Reflection of the writing and editing process

I have learned about the common grammar mistakes that we will usually make in our essays. Now I have a better understanding of what are modals, nouns, subject verb agreement and etc after doing a presentation on verb forms, text editing and online grammar exercises. I believe that it is essential to build a strong foundation with the basics to write a better essay.

Firstly, I started to look out for topic sentences, writing your own thesis and the organization of the essay. I tried to figure out what are the main points in the essay and extract it out to summarize it. For the flow of the essay, I will look out for the introduction, body and conclusion whenever I am readying an essay.

Secondly, my weaknesses are language and content. Sometimes I will extract the wrong main points from the essays. I need to understand the content of the essay before summarizing it. I need to spend more time and effort for language too. Furthermore, I am always confused about the tenses. I would like to learn more about grammar, vocabulary from week 10-12.

Moreover, I tried to edit based on the feedback given, mostly there were grammar errors and I did not elaborate on the important points for the summary, hence I tried to improve draft 1 by reading the article several times to figure out the main points of the article. I have to list down the evidence for the points that I stated.

For reader response, I did not insert the correct citation and state the evidence for draft 1, after reading the given feedback, I tried to find the evidence for my points through other sources and tried to find the right way to cite the article.

Furthermore, I feel that audio and written feedback is a good way to reflect on my work, especially audio feedback because I can understand clearly on which part I have to edit. For written feedback, I still need more time to figure out which part to edit. In addition, I feel that audio and written feedback would definitely help in my other modules.

To sum up what I have learned in this module so far will be the common grammar errors we will make in our essays, understanding of the article and summarize it.

Reflective Writing 

During my secondary school days, I did not make the effort to study as academic results was not my top priority. This caused my ‘O’ level results to be poor and when I first saw my result slip, I was devastated and wanted to give up on my studies. When my elder sister saw this, she took the chance to talk to me. She said that ‘O’ level is just another chapter of my life. Even though I was unable to get into my dream school (Ngee Ann Polytechnic), I can still strive in other polytechnics. She asked me “why give up when you are still so young?” This triggered me to reflect and my conclusion was that I am not going to give up on myself.

When I first entered Nanyang Polytechnic, I made it a point to be attentive during lectures and soon learned to take initiatives in asking my lecturer questions. This had helped me tremendously in my learning process. I realized that I have missed out the fun in studying and that with the correct mindset; it is possible for a “failing” student to do well. With determination, I made it to NUS.

To end, there is a meaningful statement told to me by one of my lecturers which I hold dearly to me - “you might be the ‘Superman’ in this course, but when you enter a university, there will be more ‘Superman’ and you will become a normal person again”.  This sentence is my source of motivation to always be ready to learn and improve myself continuously.