Unanswered [3] | Urgent [0]
  

Posts by EF_Sean
Name: Writer
Joined: Dec 9, 2008
Last Post: Oct 30, 2009
Threads: 6
Posts: 3460  
From: Canada

Displayed posts: 3466 / page 66 of 87
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EF_Sean   
Mar 4, 2009
Undergraduate / Personal Essay (Questions are a necessary part of life) [12]

"the two of us developed a relationship more intimate than I had imagined." I'd go with "the two of us became closer than I had expected." Your phrasing isn't wrong, per se, but the word "intimate" can have connotations you clearly don't mean here.

Also, I'd tighten up the organization a bit, if that is what the essay is meant to demonstrate. You go from "questions" to "tutoring," to "child getting sick" to "life isn't fair" And while your ideas are all clearly connected, the number of different topics you touch on makes your essay seem less focused than it could be. A narrative essay focused on your learning of your student's illness might be much more powerful and moving.
EF_Sean   
Mar 4, 2009
Writing Feedback / Reading - My favorite subject essay [6]

Kevin's advice is great. That would turn the essay into an essay on your favorite books, which, if you like to read, is a ridiculously fun topic to write on.
EF_Sean   
Mar 4, 2009
Writing Feedback / Jame Joyce's Portrait [11]

If this is supposed to be a literary essay, you have some more work to do. The essay doesn't really analyze the novel -- it summarizes it. To write a literary essay, you need to come up with a thesis. For instance, you could answer the question "What does a young adult have to do to become a man (i.e. what does it mean to come of age)?" Also, get rid of the first person phrasing altogether.
EF_Sean   
Mar 4, 2009
Writing Feedback / Essay to Compare your Two Teachers [10]

Also, how long does this essay have to be? If it is supposed to be a standard five paragraph one, you are going to need to add more.
EF_Sean   
Mar 4, 2009
Essays / King Lear. How To Write An Essay "the audience is sympathetic towards King Lear" [7]

If you take Kevin's advice, you might choose to compare Lear to Edmund, or even to Goneril and Regan. After all, those three characters are also flawed, yet, with the possible exception of Edmund, they aren't really that sympathetic. Why is Lear sympathetic while the others are not? (hint: Lear, despite his hubris, is essentially non-malicious. That is, he doesn't want to hurt anyone. He just wants to retire.)
EF_Sean   
Mar 4, 2009
Writing Feedback / A creation of the mind - "Imagination" essay [7]

You might want to start by defining what you mean by imagination, then discuss how it both contrasts with and complements other positive mental attributes. That would give you a solid basis for a focused essay.
EF_Sean   
Mar 4, 2009
Writing Feedback / Reading - My favorite subject essay [6]

Also, don't forget that the prompt asks you to discuss a subject, rather than a specific class. So, while you might discuss how one particular reading class helped inspire you to take an extra interest in English, there should probably be more to the essay that deals with what you like about that subject as a subject. At the moment, it really sounds like you would be just as into math class if it were taught by the same teacher using the same techniques.
EF_Sean   
Mar 4, 2009
Writing Feedback / Jame Joyce's Portrait [11]

What sort of essay are you supposed to be writing, exactly? At the moment, this reads like a book review. If that's what you are going for, there is no reason you shouldn't use "I" or give your opinion about the book. It's also okay to summarize the plot as much as you do. If you are trying to write a literary essay, though, then all of these things are horrible weaknesses that need to be fixed. In that case, you would want a clear thesis that said something important and debatable about the novel, either about its theme, or character development, or even its writing style.
EF_Sean   
Mar 4, 2009
Scholarship / Explain why you feel you merit consideration as an applicant for an award or scholarship [11]

"I'm doing my best to restrain from buying anything unnecessary"

"In addition to the help scholarships will provide for pursuits, my character traits I have obtained from high school, motivation, persistence, and management, will take me to the finish like" This sentence doesn't seem to be finished. Also, this should really be the heart and soul of your essay, so all of these good qualities should be elaborated on and shown through specific examples, rather than merely told in a list.

