I believe that many of us have taken up this module unwillingly because we had failed the Qualifying English Test. Most of us may find it time-consuming, especially when it is not counted into our Cumulative Average Points. Initially, I was very reluctant in taking this module but my friend told me, “Since we are already taking this module, might as well we get something out of it.” I find that what he said made sense and therefore, it sort of changed my mindset towards taking this module.
During class when we were learning grammar, I felt that that I had already learnt these during my secondary school days and it is rather redundant to learn everything again. But after trying several grammar exercises in class, I realised that I do have a serious problem in my grammar and it is indeed useful that we are relearning our basics again. This is important because, as mentioned in my previous portfolio, we are required to submit reports during our four years engineering course and if we were to make grammatical errors in our reports, we are actually telling the reader that either our command of language is not up to standard or we did not bother to check through our work. In both cases, it would not reflect well on the writer. I believe these grammar lessons have allowed me to refresh on what I had learnt back in my Junior College and Secondary school and also increased my awareness on all my common mistakes.
I have certainly learnt something from the 2 writing assignments too. Particularly, I am glad that we were taught how to cite our sources properly and the document on APA style citation given to us is very informative. The strict correction by our tutor on format of citation has also made me realise the mistakes I made. This format of citation that i learnt would be useful when I am required to cite sources again in my future work.
Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to my tutor for putting in the effort in helping us to improve our English language and also putting up with a bunch of unresponsive and English language impaired students (us).
=)
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
portfolio 6
Identify three of your common grammar mistakes and explain how the grammatical structure should be used correctly.
My major weakness in my grammar would most probably be the use of plural or singular form for subjects in a sentence. I tend to overlook such mistakes which can be spotted easily by others. Take an extract from my recent writing assignment as an example,
“However, if we were to look at it from the biological point of view, embryos of less than 14 days old should not be considered a human life yet as they lack parts that clearly define its possibility of turning into a human being. ”
I am actually quite surprised that I totally overlooked the gross error in the inconsistency of using plural or singular subject. We should always be consistent in the form of subject throughout our sentences, either we stick to the singular form or we change everything to plural form. Here is what I have changed the above sentence to,
“However, if we were to look at this issue from the biological point of view, an embryo of less than 14 days old should not be considered as a human life yet as it lacks parts that clearly define its possibility of turning into a human being.”
The second grammatical error that I usually make is writing non-parallel sentence. It is acceptable if you want to present several ideas together in one sentence, but you have to make sure that the ideas are parallel to each other. For example,
“From the pro-life advocates and religious point of view,....”
The term “Pro-life advocates” is a noun while “religious” is an adjective. We should keep everything to either noun or adjective term. Here are two examples,
“From the pro-life advocates and devotees to certain religions point of view,....”
Or
“From the pro-life and religious point of view,....”
Lastly, I tend to smash several important ideas together in one sentence. Below is another example from my writing assignment draft2,
“ACSR should not be used to replace ESCR since adult cells are not pluripotent and lastly, despite a number of failures, ESCR should continue as its success would certainly be of significant value to the medical field.”
If we were to group ideas together in one sentence, it may devalue the importance of those ideas that you want to bring across. This is particularly important when you are writing argumentative essays.
To conclude, such simple mistakes can be very irritating to the readers. Especially when these errors appear in our reports, the reader might think that we did not even put in the effort to check through our work for simple grammatical errors. Therefore, we should all be mindful of our grammar and improve on our language together!
My major weakness in my grammar would most probably be the use of plural or singular form for subjects in a sentence. I tend to overlook such mistakes which can be spotted easily by others. Take an extract from my recent writing assignment as an example,
“However, if we were to look at it from the biological point of view, embryos of less than 14 days old should not be considered a human life yet as they lack parts that clearly define its possibility of turning into a human being. ”
I am actually quite surprised that I totally overlooked the gross error in the inconsistency of using plural or singular subject. We should always be consistent in the form of subject throughout our sentences, either we stick to the singular form or we change everything to plural form. Here is what I have changed the above sentence to,
“However, if we were to look at this issue from the biological point of view, an embryo of less than 14 days old should not be considered as a human life yet as it lacks parts that clearly define its possibility of turning into a human being.”
The second grammatical error that I usually make is writing non-parallel sentence. It is acceptable if you want to present several ideas together in one sentence, but you have to make sure that the ideas are parallel to each other. For example,
“From the pro-life advocates and religious point of view,....”
The term “Pro-life advocates” is a noun while “religious” is an adjective. We should keep everything to either noun or adjective term. Here are two examples,
“From the pro-life advocates and devotees to certain religions point of view,....”
Or
“From the pro-life and religious point of view,....”
Lastly, I tend to smash several important ideas together in one sentence. Below is another example from my writing assignment draft2,
“ACSR should not be used to replace ESCR since adult cells are not pluripotent and lastly, despite a number of failures, ESCR should continue as its success would certainly be of significant value to the medical field.”
If we were to group ideas together in one sentence, it may devalue the importance of those ideas that you want to bring across. This is particularly important when you are writing argumentative essays.
To conclude, such simple mistakes can be very irritating to the readers. Especially when these errors appear in our reports, the reader might think that we did not even put in the effort to check through our work for simple grammatical errors. Therefore, we should all be mindful of our grammar and improve on our language together!
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