By now I have studied in NUS for almost one year. I found that there are lots of differences between studies in university and polytechnic. The language level in university is very high, and the writing skills are necessary and quite often used to better express my idea in the report. The difficulties that I have faced when I write reports for my labs and projects include the limitation of vocabulary and organization of sentences.
As a Chinese student, my vocabulary is limited so that sometimes I cannot fully or correctly express my idea in the report. The readers may feel confused because of my wrong word using. Now this situation becomes better since through the one year study in university, we learnt professional vocabulary from the particular module and try to apply the professional language into the report. However, in the university class, the lecturers prefer to talk more knowledge that relevant but beyond our notes in order to wider our view. So I need to continue improving my vocabulary in future to have high efficiency of gaining knowledge from class.
Sometimes when writing a report, we prefer to express more information using fewer sentences. It always causes confusion on understanding when the tutor read it. This situation has improved since I take EG1471 module. During this module, we learnt the structure of a sentence and how to correct sentence to prevent confusion or meaning confliction. It is quite useful. Now, I like to show my meaning using some short and clear sentence in stead of a long sentence. My idea is shown clearer and more convenient to read.
Now we are coming to the end of this semester, although I will finish the English module shortly, I will continue doing some exercises, writing and reading more articles to improve my writing skills in future.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
My common grammar mistakes
I started to learn English from the primary school already. But during writing an English article, there are sill some common mistakes when I write a sentence .
1. Wrong word or wrong word form
It is caused due to the careless of tense, or unfamiliar with phrases. There are some examples coming from my writing assignments:
1a. Nuclear energy is considered as a clean energy since it does not generated greenhouse gases. (Wrong)
1b. Nuclear energy is considered as a clean energy since it does not generate greenhouse gases. (Correct)
The verb behind ‘does’ should use its original form.
2a. This is not an accident due to the human activity but the natural geology movement. (Wrong)
2b. This is not an accident due to the human activity but the natural geological movement. (Correct)
Here ‘geology’ is supposed to be a adjective, so we need to change it to ‘geological’.
3a. Because we need to be responsible to the public, environment and even our further generation. (Wrong)
3b. Because we need to be responsible to the public, environment and even our future generation. (Correct)
In this case, I misuse the word ‘further’ since it normally expresses the long distance. To express the time distance, we need to use the word ‘future’.
2. Article
I always miss the article ‘the’ or add an extra ‘the’ in my article.
1a. Nuclear power is a technology to release the internal energy through nuclear reaction. (Wrong)
1b. Nuclear power is a technology to release internal energy through nuclear reaction. (Correct)
In my article, ‘internal energy’ is firstly mentioned here, and ‘through nuclear reaction’ is further express the meaning of ‘internal energy’, so ‘the’ is not needed here.
2a. However, high cost of CCS is still the truth. (Wrong)
2b. However, the high cost of CCS is still the truth. (Correct)
Here, ‘high cost’ is used to specific express the cost of CCS, so ‘the’ is needed in front of ‘high cost’.
3. Subject-verb agreement
When dealing with long sentence, it is easy to make a subject-verb disagreement.
1a. However, it is considered effective because fewer nuclear fuel are needed to produce the same amount of electricity. (Wrong)
1b. However, it is considered effective because less nuclear fuel is needed to produce the same amount of electricity. (Correct)
Here the subject ‘nuclear fuel’ is not countable, so we need to use ‘less’ instead of ‘fewer’; to make the agreement with subject, we need to use ‘is’ instead of ‘are’.
In conclusion, there is still a long distance for me to proficiently writing proper English. More practices are necessary to let me overcome the weakness.
1. Wrong word or wrong word form
It is caused due to the careless of tense, or unfamiliar with phrases. There are some examples coming from my writing assignments:
1a. Nuclear energy is considered as a clean energy since it does not generated greenhouse gases. (Wrong)
1b. Nuclear energy is considered as a clean energy since it does not generate greenhouse gases. (Correct)
The verb behind ‘does’ should use its original form.
2a. This is not an accident due to the human activity but the natural geology movement. (Wrong)
2b. This is not an accident due to the human activity but the natural geological movement. (Correct)
Here ‘geology’ is supposed to be a adjective, so we need to change it to ‘geological’.
3a. Because we need to be responsible to the public, environment and even our further generation. (Wrong)
3b. Because we need to be responsible to the public, environment and even our future generation. (Correct)
In this case, I misuse the word ‘further’ since it normally expresses the long distance. To express the time distance, we need to use the word ‘future’.
2. Article
I always miss the article ‘the’ or add an extra ‘the’ in my article.
1a. Nuclear power is a technology to release the internal energy through nuclear reaction. (Wrong)
1b. Nuclear power is a technology to release internal energy through nuclear reaction. (Correct)
In my article, ‘internal energy’ is firstly mentioned here, and ‘through nuclear reaction’ is further express the meaning of ‘internal energy’, so ‘the’ is not needed here.
2a. However, high cost of CCS is still the truth. (Wrong)
2b. However, the high cost of CCS is still the truth. (Correct)
Here, ‘high cost’ is used to specific express the cost of CCS, so ‘the’ is needed in front of ‘high cost’.
3. Subject-verb agreement
When dealing with long sentence, it is easy to make a subject-verb disagreement.
1a. However, it is considered effective because fewer nuclear fuel are needed to produce the same amount of electricity. (Wrong)
1b. However, it is considered effective because less nuclear fuel is needed to produce the same amount of electricity. (Correct)
Here the subject ‘nuclear fuel’ is not countable, so we need to use ‘less’ instead of ‘fewer’; to make the agreement with subject, we need to use ‘is’ instead of ‘are’.
In conclusion, there is still a long distance for me to proficiently writing proper English. More practices are necessary to let me overcome the weakness.
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