Portfolio 7

In this semester, I wrote 2 essays and I fing that essay-writing is rather difficult for college students. Especially if you want to write good essay, certain errors have to be avoided. Here I listed some errors I had in my writing assignment one and writing assignment two. I hope that by writing this essay I will be aware of the mistakes and can avoid them in my future writing.


Sometimes I fail to answer the question or neglect part of the question. Usually every fact given in the question will be relevant so considering each in turn and looking at whether they give rise to any particular issues is a wise decision.

Sometimes I fail to address what is being asked of me – for example, when the question asked to ‘discuss’ an issue but I only present a one-sided-argument. Just like in WA2, besides my point of view, I have the give the opposing side to make my essay completed.

The essay is poorly structured, perhaps missing an introduction or failing to reach a conclusion based on the evidence presented. In my WA1, many paragraphs in my essay do not have clear topic sentences. This is really bad because it makes my points not consistant with each other.

Some of my arguments are weak, not supported by evidence or reason or authority, or are non existent. This is a big problem for my WA2, because I always talk about things in distinct future. Human cloning is something not related to our real life and all my evidences are rather weak. Thus, the content for my eaasy 2 is not as good as what I have expected.

Some materials that I used are not properly referenced or no supporting material is cited. For my WA2 draft 2, no reference was made! I must be mad at that time. Academic writing is not like writing journals because we have to give concrete evidences for our arguments. Being objective and accurate is crucial, so we have to read and research a lot before writing and show them in our essays.

Above are the problems that often occur in my essays. In the following semesters I will take modules like critical thinking and writing and Singapore Study. In these modules, essay writing is almost the most important part. I will pay attention to the problems mentioned above and try to avoid them in future days.