Paraphrasing and Summarising

A3 part 1: According to Crystal (n.d.), the dominance of Latin as the official language in the Roman Empire was due to the strong influence of the Romans, instead of their vast number of conquests.

A3 part 2: Butler (2004) suggest that the new nuclear reactors are expected to function at a very high temperature which improves its competency. Safety features which are simple to operate are installed without a need for much human interference. Experts also agreed on a low-cost reactor which produces minimum radioactive waste in order to please a nuclear-adverse public.

B3 part 1: Sociologist uses quality of life indicators to explain the disparity between the rich and poor in every nation.

B3 part 2: A language turns into a worldwide tool of communication due to the supremacy of the speakers rather than the large amount of the said speakers.

Your reporting verb choices:

"claim", "observe", "find", "state"...

C3 part 1: Lester (1076) asserts/claim/allege/argue/affirm that students should only make a limited amount of notes in direct quotation in order to help minimize the amount of quotes used.

C3 part 2: It is proposed that the first half of the year has been profitable, the next six month are not expected to be as lucrative.

Done by:  Sue Ling, Valerie and Taqiuddin Tamrin

My English Language Learning Journey

I came from a chinese speaking family, so I am very used to speaking chinese since young. I only started to communicate in english when I started primary school. However, for most of the times I still used chinese to converse with my friends. Due to this, I did not pay much attention in improving my english in terms of writing and speaking.  It was probably during my secondary school days that I decided to work hard in improving my english as I used to get borderline passes for all of my english tests. My hard work was finally paid off when I managed to pull up my english grade from a C to B.

After I started my studies in polytechnic, I feel that there was lesser emphasize on using good english as the students were only required to give short answers for exams. Furthermore, due to the modules I took during the course of study; I was not exposed to any essay writing. I feel that I wasn’t able to build a strong foundation before I entered university. Hence, it became harder for me when I had to write essays and academic paper in university. For instance, I always have difficulties in expressing my thoughts because of my poor vocabulary and I tend to make grammar mistakes in my paper. This had led to my fear in taking modules which would require me to write essays as I was afraid that I would not do well in it.

I hope that by the end of this module, I can improve on my writing skills and also gain confidence in essay writing.