My Writing Experience Essay

Writing has been an essential tool to me since I started learning in pre-school. It allows me to express myself through different use of words and has been proven useful many times even till now. Despite that, I do not really have much of an interest when it comes to writing mainly because I could not master the art of writing and tend to have a lot of problems when doing so. I have tried improving it through many different methods, but to no avail. Looking back, there are many factors then led me to how I feel about writing today. However, one of the crucial factor would be that my country, Malaysia, has many different races, each with their own languages.
Being raised in a multiracial country, I was required to learn three different languages to communicate well, namely Malay, Chinese, and English. In Malaysia, there is a notable distinction between each race which can be seen in our different lifestyles, traditions and foods. This gives us the luxury of experiencing different culture together and enjoy a variety of food. The only barrier between each race is the language that we use. However, this was not a problem as all of these languages were taught to us since pre-school years and gave us a good foundation for them. As such, I am
still able to communicate and understand them well till this day. This allows me to enter a Malay restaurant and order a meal in their language easily. If there comes a time where I do not know a word, I could use English as my last resort since most waiters have a decent understanding of it. This also allows tourist to experience the wide range of culture that Malaysia has to offer despite the language barrier.
While being able to learn three languages sound very useful, it has its drawbacks. Each language has its own unique grammar, vocabulary and sentence structure. As a generally weak student in language, this resulted in many confusions through middle school and I was not able to perform well in most of my writing courses for each language. Our classes are also shorter to accommodate the vast amount of syllabus that needs to be covered each year. The burden and stress to perform well in all courses was also a problem I personally struggle with. Thus, in high school, I focused entirely on English compared to the other two languages to reduce the workload. There were also new subjects that was introduced to me during that time such as physics and chemistry which keep me occupied. This decision has helped me improve my writing skills the most and allowed me to write more casually without needing to. Yet, there are still many difficulties that I faced which hinders my progress in writing effectively. Another difficulty I faced when writing is when I am trying to convey a message while ensuring that my intentions aren’t misinterpreted.
Since the start of writing, I have been a very careless person who does not pay much attention to grammatical errors. While this has affected my grades over the years, it has always been interesting to read the teacher’s comments on my papers as they usually complain about how tough it was for them to understand what I was trying to convey. It was also these very comments that allow me to be more mindful of what I write in the future and ensure that my papers are more coherent. While my grammar still may not perfect, it has surely improved over the years thanks to the help of these
teachers. Lastly, the biggest issue that I come across in writing is my limited vocabulary which prohibits me from fully expressing myself when I write. It is quite apparent that those with rich vocabulary tend to be those who reads frequently. While I had read a few books when I was still in high school, I came to find other ways to fill up my spare time as I grow older and as such stopped reading altogether. Furthermore, the newfound workload when I entered college was a good excuse for me to avoid reading till this day. My major did not help much in expanding my vocabulary as well since I am trying to get a degree in computer engineering and new vocabularies that I learnt there are usually just technical terms that does not have much use in writing. Regardless of all the difficulty that I come across with it, writing is essential in the real world as it is allows us to express our thoughts and opinions to others in the most efficient manner. Technology has advanced tremendously over recent years and it would be a waste not to take advantage of it. Thus, I have been developing ways to improve my writing using it. I started making use of online thesaurus more often when I write to learn different kinds of vocabulary and make use of them. I also utilizes platform such as Grammarly to proofread my work and finds any grammar mistake that I might have made. I could also learn my mistakes in the process of correcting them. I find myself learning faster using these tools and makes writing more interesting than before. All in all, I felt that writing has been a difficult process for me due to the reasons I mentioned but with the right tools, I believe I will be able to improve on it. As an engineer, I would also be needed to write lab reports in the coming future and if my writing is not up to standard, no amount of research that I do would be useful if no one understands it.