel disappointed. Your writing is pretty strong. You just need to work on cleaning up your grammar. That's just a matter of reading and writing more in English, and practicing as much as possible.

Writing Feedback / Comparing Brutus's and Mark Antony's rhetoric in Julius Caesar [3]

You're on the right track. I don't know that you can say that Brutus's speech isn't effective at the beginning, though. The people do respond well to him. He has a good reputation, he offers to let the crowd kill him if they find him villainous, and they urge him to live. His rhetoric is pretty good. But he speaks first, and leaves once the crowd is calmed down. Antony comes along afterward, and speaks for a lot longer. He doesn't need to -- the crowd is ready to riot after the first part of his speech, but he gets a lot more air time, as it were. Part of the point here is that the crowd is so fickle, in need of a strong ruler.

Beyond that, I'd say you need to add more to your essay, and to break down the two speeches in much more detail than you do. What you have now is strong, but you could quote more extensively and add additional points. You only have ~500 words, and can go for half that again if necessary.

Writing Feedback / Paper about an important movie [9]

Your essay suffers from a host of minor grammatical errors, none of which are that serious on its own. In combination, though, they become a more serious problem. Here are a few fixes for you:

"This movie has taught me what to do to overcome my situation as an immigrant who just moved to America from China.

"The two go through their adventure in Tokyo together experiencing the differences between Japanese and American culture"

"The movie made me realize that living in any environment without understanding the native language of its own will prevent us from capitalizing on many opportunities."

Undergraduate / "My Mom" - help with most influential person essay. [5]


The essay isn't even particularly good in this regard, either. Your mom taught you dedication and perseverance! Wow!! Even overusing exclamation marks, I can't make that more interesting for you!!!

So, Simone is right -- you should write an original, moving piece that captures the essence of your mother, what makes her unique among women.

Essays / Having trouble with understanding an essay ("Is This the Promised End?") [10]

Technically, no. The idea is that the essay remains here, with the feedback on it, so that people can learn from it. If you are worried people might copy it, make sure to sign up here with your real name, so that your name and the date you posted your work appear along with the essay. That way, you can prove that the essay is really yours even if someone does try to copy it.

Writing Feedback / IELTS; GENDER EQUALITY @ UNI ADMISSION [4]

Ow. I'm going to join in the chorus of "you need to flesh out your essay." At the moment, you seem to be reliant on some very old gender stereotypes. Women can fly a plane, as long as they continue to be good housewives. Women should go into soft and nurturing fields; men should go into rough ones. Your essay reads like a caricature, the way a feminist might portray a conservative point of view to avoid having to respond to it seriously.

If you want to stick with your current thesis, you need to argue that university admissions should be based purely on academic merit, and that this may lead to gender imbalances in certain subjects, depending upon who applies for what.

If you want to argue for gender balance, then you might not want to focus quite so much on protecting poor oppressed women, and start looking more at what can be done to help poor oppressed men. After all, most campuses show a clear anti-male bias, and have done so for the past decade:

Undergraduate / 'trauma patient emergency care' - Supplement essay medical school [17]

Unfortunately, one of the bullets had struck the patient's left eye, leaving it dangling from its socket.

"'Hang on in there,' I uttered softly to him" I don't much like the use of "uttered" here, though it is not technically wrong. Could you find a better choice?

"This incident left me thinking about the fleeting nature of life and how only when one tightropes the thin line of life and death does one truly appreciates the precious gift of life." Great image. I hadn't even realized that "tightrope" could be used as a verb. Excellent job. Now, can you work it so that you don't use the word "life" three times in the same sentence?

That's about it. Your essay is already pretty strong, so there isn't much to correct.

Essays / Essay about why the 4th of july is celebrated? [7]

Hmmmm . . . the essay seems to have been removed. Did you copy it from another website, or merely post a copy of it on some other site yourself after finishing it?

Essays / Having trouble with understanding an essay ("Is This the Promised End?") [10]

It's possible, but how could anyone tell? :-)

Literary criticism in its current form tends to be largely meaningless, an exercise in illusion and pretension. Have you heard the one about the English professor who got so sick of this that he simply threw together an literary criticism piece using the largest words he could find, constructing sentences with them that were grammatically correct in their structure, but pure nonsense in their content? He actually got the essay published in a respectable academic journal, and had to write in afterward explaining what he had done. The story is probably apocryphal, but no one who has read a lot of literary criticism would be absolutely willing to bet money on it.

A book some people might find interesting:

Scholarship / I need some advice on ideas - "Why do I deserve the scholarship" [42]

I started reading the novel a while back. Couldn't get into it, though, which is unusual for me -- normally if a book is any good at all, I won't stop reading it until I get to the end, even if I really should be doing something else.

Scholarship / 'Bournemouth University has one of the most advance educations in the world' - BU scholarship essay [31]

That includes sentences that have nothing to do with you, or that state generic information that isn't particularly interesting.

"Animation industry has changed our lives. It is one industry that has been growing rapidly since centuries. Moreover, Nepal is a developing country with a potential in the digital technology business"

Writing Feedback / "Cellular Phones" - need someone proof read my paper [9]


Simone's already told you what your thesis is -- you just need to paraphrase it so that its in your own words.