You still need to tie everything back to the scholarship. The only reason you have given for deserving one is that your family is struggling financially, which you admit is happening to a lot of other families at the moment too. You do give a generally good impression of yourself in the rest of the essay, but you never explicitly connect the good qualities you mention about yourself to what you would do with the scholarship that would make you deserve to get one.

Hope this helps you in coming up with the next draft.
EF_Sean   
Mar 4, 2009
Writing Feedback / Castin Characters #1: Jim [8]

Well, yes, most morally horrible things are not worth it in the end. That, of course, is why people develop moral codes that most of us stick to most of the time. Still, the idea is hilarious, even if the actual act is a tad reprehensible.
EF_Sean   
Mar 3, 2009
Scholarship / Explain why you feel you merit consideration as an applicant for an award or scholarship [11]

Kevin's pretty much covered everything worth saying in his post, but I'll elaborate on his points anyway -- you need to explain why you deserve the scholarship. The economic hardship angle is good, especially if you are hoping for a bursary or needs-based scholarship. If you are hoping for a merit-based one, or want to be considered for both, you will need to add a lot more about what a great person you are. The fact that you came in first in your class for all of your projects is about the only relevant detail you have at the moment, in this regard, so perhaps you could start there and build on that. Good luck.
EF_Sean   
Mar 3, 2009
Undergraduate / I made a decision that change my life completely; Why I Want to Transfer to Cornell [4]

The ending isn't that bad. It clearly refers back to the opening, "We are raising you and your siblings to be better persons than your mother and I." The idea that being better educated than someone else doesn't make you a better person is a contemporary conceit of the left. While it is true that having a formal degree from a university doesn't necessarily make you better than a person without one, being educated does, by and large, tend to make you better than people who are not, in many, many ways.
EF_Sean   
Mar 3, 2009
Poetry / Neruda Poem, a reply to the author [5]

Now, try making it more poetic. Really, anything without meter isn't a true poem, so the obvious approach would be to make your work metrical. It isn't that difficult to put things in iambic pentameter. But, if you want to stick with the easier, modernist approach of creating broken up prose that you pass off as poetry, you could at least throw in some poetic techniques, anaphora, chiasmus, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, litotes, etc.
EF_Sean   
Mar 3, 2009
Writing Feedback / Essay to Compare your Two Teachers [10]

Here are some more grammatical fixes for you:

"My English teacher and my Maths teacher are the two teachers whom I admire the most."

"but one striking difference between them is particularly noticeable "

"My English teacher always tries his best to help us with studying English, especially encouraging us to speak frequently. "

"he can easily forgive for our mistakes and remind us not repeat them ."
EF_Sean   
Mar 3, 2009
Scholarship / In my own words: Why is a scholarship important to you? [5]

Don't talk about scholarships in general. Talk about this particular scholarship and why it is unique to for you.

That about covers it, really. They already know why scholarships in general are important -- that's why they have them. What they don't know is why they should give one to you instead of to one of the other hundreds of applicants. So, tell them. Even the first part of your essay doesn't really do this. It introduces you, which is okay, I guess, but you want better than okay for this sort of thing. Can you explain why the details you give about yourself form a justification for getting the scholarship? That would really strengthen your essay.
EF_Sean   
Mar 3, 2009
Writing Feedback / Castin Characters #1: Jim [8]

Each time a new person speaks, you should create a new paragraph. This makes it easier for the reader to keep track of the conversation. Apart from that, the essay is good -- I especially like Jim's prank; it's particularly horrible, morally speaking, yet also completely effective at achieving his goal.
EF_Sean   
Mar 3, 2009
Essays / King Lear. How To Write An Essay "the audience is sympathetic towards King Lear" [7]

Well, start by listing all of King Lear's flaws (pride, stubbornness, a touch of madness, etc.). Then, list the reasons readers might be sympathetic to him (he's old, he's been really good to the two daughters who persecute him, etc) Then track down quotations that show each trait and each reason. Then brainstorm ways in which the two categories influence each other. This will give you the evidence you need to create and support a thesis. Then, you can begin writing a first draft.
EF_Sean   
Mar 3, 2009
Research Papers / The Psychological, Physiological, and Neurological effects of Marijuana and Cocaine Use in Humans. [34]

