English Writing Skills - Essay Example

English Writing Skills Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Name Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Course Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Instructor Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Date Executive Summary This is a Personal Project Portfolio which is designed to help me work towards improving my English writing skills for they are a prerequisite in Advance Bilingual Enhancement with a Major of Translation and Interpreting, a course that I am undertaking. Having had difficulties and weaknesses that go by bilingual, improving productive and receptive skills is of great importance for they coexist and so they can never be separated. Having substantial difficulties in understanding the rhetorical organization, appropriate language use and specific lexicon which need to be used in the written communication, I saw a need of finding strategies to help me improve my writing skills. In this article, I therefore explore and implement ways and actions that are crucial in reinforcing my writing skills in terms of grammatical and syntactical forms as a way for improving my skills as well as increase my level of writing skills. This plan has been a success for I have registered substantial improvements in the same After analyzing and having an encounter with several English words, I came up with bilingual glossaries where by the definitions of the new words are documented as well as any example to go with them for future reference for it has words definition and their translation. After designing the action plan, implementing the same was of great concern. Implementation solely relied on the on my commitment irrespective of how my schedule was on daily basis. I had to reschedule myself to attend to the demand of the plan which I did and substantially had an improvement in writing skills. Vast exposure to English vocabularies, revising or re-reading these vocabularies greatly assisted me to achieve great improvement. Any other requirement of such an exercise is highly appreciated for through it, my profession will be moved to the next level English Experience Improving my English has been my desire for a long time as I continue with my studies in Advance Bilingual Enhancement with a Major of Translation and Interpreting. This has compelled me to taking a bold step towards that direction. This being the case, coming up with my Personal Project Portfolio for my course gave me a clear play ground to work towards my desire. First, I acknowledged that, I must do something to ‘Improve my English’. By acknowledging this, there is one this that was very clear to me. That there are some issues that were lacking in my English that needed to be improved and that is the reason why I did not say that I am working towards enhancing my English. In many occasions, I have had more difficulties when it comes to my speaking and writing that it is to the listening and reading skills. I understand that all this skills are of great importance and since there is a room for improvement, my option is to work hard towards polishing my English skills whether productive of receptive skills. This is attributed to the fact that, both skills co-exist. For example, I am sure it is impossible to write without reading and it equally hard to hold a meaning of a conversation without listening. I finally decided to choose writing skills as the aspects that I need an improvement. This is correlated to the fact that, I have had substantial difficulties in understanding the rhetorical organization, appropriate language use or specific lexicon which need to be used in the written communication. I therefore explore and implement ways and actions that are crucial in reinforcing my writing skills in terms of grammatical and syntactical forms as a way for improving my skills. Task According to Myhill and Jones (2007) writing in clear English can be a difficult task to many and the difficulty gets even worse the more complex the subject gets. Even though accuracy and clarity is paramount when it comes to official documents, project proposals and reports bureaucratic language is still demanded. The written production is in many instances marked with an abundance of errors caused by wrong choice of words. This frustration is even worsened by the fact that, many common words which I am familiar with do not come in mind when I am writing. This means that, it is not easy to use receptive reading and listening vocabulary for the productive skill of writing. It is therefore clear that, the interrelationship between productive and receptive skills is very crucial in the approach to vocabulary teaching (Lee & Muncie 2006). The receptive skills and most importantly reading are effective ways I found vital in vocabulary acquisition but there calls for a strategy that will bring the same new and familiar words into productive use, which in this case happens to be writing. The first step I took is to master high frequency words. This is words that appear most often in written and spoken texts and therefore it is important to familiarize myself with them. According to Nation (2001), the most frequent 2,000 English words, with their inflected forms, account for at least 85% of the words in any page of any book regardless of the subject matter (Ste-Marie et al 2004).). However, it is clear that, vocabulary knowledge cannot be gained through the first encounter with the word but through successful encounters with the word in various contexts and even activities while I am being exposed to large amounts of comprehensible input. After being exposed to various words it was my turn now to come up with bilingual glossaries where by the definitions of the new words are documented as well as any example to go with them. Additionally, I found it comfortable to making it bilingual so that I can comfortably have the translation of words with ease and aspect as a translator and interpreter will be inevitable for me. The Process The second part involves writing of several paragraphs with much emphasis on unity, coherence, transitions and good structure. The same case much attention is paid on the changes in the introductory sentence and the addition of a second sentence immediately after the first which will in this case be providing a summary of the main points to be elaborated. After writing, the draft is kept for a few hours or at least a day after which I will then read it as though it was written by someone else, underlining the mistakes and try to detect any details that don’t contribute to the unity of the paragraph, and also pin point those areas which need more details. In this case, revision is done on the written work previously done. Having completed designing the action plan, implementing the same was of great concern. This is attributed to the fact that, its implementation solely relied on the on my commitment irrespective of how my schedule was on daily basis. However, I was left with no option that to commit myself to achieving my goals and this called for discipline which could not have been compromised at all. In the same case, juggling between other duties was also a challenge but this also taught me to comply with the notion that, ‘first things firsts’ and therefore I had to prioritize my duties after all. In complying with the plan whereby I was supposed to master high frequency words and interact with may English words as possible. I started seeing an improvement in writing those words which I had learnt with ease. This on the other hand led me to one understanding. That if I spent most of the time studying grammar, then my English would not have improved at all. Most improvements is realized when in learning more words and expressions. In actual facts, I concur with Thornbury (2002) who stated that, one can say very little with grammar, but can say almost anything with words. The same case applies to writing. After internalizing on as many English words as possible, my writing skills kept on improving and my vocabulary acquisition substantially increased. The more I assimilated the topic, the more I became anxious in wanting to learn more and acquiring vocabularies became even more simplified. Results The whole exercise was not a walk in the park. Actually, it was cumbersome and demanding and the tasks very complex. Even though I made improvement in connection to my writing skills, it was commitment and undeterred efforts that kept me going and in so doing achieve, the much I have achieved to the good of my course. On realizing that my writing skills will improve after many encounters with English words, I have decided to always work towards increasing my English words bank and in so doing continue improving my English. I graciously noted that, vocabulary knowledge cannot be gained through the first encounter with the word but through successful encounters with the word in various contexts and activities and therefore will always look for large amounts of comprehensible input. The bilingual glossary was quite helpful in vocabulary acquisition. This is due to the fact that, I could make meaningful links between words and this made the understanding of English words much easier and most importantly, made them stick to my mind and thus can be written with ease. Having a clear understanding of the topic and how they are linked with the vocabularies has changed my perception on the complexity of some English words and this is quite a substantial boost in my profession. To crown it all, this was a nice experience which has helped me gain vast experience in bilingual and has given me a platform to work tirelessly to improve my skills to the highest standard. I hope to get another more challenging assignment for now I have courage and confidence that I can make it, through determination. References Lee, S. H. & Muncie, L. (2006). From receptive to productive: Improving ESL learners’ use of vocabulary in a postreading composition task. TESOL Quarterly 40(2), 295-320. Myhill, D. & Jones, S. (2007) More than just error correction. Written Communication, 24, 323 343. Thornbury, S., & Meddings 2002. Using Coursebook the Dogme way. MET, 11 (1), 36-40 Ste-Marie, D. M., Clark, S. E., Findlay, L. C., & Latimer, A. E. (2004). High levels of contextual interference enhance handwriting skill acquisition. Journal of Motor Behavior, 36, 115 126. Senesac, BV. K. (2002). Two-way bilingual immersion: A portrait of quality schooling. Bilingual Research Journal, 26, n1, 85-101. Read More