Undergraduate / The importance of Register in Marketing professions [7]

Hmmmm . . . possibly this assignment is related to the assigned readings for your class and to material your teacher has covered in lectures. So, you should review the readings and your class notes to get a better idea of where you should start when you go to do additional research. That might make it easier to track down sources that will help you write your essay.

Research Papers / Your way of writing 10 or more pages research paper (univ or college level) [10]

To elaborate on what I meant on the mini-essay thing:

Let's say you have to write a five paragraph essay for high school on, say, gun control. Your essay outline might look a bit like this:

Thesis: Gun control has little effect on crime.

Point A: Violent crime rates are often lower in countries with higher rates of gun ownership.

Point B: Gun crime may increase with gun ownership, but usually this merely replaces non-gun crime.

Point C: High rates of gun ownership may actually discourage criminal activity.

This would give you two to three pages of essay, by the time you had finished adding in statistics and examples to back up your points. If you wanted to expand it to a 10 page essay, though, you could treat each point as a mini-thesis.

Thesis: Violent crime rates are often lower in countries with higher rates of gun ownership.

Point A: By law, every Swiss male over twenty must own an assault rifle. Yet Switzerland has one of the lowest crime rates in Europe.

Point B: Mexico has very strict gun control, yet is plagued by gun violence.

Point C: The Czech Republic has fairly loose gun control compare to the rest of Europe, yet its crime rates are no higher.

So, instead of having one paragraph on the sub-topic of how violent crime rates and gun control go together in various countries, you now have three. If you do this for each of the points in the original essay, you will have tripled the length of the body of the essay. This allows you to explore your points in much more detail, and to add great depth to your essay, without having to master anything more than the writing structures you have been studying throughout your previous schooling.

Graduate / Law School Personal Statement ("I am a fighter.") [11]

If you want more feedback, post your revised draft here.

Writing Feedback / TOEFL - modern society has become more complex, so it is essential for the young people [10]

You might want to post your revised draft here when you are finished making the proposed changes so we can offer you more feedback.

Scholarship / What can you contribute to ___ essay? - alumni scholarship [11]


What talents?


How?


How?


Why?

Answer the above questions, and you will find yourself adding the examples you need. Please note that all answers should be in the form of personal anecdotes.

Writing Feedback / TOEFL - modern society has become more complex, so it is essential for the young people [10]

Make sure you are using the right part of speech when using words with multiple forms. I notice you sometimes use nouns instead of adjectives and vise versa:

"because people with these abilities can also be creative ,"

"In addition,youths can have more opportunity if they have the ability to plan and organise."

"Last but not least,the ability to plan and organise can offer you a creative mind"

Research Papers / Your way of writing 10 or more pages research paper (univ or college level) [10]

Writing a ten page paper isn't really all that more difficult that writing a three page one. Once you have your three or four main points in defense of your thesis, instead of thinking of each one as something to be dealt with in its own paragraph, treat each one as the topic of its own mini-essay. That is, you can use a standard five paragraph essay structure as a basic building block to construct essays of just about any length you choose. That's why teachers emphasize the format so strongly throughout school, even though no one in real life, or even in undergraduate studies, ever has to write a five paragraph essay.

This is pretty much how you should deal with any goal that seems too large for you to handle -- break it down into smaller steps you know you can deal with relatively easily. Obviously, you still need to have the basic material upon which to draw your points, so the research-doing and note-taking is definitely necessary, but it helps if you are thinking about the material from the outset as something divisible.

Writing Feedback / CBEST: Technology today has been positive or negative impact? [16]

"Intelligent machines based on technology are involved in many activities today across the world." Um, no. We have yet to create a machine that manifests anything resembling true intelligence. To explain that in more detail would involve a fairly complicated look at debates over what constituents A.I., so I'll forebear. Just be aware that you should rephrase.


