Writers' problems

                  My motivation of joining this course is to improve my writing in terms of grammar, style and sentence structure. Whenever I write on any topic, it is felt the writer has lost the language flow, even though the events are explained systematically. I also feel difficulty in using the words that can convert a sentence into a single word to enhance the brevity. Moreover, punctuation is another direction I have to concentrate on. I have noticed that I write better when it matches to my interests. My writing gets worse if it is required to be done in limited time.  One of my friends who had reviewed my college essays said that I had a habit of using long sentences. Now, I do take care about that, yet fail in making the connections among the sentences.  (Fahad)

                  I have learnt English since I was in play school. It is a beautiful language, my favorite. I also used to write poems and essays for my school magazine. As a writer I am always confused about what is right. I did follow the rules I was taught in my English classes but every teacher had a different right English. Now that I am in the US, English is different even here. This is one of the issues. The other issue is a bit of a personal problem. I do not know why, but I compose very complex sentences. I remember my teachers praising my essay content but losing points over sentence structure. Now I make deliberate efforts to keep my sentences short and sweet. One thing that confuses me is the constant evolution of grammar rules. I wonder how to stay updated about such changes. Also there is one more problem that I have seen but do not experience; a few of my friends have a great vocabulary but they just cannot write an essay. They try hard but they just cannot compose the whole thought process. I would love find answers to at least some of these problems and get better at this beautiful language. (Snigdha)

Being a good writer demands a lot of practice and effort, especially if you are learning a second language. It’s a challenging skill and it requires time to master it. For me I’d say that my biggest challenge I’ve always faced is coming up with ideas and outlining my paper. “How can I start my first sentence?” Or “How can I engage readers in my writing?” Or, “Can I start with a famous quote or just a general statement?” These are some of the questions that come to my mind whenever I want to write something. Sometimes I just hold my pen and stare at the paper for hours without coming up with any idea. Then I thought that I had a problem, but when I read about it I figured out it was what’s called writer’s block. This is what people usually feel when they have difficulties to write or when they are under pressure. Other issues I’ve met are lack of academic vocabulary and mistakes in spelling. There are plenty of words that I know how to say but not to how to spell. Therefore, I feel less confident and productive about my writing in general. Lastly, “Grammar, Grammar, and Grammar!” I always mix more than one verb tense in my paper and sometimes within the same sentence. If I don’t pay attention or read my paper a second time, I won’t notice such small mistakes. (Eve)

                  For writers, there are various challenges when they start writing, such as writer’s block, lack of vocabulary, ideal organization, etc. Well, for me, whenever I start writing something new, the biggest problem would be writer’s block. When I take a seat in front of my laptop, and open the writing program, there is nothing in my mind; it is totally blank. I don’t know exactly what to write and even have no idea how to start writing down the first word. Unfortunately, I still haven’t found out an effective way to work this out so far. And lack of vocabulary is another big problem when I write something. Due to this, it’s hard for me to come up with words when I want to use a word to substitute another, in order to avoid repetition. Well, for this problem, I think memorizing vocabulary should be an efficient method, but is also a grueling process.  (Siyu)

                  People may face different problems when writing. For me, the biggest one is the lack of vocabulary and this becomes more critical when I am writing English paragraphs. For example, I just took some time to look up a suitable word to express my feeling, which ended up with the word ‘critical.’ On one hand, trying to find the appropriate word to express myself distracts me from writing fluently and building good organization. On the other hand, I have to stop every few sentences to double check if the word I use is proper or not, and this makes me feel frustrated sometimes, which leads to lack of interest in writing.

                  The problem can become lack of sentence pattern as well. Sometimes I cannot recall a perfect sentence pattern; therefore, I have to write it in another way. This may lead to quite strange sentence structures.

                  Acquiring more words and doing more reading may be an effective way to solve this writing problem. (Songjing)

Writer’s Biggest Problem

                  Non-native speakers of English may find it very difficult to write an article in English. The most common problems are as follows. Firstly, they usually make a lot of grammatical mistakes. Secondly, the lack of vocabulary makes it difficult for them to express their ideas in English. Thirdly, sometimes they do not know what to write about certain topics. Fourthly, they do not know how to organize the whole passage. All in all, I think the biggest problem for them is that they do not have enough chances to write something practical so as to practice their writing ability. (Lynn)

The biggest problem in my academic writing

                 

                  As a scientific research worker, I usually describe my research results by academic article. However, as a non-native English speaking person, I have a lot of problems in my academic writing. One of the biggest problems is that I do not know how to exactly describe my meaning in suitable English. Generally, I know the results in my native language - Chinese, but when I want to translate those to English, I could not find out the appropriate word, phrases, and sentences to describe those. There also is another situation; I can describe my research in simple style in Chinese, but when I use the English, I need a lot of words or sentences and make a very complex description. In a word, it is very difficult to me to find an effective and suitable way to describe my research results in English. These are my biggest problems in academic writing.  (Lei)

