When I began to write professionally several years ago, the type of writing I dreaded the most was the one that seemed the easiest at first glance: narrative writing.  How tricky could […]

Ask any secondary school student to name the English assignment they hate the most, and they are most likely to say “the argumentative essay.” Indeed, the strain of having to fake interest […]

In the early 1980s, when the Chinese Communist Party permitted overseas Chinese to set foot in their homeland again, Cecilia Chiang made her way from the US to her native city of […]

A large part of writing well has to do with knowing what not to write. This is much harder than it sounds: students who lack good training tend to write whatever comes […]

The three-paragraph script below was written by a candidate who sat for her UKiset. To differentiate her text from mine, I’ve put her copy in italics.  Exam writing topic: “It is important […]