2021-05-10 ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด – A – assay & essay

Revision A

2021-05-10

ศัพท์ น่าสับสน ชุด – A – assay & essay

แนะนำการใช้ ตามที่ส่วนใหญ่ใช้ แต่ละท้องถิ่น

ความหมาย อาจผันแปร ตาม ตำแหน่ง/หน้าที่ ในประโยค

Dictionary.com

ออกเสียง assay – verb = ‘a-SEY’ – noun = ‘AS-ey’

ออกเสียง essay – verb = ‘e-SEY’ - noun = ‘ES-ey’

Dictionary.com

6 Tips for Writing A College Application Essay

A college application is made up of many different components.

You’ve got the transcripts, the recommendations, the exam scores.

And, just when you think there can’t possibly be anything else,

you’re hit with the essays.

Some schools require just one personal statement.

Others ask for many.

Some, like the University of Chicago,

pose “quirky”questions

like, “Cats have nine lives, Pac-Man has three lives,

and radioactive isotopes have half-lives.

How many lives does something else

—conceptual or actual—have, and why?”

(Yes, that’s a real question.)

No matter what the specific essay requirements

are for a given university application,

they boil down to essentially the same thing.

College admissions staff want to know more about

who you, the applicant, are as a three-dimensional person.

We get that talking about yourself

might not be your favorite thing in the world,

but there are ways to make the process of writing

a college application essay easier.

We’ve broken down some of the basic principles

you can use to make nearly any college application essay a success,

regardless of how strange the prompt might seem.

1. Use the prompt as a starting point for brainstorming

It might seem like the prompts for college application essays,

whether on the Common App or elsewhere, are really specific.

But actually, they’re way more open-ended than they seem.

Essentially, every single one of the prompts is asking you

about the same thing:

what is something that happened to you and how did it affect you?

This can be something related to your background, your personal history, or a challenge that you faced.

You can write about something silly,

like the time you “accidentally” brought your pet hamster to school

in your pocket, or something serious, like the loss of a family member.

To get the ball rolling, take a look at the prompts for ideas.

Write down events in your life that come to mind

while you’re reading the prompts.

You should try to pick discrete events

that can be explained in about 500 words,

like “working tech on the high school musical after not getting cast

in the play.” Aim for a list of 5–10 ideas.

2. Pick a subject that is specific to you

Your personal statements are not an opportunity

for you to rewrite your entire resume.

Remember, the college admissions staff already know

about all of your extracurriculars, your grades, your exam scores.

No need to go into all of that again.

Instead, you should pick one or two subjects off of your list

that really highlight who you are beyond all of that.

(And be honest!

Don’t make up a story about saving a puppy from a burning building

if it didn’t really happen.)

Ideally, the topic or topics you pick should be very specific to who you are.

It will make it easier to write about in a detailed way.

It will also help you stand out from the crowd.

You should think about what subjects will best

present your value to the admissions committee.

Are you tenacious? Brave? Creative?

Whatever quality you want to highlight

should be shown in the topics you pick.

3. Be descriptive

Once you’ve picked your topic,

remember the basic format you need to use:

what happened and how you responded to it.

Then, start writing your response.

As you write, try to use as many sensory details as possible. Use descriptions to give the reader a sense of what you heard, saw, smelled, felt, and (maybe) tasted. These will help give your essay something special.

For example:

Boring sentence: I knew I had my hamster in my pocket.

Interesting sentence: I could feel Harvey scrabbling around in my coat pocket while he squeaked with excitement.

This is why it’s important to be honest about the events you’re writing about. It’s hard to provide good, realistic detail if you’re making up a story.

Also, if you’re puffing up your volunteer work,

the lack of detail will be a dead giveaway. Just don’t.

No one expects you to be a superhero. They just expect you to be honest.

While it’s good to use vivid descriptions,

you should also try to avoid clichés.

The worst of these is starting with a quote from a famous person or

“The dictionary defines ‘bravery’ as …”

While we appreciate the shout out, it reads as trite.

4. Edit, edit, edit

One of the most challenging parts of writing

a college application essay is the editing process.

You only have a limited number of words to work with

—somewhere between 250 and 500, generally.

And you have to do a lot in that small space like tell a compelling,

detailed story that gives a clear picture of who you are,

your values, and how you respond to events in your life.

That’s a lot.

We can practically guarantee that your first draft of your essay

will not be quite right.

Once you’ve drafted your essay, read through it again.

Are your details vivid enough?

Have you addressed both sides of the prompt:

what happened and how you reacted to it?

Have you avoided clichés?

Does the first sentence open the essay with a bang?

Did you spell everything correctly?

(Hint: Dictionary.com can help with that.)

Once you’ve run through your mental checklist, go back and make changes.

 Then, read through it again. Make more changes.

We suggest that you go through at least three or four drafts

before you move on to the next step in the process.