Really? I'd have said we've been using technology to feed ourselves since the advent of agriculture. Come to think of it, even primitive hunters normally use spears, or arrows, or stone knives to catch their prey and then cook it over a fire, so you'd have to go back even further to find a time when we fed ourselves without technology.

Issues of timelines aside, Simone has a valid point -- you should probably say that technology allows us to solve basic problems more easily and efficiently than we could otherwise, which is what you say elsewhere in your essay.

Writing Feedback / My first essay exercise - "we learn our most important lessons in school?" [3]

Before: "As we see, this issue is so complex and so controversial that many people might hold different view due to their respective angle. Someone may agree that we can reap more benefit from school. In my opinion, however, I have good grounds to conclude that we should attach importance to acquiring knowledge from society, which is more important than learning in school."

After: "Knowledge learned from society is more valuable than knowledge gained in school"

Nothing else in your introduction particularly needed saying. If you want to have an introduction that is longer than one sentence, you might start by defining your key terms -- what do you mean by "knowledge learned from society," and "knowledge learned from school?" You could also preview your reasoning -- why do you believe that the former is better than the latter. Your first sentence of your second paragraph, for instance, probably belongs in the intro.

Be concise, and use parallel structure:

"First of all, it would be an inerrability to draw this conclusion generally and the merit of this conclusion is that Encouraging students to have an internship outside school will teach them toincrease their positivity tostudy questions think independently, broaden their imagination, and make them finally they will be more creative."

I'll hold off on editing the rest of the essay until you have gone through and revised for conciseness. Try to say what you want to say in as few words as possible.

Writing Feedback / TOEFL - should history be a mandatory course to university students? [5]

But how would this be of any use to international students? Bear in mind that universities often have a portion of the student body that comes from outside the country where the university is located. Also, what about universities outside of your country? Should they also force their students to learn the history of how their countries were industrialized? If so, what makes that particular aspect of a nation's history worth knowing?

Writing Feedback / CBEST personal essay - an unforgettable person you have encountered in your life [13]

You are making progress. You still need to work on being more specific and detailed though:

"Always strait-laced and well dressed, Mr. Taylor spread a respectful attitude to the entire class." Why would he come to class in a tux? Or was he not that well-dressed? Do you see how the term doesn't really do much, descriptively? You do sort of go on to mention the tie, but the comparison needs some actual description welded to it if it is to stand up properly.

"blue eyes, like Michelangelo's paint, " I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Michelangelo used several shades of blue in his painting.

"Hi had a remarkable talent to teach student and to transmit knowledge to others. I had a few math teachers but only Mr. Taylor knew it how to make students to love math." That's wonderful. Now, how about you tell us how he did this? Imagine that you were trying to explain this to another teacher that you wanted to be more like Mr. Taylor.

And so on. Keep making your essay more descriptive, and it will keep improving.

Research Papers / "Going the extra distance" - research paper -- and customer service [11]

I agree with you -- I just dislike the prejudice against wikipedia, that's all, and wouldn't avoid citing it myself if it happened to contain information I wanted to use. In fact, I might cite it just to prove a point. But grabbing a definition from a dictionary would be the safest course of action, and is easy to do, as so many of them are online nowadays anyway.

Book Reports / King Lear naivety and inability to control his emotions (ENG4U class) [17]

Great job! I look forward to seeing what you come up with on the Stone Angel.

Graduate / Law School Personal Statement ("I am a fighter.") [11]

As long as you are ruthlessly cutting verbiage, you might as well replace all of your weak, pathetic verbs with strong, admirable ones, too. You can read about how to do that here:

Undergraduate / Barrier between me and my dream career; UT AUSTIN; SOP [10]

Yes indeed, your currently stated purpose is too obvious to be worth mentioning. Of course you want to get into the university you are applying to, and presumably you want to do well there. The university wants to know what you will do with your degree once you have it. You may not know, just yet, what aspect of law will interest you the most. After all, many undergrads don't even know what they plan to major in, much less what they plan to specialize in in their graduate studies. Don't worry, though -- what you pick here isn't binding, so just choose whatever sounds most interesting to you at the moment, and go with that. If necessary, do some research so you can talk about your chosen career intelligently.

