Critical Reflection: My Academic Writing

My journey of ES1102 had been useful, from taking my QET to writing this final exercise. Upon knowing this module is burdening but helpful, I tried my very best during the QET and obtained a band 2. Thankfully, I do not need to take the previous module but ES1102 is unavoidable. I came to the lesson knowing that it was an extra workload but still I wanted to improve my English.

On the first lesson, we do not know who was our tutor. My friend told me that his tutor from previous semester was good which coincidentally became my tutor as well. Ms Toh is really friendly and she wanted us to bond with each other. Surprisingly, our class only consists of males. We went around knowing more about our classmates and introducing ourselves while sharing some of our interesting happenings. I find that this was a good start as it was not like those typical class where students come because they needed to. Besides that, I was "lucky" when I picked my favorite number and was selected to be the Monitor.

English used to be one of my weakest subject, but when I attended ES1102, I really picked up more knowledge to improve my English. During the class, I have learn about grammars, verbs, writing peer reviews, assessing my own essay, citations and many more. Writing the readers's response was one of the interesting exercise as we get to read an essay and give our review on it. Unlike writing Facebook or Twitter comments, this was a good experience to learn and write a professional review. Next,we have our first essay writing. During the journey, my tutor gave us feedback on how we can improve on our essays and I feel that it is really helpful.

I have learn that to be able to write a good essay, firstly we cannot start writing without planning what to write. It is similar to programming, you cannot start coding without planning the algorithm. The problem solution essay taught me to do an essay outline. We start by writing down our ideas and then try to focus on the main idea as much as possible instead of adding new minor ideas. Then we separate them into different paragraphs then try to link them so they could flow smoothly. First paragraph must consist of a brief idea of the essay and the thesis statement. The subsequent paragraphs must consist of a topic sentence to get the readers to understand what this paragraph will be talking about. The concluding paragraph will be a brief summary of the whole essay and restate your stand or give your opinion on what is the possible outcome.

After we wrote finish our essays, we exchange with another classmate for peer evaluation. My partner who was very good in English evaluated me. I wondered why is he in this class. He gave me quite a number of feedback which are concise and understandable. I learn from my evaluation and improved my essay. I feel that peer evaluation allowed me to learn from my peers and also get to socialize with more people.

In my opinion, my strengths are able to write my essay in a proper structure, good citations and reference list. My weakness would be grammars, vocabulary and word choices. There may be more strengths or weaknesses but evaluation is needed. My plan for improving my English writing is to read more books,articles,essays to learn from the professional writers. I will also need to practice writing on more essays myself even if it was a short essay.

Words of wisdom - Practice , practice and practice more. Seek help from tutors to evaluate and give feedback is the way to improve and prepare for any assignments and final exam.

My journey of ES1102 is coming to an end, I have learn a lot from my tutor and my peers. Even though this module offers 0 module credits, it is still worthwhile. Being pushed into this module does not mean I am lousy, it just means that I needed a guide to go on a better path. Lastly, I would like to thank Ms Anita Toh for guiding us throughout this module.