My biggest problem is that I always make simple sentences. When I write something, I usually use this simple format. “Subject + verb + object.” So, most of my writing I used to start with I am, I was. As a result, my writing does not look professional. And another problem is that I also makes my idea simple, because it is easy to write. I divide my opinion with small sentences; it also makes my writing look bad. Whenever I try to write more detail, my sentences lose their way. So I cannot fully express what I really want to write.  (Jimin)

There are several problems with writing, one of which is getting started to write. It is important to note that starting poorly is better than not starting at all. If you pass this step you have gone almost half of the way. In this way, you have something to be developed and built upon, which would not be the case if you wait forever for a brilliant concept  to come to your mind. Another problem writers may encounter is logical consequence of their sentences. This is something beyond writing skill, and it goes back to your logical way of thinking, which should be improved through practicing and reading more books and even doing more math problems. (Mahshad)

Writer’s Biggest Problem

            In my opinion, inspiration is the biggest problem faced by writers. Before writing a story, the topic should be decided. Without any inspiration about writing a new story, it will be hard to start. Someone will argue with me that academic writing, such as writing a research report, does not need inspiration - it is based on experimental results.  It is true that writers create their articles by analyzing and organizing experimental data. However, writing an academic article without inspiration will lead to boring, stuffy, monotonous words. Writers who have inspiration know how to make their story interesting and attractive, even a research report. Therefore, inspiration is the soul of articles; without that, articles will be a bunch of dead words. (Yuan)

                 

                  Writing is one of the biggest nightmares of my life, regardless of any particular language. I find very much difficulty in English writing, since it is a foreign language to me. Apart from writer’s block, my biggest problem in academic writing is the organization of my thoughts in a logical and chronological way. When I gave my first draft of my manuscript to my advisor, he told me that I was confusing people. It was perfectly fine for me but not the reader.  I realized that I needed help from someone who is able to understand my problem and give critical review. I do not want to squander my research findings for my poor writing skill. I believe that this academic writing class will help me to write in an organized way. (Nazir)

As an international graduate student, it is very important to articulate and express research findings in a journal very precisely so that readers can easily comprehend them. A good scientific research article is a combination of both research and excellent writing strategies. That’s why it is very important for most of the international students to learn academic writing. For most of the international students, the major difficulties during writing are grammatical issues and choice of proper vocabulary. It is also very important for an author to maintain a proper structure of the paragraph and he should follow a certain order of the sentences. Most of the authors also find difficulties in consolidating all information in a precise way. All these difficulties may be overcome through practice.  (Hla)

Throughout my life, I have experienced many difficult problems. However, there are problems that I will never forget. I remember one problem that I faced when I was visiting China with my brother. During our visit to China, my brother got food poisoning. He was very sick. Unfortunately, I did not know any Chinese and I did not know anybody there. I took my brother to the pharmacy nearby and I used sign language with the pharmacist. Fortunately, the pharmacist gave my brother some medicine and he got better. That is the most difficult problem that I have faced, because my brother almost died.  (Abdullah)

Not everyone is a good writer. Like other international students, I have some issues in writing a good research paper which I am trying to overcome. I found my biggest problem in writing is that I cannot express exactly what I want to tell. This happens mainly because of grammatical errors, inadequate stock of vocabulary, lack of flow of story, and sometimes lack of proper knowledge. To improve my writing skills, I am reading papers from different journals, reading my manuscripts again and again to find mistakes, and trying to figure out any mistake that I have made and have figured out before. At the same time, I am taking a class entitled ‘Academic Writing’ where the instructor is assigning us homework in each class to test our writing skill. The instructor posts all the class assignments on an online page, where I can read writings of other foreign students. It helps me to think of any topic from different angles and thus helps to improve my writing skills. (Sheik)

                  My biggest problem in writing is both the writers’ block and poor organization. I always wanted to write some academic research paper on English education or English public speaking, but I don’t know what to write. The solution to this problem might be to read more and write more. When I get to write something, I find it hard to organize my thought in proper English organization. It seems that I only use some very simple sentence structure and the sentence coherence is terrible. The sentence patterns are much alike. The solution to this problem might be to read some beautifully-written articles and practice more. In this academic writing class, I believe with more practice and experienced teachers’ help, I can improve greatly. (Lucy)

           My toughest challenge in English writing is that I do not know how to organize different ideas within one topic. It is obvious that poor structures can turn good thoughts into misleading, confusing and even boring clutters. Firstly, there are abundant details, either critical or trivial, can be derived from a certain topic. Unless I can identify the strongest ideas, I might weaken the entire work by using ideas with mere relations to main topic. Nevertheless, having right ideas is not enough. Sometimes, my readers cannot comprehend the whole concept because I put its components in wrong orders. I have troubles with arranging these separate ideas in ways, which can clearly show their relations to each other. Finally yet importantly, I understand that orders cannot fully establish without connections. However, when using paragraphs to represent idea, I usually forget to use appropriate conjunctions between them. Therefore, my readers cannot navigate themselves through different aspects of the same topic.   (Ho)