Posts by merurino

merurino

Oct 10, 2013

Student Talk / Hi everyone! Welcome at EssayForum thread. [414]

Hello, my name is Rafael, English is not my first language, but I really like it! I can watch series, movies, listen do music and read books (books I don't get 100% depending on the book, but I can get the story pretty well). My goal here is just to exchange ideas and improve my writing, because, in the future I plan to take the IELTS exam. My dream is someday live in a country that has English as official language =)

I would like to ask a moderator if in the "Student Talk" forum I could for example create an topic or reply on a post just telling some story that happened to me someday, not an Essay level, just writing some random text or ideas (like I'm doing right now). I ask that, because before being able and prepared to write an good essay, I believe that just by writing something everyday in English will already generate progress in my writing skill.

I have another question though, for me to be able to open a new thread, I have to write at least two meaningful replies in posts from other people. Is this one going to count as one? Because I have no level of English for helping people writing essays for example. I'm just a beginner.

If authorized I have the intention of coming back here often to write something (hoping that some good soul advise me if I'm making some creep mistake). Thank you guys I hope I make a lot of friends here =-)

merurino

Oct 10, 2013

Writing Feedback / Essay: Schools problems with student behavior. [4]

tayleeb, thank you very much for your feedback, this is my first time receiving feedback from someone that really understands English.

As you pointed out, English is not my first language. I am very good at listening but talking is hard for me and writing is my Achilles' heel.

This was my first essay and I'm aiming to an IELTS certification in the future. Here where I live is not very easy to find people with good knowledge in English so, I believe I'll not be able to find someone to proofread my texts that easily, do you have any online recommendations?

Besides that I have a problem with grammatical rules, even in my native language I cannot understand some rules, I simply know that I shouldn't write something this or that way. Since I've never studied English at English schools, what I know was learned by playing games and mostly watching movies/series in English, I really like the language, but I don't have this "grammar/collocation good sense" as good as I have in my native language (and probably I'll never going to). Do you have any recommendations on how someone like me can get this knowledge? Reading maybe? Do you have some author to point out?

Thank you again, I'm very happy to have a feedback from someone that understands English for real =-)

merurino

Oct 10, 2013

Writing Feedback / Essay: Schools problems with student behavior. [4]

Topic: In many countries, schools have severe problems with student behavior. What do you think are the causes of this and what solutions can you suggest?

Answer:
Inadequate student behavior is a growing issue nowadays, in Brazil the cause is related to home environment, teacher's lack of will to teach and specially to government policies. Kids are protected from their mistakes until adulthood, making them unprepared adults for working properly.

In Brazil, the school policies allow the students to advance to next grade even if they weren't good enough. This happens because the government is not willing to spend more money than it should into these students, allowing a bigger share of unprepared students. Sometimes students leave fundamental school not knowing the basics of writing and reading, being able just to write and read their own names. The government does this because when a student leaves fundamental school it's considered as an alphabetized student, decreasing the analphabetism rate of the country.

Furthermore, the students don't respect the teachers as they should, they're protected from their mistakes, for example, if a student until the fourth grade made a mistake on a test, the teacher is not allowed to show the student that the answer was wrong, because the government imposed that this will make the student feel demoralized among others in the classroom. If some student is disrespectful to a teacher and receives back a severe feedback there's a big chance that the teacher will receive a complain from the student's parents.

Today's parents are product of this faulty learning system, and the learning system is one of the most important aspects of a country, this said I believe that the solution would be a policy reformulation, forcing schools to be more rigid with non automatic grade approval and increasing the money investment on learning material and teacher training, allowing only really prepared students to graduate.