how can i improve my GP essay

strayedsouls SG

hi all

im new here, basically im a foreign student here..studying at a local JC and next year is my A levels. i always have problems with GP, though im ok at other subjects..always gotten E for my exam. Will really appreciate if you guys can give me some advice regarding my language style, and the way i write my essay etc.

thanks alot, here is my essay, might want to take a look if you are free.....:DDD your comments will be greatly appreciated..

here is my essay...

The Influence of Mass Media is Largely Negative. Do you agree?

Mass Media is undoubtly ubiqituous in today’s society, and the media often be scapegoated by the society as as a tool to spread negative influence on the community, such as media stereotypes as well as violence. Dictionary.com had defined mass media as a means of communication that reach a large audience, and indeed they knit different parts of the world today. Many of these forms of media are present in our daily normal lives, such as television and newspaper. Their presence had sometimes brought degradation to moral values in our society, such as stereotypes and media violence. Stereotypes could bring about devastating results, such as when Adolf Hitler dominated the media in mid 1930s to stereotype the Jews through newspapers which will eventually be responsible for the horrifyingly catastrophic deaths of 6 million Jews. Or even violent behaviour among people which is believed by researchers to be caused by constant exposure to media violence. On the other hand, while it is true that media do bring about negative impacts in our society, their positive impacts should indeed not to be neglected as they often show overt actions to our society. Media help us to disseminate information swiftly or even having a cheap access to the entertainment world. Hence, due to the benefits that they bring, i always believe that the positive aspects of mass media always outweigh its negative influence.

Violence in today’s world is unavoidable and partly is due to constant exposure to media violence which is common today and violence caused many problems to social life. Media violence,often in the form of violent television programmes and video games had influenced many youths aparts from adults. In the US, survey had shown that 80% of the television programmes are violence and exposure to television account approximately half of the homicide committed in the US. Youths growing up in the midst of violence will show worse effects than adults as they may fail to distinguish between real and fantasy world, and may see the world as an unfriendly place to live. As they grew up, their hostile feelings become more complex and difficult to change and this could be seen in different aspects of person’s personality, such as increase in feelings of aggressions and hostility. In April 1999, 2 Columbine High school students killed 12 of their peers and themselves, CNN had reported that these youths had played violent video game‘Doom’ and listened to Marylin Manson’s songs. However, reactions to media violence vary to different individuals as different people may show different reactions towards violence, and good parenthood as well as informal education system may teach good moral values toward these youths. Furthermore the serious violence committed due to media violence are only committed by a small percentage of the population. However, there are still so many types of violence that is committed on a small scale in which we have yet take account into which happened almost everyday, such as insults that many people learned from the media such as television. Hence, the influence of media do indeed bring harmful effects to our society.

Mass media were often blamed for brainwashing people and used as a medium for stereotypes and insults that often happened in our society. Advertisements in television often attract consumers to buy products that they do not really need, such as the latest handphone model or even the attractive advertisements that we see in the television to promote products such as cigarattes or beer to be a cool product to be consumed. Excessive stereotypes and insults are often see in the media, especially in various internet blogs and other sites where we often see people making insults or stereotype each other. Recently, in the year 2005 2 chinese men were being arrested by the police for stereotyping the malays through their blogs. These may cause resentment and anger among people, and may eventually cause racial disharmony that may cause the society to fall apart. However, nowadays blogs were being protected by the laws and the advancement of technology may let the authority to punish the offenders who violated the terms of use. Nevertheless, many of these hurtful comments were being ignored as they were too many of them, and personal attacks such as in Youtube and Facebook are not able to be judged by the laws. Nowadays, the ease of access to media often caused many people to post nasty comments which may cause hurt and anger among many people’s feelings.

Yet, however benefits obtained from media should not be ignored as the media are able to provide cheap access to the entertainment world. The availability of television, radio and other appliances had led people to have cheap access to the entertainment world. In a hectic country such as Singapore, where people worked for long hours, the availability of television programmes or internet are the easiest way for them to relax themselves. And they were charged at much lower rate compared to other forms of entertainment, such as watching movies in the cinema or even fine dining. Helping people to relax is a great way to increase the productivity of the workers as human mind work best when they were in a relaxed state. However, there had been controversies where these media can be used as an easy medium to have access to pornography or violence that may bring other social problems later on. Nevertheless, the benefits obtained from the cheap access of entertainment surely outweigh the disadvantages as generally the working class people and youths are able to make the best use of this media for themselves.

