Is my essay any good?

This is the topic: Using the concept of a ‘world view’, identify some of the beliefs and attitudes, particularly to education and learning, that you bring to your learning now. Reflect critically on how your world view has been shaped by factors such as your gender, age or community. In your answer refer to Hobson (1996) and Samovar and Porter (2004) from the SSK12 Reader, and Chapter 1 in A Guide to Learning Independently (Marshall and Rowland, 2006, 1-18)

And here is the essay:

http://clearblogs.com/uniwork/101119/World+view.html

Please be gentle!

I think it is really good. You’re lucky that you have such an interesting story to tell! There are a few grammatical things you might want to take a second look at, but the content is very good.

Lost Propelleros- Samovar

video spot

Duration : 0:2:7

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Is my essay up to uni standards?

This is the topic :

Using the concept of a ‘world view’, identify some of the beliefs and attitudes, particularly to education and learning, that you bring to your learning now. Reflect critically on how your world view has been shaped by factors such as your gender, age or community. In your answer refer to Hobson (1996) and Samovar and Porter (2004) from the SSK12 Reader, and Chapter 1 in A Guide to Learning Independently (Marshall and Rowland, 2006, 1-18)

My essay wouldnt fit so I pasted it at this website:

http://clearblogs.com/uniwork/100528/Wor…

Please let me know if it’s OK, it’s my first uni essay. Suggestions on improvement would be appreciated!

Personally, I wasn’t too impressed with your essay. I have a lot of concerns with it. I will edit my answer to include some of my thoughts about specific parts of your essay. DISCLAIMER: All criticism is meant to be constructive.

"A world view is how you view the world through your eyes."
Oh really? a world view is how you view the world through your eyes? come on, this doesn’t do a thing for your essay. I would eliminate it all together.

"It is your assumptions that you make of the world, those assumptions are usually influenced by race, gender and culture."
Sentence starts with a vague pronoun. What is it? Also there are two complete thoughts which should be two sentences or have some other link besides a comma, maybe a semi colon would be better.

"World views are habitual perceptions of the world they are in our subconscious, we do not think of them."
Again, you have three sentences here. Connect them better or make them three seperate sentences.

"Apart from race, gender, age and culture I believe the environment in which one is brought up in, influences a person’s world view."
Race, age, and culture have a huge influence on environment.

"Not everyone who belongs to a specific culture might accept that certain culture’s world view on education."
Remove certain from the sentence.

"Each individual is different, no matter which culture he or she belong to."
Subject-Verb agreement. It should be individual….belongs. Also, we don’t end sentences in prepositions, generally.

"We migrated to Australia in the early eighties." Just wondering…what are you applying for. If you migrated in the early eighties you are probably a non-traditional student right? Kids applying to school these days are born in 89-90-91. Did you and your family migrate, or your family? You need to specify here.

"Back in Iraq, women were expected to do two things, to marry at a very young age and to produce as many grandchildren as she could."
Keep your subjects consistent. You go from women to she. You should go from women to they, or change it to a woman was….she could.

"University was not created for women only men, the only way a woman could attend university was if her family was well off or if she was extremely intelligent."
Again, a consisten problem for you. Make sure that your ideas flow well and that your sentences are not poorly connected clumps of independent clauses.

"Therefore, if I was still living back in Iraq, I am sure this is what my world view about formal education would be."
This? What’s this? Vague demonstratives…

"“If you want a tertiary education but in persuing this you are at odds with others in your cultural or social group…”[4] This created many problems for me especially with my father. "
I don’t understand the relevence of the quote. I think I would have to read more to see how it connects. If you want a tertiary education but blah blah blah then what? For me, you could have said this yourself without it being a quote and reiterated that this is your situation and creats problems for you. I see know usefulness of the quote. It does not help you develop any ideas.

