Tim Zha

Professor Marie Webb

Ling 12 section 200 MW 11am

19 February 2019

Language Self-study Reflections

I did four tutorials in total. They are number 11 (passive/active voice), 14 (verb), 17

(quotations), and 21 (sentence structure). They each provides me with some insight into the

world of English, and the practices, I believe, help me with my language skills.

I had a bad habit of using too many sentences structured in passive voice, and I hardly

ever noticed that I was overusing the structure. I began to learn about how each genre has their

own tolerance towards the using of passive voice. Now, when I am writing for any purpose other

than scientific report, I always keep tract of my writing so that I do not include too many passive

voice sentences. Another problem I noticed from my early writings (high school writings) is that

I tend to write incomplete sentences, sometimes making dependent clauses into sentences.

Throughout the years, I have gradually figured out ways to solve this problem, and many of my

solutions are exactly the same as the ones appear in Tutorial 21. The one I used the most (it also

appeared in the tutorial) is checking the three basic elements, namely subject, verb, and object. I

greatly reduced my mistakes just by doing it.

As for my quotation problem, I did not realize it until the first draft of writing project 1.

After reading Tutorial 17, I am confident about the punctuation (commas and periods) in

sentences with quotations. I rarely make mistakes on verbs, but in exam conditions it is almost

impossible for me to get every verb correct. I tried to find a method of check verbs efficiently.

Unfortunately, I did not get what I was looking for in Tutorial 14.
 Overall, Language Power is a very good book to get grammar trainings for multilingual

students. I also consider it as a good source for checking grammar rules when I am writing for

other classes in the future. I am planning to go through all the other chapters during my spare

time so that I could get to know about grammar rules in other aspects. I will always leave it on

my desk when editing or writing, because I believe I can find an answer to whatever grammar

question I encounter.