Essay Do I Have the Necessary Skills to Register Into 1100 Academic English?

Essay

Do I have the necessary skills to register into 1100 Academic English?

Thompson Rivers University

I am a Thompson Rivers University (TRU) international student enrolled in post-baccalaureate program in international business. This winter 2012 is my first semester at TRU. Despite the fact that I am taking two English as second language classes (ESAL) which are grammar and writing, I am also studying third and fourth year courses, which is quite challenging for me. It is severe because in writing class I am learning how to write academic papers and at the same time I am writing research papers for my marketing classes. Perhaps this complication has made my writing skills more advanced, because I have written, reviewed and re-written, and now at the end of this semester I am writing better papers. Nevertheless, the main question for both of my instructors ESAL 058 and prospective English 1100 is whether I have the necessary skills to register into Academic English 1100 (AE 1100). My answer would be: “Yes I do, because my reading, writing and grammar skills are developing and some of them I have mastered. Even though I experience the lack of academic vocabulary, it is not essential to pass this ESAL course and proceed further into AE 1100”.

According to the scale in ESAL 058 outline (Marcelet, 2012) my reading skills fall in category between developing and master levels good enough to be enrolled in AE 1100. My performance is relatively highly ranked mostly by A’s and B’s which shows my ability to understand the requirements for my assignments. In order to get 85% (which is A) for my marketing project I had to read, understand and respond to variety of research articles. This is exactly what Dr. Smyrl requires from students: “find, evaluate, and integrate source material purposefully and effectively” (Smyrl, 2010, p. 2). In the beginning of my ESAL writing course I did not know how read the material effectively. It took me a lot of time and effort to get...