Writing Feedback / GRE analytical writing ..TOPIC (the need for global universities.) [4]

You might also want to explain in a bit more detail what a "global university" would look like. If it has a physical location, it must be in a specific country. Would it then become a regular university with a particularly high level of international students? And if it selected students based purely on merit, would it tend to favor applicants from certain countries (those with higher levels of good public education)? And would this tend to make it even more like a regular university with a few extra international students? If the application criteria were something other than merit, would that lessen the university's effectiveness? And would a global university offer different programs than a regular one? If so, explain.

You sort of hint at the answers to some of these questions, but your notion of what a global university is should govern your attempts to explain why we need one or more of them.

Graduate / Statement of Objectives (Supply Chain Management department) [4]

AS I often advice people posting in these forums, try using stronger verbs. Your main verb is often a form of "to be," and even when it's not, your verbs tend to be weak and abstract, such as "help," "avoid," "provide," "believe," etc.

This article will give you some idea of how to remedy this problem:

Scholarship / 'Bournemouth University has one of the most advance educations in the world' - BU scholarship essay [31]

"And I have been a volunteer for the past six months at Nepal Children's Organization, an orphanage since the last six months. "

"It won awards for being the most innovative project, second onone of the best open-source software categoryprograms, and the best programawardfor a mobile application category "

"(here i wanted to mention that i could share my creativity as i belong to a different back ground.. but couldn't put it into proper words)" Well, what is your background, and how does it make you creative?

Graduate / Essay on different programmes (English, Finance, Global Studies) [4]

Are you applying to English Lit (which is what your thread title implies?) Because if so, nothing you say in your essay is relevant. Assuming that you are actually applying for Finance, which makes more sense given your stated BA, then, well, nothing you say in the essay is actually relevant. It's nice that you want to polish your English skills, but that isn't why one takes a graduate degree in finance.

And I agree with Simone about never starting sentences with "and."

Writing Feedback / No Driving Licenses for People Under 18 - Argumentation/ Persuasion Essay [4]


Whereas this couldn't possibly happen to 18 year-olds just leaving high school and having the freedom of being away from parental supervision for the first time?


This is a stronger point. Do some research and quote researchers who have shown that teenagers are biologically programmed to take more risks than older people (it's not just a matter of experience).

"Statistics have shown that teenagers have a higher chance of accidents." So what are the numbers for other age groups (you only talk about teenagers in the rest of the paragraph) If you look at other countries with a higher driving age, do you find that the youngest legal group of drivers still has the highest accident rate (in other words, are new drivers going to be the most accident prone regardless of what age they start driving).


They aren't good criticisms, though. See my comments on your other points for how the other side might try to counter you. Also, you can't say that the criticisms are valid, but that no intelligent person would agree with them, unless you believe you are unintelligent. Besides, you shouldn't be insulting people who disagree with you, as they are the people you are trying to persuade, and few people are persuaded by being called stupid.


Make sure to double check the statistics, though. If the only reduction has been in the number of 16 year-olds involved in car accidents, then the numbers won't be very convincing. Also, if the numbers are looking at teenager driving accidents only, you'll run into a variation of the same problem. The overall accident rate has to have declined, as a percentage of the driving population. This may actually be the case, but you should make sure -- reporters aren't noted for their grasp of statistics.

Scholarship / 'Bournemouth University has one of the most advance educations in the world' - BU scholarship essay [31]

"It won awards like most innovative project, second on open software category and best project on mobile application category." A pity it only won awards like most innovative project, because it would have been so much better if it has actually won the award for most innovative project.


I'd eliminate this sentence altogether. You don't really need it, and without context, it detracts from rather than adds to the impressiveness of what you are describing.

"My experiences include teaching English to the primary level children."

"And I have been a volunteer at Nepal Children's Organization, a child orphanage since six months." Do they even have adult orphanages? If not, you can eliminate the word "child." And has the organization really only be an orphanage for six months, as you claim, or is that that was how long you volunteered there?

"The research facilities and the faculty at the university are par excellent"

Writing Feedback / "Cellular Phones" - need someone proof read my paper [9]

A few things:

1. Your essay writing skills don't seem noticeably subpar. Your content shows a certain amount of thoughtfulness, your grammar is quite good, and your style is passable. You should have more confidence in your writing abilities. And I'm not just saying that to be nice -- I just left another thread in which I told the author that her writing style could be profitably compared to a form of cancer. If your writing was horrible, I would be, quite literally, the first one to tell you so.

2. You will find it easier to stay in the 250 word limit if you cut out redundant or verbose phrasing:

"While some consumers focus only on the positive effects, others focus primarily on the negative effects that cell phones have on society today. "

"Cellular technology has progressed so rapidly progressed and advanced over the past ten years that these specific devices have very littlefew limitations on what they can offer consumers."

"In conclusion, I think its safe to say that While technology can be extremely helpful to society it can also be very detrimental if improperly used."

3. Now that you've cut some stuff, you have room for more points. You might want to look at the psychological effects of having a cellphone. On the bright side, we're always connected to our friends now. We're never really alone, unless we choose to be. On the other hand, what does it say about our ability to function as mature human beings when our horror movies portray the worst fate that can befall us as entering into a cellphone dead zone?

Essays / Essay about why the 4th of july is celebrated? [7]

Yes, the question as posted is a fairly simple one that doesn't really need an entire essay to answer it. It certainly could be expanded into something very interesting, but you haven't really indicated anything that would lead us to do that . . .