Simone, I love the implications in your pairings. Subtle, but hilarious.

Scholarship / What can you contribute to ___ essay? - alumni scholarship [11]

Why not post what you already have? That would make it much easier for us to suggest ways in which you could improve your writing, as well as to identity areas where new examples would be a good idea.

Research Papers / "Going the extra distance" - research paper -- and customer service [11]

Obviously if a professor has told the student not to use wikipedia, or if the university itself has labeled it inadmissible, then the student should not use it. However, many professors also use wikipedia themselves, and realize that it is no more likely to contain errors than any comparable, admissible print source. As with any source, the person using it must critically evaluate what it says, and compare it with other sources to determine its accuracy. I suspect that wikipedia will always fall into a "love it or hate it" area, though, with some profs absolutely hating it and others not much minding or even approving of it.

Speeches / Need pointers for a persuasive speech in getting a patron for life [6]

Prior experience in a field is always a good thing to mention when trying to get a job, so sure, that would work.

And Simone is right. You need to explain "gender" before you explain the compound terms that build on it, if you want the essay to flow smoothly.

Research Papers / "Going the extra distance" - research paper -- and customer service [11]

The problem with Gradesaver and Cliffnotes is that, as you admit, they tend to be read as substitutes for the book. I suspect there is nothing in them that a student couldn't come up with himself by reading the text carefully. At the very least, students should be able to make the points summarized in Cliffnotes in their own words, using quotations from the texts, and so not need to cite those sources. I agree that Wikipedia has some reputation issues, and I certainly wouldn't recommend using it as the main source for a paper. But in this case, it has been quoted once, to provide a definition no one would actually disagree with. At most the prof might make a note on the paper advising against use of Wikipedia in the future -- I doubt it would lose the student marks, though.

Book Reports / I have trouble developing a thesis statement for Oedipus the King [10]

Again, though, you might want to post your outline so that we can let you know if you are on track to creating such a defense.

I can't believe I'm about to write this, but . . . there is nothing wrong with a little bit of post-modern thinking. As long as people remember that texts were written by authors for a reason, and that that purpose is likely to limit the range of defensible readings of them. The problem comes when people insist that texts function entirely independently of the author's intentions.

Writing Feedback / War -- victor or no victor? [45]

Put another way, it is entirely possible that you have encountered an unfair teacher who deducts grades out of personal bias. Such teachers do indeed exist, and if this is the case, you have my full sympathy. It is also possible that you have encountered two or three such teachers -- some people are just genuinely unlucky. If, however, you find that the majority of your teachers deduct marks from your work for the same reasons, you might want to start asking yourself if the world is really a harsh, unfair place in which everyone is set against you, or whether perhaps the problem lies with someone other than them.

For instance, many students who receive a poor grade ask themselves where they went wrong, and how they could improve next time, instead of, say, repeating what they did while taking detailed notes to prove that they are the victims of a sinister plot to punish them for their personal beliefs. It is difficult to say how the matter stands in this case, as you have not posted either the essay in question or your teachers comments. On the one hand, as Simone points out, you are extremely intelligent. Reading some of your earlier posts in which you deconstructed my arguments on various topics was highly entertaining, and in some cases your logic as tightly argued as anything I would write. On the other hand, you also tend to be . . . how can I phrase this . . . a tad defensive and, well, very, very self-assured. This can lead to a certain narrow-mindedness that is unlikely to be appreciated by teachers, whether they agree with you or not.

Writing Feedback / Essay response to Thoreau - "Does adulthood takes away the true spirit of life?" [5]

There are multiple guides to citing in MLA format online that you can find via a google search. For instance, is the very first web site at the top of the list. Also, Office 2007 has an auto-cite feature that can be set to many different citation formats, including MLA.