"As I was growing up as I realised how flawed and sexist some parts of my culture were in regards to education among other things. I did not want my kismet to turn out, as that neither did my mother. "
Fiddle around with punctuation and make this one sentence.

"Even though she herself could not even read a book written in English."
Even though she couldn’t read…blah blah blah. This is incomplete and needs to be linked the previous sentence.

Well, theres the first three paragraphs. I’m going to take a breather before attacking the next three.

" I was lucky enough to have been raised in Australia where I attended both public and denominational schools, and by rejecting my culture’s world view and adopting the Australian world view on education; that if you worked hard in school, if you got good grades you would be rewarded by becoming whatever you wanted to be, and if you were successful you would become rich and live happily ever after. "
LONG LONG sentence, needs to be separated into at least two parts.

"In addition to the two factors mentioned above, my world view on education was further solidified by watching successful women on TV." Such a cookie cutter transitional sentence. I don’t like it. Nix the in addition bullshit.

"Women who value education, strong and independent women, such Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State."
You forgot the as after such.

"Her power and independence was derived from hard work and of course a lot of tertiary study. " Subject Verb agreement. plural. power and independence were derived. why not change things up a bit? nix "of course a lot of tertiary study" and replace it with "higher education.

"Another two successful women Oprah Winfrey and Queen Rania of Jordan."
This sentence lacks a verb. I take poetic liberties myself occassionally and don’t use a verb but this NEEDS a verb.

"In 2006 Oprah built a girls school in Africa, she proved just how valuable education is."
How did she prove "just how valuable education is"? By building a school? If I build a crack house does that prove just how valuable crack is?

"Queen Rania of Jordan believes "You can change the course of a nation through education," she says. "One of the "
Again punctuation issues. I didn’t copy the entire quote but you get the picture. the first sentence should end with Queen Ranias quote, and the word education. Capitalize she and replace the period after says with, well, nothing. remove the period.

"her belief gave me hope that not all Middle Eastern cultures share the same world views on education, especially were women are concerned."
Capitalize her, change were to where.

"It gave me the belief that perhaps not all are sexist such as mine as I mentioned in my earlier paragraph." Get rid of the as I mentioned in my earlier paragraph, it is useless. We don’t need anything that is useless AND lacking in style.

"In conculsion, my world view in relation to education did not actually come from my Iraqi community or the Iraqi culture. "
Again, lose the cookie cutter bullshit. In conclusion is very third grade.

"It came from a myriad of inflences, my mother and the liberal Australian culture in which I grew up in."
Vague pronoun, what is it? Again, sentence ends in a preposition. We don’t do that in formal essays.

"These are the factors who influenced my world view on education and who gave me the belief that male of female, if you have a degree in your hand, you can achieve anything."
These are the factors who…i don’t think australian culture is a person. change this word. male of female…i think you meant or.

I have a few more concerns that are not specific but general. You need to introduce your quotes. Free standing quotes are not appropriate for formal essays. All of your quotes, well 90% of your quotes are not introduced.

To Be-
Go through your entire essay and when ever you see a state of being verb, is, am, are, was were etc. try to replace it with a better verb.

To Say-
Everytime that you used he/she says or said get rid of say and replace it with a better verb ie. states, exclaims, etc.

Good luck on your essay. With some work you will have a decent essay. I hope you get into your university of choice.

The Dreadnoughts – Antartica and Samovar

The Dreadnoughts live at the Bunker Chicoutimi. 30 mai 2009.

Duration : 0:6:56

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Why does Obama eat endangered species? I thought that was illegal?

Quote:
Russian agencies, quoting the government’s press service, said Putin treated Obama to black caviar with sour cream, smoked beluga with pancakes and tea made in the traditional Russian samovar, a big coal-fired kettle.

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-BarackObama/idUSTRE56657E20090707

http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersComService_2_MOLT/idUSTRE5661Q520090707

I’m guessing you are referring to the beluga – that is beluga sturgeon, not whale

Typical. Do some research next time.