Besides that, media can be used as a tool to swiftly disseminate information to the people all around the world. With the advancement of technology, the programme called ‘breaking news’ came about and we are able to view live coverage all around the world. Unlike the past, before newspaper and other printed media came about, news travelled very slowly as it is being passed from mouth to mouth. Recently the government of various countries are able to raise sums of money to help the unfortunate in the year 2004 when tsunami hits various countries in Asia. Or the cheap and speedy dissemination of news that happen in various countries to the people so that they can show greater awareness and learn to adapt better to their surroundings, such as economic recession that happenned recently in 2008 or war in Iraq, which caused price fluctuations in oil price. However, the people may received false information especially when the media is strongly under the influence of Government’s propaganda. Various medium such as magazine and amateur blogs are often based on personal feelings and opinion, and hence they may show biasedness in their news. However, nevertheless most newspapers, be it online or printed edition around the world often display the factual news and hence, media is a useful tool in disseminating the information swiftly.

The media had evolved with the advancement of technology, and it can be used as a double edged sword as it can spread both negative and positive influence to our society. Under the tight laws by the government, the media had indeed bring much benefits to our world society.

1202 words

i hope some english experts can give me some tips...as i know that my GP essay is still far from good....thanku

JCMaths SG

Hi, I'm not a GP expert, typically scoring Cs in JC (but by some stroke of luck got an A2 in the end), so these are just my personal opinions, based on only the first paragraph.

Well, to begin with, there are a few grammar/spelling errors, such as inconsistency/wrong tenses as marked in red. You need to be careful to avoid the past perfect tense, because 9/10 times they are used wrongly. What you really wanted was the present perfect tense actually. The only time you need past perfect is when you have another reference point in the past and you're talking about something that happened before that past reference point. Hence, unless you're dead sure, avoid past perfect and stick to simple past or present perfect.

As your English is of a rather high standard, you need to avoid the trap of using bombastic words and complex language structure, especially if you're not very sure if that's the correct usage since you're not native after all. Language is for communication, not showing off, and GP is to demonstrate that you can discuss a topic effectively in English, not to show that you can write a flowery poem, so if the reader can't understand the point you are trying to put across, all is wasted. Personally, I find your introduction difficult to read and digest, and I end up dreading to read the rest of the essay. I've marked some of these parts in blue. Why do you say 'often be' when you can say 'is often'? Even though it's not wrong grammatically, it makes it difficult to read and digest. When I saw the 'knit', I was expecting a 'together' to follow, but it didn't appear. I would prefer to see 'horrific' instead of 'horrifyingly' here. The 'indeed' is uncalled-for, and your sentence will read much better without it. I have a vague idea what 'overt' means, but I don't think it fits here, and I do not want to have to check the dictionary to confirm if you are using it correctly or not.

For those in green, it's more straightforward - unnecessary repetition.

My concluding word of advice - write as simply as you can. Show the examiner that you have contents you want to discuss, not language you want to show off. Try this in your next GP essay and see how your GP tutor grades it. Write something that people want to read, and don't try to write literature (personally I hate reading literature). Good luck!

Hal Georgie SG

nice work. think this essay will reap u great rewards...

strayedsouls SG

thanks alot JC maths...thansk alot for taking your time to reply. REally appreciate your help:))

Shotgun SG

My recommendation is to throw in a line that goes "I agree" or "I disagree" to make it seem blatantly obvious what position you are on. Markers don't like to read a whole paragraph just to figure out which side of the fence you're sitting on.

mdfjami SG

Hmm, I think your content is good! You should pay attention to your tenses though, because the mistakes can distract examiners from the content.

For example, these two sentences both contain mistakes, which I have highlighted above.

If there are spelling or grammar mistakes in every line, it is difficult to score a high mark!

As markers read through the essay, they will mark out mistakes they see in sentence structure, spelling and grammar. If every sentence has a mistake, chances are very high you'll score a C grade or below!

Its great that you are able to use a wide range of vocabulary. Grammar is the key issue that is pulling down your GP grade, and I recommend that you work hard on it!

All the best.

2cansam SG

you can further work on the structure of your gp essay. i felt that you were jumping from the bad to the good, and back and forth. You can further structure it by paragraphing more.

JCMaths SG

thanks alot JC maths...thansk alot for taking your time to reply. REally appreciate your help:))

You're welcome =)

Perhaps you can try rewriting your essay (or intro para at least) for us to comment again, to see if you're going in the right direction. As mdfjami said, you do have content, it's just the language and presentation you need to work on, so rewriting the same topic is a more suitable practice for you than writing on new topics.

Garrick_3658 SG

I'm no expert in GP, but based on my personal experiences...

