Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Sample Student Essay with Edits and Comments

Hope your in class writing went well for you today. I very much enjoyed reading your posts for the "Something New or Interesting" topic. Well done!

Here's the essay: Learning English

See you next Wednesday. Enjoy your extra day off and no-homework weekend!

7 comments:

LINDA LIU said...

Very helpful comments and edition! I have learnt something from the sample essay. And I hope my essay as well as all other student’s essay will be edited and commented each time. I know that is the “mission impossible” to our teacher to comment every one’s work like this way, but I just couldn’t help thinking about it. So as a student who craves improvement in learning English, I am appealing my English 11 teacher continuing giving comments to the students. How great it would be if you post at least one edition of one student’s work each time! This mistake in sample essay A , that error in sample essay B, together will make an efficient improving for us so that you don’t have to suffer our clumsy grammar or inappropriate expression. I am assuming here, that other students will think the same way as I do. So my classmates, if you support my appealing, please give your voice here. If you do, I will be happy, and I assume our teacher will be happy as well.

Brad said...

Linda,

I do plan on doing this (as often as humanly possible) and will select from the top work each time. So, it may not happen for everyone, but for seven or eight others at least. We'll see! Glad you found the edited/commented essay useful.

Rita said...

Thank you very much! I learned a lot! I did know that I must made some mistakes in my writing, but I couldn’t aware where they were.

Qin said...

Good sample
I like to read the comment. It is a good sample and reminds of me to do several things. First, I should follow the essay’s writing rules to modify my essay. Second, I should revise again communications 12 textbook for those useful writing methods. Third, I should change my wrong ideas for English 11 writing, so I try to write correctly each sentence. It is important for me that I don’t forget to apply the topic sentence in the beginning of the paragraph, and the conclusions in the ending. Thank teacher giving this useful sample.

LINDA LIU said...

To Brad:

After reading your comments to Rita's essay once again, I rewrote my essay. I cut off those which were not coherent to the main ideas. Also i add the thesis statement at the end of first paragraph, and concluding sentence to each body paragraphes. Would you allow me updating my essay again?

Brad said...

I am impressed with your effort, but do not have the time (or energy) to mark again all the essays (and, to be fair to all, I would do so if I did it for you). I would, however, be happy to read it here and to give you a brief comment if you wish.

LINDA LIU said...

thanks for your rely. Here is my fourth draft. To be fair to other classmates, please just take a few minutes to read and leave no commments here. thanks again.

Headache or Fun?

English had been my big headache since I was grade 7. I never imagined that I could use English eloquently like native speakers. However, things have changed since I started learning English again in the adult learning school in Canada. My headache has turned to a pleasure with higher expectation for my future study.
My English study started from my first year in the middle school; at that time, I thought English was like the puzzle of grammar and vocabulary. Solving the puzzle makes “perfect English”. Furthermore, I was encouraged to practice compound and complex sentence, and use the” big word “as many as I can. As a result, I strived to make long sentences with hard-spell words. Although it looked awkward to native speakers; for me, I thought it was academic. Sometimes I was so annoyed why those native speakers don’t understand my English. Is their English worse than mine?
In this school, I learnt some different methods which totally reversed my attitude of using English. The first one is KISS principle. KISS is the short form of Keep it Simple and Straightforward. My teacher told me, “Everything should be as simple as possible, no fancy dancing word!” Later on, my another teacher taught me the principle of “show don’t tell”. It is playful to use all sensory words. By practicing these rules, I have built up my fluency with simple expression and I found I can watch the TV programs without subtitles. Right now, learning English is fun and brings me fun to my life. I realized that I was in the wrong track of learning English in my past experience; my headache is gone.
This term I am moving to English 11, I do have my expectation for this class. First of all, I want to develop my own style of writing which no one can repeat. Secondly, I wish I could learn more knowledge of poetry so that I could write my own poem and read it aloud to my classmates. The third one is easy to say but hard to fulfill : that is to get a good result in this course. There is a rumor about this course that no one can get A mark in the end of the term, because the course is difficult and the teacher is strict. That really scares me, so I hope from this term, me, and my classmates together will make a change. We will work hard to make some A students in the class. If that could happen to me. I would hold my head high swaggering into English 12.
Learning English once was a headache to me but it is fun now. when I look back my past experience and think about my current improvement, I believe that with hard working and correct methods, learning English can be and will be a pleasure to my future study.
--482 words; fourth draft by Linda Liu