Could someone check my essay, please

jor
February 9, 2009

As a student whose English is a second language, Agnieszka faces more challenges as a English writer. Lack of vocabulary, incorrect sentence structure, grammar mistakes, and incoherence are Agnieszka’s biggest weaknesses, but besides them she also has strong feature as: well done research and good essay organization, and all of them can be improved in order to make her a better writer.

The lack of vocabulary can be a huge barrier appealing to create variety of sentence. Agnieszka doesn’t posses enough words that have a influence on her writing, which when shabby and uninteresting, may discouraged the readers. Because she doesn’t know all important words, she has a problem with expressing herself. She has to spend a lot of time until she gathers proper words to build a logical whole. Even though she thinks that the way she uses words is correct, later on she is surprised seeing the teacher red pen on her writing. It’s not a big deal to write an essay, but to write it that everyone can understand, that is a plus. That’s why Agnieszka already has a plan how to make her vocabulary rich, simultaneously eliminating the negative influence of it on her writing. For example, she want to expands her vocabulary at the point, she could imply it to make sentences various. Learning different synonyms of word ex. “have” she will make her writing more interesting instead of using one simple word “to have” all the time. She should write in English as much as possible. Taking more courses for example Biology she writes all vocabulary in her notebook, this way she will improve her writing and gain of more words whenever writing on a subject of biology. Incorrect sentences structure is another negative feature of Agnieszka. She often writes sentences which are too short or too long, what makes that kind of writing boring for the readers. There are couple of sentences that states what was hinted before: “Writing that contains mostly short, simple sentences can be uninteresting or even irritating to read. Writing that consists of mostly long, complex sentences is usually difficult to read.” (Frankfurt International School. Paul Schoebottom. 1996-2007. http://esl.fis.edu). Agnieszka also tends to write run-on sentences, that can make sentence very unclear. According to: Troyka and Hesse: “a run-on sentences is created when no punctuation at all separates independent clauses.( 408). For example, she would writes: “He has to go to school tomorrow he has a chemistry exam“. Agnieszka often creates sentences that sound weird, for example: “ I ride on my bike instead of writing “I ride my bike”. It’s all because many times she thinks as a polish writer, and she tries to form sentences in English as she constructs them in her native language. Despite this challenges, Agnieszkaa doesn’t give up, and she tries to lower their influence. She tries to follow the rules for good sentence structure by digging in the books, which contain information on forming good sentences. She also has taken her English teacher advice, and she reads news at least twenty minutes a day.

Grammar mistakes are Agnieszka’s another weakness that effect her writing. Polish grammar vs. English differs a lot. In Polish language, she has three basic tenses for example: polish word “pic” means drink, word “ona” means she. So, sentence “Ona pije” is like present tense, “Ona pila” is past tense, and “Ona bedzie pic” is like future tense. In this case everything what she needs to do is to imply different endings and in some exceptions beginnings. The biggest problem for Agnieszka is that in English there are many different kinds of tenses such as: past progressive, past progressive with simple past, present perfect, and so on. All of them require different structure, that’s why she sometimes instead of saying “he has read book about sea animals, she tend to say he read book about sea animals“. The tense which she used is incorrect. Referring to a book, “Focus on grammar” in this case Agnieszka should use present perfect because the time of this action is unknown.(Fuchs and Bonner 22). Agnieszka’s plan for solving this problem is similar to those with incorrect sentence structure.

The second Agnieszka’s biggest challenge is to write a good coherent essay. First of all, she often doesn’t follow the rules for coherence writing, and she creates ones in which particular parts doesn’t fit together. Creating a body writing, she tends to wander from the subject. For example, last semester her assignment was to write about negative features of global warming and to describe their influences. “Global warming can effects human life and an ecosystem“ this was her thesis statement she choose for her essay. In this writing, she did include information about dangers of global warming, but she also wrote how this effect is forming and how people can help to lower it’s results. She shouldn’t have included this information, at least she mentioned them in the thesis statement. Second of all, Agnieszka also tends to introduce a new details in a conclusion, where she should contains summary of what was written earlier. To prove this statement, here is the example, she has written one essay on painting “Starry Night” Vincent Van Gogh, where she was supposed to write about what it depicts and what kind of impressions it invokes. She has done pretty good job on her intro and body, but in the conclusion she include a new informations. Nadell wrote: “Be careful, though, not to open an entirely new lines of thoughts at essay’s close. If you do readers may feel puzzled and frustrated, wishing you had provided evidence for your final point.” (Nadell, Langan, Comodromos, 82) Problem with coherence in writing as every weakness can be in some point fixed. For instance, Agnieszka is gone think about subject and focus on thesis statement. She plans to read professional paragraphs, essays, or even books. This way she may find some patterns how to write a good paper, where everything is matching in smooth and effective whole.

Despite weaknesses Agnieszka got strengths. One of them is doing a good research. She likes to spend time in a library where she searches for information about her topics. She also spend time doing research on the web. Taking advantage of different sources she can make writing more interesting. Although, She always try have a balance when using outside information. What means, that she doesn’t want to include too many sources but enough to catch readers attention. Agnieszka, while searching for sources in the library, gathers only those of strong nature. She doesn’t want spend to much time on doing research because she has to do writing. There are two tips, which are helpful: ”write down your thoughts and insights as you move through the research and writing processes”(Troyka, Hesse 161), another one says: “avoid getting too far along in your search until you’re reasonably certain that you’re going in a useful direction” (163). Agnieszka is not used to taking advantage of information which come from a first hand source, she usually includes secondary sources. However, she would like to try something new. To make her writing more various she want to start including information from a primary sources in her writing,

Agnieszka‘s another strength is good essay organization. She always imply correct format for an essay. In her writing, she includes introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Her thesis statement is always placed in the introduction. She includes topic sentence for each body paragraph, so readers know what the paragraphs are about. Agnieszka wants to make her statement strong, that’s why she gives facts and examples in her body writing. She likes to have her essay looking neat, so she always begins introduction, paragraphs, and conclusion with indention. She also remember to double space the lines, what gives the essay clarity. Although, Agnieszka needs some work on her paragraphs size. As her English teacher noticed, she tends to write too long paragraphs. As a result, she must break them down on a smaller units.

Agnieszka’s attitude toward becoming a good writer is very positive. She realizes that she needs to improve her writing by eliminating common mistakes such as: incorrect sentence structure and building incoherent writing. What’s the most important she got a plan, which she wants to apply in her daily studying. What in turn can bring a lot of profits while creating essay. Agnieszka also have a strength which she can improve to the point she becomes a really good writer.

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