Oh, the principle of letting people know where you get your facts from is fine -- after all, you need to be able check the validity of the sources. It the fact that there are over a dozen different competing standards that all involve horribly unnatural formats that is annoying. I mean, hanging indents? The complete reverse of the formatting of all other text? Someone thought this was a good idea?
EF_Sean   
Mar 3, 2009
Writing Feedback / A creation of the mind - "Imagination" essay [7]

That begs the question of what exactly imagination is. What makes you think imagination and logic are incompatible? Or that imagination is the opposite of science. Einstein came up with his theory of relativity after imagining what he would see if he were riding on a beam of light. No one therefore accused him of being either illogical or unscientific.
EF_Sean   
Mar 3, 2009
Research Papers / The Psychological, Physiological, and Neurological effects of Marijuana and Cocaine Use in Humans. [34]

I must admit, citing sucks. Really, its deadly dull, involves arcane rules that make no sense, and comes in a bewildering variety of types, none of which are compatible with one another. However, they do serve to acknowledge your sources in a way that, when properly done, frees you from those pesky charges of plagiarism and all the unpleasantness that follows them. This is especially important in this sort of essay because you include a lot of factual information that clearly comes from external research, because it just isn't common knowledge. So, if you have no citations, you are pretty much ipso facto guilty of plagiarism. If you made up citations that have no connection to your actual sources, you could likewise be in trouble if the person you hand it into bothers to check any of them. This is especially likely to be a problem if you used web sources, because if you didn't paraphrase, of if you only barely paraphrased, the passages are likely to be flag by anti-plagiarism software. If the parts that are flagged are clearly quoted and/or cited, then you're in the clear, but if not, you may find yourself having to answer some tough questions. So, if you decide not to cite, or to make citations up, be careful.
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Undergraduate / UT Austin issue of importance! Taking a Stand: Activism. [6]

Your problem seems to be that your issue is more like a meta-issue. I mean, if everyone became a passionate activist, that could cause a lot of social problems, because not everyone would be on the same side of every issue. For instance, you would have both more people being pro-choice activists and more people being pro-life activists. You would have more people being activists for public health care and more people being activists for reducing the size of government. You would have more activists for gun control and more activists for the freedom to bear arms. And so on. So, the lack of engagement by ordinary people in social matters is a meta-issue in the sense that it covers a wide range of issues, and affects both sides of each. Picking a more specific issue, such as the importance of health, sounds like a great idea, because then you go into detail about your point of view, and show that you know a lot about that issue.
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Undergraduate / Technology for ESL Students [6]

"ESL students can learn better with the use of technology, specially blogs." Um, that is a thesis statement. It is a focused statement about your topic that is debatable. So, start with that, then introduce the reasons why you believe the statement is true. That gives you an introductory paragraph that will act as an outline for the rest of your paper.
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Undergraduate / Why I Would Like to Transfer? - Common App [5]

Being more detailed and using specific examples rather than talking in generalities is always a good idea, so adding more specific details to the second paragraph would be a great course of action. That said, I thought the essay overall was strong. You write like someone who knows and respects the English language, and the essay is by-and-large composed of specific details about your personal experiences, which is how it should be.
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Undergraduate / 'unexplainable bond' - Burnett Honor College Essay for Entrance [4]

Specific is good, as the others have mentioned. In addition to specific anecdotes, you might want to discuss some of the specific values, apart from individualism and dedication, your mother imparted to you. These could, of course, be conveyed by any anecdotes you do add, so the essay shouldn't get too long.
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Essays / Essay on two different shows and how they construct gender stereotypes [4]

If you are still stuck after reading Tyler and Kevin's advice (all of which is great, btw) just pick two shows, watch them, and write down everything you can think of about how they construct gender stereotypes. This will give you a first draft. It may well be a horrible, crappy first draft, but that doesn't matter. What does matter is that you will have started, and can post your draft here to get feedback on what you should cut, what you should expand on, how you should restructure your ideas, etc. Then you can come up with a second draft that is fairly decent, and post that to get more advice, which you can then use to come up with a third draft that will be actually quite good, and so on, until you have an essay of the quality you desire.
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Scholarship / Scholarship Personal Statement (my dream of becoming a doctor) [9]

