Improving homework can be challenging.

Hey guys!

Last time we had to hand in a piece of homework it had to be about analysing a dictionary. The following text is what I handed in:

Today we had to have a look at various monolingual dictionaries in English Class and I for myself liked the Macmillan English Dictionary best. Why? Because it has a vocab section! One of my goals for this semester is to expand my vocabulary and I think, with a vocab section in the dictionary this could be easier. We also discovered a so-called “writing skills section” which could also be very practical. Another advantage for me personally is that there are many pictures in it. I tend to remember what I see and I think this could make learning new vocab easier for me. There is also a CD included but actually we couldn’t find out what’s on it because we didn’t have the required administrative privileges to install the software on the computer. Another thing we discovered was a section called “language awareness” and I for myself found that very interesting! The Macmillan English Dictionary covers so many of my personal language requirements and this is why I chose this as my favourite!

While writing the text I didn't have the feeling that I was making many mistakes but getting my work back a week later showed me that I had made many mistakes. First of all I didn't use one of the topic sentences our teacher told us to use. I actually don't know why I didn't use one she gave us. I have absolutely no idea! My text also sounds like a list - I tried to improve my writing when I corrected the text. The following written piece is the correction of the text above:

Having looked at a number of monolingual print dictionaries in class this week, I have decided to buy the Macmillan English Dictionary. There were especially two sections which caught my attention: „improve your writing skills” and „vocabulary“. One of my goals for this semester is to expand my vocabulary and I think that with a vocab section for knowing common words which are used more often by native speakers this could be easier. For people who tend to remember what they see - for example myself - there is a great feature: words related to the topics “house, kitchen, body, clothes and patterns, motorway and types of vehicle, transport und car” are described using pictures. Giving the user numerous collocations the Macmillan English Dictionary is very practical because knowing the most common collocations is a must and covering so many of my personal language requirements I chose this as my favourite!

The first sentence is one of the topic sentences we had to use. For not making my text sound like a list I tried to use verbs in progressive form at the start of some sentences. Asking a friend of mine who is great at writing English texts about how I could write this or that was also a thing I did and I think the correction is much better than the piece I handed in!


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