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

The biosphere, yes. The biosphere is not a closed system -- it continually gets an influx of energy from the sun. In the long run, though, even the biosphere will break down as the sun ages and ceases to provide sufficient energy to sustain it. Also, I question whether the biosphere pre-oxygen and the biosphere post-oxygen have enough in common to be considered the same system in any meaningful sense. Unless you take the Gaia system as being essentially the same as long as there is some life in it, though that seems a bit too broad to be useful as a definition.

Research Papers / Research paper on HR related topics [6]

If you are really stuck getting started, ask the Overmind. A Google search for "H.R. Research topics" will quickly give you an idea of what other people in the field are up to.

Writing Feedback / ielts essay: Should students be taught to compete or to cooperate? [5]

"On the other hand, the significance of competition is that how to become more excellence to gain the victory" I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say here, but I suspect you mean "Competition hones our skills."

"The greater our goal is, the more competition we need. " I think you mean "cooperation" rather than "competition."

Your overall argument is fairly good. Game theory states that the best strategy in any open-ended non-zero sum game is reciprocity with a modicum of forgiveness, which sort of favors your view.

Writing Feedback / TOEFL - should history be a mandatory course to university students? [5]

You might want to specify which history courses you want to be mandatory. Your first argument seems to assume that the courses would be on a country's own history. However, making history credits mandatory would presumably still allow students to choose which period of which nation's history they wanted to study. This in fact is very similar to the first year policy of the university I went to for my undergrad. In such a case, students might well study history without learning a thing about their own nation's history, especially if they come from less geopolitically important nations. In the case of international students from smaller nations, they may find themselves at a university that doesn't even offer any history courses on their native land. So, your first argument sounds like it would make a lot more sense if you were talking about mandatory high school courses, where people would be forced to learn about the country they were living in. It doesn't seem to apply so well to university courses, though. To make it work, you will have to elaborate on your point a bit more.

Writing Feedback / CBEST personal essay - an unforgettable person you have encountered in your life [13]


You can delete all of the above, as it has nothing really to do with answering the prompt.

For the rest of your essay, it suffers from an overabundance of weak verbs. So, I suggest you read this article about proper verbs, then revise your essay to eliminate as many weak verbs as possible, especially forms of "to be" such as "is, was, were, are." Once you have done that, post the revised version here for further feedback.

Research Papers / "Going the extra distance" - research paper -- and customer service [11]

Most body paragraphs should contain at least one quotation, possibly two or three, depending upon their length. This is true of most academic papers, and doubly so of research papers, as the quotations from your research should form the foundation of everything you are writing. That said, you need to fully integrate and explicate each quotation, making sure it serves your purpose rather than simply taking up space.

I'll play the contrarian, though, when it comes to wikipedia -- unless your prof has specifically forbidden it, there is no reason not to use it. It has been shown to be roughly as accurate as any print encyclopedia, and covers far more topics, especially recent events, in far more detail. The strongest case against using wikipedia tends to be that encyclopedias of any sort are generally too shallow to make good research sources, but for a simple definition, this doesn't really apply.

Writing Feedback / Traveling in a group led by a tour guide give us a safe, useful and exciting excursion & save time [7]

Or

Tour guides possess professional knowledge of an city that allows them to avoid dangerous areas.

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


This is an interesting view. How do you square it with the second law of thermodynamics?

Essays / comparing the tragic flaws in Hamlet and Gatsby [15]

It helps too if you can find some connection between the similarities and differences. So, "Despite having the same X, Hamlet and Gatsby manifest this trait differently through A, B, and C." Or, "While Hamlet and Gatsby are completely different in terms of X, they end up acting similarly in A, B, and C." This gives you an arguable thesis, rather than a list of similarities and differences that most people probably wouldn't challenge.

