Siyu Ye

Marie Webb

Ling 12 MW 11 am

11 March, 2019

Language Self-study Reflection

As an international student, I am capable to write down sentences with few grammar

mistakes because we have been trained to pay attention to grammars since we are young in

China. I can master most of grammars well. However, I do have problems in many other

aspects such as word choice and lexical variety. Therefore, I focus on these parts in the

language self-study programme.

I have finished tutorial 3, 6, 12 and 19 in order to improve my language skill. Tutorial

is about clause. It describes two different types of clauses - independent clause and dependent

clause. In a long sentence, we are supposed to employ proper amounts of clauses wisely.

Utilizing too many clauses will make the sentences hard to understand for readers. Tutorial 6

is about writing style and lexical variety. This is one of the most significant parts because I

am actually weak in writing style and lexical variety. It teaches me how to differentiate topic-

specific term and general academic term so that I can gain a better understanding of how

professional my words are. It also recommends a tool to help determine the variety of words -

The Compleat Lexical Tutor: Vocabulary Profile. In this approach, we can check if our words

are lexically dense, academic and topic-specific. Tutorial 12 is about word choice. It

demonstrates different types of word choice such as wrong word, imprecise word, and wrong

combination of words. Tutorial 19 is about tense, which is an essential part in a paper. A

good use of tense enables readers to understand the timeline.

 As far as I am concerned, tutorial 6 and 12 are most useful for me. I am supposed to

remember what I have learned and to employ those strategies in my papers in the future.