q7

After a year in NUS, I find that writing essay is a very difficult process for me. I think one of the reasons why I have difficulty writing essay is the lack of practice. When I am writing essay, I tend to encounter the problem of converting my thoughts and ideas into words. As a result, I would attempt to rewrite the sentence numerous times to fit the context of the essay. I find that the reason why I frequently encounter this problem is because of my poor language skill. The way for me to improve is to actually write more essay to bring my ideas across in words. Another difficulty I face is during planning process, I do not have a lot of points to elaborate on my ideas. What I would normally do is to spend more time researching and gathering more suggestions from the internet.
I think that planning process is one the most important part of writing an essay. In order to ensure that I have sufficient ideas to support my point, I would also do mind mapping to generate more points to be used in my essay. Another major that I faced is there are a lot of grammar mistakes in my essay. I feel that correcting grammar mistakes is one of the most difficult tasks for me. To the number of grammar mistakes, I would check my essay carefully when I am writing. I also tend to avoid writing too long sentences so that it would be much easier to bring my points across. I find that reading newspaper can help me improve my essay as a whole. The information that I can find in the newspaper would provide me more ideas when I am writing essay. Currently, I would spend some time in the morning reading the news. I would also take note of the mistakes I made in my writing assignment so that I would not commit the same error.

q6

One of my most common grammar errors is the usage of article. Articles can be categorized into definite article and indefinite articles. ‘The’ is a definite article and is used when we want to refer to something or someone specific. For example: The girl was very happy. (We are referring to a very specific girl).‘The’ is also used before certain proper nouns. Words like “Pan-Island Expressway” and “Dark Ages” all requires “the” in front. One of the errors common errors I encounter is that is that am not sure when I should omit an article. Article should not be used when we are referring to general statement or when a plural countable noun is non specific.
Wrong: Embryos should not be considered a human.
Correct: Embryos should not be considered human.
Generally, a/an is used when we are referring to a non specific, single and countable noun.

Another common error is subject verb agreement. My mistake usually involves the head word not agreeing with of a noun phrase.
Wrong: Animal testing in stem cell research have proven to be successful.
Correct: Animal testing in stem cell research has proven to be successful. (Animal testing is singular)
In addition, singular verb should be used for uncountable nouns. We also use singular verb when we are referring to a collective group (Example: Government and Sport Team are both singular noun).

The third mistake that I commonly made is incorrect use of quantifiers for uncountable nouns. I often used the wrong quantifiers to describe uncountable noun. For example, words like resistance and criticism are uncountable. Quantifiers like ‘much’, ‘a little’ ‘a bit’ is used to describe uncountable nouns.
Wrong: numerous resistances
Correct: much resistance
Wrong: many criticisms
Correct: much criticism

Q5

During the roundtable discussion, one of the group discussed a topic regarding computational modeling in brain studies. This particular research hopes to give a clearer understanding on how our brain works. The group discussed various advantages and disadvantages this technology can bring to us and also gave reasons to support why the government should not restrict this research.
The supporting members of the group argued that the brain scan can provide people who cannot express themselves the ability to communicate with their family or friends. It can be used to identity suspects who are potential terrorists. The supporting members also said that government should not imposed restrictions on this technology because it will curb and limit the growth of the research. However, the opposing member of the group argued that this technology can leads to discrimination. For example, employers may use this technology to screen potential employees before employing them. This can be considered an invasion of people privacy.
I feel that this technology can is very promising. However, I feel that government should place restrictions on this technology. This technology can cause other problems if it is not carefully regulated. We have to make sure that this technology is put to the right use.
Another topic that was discussed by another group was on green chemistry. The group argued that Singapore should lead her counterparts in the region and focus on green chemistry. Green chemistry encourages the processing of products that are safer to our environment. However, the opposing team argued that Singapore should seek advices from other successful nations before venturing into this technology. I feel that green chemistry is an industry that would be successful in the future. This is because currently, there have been increasing amount of funding provided to develop alternative ways of processing and design material in a way that does not cause pollution.
The last group discussed about hybrid electric cars. Supporting members of the group argued that hybrid cars are less environmental polluting and better fuel economy than conventional petrol powered cars. Furthermore, hybrid cars tend to create much lower noise pollution. However, opponents of the group argued that these types of car are still very expensive. The general public would not be willing to spend money on this car.