Just remember that you need to convey the idea that you desperately need the scholarship while simultaneously showing the reader that you are a wonderful person who absolutely deserves a helping hand. At the moment, you do a better job of doing the latter than the former, but you could tighten up the latter too. Good luck.
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Scholarship / Scholarship Essay - degree vs a positive contribution to society [5]

Sounds like you have a clear vision of what you want to do with your life. Good job. A couple of minor suggestions:

"I would love to help research and contribute to finding a cure for cancer."

"'When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it - this is knowledge,' from Confucius." Integrate your quote with the rest of the essay.
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Undergraduate / Why I Would Like to Transfer? - Common App [5]

Overall, this is pretty good. A few minor grammatical fixes:

"I was accepted to a few local colleges "

"When my internship started, markets were undergoing major changes and the country was beginning to fall into a recession,"

"and that one can never know enough"

"By attending a four-year college, I hope to gain a better grasp of essential economic theories"

"Cornell would provide me with the collegial experience that I am looking for."

"A well-rounded education will help me better understand how the banking industry affects the world we live in."
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Writing Feedback / eating disorders (Anorexia Nervosa), introductory paragraph [10]

Your last sentence wouldn't actually be a thesis. A thesis has to be debatable. It is, however, a good description of what you plan to write about, and as such is wholly appropriate to include in your introduction. I assume that the details you included in the first few sentences constitute background for readers who might not be familiar with the nature of the condition and who it normally affects, though if you plan to repeat that information elsewhere in your paper you don't particularly need it in the intro too.
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Grammar, Usage / Another MLA question [11]

One of the things I've done before in essays where all of the information comes from the same source is to just include a footnote at the end of the first citation that says "All information in this paragraph is condensed from ______" where the blank is filled by the name of your source. It looks neater and it frees you from any accusations of plagiarism. Plus, it isn't a violation of MLA format as long as your first citation is correct.
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Writing Feedback / eating disorders (Anorexia Nervosa), introductory paragraph [10]

This is a very well-written introductory paragraph. You give an overview of your topic and outline all of the main points you plan to discuss in the body. Once you have the rest of the paper written, you might want to go back and add a thesis, which will really be whatever conclusion you draw from your research. But other than that, it's fine.

"the primary population suffering from this disorder is composed of young females,"
EF_Sean   
Mar 2, 2009
Research Papers / The Psychological, Physiological, and Neurological effects of Marijuana and Cocaine Use in Humans. [34]

You latest draft is looking good. Of course, you don't have any citations in it, and so you will probably get a 0 on it after facing accusations of plagiarism, but you could fix that without too much difficulty. You can just throw in in-text citations next to all of the medical facts about marijuana -- you don't even need to replace them with direct quotations from the research to do this, though that might not be a bad idea. Don't forget to make sure you use whatever citation style the person you are handing it in to is expecting you to use. Good luck.
EF_Sean   
Mar 1, 2009
Writing Feedback / Short Story (heart still aches for Darren) [6]

This is a wonderfully written narrative essay. You have a great style and sense of important details. However, I couldn't help but notice that you said that the assignment was supposed to be a short story. Short stories normally have conflict, resolution, elements of plot. What you have now sort of doesn't. The main character feels nostalgic as she moves out of her old home. She continues to feel nostalgic. Then, a year-and-a-half later, she still feels nostalgic. So, while it is an excellent piece of writing, your English teacher might be critical of it if it is the wrong type of writing for the assignment! If you were aiming for a narrative essay, or even for a descriptive scene that could be part of a longer fictional work, you're on solid ground. If you really do need a short story, though, you may need to file this piece away for a while and try again.
EF_Sean   
Mar 1, 2009
Undergraduate / SBU Essay - An Intellectual Experience [5]

I agree with Tyler -- this is too much of a play review. Only in the second-to-last paragraph do you talk about how the play affected you personally. So, condense the summary of the play, and expand on the second-to-last paragraph. What are your own answers to the questions you pose? How did you come up with those answers? How has the process of answering them influenced your life? This will give you an essay that is far more personal and that will tell the reviewers a lot more about you than does the one you currently have.
EF_Sean   
Mar 1, 2009
Research Papers / The Psychological, Physiological, and Neurological effects of Marijuana and Cocaine Use in Humans. [34]

Well, there's plenty you can cut. Most if not all of the first paragraph, for instance, can go. It rambles on without really saying anything either pertinent or interesting.

