Difficulties in writing in University classes

After studying in NUS for one year, I have realized that university is very much different from polytechnic in terms of writing good English.

The similarity of both university and polytechnic is that we have to write a lot of reports for different modules. As a result, it is vital to develop my writing skills not only for the purpose of getting good results, but also prepare ourselves for the future when we graduate. However, the major difference between university and polytechnic is that university requires us to write a much longer and detailed report. As the report is getting longer, we have to include more stuff inside the report and thus we are more prone to making errors.

At university level, the proficiency of English language is undoubtedly high. Meanwhile, since NUS is a global university, there are many international students who are pursuing their higher education here. So it is important that we use professional and correct English to express our ideas to others. Having taken EG1471, I have noticed that after so many years of studying English, I am still facing quite a lot of problems in writing good English. Some major mistakes are verb tenses and spelling errors. That is the reason that sometimes my writing will cause a bit of confusion and misunderstanding. This kind of situation is always not desirable and it is crucial for me to improve my writing skills so that I will make the same mistakes in the future.

Writing a good essay or report does not necessarily mean using difficult words. Most of the time simple words and sentences will do a much better job. The important thing is that if I can use simple words to express what I want to say. For example, when I was writing argumentative essays, I always stuck at some points where I could not continue anymore. The reason for this is that I do not know which correct word or sentence to put in order to convey my ideas to the readers. After taking EG1471, now I have the habit of do the pre-writing before I start writing the real essay. All the knowledge that I have acquired from EG1471 is valuable to me and will definitely help me to write good essays and reports when I graduate and start working.