Suggestions please

Parents Forum
1

<p>Hi everyone</p>

<p>I'm a non-native speaker and International student and have studied outside of the U.S. all my life. The country I live in is very conservative and doesn't really encourage study of Humanities/Social sciences. I'm quite detached from these fields. More or often, I see that U.S. colleges emphasize a liberal arts education, encompassing all fields of study. And for that reason, despite becoming over aged and a novice to start with these fields, I've a growing interest over them.</p>

<p>What suggestions do you have for me? Not studying Literature and novels has crippled my English too as they are interrelated. I'm very bad with reading comprehension; it is very tough for me to search for an answer and I've to guess often. I don't know who Emily Dickinson or Ralph Waldo Emerson is. I haven't read any play of Shakespeare except for Macbeth (which I didn't understand too. I'm incapable of reading books due to my bad comprehension practices and drastically limits my understanding of complex sentence structures making me bored of many novels. This problem has also affected my standardized scores i.e. SAT Critical reading.</p>

<p>I've rarely written a descriptive/analytical essay on any topic. Creativity has never seen me through. To be frank, I've been an ESL student passing through all hardships that English is supposed to cause. I learn vocabulary but never seem to use them or even worse, forget them. I'm even admitting that my college admission essay was partly written and edited by my good friend (a native speaker). I excel in every subject I learn (the sciences and math) and have been the best student of my class. But English has seemed to snap my ears off. I've seen foreign IB students excelling in their theory of knowledge and other papers and easing the pain of being regarded as a 'non native' speaker. I simply don't get it why I'm incapable of achieving something which is becoming a norm today globally.</p>

<p>After such unsuccessful hurdles, I was very lucky to get into a top New England Liberal Arts College (due to its test optional admission policy). It was quite astonishing (taking my current condition into account) and hope to attend this fall.</p>

<p>But my question is, will I be able to cope up with the level of English in the U.S.? What can I do to get the English preparation of a native college freshman? Do I study SAT/AP English without taking the test? I really want to write like students do as in a high school newspaper. I'm really worried because I need to take english courses at college, which I may fail at and fear that my GPA will go down a lot. And I have high hopes for attending graduate school (apparently means GRE comes as a barrier again).</p>

<p>Sorry for writing a huge essay. Thank you for giving your time to read and answer me</p>

2

<p>If you wrote that post by yourself, without recourse to a dictionary, you’ll be fine. It’s nicely written, grammatically correct, and gets the point across while being pleasant to read.</p>

3

<p>Thank you for the response :slight_smile: Even though writing seems to be well (because of the ample time given to think) reading comprehension seems to be a major problem for me. Any suggestions on that?</p>

4

<p>I’m genuinely not trying to be a jackass here…</p>

<p>Maybe try reading some books?</p>

5

<p>The only way to get better at something is to keep doing it. It’s the same when English speakers learn other languages. You say you learn new vocabulary and then you never use it… why not? That’s why you don’t remember it, and if you’re not building your vocabulary it IS going to be hard to read. You will have to be able to read books and write papers in college. Your writing here does not indicate to me that that should be an issue for you, but if you think so you are just going to have to work at it and bring yourself up to the necessary level, keep practicing and USE the new vocab and grammar rules you learn. There are millions of different ways to practice language skills-- I keep a journal in the language I am learning, I talk to the dogs I work with in the language I am learning, and I read books and watch movies in the language. I don’t understand every little thing and not everything I produce is correct, but the practice builds my knowledge base so that I can advance. You probably didn’t do yourself any favors letting someone else write your admissions essay for you.</p>

6

<p>That was really encouraging TwistedxKiss :slight_smile: </p>

<p>Other opinions by peeping users will certainly be appreciated :stuck_out_tongue: :D</p>

7

<p>If you get an ACT or SAT practice book and try the reading sections. There usually is a section in the back that tells you why certain answers are right (or more right) and why other answers are wrong (or less right).</p>

<p>Also, when doing a practice section, if you guess at an answer, mark that number. Then when you check your answers, see if you guessed right. IF you did, use the info in the back to learn why that was the best answer.</p>