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 […]
Navigating narrative writing
Michelle Ng
I'm Michelle Ng (吳若琦), an Oxford-educated bilingual political writer and English writing coach based in Hong Kong. I'm currently an English columnist for Ming Pao, and a Chinese columnist for 眾新聞. I have written for Hong Kong Free Press, The Wall Street Journal and The Vancouver Sun.
Writing aid for the argumentative essay
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 […]
Two responses to a DSE English essay topic
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 […]
Go off-topic in a writing exam and lose marks
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 […]
Hitting the high notes
At one point in her operatic career, Maria Callas became so portly that in a performance where she sang next to live elephants on stage – they were there as props – […]
Going beyond DSE English
The way I see it, developing an eye for good writing is a bit like wine-tasting. Taste this sample. What makes it work, and how does it compare with the samples you […]
Exam essay writing tips: how to use examples and quotations properly
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 […]
Rescuing a near-hopeless IB English essay
A student who sat for her International Baccalaureate English exam wrote the following essay for its writing segment. For ease of reference, I’ve numbered the paragraphs in her piece. The writing topic […]
