MUET Writing (Paper 800/4) Tips

How to improve your English essay writing skills?

Write Grammatically Correct Essay
The English grammar level presented in the essay decides whether it is a well-written or low-graded essay. A grammatically incorrect essay distracts the readers’ attention from the content written by the writer. So, you should read the Important English Grammar Notes for Essay Writing posted on this blog previously. In addition to that, you should always avoid doing minor errors like first-draft slips and gross errors like tense and subject-verb agreement.

Use Thesaurus to Increase Vocabulary
Thesaurus comes in handy to increase your vocabulary. You should try to replace the general words with the more specific ones. For instance, replace the word ‘important’ with the word ‘vital’ when you want to say something that is very important and necessary, and if not done correctly there could be serious problems. Besides that, you are suggested to reference the thesaurus to expand your vocabulary. Try to replace some adjectives with others which are similar in meaning like replacing the word ‘boring’ with ‘mundane’ or ‘tedious’. However, using bombastic words in your writing with the only purpose is to impress the examiners in order to score well is not recommended.

Write Journal or Blog in English
Since MUET Writing Test tests your English writing skills, you should be able to write your essay in English. So, writing journal or diary or blogging in English can brush up your English writing skills. Try to write in grammatically correct sentences instead of using broken or casual English in your journal or blog. You should also train yourself to plan or outline and organize your essay before writing it. Writing spontaneously may keep the flow but the essay written may be a mess. So, it is a good habit to organize your essay before it is written.

Read Well-written Essays or Articles
Last but not least, read a variety of materials to improve your general knowledge. Reading the well-written essays or articles may inspire you to write better by learning the writing styles. Reading newspaper and magazine is the recommended way to brush up your writing skills.

Tags: stpm, muet, form 6, English, writing, skill

How to Cite Materials from Online Resources (Internet)

Students cite or quote materials from Electronic Resources and Internet in writing the research papers. Citation or quotation is crucial to give the exact words of something that has been written, especially in order to support an opinion or prove an idea.

Students should be cautious not to cite online materials which are not retrievable from the Internet. For instance, students should avoid quoting information from webpages which require a login or free registration to retrieve the cited information or are protected by passwords. It is acceptable to cite information from this type of website though it is not recommended. In addition to that, researchers are not encouraged to cite articles from websites which are accessible only through online paid subscriptions such as The Wall Street Journal Online and The New York Times, to name a few.

To cite files available for viewing or downloading from the Internet, the electronic address or Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of the web resources must be written for future references by the readers. Moreover, the protocol (http://) for a web address may be omitted since typing either http://goodessays.blogspot.com/index.html or goodessays.blogspot.com/index.html will bring you to the same webpage. The protocol for an electronic address however is necessary only if it is not http:// like a file from an ftp server should be written as ftp.websites.com/file so that the file can be accessed successfully.

Include the following information (if available) of the online materials cited in your research papers accordingly:

1. Name of author, editor or translator
2. Title of material
3. Title of website
4. Date of electronic publication, of latest update, or of posting
5. Date when researcher found access to material
6. Electronic address – Write in a new line in <angle brackets>. Sometimes the web address is very long and you should always break the URL immediately after the slash.
   

For example, to cite an article titled “ProBlogger Group Writing Project – ‘How to…’” written by Darren Rowse from the URL on website named Problogger Blog Tips, the citation should be written as follow in the research paper.

Rowse, Darren. “ProBlogger Group Writing Project – ‘How to…’” ProBlogger Blog Tips 18 September 2006. Retrieved on 20 September 2006.
<http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/09/18/
problogger-group-writing-project-how-to/>

Citation is very essential in writing academic essays or research papers. Using someone else’ idea or a statement in your writing without mentioning the sources of reference is considered plagiarism. If you find this post useful and would like to cite it in your research paper, please cite it in the format written above. If you would like to cite this article in your website, please provide a clickable direct link from your website to this post. Thanks.

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MUET Reading (Paper 800/3) Tips

How to improve your English reading skills?

Make Reading your Habit
Reading for many people is fun and enjoyable. You can improve your English reading skills by reading as much as possible. Reading articles on topics of your interest is always an enjoyable and pleasure experience. To make reading your habit, you may begin by reading shorter texts and after a week progress to the longer texts. Train yourself to read daily.

Read a Variety of Materials
Newspapers, magazines, novels, encyclopaedia, etc are some typical reading materials to start with. In addition, reading English ebooks and weblogs or blogs helps too. Magazines such as Readers’ Digest are suitable for your general knowledge, English grammar and vocabulary. A recommended blog for Malaysian students is Malaysia Students blog.

Read Articles form Different Disciplines
Do not limit your reading materials to your favourite topics. Instead, you should read articles and scholarly journals from various disciplines. For instance, health, technology, education, science, environment, you name it.

Learn Skimming and Scanning Skills
Skimming is a skill to read something quickly to find the main facts or ideas in it while scanning is to read something word by word quickly for a better understanding of the text. Skimming and scanning skills come in handy in your MUET reading test since you have to answer 50 multiple-choice questions (MCQ) based on several texts given.

Tags: stpm, muet, form 6, English, reading, skill