Post 7 – Difficulties Encountered in Writing

a.What difficulties do you have in writing in your university classes? How do you resolve these difficulties? How will you continue to improve?

In this final post, I will be writing on the difficulties that I have encountered in my writing in my university classes, how I resolve them and how I continue to improve.

One of the difficulties that I have encountered is how to express what I want to write. This has been my main difficulty since my secondary school days. It is partly because I seldom interact with people and I have limited vocabulary which restricts what I want to say and write. Furthermore, I also tend to think in Chinese and sometimes just translate directly from Chinese to English. I try to resolve this problem by interacting with people more often and also try to speak in English more often. I seldom speak in English mainly because of my pronunciation. However, if I do not speak in English more often, my pronunciation will become worse. In addition, speaking English will also make me think in English. I also read The Straits Times and other newspapers in order to expand my vocabulary. I prefer to read newspaper than to read storybooks because the newspaper is usually easier to comprehend. Furthermore, when I am reading storybook, I do not like to read between the lines. I also try to express what I want to write or say in simpler words and structure so that others will understand. It is just like I prefer things to be as simple as possible in my daily life.

Another difficulty that I faced is the use of verb tenses. I remembered one of my secondary school teachers once told us that if we use the wrong verb tenses in our writing, people will laugh at it and it can create a lot of jokes. It is because she once received an email which has a lot of wrong usage of verb tenses. Frankly speaking, up till now I still have problems with when to use present continuous tense, past continuous tense, present perfect tense and past perfect tense. I try to resolve this problem by reading the grammar notes. But even after I have read these notes, I still do not know when to use which tenses.

In order to continue to improve my writing, I need to read more and speak more in English.