Pretty much all of the amplifiers and qualifiers that you've scattered haphazardly throughout your body paragraphs can also be removed without detriment to the essay. For instance:

"It has been shown that after mere minutes smoking marijuana . . ." Not only is the amplifier here unnecessary, it's probably misplaced. I suspect you planned to put it before the "after."

"Some people report being detached and to some extent cognizant of experiencing a dissolution in deed and perception known as depersonalization"

You could also eliminate many of the redundant phrases you seem so fond of:

"The user will also, often times experience a shiftincrease in appetite and a ravenous urge to eat or drink " The last phrase merely repeats, in a wordier way, the information contained in the key phrase "an increase in appetite," mentioned earlier.

"Performance is adversely affected as there may be difficulty concentrating, remembering, or coordinating and balancing one's movements; this is consistent with an overall decline in motor skills" Or "Smoking weed impairs motor skills." Not only is the latter version far more concise, it is more accurate, too. You can't say that "performance" is adversely affected without specifying, what, exactly, is being performed, and without showing that the motor skill impairment isn't balanced out by other factors, say more confidence and relaxation.

And, of course, the digressions that wander completely off-topic should be cut, too. For instance:

"People who use marijuana may not be aware of it," So? Most people aren't aware of the chemical process that go on inside their bodies when they put stuff into it, unless they are trained biologists.

"Marijuana has attained a good bit of notoriety in schools across the United States, partly because it is the most widely used illegal drug among teenagers, but also because its widespread use permeates into the classroom during school, and on the football field and other sports arenas after school. These areas have come to be emblematic of some of the most troublesome effects and shortcomings of marijuana use. Instructors and school officials may become suspicious of marijuana or drug use in the case of a student whose grades have declined considerably in conjunction with unusual behavior such as sleeping in class, displaying inattention, or missing homework assignments and being inconsistent." None of this has anything whatsoever to with the neurological effects of marijuana.

"If someone smokes cigarettes for a week and never again, we can conclude with reasonable certainty that it won't affect their long term health prognosis. However, if the same person smokes for 30 years, bravely assuming that they are not already suffering from, most likely they are at an increased risk for lung cancer, heart disease, and other ailments that only develop over long term use." This is a bit more relevant, since you go on to make a comparison, but you could just state the facts about marijuana directly, without losing your main points.

Finally, you get rid of the phrases that you have included merely because they use vocabulary that you think makes you look intelligent, but that really only make you seem pretentious. So, for example:

"While a psychologist might be interested in and have something to add to that discussion, in lieu of any forthright answer, in the immediate term, there is a scholarly consensus based in decades of research, that illegal psychoactive drugs such as marijuana and cocaine, exact a toll on your health." How about the more straightforward: "Medical researchers agree that smoking marijuana is bad for you."

"which might hasten the imminence of their death." This really isn't necessary at all. It's implicit in the concept of aging, so this could also fall under the category of redundant phrases, too.

"but ostensibly could still persuade some to discontinue cannabis use" "Ostensibly" just isn't the right word to use here.
EF_Sean   
Mar 1, 2009
Grammar, Usage / APA formatting - Review Essay [17]

That's all right. I didn't know that MLA didn't put a comma between the author and the page number. I left the comma off in my example, but that was actually a mistake. It was only when you mentioned it that I looked it up online and realized that my mistake was actually correct, and that what I had intended to do, what I have always done with MLA, was wrong. And I used MLA for all of my essays for five years. Just goes to show that this citation thing can be really, really confusing, even for professionals.

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