Book Reports / I have trouble developing a thesis statement for Oedipus the King [10]

At this point, you may want to post your outline (if you have one) to make sure that you have sufficient evidence for your thesis. As most of the posts here indicate, you are trying something that is a bit different. That's not necessarily bad, but if you don't craft a strong case for your thesis, you are likely to lose even more marks than such a failure would normally incur if you had a standard thesis.

Essays / Essay on myself, how to write it? [35]

Hi Sajid. If you need help figuring out how to use this site, try reading through the FAQ forum. I look forward to reading any threads you create.

Essays / "Growing up and self-improvement" essay - how can i write a topic? [7]

You might also look at how you would define growing up, and what role self-improvement plays in that process, or on how one might improve oneself as one grows up (regardless of whether the two have to be linked). The phrasing of the question allows you to write on pretty much any aspect of the topic, so long as you can work both growing up and self-improvement into your response.

Writing Feedback / IELTS essay : Nowadays majority of people are trying to live in the cities [6]

You have a decent essay structure, and while you do have some grammatical errors, they tend not to interfere with the reader's ability to understand your point. I'd write some more practice essays and post them here (don't forget to start them in a new thread, though). These sorts of essay are very formulaic, and after writing a couple of dozen, you should be able to quickly compose one without much difficulty.

Undergraduate / Personal Essay/Personal Statement, "connection between me and science" [10]

Okay, but you see how the original phrasing was confusing. Simone and I each interpreted it differently, and we're both intelligent readers. So, you should revise the sentence to make sure there is no confusion on the part of your intended audience when they read it.

Undergraduate / UCF Essay:Why did you choose to apply to UCF? ("Christmas 1997") [3]

The essay suffers from a problem that is fairly common in application essays dealing with this sort of prompt -- it could be easily used for any university, simply by substituting a different name for UCF. Do some research on UCF, and find out the names of specific courses, programs, and professors that make it appeal to you, so that you can praise UCF specifically, rather than in terms so general as to be meaningless.

Also:


About? You don't know whether you were 6, 7, or 8 on December 25th, 1997?

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

As with many of the essays and reflections you post here, you are dealing with very abstract concepts. You might want to go through and expand on your points, explaining them with detailed, concrete examples that will help your readers to fully understand your meaning. I like the idea of essay as conversation, btw, where you have one of your readers responding in italics.

Essays / comparing the tragic flaws in Hamlet and Gatsby [15]

Well, they are both tragic, and flaws, which gives you two similarities right there. While that may sound facetious, it is something to bear in mind. A tragic flaw is a character trait that might, in other circumstances, be seen as a virtue. So, Hamlet's tendency to be very analytical might have made him a very good scholar or policy wonk. It makes him a poor prince and avenger, though. Unfortunately, he finds himself pulled back from university to fill the latter two roles, and so his analytical mind works against him, as he keeps postponing what he has to do as a result of overthinking his situation. Gatsby's flaw is different. He can't see that Daisy is incapable of loving anyone other than herself. He doesn't think through who Daisy is carefully enough, or what it would mean if he convinced a woman to fall in love with him when he was pretending to be someone he wasn't. But this mindless dedication to a goal might have served him well if he had fixated on a different goal. In fact, if he had been put in Hamlet's position, he probably wouldn't have had much difficulty in striking Claudius down within an act of learning of Claudius's treachery.

Essays / comparing the tragic flaws in Hamlet and Gatsby [15]

Hmmmm . . . well, Hamlet spends most of the essay seeming to be something he isn't. Gatsby spends most of the book pretending to be something he isn't. So there's a similarity. Both are pursuing goals that are very difficult to attain. Really, in Hamlet's case, a goal that has to end in his death, and in Gatsby's case, a goal that is probably impossible, even with his death. So that's a second similarity

Hamlet's main problem is that he over thinks his situation. Gatsby's is arguably that he doesn't think his situation through clearly enough. That is a difference.

Well now, that's interesting: the similarities arise from the difference, which is not just any difference but a case of diametric opposites. If one were to explore how that happens, one might have an interesting basis for a comparison and contrast essay . . .