The Influence of Mass Media is Largely Negative. Do you agree?

Staying on topic is perhaps the most essential factor in your marker deciding the grade. Remember to always refer back to the title and DO NOT DERAIL.

Mass Media (Are you sure that you are allowed to type/write In This Manner? It Looks Bad) is undoubtly ubiqituous in today’s society, and the media can often be scapegoated by the society as as a tool to spread negative influence on the community, such as media stereotypes as well as violence. Dictionary.com had defined defines (Please double-check your grammar) mass media as a means of communication that reaches a large audience, and indeed they knit different parts of the world today. Many of these forms of media (Master your language use. The underlined phrase looks awkward, though there is no apparent need for correction. By the way, language use =/= vocabulary. It is leaning more towards the way you express your thoughts in prose form. I will underline every potential expression problem from now on) are present in our daily normal lives, such as television and newspaper. Their presence had sometimes brought degradation to moral values in our society, such as stereotypes and media violence (Do not repeat your points. It makes you look insecure and unfocused). Stereotypes could bring about devastating results, such as when Adolf Hitler dominated the media in mid 1930s to stereotype the Jews through newspapers which will eventually be responsible for the horrifyingly catastrophic deaths of 6 million Jews (Leave this part to your Body paragraphs). Or (Do not begin with "Or", "And" and "Because") even violent behaviour among people which is believed by researchers (If your example has an uncertainty, it is not concrete and creates room for the examiner to doubt the arguments cited in your essay) to be caused by constant exposure to media violence. On the other hand, while it is true that media do bring about negative impacts in our society, their positive impacts should indeed not to be neglected as they often show overt actions to our society. Media help us to disseminate information swiftly or even having a cheap access to the entertainment world. Hence, due to the benefits that they bring (This is NOT a media INFLUENCE. They are the INFLUENCE factors; It is these factors that create the INFLUENCE. You have gone off-topic), i always believe that the positive aspects of mass media always outweigh its negative influence (You are arguing for the positive aspect, yet almost your entire introduction has been filled with the atrocities of mass media. It's almost like you are fighting for the wrong side. Logical sense tells you that if you are going to support a stand, you should reinforce and back it up).

Violence in today’s world is unavoidable and partly is due to constant exposure to media violence which is common today and violence caused many problems to social life. Media violence,often in the form of violent television programmes and video games had influenced many youths aparts from adults (This is not in the requirement of your essay. Attempts to solidfy this point might lead to the creation of more mistakes. Try to generalise if possible). In the US, surveys had shown that 80% of the television programmes are violence violent and exposure to television accounts approximately half of the homicide committed in the US. Youths growing up in the midst of violence will show worse effects than adults as they may fail to distinguish between the real and fantasy worlds, and may see the (Which? You pointed out two worlds previously) world as an unfriendly place to live in. As they grew grow (No offence, but if I were the marker, I'd have failed your Language for all the grammatical mistakes you have committed up till now. So, always remember to double-check your essay) up, their hostile feelings become more complex and difficult to change and this could be seen in different aspects of a person’s personality, such as increase in feelings of aggression and hostility. In April 1999, 2 Columbine High school students killed 12 of their peers and themselves, (Use a period. Remove the previous comma) CNN had reported that these youths had played violent video game‘Doom’ and listened to Marylin Manson’s songs. However, reactions to media violence vary to different individuals as different people may show different reactions towards violence, and good parenthood as well as informal education system may teach good moral values toward these youths. Furthermore the serious violence committed due to media violence are only committed by a small percentage of the population. However, there are still so many types of violence that is committed on a small scale in which we have yet take account into which happened almost everyday, such as insults that many people learned from the media such as television. Hence, the influence of media do indeed bring harmful effects to our society.

1202 words

I stopped reading somewhere halfway. I'd recommend you to seek help for the English Language specifically, rather than starting on the General Paper. A poor use of English for a GP essay, where arguments and examplification are quintessentail, puts any marker off.

Truth be told, a good GP essay need not require English Vocabulary usage of an excellent calibre. Focus on your Grammar and ability to construct arguments. In GP, you are fighting for a side which you think that is right, and you explain your points while substantiating them with examples. All in all, logical sense and flow in the essay is undoubtably the crux in piecing your essay together.

EDIT: Oh yes, a GP essay is feasibly 500-800 words long. Any longer will put the marker off and bad grades will follow. Try to stick to 100 words per paragraph. The structure is as follows:

xingg SG

you can improve on your language.

and your links back to the question are quite weak. it can be improved.

some of your evaluations are neat and justified.

will give a low B for this essay,if your language is ok.

cheers!