<p>Dictionary.com always has a Word of the Day. (:</p>
<p>an 8th grader???</p>
<p>hehe I write killer essays but I'm bad at class discussions...that's why I got a B for english 2 honors</p>
<p>READ. and if you can, try writing to improve your style. anything would be good, as long as you take it seriously (poems, articles, essays or even a letter to your girlfriend).</p>
<p>magazines don't exactly help.</p>
<p>Well, I don't know about you , but English is hard for me.</p>
<p>First of all, English is not my native language. When I came to America, I was struggling with basic comprehension. As right now, my troubles lie in writing a GOOD essay. I can easily get A in my Honor English as I am right now. However, I barely made a B in my AP English Language class, which I took last year. I tried to make everything I wrote fancy. But often the result was question marks all over my paper. </p>
<p>Well, the one thing is that you are still in eighth grade. There are rooms and time for improvement.</p>
<p>thanks everyone for your advices, so basicaly</p>
<p>read a LOT
write a LOT</p>
<p>i'll start with reading</p>
<p>^ are you a prep school applicant? i'll add you to the list on the countdown thread if you are.</p>
<p>I hate to bring this up, but...</p>
<p>SAT critical reading passages are pretty good for vocab, since there're always a bunch of questions asking what "____ most nearly means", which forces you to not only know what words mean by the dictionary but know what they mean in context. Plus, reading those will prep you for the SAT. (I'm sure you wanted me to remind you of that.)</p>
<p>haha, SB, that's the best thing I've read here....
Anyway, just one more word: I took this from my math teacher "I hate English because I dont understand why I got a D for my own opinions".
So basically, there's noone who is a "bad writer", it's just because of your teachers, that's all.
there are two kind of people Language Arts + Social study, and Math + Science. NOONE is good in both. (Well, the geniuses are, wondering how many there are).</p>
<p>im not a prep school applicant</p>
<p>so don't, noone can be perfect. So just concentrate on one thing, and make sure that you'll be excellent in that subject.
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<p>
[quote]
First of all, English is not my native language
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Not an excuse. Sorry. In my experience, you can be good at anything even if English is your 90th language. English is my second best class and my cousins' and my sister's best class, and it's not my first language, or theirs.</p>
<p>
[quote]
were you born in the US or are you an immigrant?
[/quote]
This has hardly anything to do with english. Trust me.</p>
<p>Yeah, my boyfriend complains the reason he isn't good at english is because it wasn't his first language - the funny thing is, he actually is very good at english.</p>
<p>You really do just need to read. If you get familiar with words and see them a lot, you will start using them in more "every day" speech and essays.</p>
<p>Also, if you find yourself starting an essay with a certain word, try this writing excercise - stop using those words. It might take a little longer, but if you force yourself not to use those words, then you find other words that might be or might not be better. The point is, you try, therefore you'll have a larger pool of words to choose from. Once you find that you're not constantly linked to certain words at a certain place of the sentence or referring to something, then you can bring those words back in. I don't know if it will help for you, it's just something I kind of thought of and tried - it worked for me. </p>
<p>Good luck :)</p>
<p>i have better grammar than an american born, and i came to america three years ago. i write better essays than her, too.</p>
<p>but then she reads more. but i still rock :)</p>
<p>It was my poor essay writing that made me decide to go on the regular English path in sophomore year. I decided to apply again for AP last year, but was denied admission. I tried again this year, and I just found out that I made it in today. After two years, I'm finally back in the AP/Honors program. Wee!</p>
<p>english isnt hard its boring</p>
<p>yea, you can have a word of the day or something, but the best thing is to read. read read read read, the New York Times, bestseller novels, etc. whenever you find a word you can't understand, look it up immediately. you can understand a word if you read it in sentences, and familiarize yourself with its usage. a good portion of my vocab comes from picking words up from seeing it in books, magazines, etc. over and over again. </p>
<p>dont get a tutor. no one needs a tutor for English. just keep reading. if you read a lot, you will soon love books. go to the library and ask for some interesting books, or go look up teen bestsellers, to start with.</p>
<p>well, as I said before, I hate it when I got a D for my own opinion.
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