5. Get feedback

It’s important to get a lot of feedback from others

in the process of drafting your college application essay.

Don’t do this too early

—it can be discouraging to have someone

comment on a piece of writing that is half-baked.

But once you’re semi-happy with your work,

have a trusted family member, teacher, mentor,

or other member of your circle read through it.

Ask them to give you honest, direct feedback about what they think of it.

You might ask them to specifically look for instances

where you need to be more specific or provide more detail.

Once you have their feedback, incorporate it into your piece.

Then, ask for another couple of rounds of feedback.

After each round, use the feedback to make your essay better.

6. Double-check before you submit

When you’re sure you’re happy with your essay,

double- and triple-check the spelling and grammar.

We recommend you read it aloud to yourself to make sure it sounds OK.

After all that, submit your essay, cross your fingers, and good luck!

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Choosethe Right Synonym for essay

Verb

ATTEMPT, TRY, ENDEAVOR, ESSAY, STRIVE

meanto make an effort to accomplish an end.

ATTEMPT stresses the initiation or beginning of an effort.

will attempt to photograph the rare bird

TRY is often close to ATTEMPT but may stress effort or experiment

made in the hope of testing or proving something.

tried to determine which was the better procedure

ENDEAVOR heightens the implications of exertion and difficulty.

endeavored to find crash survivors in the mountains

ESSAY implies difficulty but also suggests tentative trying or experimenting.

will essay a dramatic role for the first time

STRIVE implies great exertion against great difficulty and specifically suggests persistent effort.

continues to strive for peace

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Usage Notes

To 'Essay' or 'Assay'?

You'll know the difference if you give it the old college essay

You know what an essay is.

It's that piece you had to write in school,

hopefully not (but probably) the night before it was due,

about a subject

such as What Freedom Means to You

—at least five pages, double-spaced,

and don't even try to get away with anything larger than a 12-point font.

(Kudos for thinking to tweak the margins, though.)

You might also know that essay can be a verb,

with its most common meaning being "to try, attempt, or undertake":

A very close approach to the evil of Idi Amin

is essayed in Giles Foden's 1998 novel The Last King of Scotland,

whose narrator is the Scottish personal physician to the dictator.
— Norman Rush, The New York Review of Books, 7 Oct. 2004

The principal accidents she remembers, before last summer's,

involved chipping a couple of teeth while, as a fifth grader,

she was essaying a back flip off a diving board,...
— E. J. Kahn, Jr., The New Yorker, 17 Aug. 1987

The verb assay, meanwhile, is used to mean "to test or evaluate"

and can be applied to anything from laboratory samples to contest entries:

He bounced from job to job, working on a shrimp boat

and later for Pan American Laboratories assaying

chemicals coming in from Mexico.
— Steve Clark, The Brownville Herald, 21 Apr. 2017

"Each burger will be assayed by visitors and a panel of judges,

including local chefs Jen Knox, Gina Sansonia, Judith Able,

Bret Hauser, Camilo Cuartas and Peter Farrand."
— Phillip Valys, SouthFlorida.com, 19 May 2017

While this distinction might seem clear-cut on the surface,

there exists a great deal of historical overlap between essay and assay.

The two words derive from the same root

—the Middle French essai, which ultimately

derives from a Late Latin noun, exagium, meaning "act of weighing."

At one time, assay and essay were synonyms,

sharing the meaning "try" or "attempt."

In the 17th century, an essay was an effort to test or prove something:

Edmond: I hope, for my brother's justification,

he wrote this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.
— William Shakespeare, King Lear, 1606

For the modern noun use of essay to mean

"a written exploration of a topic,"

we can almost certainly thank Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592),

a French writer noted for working in the form.

Borrowing a word that emphasized their identity as literary "attempts,"

Montaigne devised Essais as a title for the vignette-typed pieces

that he began publishing in 1580 and spanned over a thousand pages,

covering subjects as varied and wide-ranging

as solitude, cannibalism, and drunkenness.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary

assay

Did You Know?

Noun

Usage experts warn against confusing the verbs "assay" and "essay."

Some confusion shouldn't be surprising,

since the two words look alike and derive from the same root,

the Middle French word essai, meaning "test" or "effort"

(a root that in turn comes from Late Latin exagium, meaning "act of weighing").

At one time, the two terms were synonyms,

sharing the meaning "try" or "attempt,"

but many modern usage commentators recommend that

you differentiate the two words,

using "essay" when you mean "to try or attempt"

(as in "he will essay a dramatic role for the first time")

and "assay" to mean "to test or evaluate"

(as in "the blood was assayed to detect the presence of the antibody").

Dictionary of Problem Words in English

assay & essay

Assay means “a test” or “to test”:

“The chemist started to assay the mineral.”

Essay means “to attempt,” “an attempt,” or “a literary effort”:

“Will you essay this difficult task?”

“This is a delightful written essay.”