Hey guys,
Let me tell you my frustrating story which happened recently. It did push me to edge and took me few days for me to get back on my senses.
Lately I was doing an assignment on Key Skills i.e. mostly writing things in English about my own, skills, knowledges, experiences and personal qualities. Trust me it sounded easy but actually doing the work was pretty hard. It is hard because you have to analyse all your qualities, abilities and god knows what. I did my best to try and write upto to distinction level. This expectation thing is really annoying. We always say aim high but when you aim high and don't get what you want you will be completely shattered. Coming back to the topic, I hand in the assignment on time and was happy about it until I got the feedback from my teacher.
Result :
My blood boiled when I saw the result.I haven't tasted failure lately, I have been academically good in past few years. I guess I have been too comfortable that I will get what I want. I didn't feel like writing blog anymore. My level of English is just not good enough I guess. A total heartbroken me felt like I should have studied Major English in school and college. I honestly felt like closing down the whole blog for instance. The problem was deep inside I always knew my English vocabulary was not too good, and rather than improving it I just started ignoring it. I do look into dictionary often but I tend to forget the words easily.
Let me tell you my frustrating story which happened recently. It did push me to edge and took me few days for me to get back on my senses.
Lately I was doing an assignment on Key Skills i.e. mostly writing things in English about my own, skills, knowledges, experiences and personal qualities. Trust me it sounded easy but actually doing the work was pretty hard. It is hard because you have to analyse all your qualities, abilities and god knows what. I did my best to try and write upto to distinction level. This expectation thing is really annoying. We always say aim high but when you aim high and don't get what you want you will be completely shattered. Coming back to the topic, I hand in the assignment on time and was happy about it until I got the feedback from my teacher.
Result :
- Uncountable grammatical mistakes (relied too much on spell check)
- Formatting was completely not right ( teacher says)
- 1 whole task was not upto teacher's expectation
- Lot of informal words used.
My blood boiled when I saw the result.I haven't tasted failure lately, I have been academically good in past few years. I guess I have been too comfortable that I will get what I want. I didn't feel like writing blog anymore. My level of English is just not good enough I guess. A total heartbroken me felt like I should have studied Major English in school and college. I honestly felt like closing down the whole blog for instance. The problem was deep inside I always knew my English vocabulary was not too good, and rather than improving it I just started ignoring it. I do look into dictionary often but I tend to forget the words easily.
Do you know what? I have to do the whole assignment again. At first, I thought like I won't bother doing it but then now I feel like I should not get discouraged by it and try and move on. It was my carelessness that I did not deserve the higher grade. I need to avoid jargon and informal words in my writing. (according to teacher).
Sometimes things will go terribly bad to go incredibly well. Hope next time my English assignment would be less disappointing to my teacher and more satisfying to me.
Lesson learnt : ''You will never be a good writer until you are a good reader.'' And I am a lousy reader and miss out on areas of learning.
Funny fact : I still used 'Spell check' to finish this post. Dammit.
Funny fact : I still used 'Spell check' to finish this post. Dammit.
All the best for your english. It looks fine to me.
ReplyDeletethank you for your support Sirish
DeleteHey, You aren't the only one, everyone (WHO ARE SERIOUS ABOUT STUDYING, not everyone:P) has to go through this. This is how we all learn. Language is all about communicating. You aren't majoring in English. So, no need to worry about grammatical errors. Ah Ah, It's good to improve anyway.
ReplyDeleteI think it's good to improve vocabulary. It helps us to make good score in some kinds of so called standardized tests for higher studies. Otherwise, I am good with A,B,C, ....Z and A for Apple, B for Ball, C for cat, ....... Z for Zebra.
I USED to think that if someone can write well and speak fluently in English, he or she is a genius. Now, I don't think like that. There are so many great writers who have asked someone else (linguists- they must have majored in English) to re-write their work. This is why I started thinking NOW if you can hatch good ideas and thoughts in your brain- You are a true genius.
You keep on hatching your thoughts in your beautiful blog. But, never say, " I didn't feel like writing blog anymore" it again. There are people who simply enjoy reading. I think I am a good reader. I don't wish to be a good writer :P
Dear anonymous friend, thank you very much for supporting me and boosting up my spirit. ok i wont mention about not feeling like writing anymore. but honestly I am grateful to you. live well.
DeleteIdeas trumps correct grammar :)) Reminder : I love your blog.
ReplyDeletethank you my lovely blog-buddy. tk cr
DeleteWriting improves as you read more and more--as you already mentioned. Let me share you my own experience in reading.
ReplyDeleteIn my entire school, college and university years: I read--may be-- 4 books other than my text books. I relied heavily on my notes for exams, that means my text books were just for marking homework problems. My writing was pathetic and I felt insecured about it as well(thats even worse).
I have received similar comments on my writing from my professors. My graduation gift from my advisor was a dictionary. His advice was "You need to learn to write".
My revelation occured after I started working. Writing email, report was pain in the rear end. So, I had to improve my writing.
I was never a book reader. I always felt reading is boring. But, I had an idea, reading books about things I want to learn or know about. Before I started borrowing books from the library, I needed to know what I want to read--my interest. Finding interest is difficult until you start thinking, takes time. I have found many things that interest me and not--along the way. Just go for it, weed out what you are not interested in, then the rest are the things that you are interested.
Back on writing, there is a thing called editing. Spell check is only part of it. Edit your piece until you feel comfortable.
To edit your writing, once again it gets easier when you are well read. Take writing class if you can, that will tremendously help you edit your own writing. There are free writing classes on the web. www.coursera.org.
Reading gives so much confidence. Last piece of advice--choose what you read. People who only read romance novel are not considered good reader. Read variety of materials. Read newspaper--good edited newspaper NYTIMES,WSJ, newyorker, harper, atlantic, walrus. Avoid nepalese and hindi english websites-not well edited; not even msn, yahoo.
Give time...
And you already have the best habit of all. You write often. Just add reading to that. I guarantee you will see improvement in few months period.
B