What I like about writing

Since I was little I loved to read books. When I grew older I learned how to write and I liked it. At the age of 11 I wrote my first own story, which was rather a short story. I invented the story and I was really proud of it. It was a kind of thriller and even interesting to read. Unfortunately, my story got lost over the years. I wish I could read it again. 
But anyway, at that time, I wanted to be a writer because I liked the thought of creating my own stories and characters instead of just reading about them. I wanted to control my character's destiny and my own plot, just as I did when writing my short story. 
Now I don't want to be a writer anymore since I think that in today's world it is hard to earn enough money with writing stories or novels, that is unless you are really lucky and invent some fictional story as Rowling did with Harry Potter. Her success is of course an exception in the writing world and I don't want to earn as much money as she does. But still there definitely are enough writers out there who can't sell their books. 
Nevertheless, I still like writing.. but I have never written anything again.. Probably I should start to do that in the near future. Just for me and for fun.  
Maybe I will work at a publishing house after I'm done studying. 
We will see what the future brings..

Last session

Yesterday I got back my second draft on the Sutherland essay and I've improved from 66% to 70%. This was what I wanted and I'm happy that I've achieved it because someone told me that 70% means an A (though I'm not really sure about that) which is really good. This is at least something I can be proud of as I am a little afraid of the grade of the 3rd assignment.. 
As we talked about the last assignment and the mistakes we made yesterday, I got the impression that my draft has not been that good. We also corrected some of the sentences which we wrote in our essays. 2 of the examples were my sentences and when reading these sentences I realized that they did not sound very well. The main problem of both sentences was that I didn't use proper punctuation. 


Example of sentence:
In contrast, in the article in The Guardian Will Self states that he does not like the bowdlerisation in text messages which he partly blamed on his age.


Corrected sentence:
In contrast, in his article in The Guardian, Will Self states that he does not like the bowdlerisation in text messages, which he partly blames on his age.


I forgot to put two commas, which, after reading the new sentence, make the content of the sentence easier to understand. 


One or two years ago I used much more commas in my sentences. Probably because Germans use a lot of commas in their sentences since it is required by German grammar. English does not need many commas and my English teacher at university used to say the following about commas in English writing:
"When in doubt, leave it out." 


That is why I started to rethink commas before I use them and now it seems to be wrong what I did. Obviously, I should use them more. Another problem is that I learned not to use a comma after 'which' or 'that'. Because of that I didn't put a comma after 'which' in the sentence above.
Next time I'll try to do it better.

My term abroad

This time I won't write about my writing skills, but about my time at the University of Essex.
I have been here since October 2nd and now there are two weeks left of the term. On the 17th of december I will fly back to Germany. Looking back, there are a lot of things I have learned during my time here. Firstly, I know much more vocabulary, mainly vocabulary for everyday use. There are a lot of words I didn't know before since I just didn't use or need them at home when writing an academic essay or talking to a teacher. By and by, I learned more and more English words by communicating with flatmates, other students or through grocery shopping. I also think that I've improved my English language. I have become more fluent and more confident when talking to someone. But still I often think in German and when talking to someone in English I sometimes say one or two words in German by mistake.
Moreover, I have learned more about myself than in my whole life. I have learned to be more independent and to practically live on my own. I don't live together with my parents anymore but I live together with my boyfriend in Germany. That is why it is so hard for me to live here alone and to be alone all day. Thank God that Skype exists. I couldn't live without it.
This term abroad is the hardest time of my life since it was really difficult for me to adjust to everything here. And sometimes it is still difficult, especially since the closer it gets to my departure the more impatient I become.   Nevertheless, my time abroad has taught me so many things and has let me grow as a person and there are many good memories that I can bring home.

Essay tasks

I think that my strengths and weaknesses when writing academic essays in English heavily depend on the task of an essay. What I mean is that writing a summary, as we had to in the first assignment, is much easier than to compare and contrast different opinions on a topic, which was the last assignment.
It was quite easy to summarise Sutherland's essay and it did not take long for me to do that. But when I was writing assignment 3 I had to compare and contrast the opinions of three people on texting. It took much longer  since firstly I had to understand their point of view relating to the topic and secondly I had to find similarities and differences in their ideas. I also found it hard to pay attention to coherence when writing the essay and to connect all the ideas and thoughts of the authors. Moreover, it was quite difficult to structure the essay. I was not sure whether to start with a general summary of their opinions or with listing the differences of the authors' views.
That is why I really don't know which mark to expect..

Feedback on writing helps me to improve

In the past few years I learned that recieving feedback on writing is very important and helpful for my writing skills.
In the writing skills classes in my home- university I always had to write a first draft and afterwards a second draft of an essay. When revising a first draft I used feedback sheets which I got from the lecturer. On the feedback sheets I could see which areas of writing needed improvement and which mistakes I made when writing the first draft. This really helped me to work on certain problem areas such as tenses or syntax and thus to improve these areas. Consequently, all my second drafts were much better than my first drafts.
At the beginning of my study I did not know what I have to pay attention to when writing an essay. I did not even know that there are so many grammatical areas where you can make mistakes. Now I also know that teachers pay attention to everything when they are correcting an essay and that the layout and structure are almost as important as the actual content of an essay. Knowing all this, I could also improve my first drafts because I knew which areas of writing represent a problem for me and that I had to pay special attention to these areas.
That is why I like this writing skills class. I get feedback for my essays and I have the opportunity to revise and thus improve the first drafts which reminds me of the writing skills classes in my home-university. Obviously, writing skills classes are quite similar in every in country.

University Writing

When I went to high school one of my subjects was the English language. Actually, I did not have many writing assignments, but I liked to write in English. I think that at that time my strengths in writing were for example to summarise a story. That was easy and I liked to do that. Moreover, I thought that I was a relatively good writer, but after doing my A-levels I went to university to study English and that is when I noticed that I was not as good as I thought in English writing. From the first semester onwards I had writing skills classes where I had to write essays on different topics, such as Cause and Effect essays and a Statement of Purpose. The first thing I learned was formatting, which I had never done before, respectively, I did not need to do that at school. Furthermore, I learned many other things such as structuring and planning essays. Sometimes I felt as if I had never written essays in English before since everything was new to me and I had to get used to all the essay requirements of my lecturer.
Fortunately, the writing practice over the past four semesters has had a huge impact on my knowledge of writing academic essays in English.

Brief reflection on my writing skills

In the past two years of study I have improved my English writing skills in different areas. I can express myself much better and I have a more extended vocabulary than before. Moreover, I learned how to structure and organise essays in order to make them reader-friendly.
One of my weaknesses in writing is that I have problems with German interferences when writing in English. My formulations are sometimes unclear as a result of me not thinking 100% in English. Tense sequencing is another aspect I need to work on since I am uncertain with tenses which I notice every time when writing in English.

By participating in the writing skills class I hope to improve my weaknesses and to become a competent writer in English.