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Constructive Feedback on my writing please?
I am taking creative and academic writing for the first time.This is a compare/contrast essay that I wrote about being bilingual, compare and contrast essays are not my strongest points, I have a preference for narrative and descriptive ones.
Is my thesis sentence strong enough, is my essay coherent? Any constructive feedback would be helpful.
looooooool ! here is the rough draft with an intro and 1st body paragraph ( sorry about the format)
Goo, goo, gaa gaa were most certainly not my first '' baby words''.Being the freak of
nature that I am,I displayed all the symptoms from the very beginning.On day one, instead of crying
which would have been quite helpful to my mama telling her that it was time to change the diaper,
apparently I had decided that staring at the ceiling was a much more interesting thing to do and
supported by an environment of language diversity in my early childhood,my freakishness
lavished.As the only child in the house, my big eyes full of wonderment and my little hands, feet
and ears were free to roam around and satisfy their curiosity so I ended up picking certain words
from the certain languages floating all around me.So it shouldn't have been surprising when later on
I opened my mouth and out came a sentence which can not be called a correct sentence according to a single
sorry the link keeps redirecting and the format is just keeps screwing up.
a single language.It was a mix of three languages;Arabic, Urdu and English.It may seem helpful,
but back at the time it wasn't. So basically ''my language'' from back then to now has been a journey
with progress and changes aplenty as my usage of these language ,English and Arabic mainly,at the
present time proves in both academical standards and emotional and social scales .
3 Answers
- SuzianneLv 71 decade agoFavorite Answer
An academic essay does not use the first person point of view. Be sure you understand what your instructor requires. If he or she is open to first person autobiographical narratives, then go on with this, but if not, try a more formal approach.
Even when the instructor allows the use of first person in an essay, the writer should give careful consideration to describing the actions of himself as an infant. The piece becomes fiction when such observations are impossible.
If you are going to compare and contrast, you need two different things or situations to play against each other. You can compare and contrast the development of two children, one of whom is brought up in a multilingual family and the other brought up in a home where only one language is spoken. You could also describe two different approaches to language training in the home, indicating that one parent only speaks English in front of the child while the other speaks Arabic to some members of the family, Urdu to others and English to the neighbors and out in public.
I was unable to detect a thesis statement. Make it clear. Your writing rambles. Try to focus, be specific and be concise. Do not use contractions in a formal paper. Avoid cliches and figures of speech. In a short essay, every word should count. Go through your first draft and remove every word and phrase that is not essential to your piece.
I do not mean to discourage you or tear down your writing, but sincerely hope my observations will help you. Constructive criticism from an stranger is better than the disapproval of your instructor and a bad grade.
Good luck with this.
- ?Lv 51 decade ago
A link to the essay would help.
Edit: it reads quite well (despite the format messing it up), but you can see your preference for descriptive essays. I don't think it's formal enough for an academic essay: it reads more like a first-person narrative in a fiction book. It depends what your tutor is looking for - if it's supposed to be more descriptive than formal it's fine.
- ?Lv 71 decade ago
'This is a compare/contrast essay...' runs on a lot. Shorten it and edit in 'compare and contrast essays' instead of saying it twice. Aside from that, what you have here seems OK to me.
