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..