College applications have always been a nightmare for prospective students and parents alike. This is true, especially when writing the college application essay - it’s considered a major hurdle to joining college. Those who have been asked to write it can relate to the cloud of anxiety that engulfs them as they realize how clueless they are on how to write the essay. This anxiety is not unfounded as these applications are serious business. Picture it as an interview where you’re being asked to describe yourself and to justify why you deserve admission into the institution. You also have to explain what contribution you will make to the greatness of the institution. Your life experiences, academic credentials, and also any other career or professional experience will come into question.

If you served in the military, then you have the upper hand. This article will consider vital tips on how you can use your military life experience to ace that college application. There are positive experiences that have been fronted by former military men and women who cited success in using their military experiences in their college application. Most of them though were hesitant and undermined the value of the adding this experience at first. Therefore, if you are in the same boat, be assured that there are positive implications.

Open Up About Your Life

When writing the college application essay, it pays to open up about your real life. Perhaps you had applied to a program while still serving in the military. Perhaps you had some ambition to pursue a certain degree in a specific sector. Maybe you had to juggle family life with military life, and at times you found it overwhelming.

Opening about such life experiences might seem hard at first owing to your military decorum. You might be frightened to open about your personal life. However, you can start by being open-ended. Write anything that comes into mind.

Most applications ask the applicants to relate instances when they applied something that they learned in school in real life situation. Well, don't overthink about the answers as everything can be a reply. You could even share something as simple as learning mathematics in second grade. The math that you were taught during that time seemed to be insignificant, but later you applied it in real life when dealing with personal and family finances. That’s a practical application of something you learned in school in real life!

Another thing that you could mention is persistence. Persistence characterizes military life, and this is something that you might have been cultivated to practice while still in school. If need be, share a military expedition story, perhaps of how you went on a mission trip to dense forests in Africa. The essence is to pour out your heart and open up about real life experiences that you’ve encountered as a person and as military personnel.

For many military personnel, there are two obstacles that cross their path when deciding on whether to attend college. The first is career counseling and advice. Apparently, there are not many places for current and former military personnel to turn for advice with regard to applying for college.

The second is transition assistance. Most veterans find it hard to transit into civilian life; leave alone attending college. As many veterans can relate, the most preferred route is seeking employment rather than attending college and earning a degree. Did you face these challenges? Be sure to include them in your college application essay!

Military Children

Military children also face unique challenges that their civilian counterparts don’t. However, their experience can be leveraged on the application essay. If you are a military child or a parent guiding your child to write the essay, be sure to mention aspects such as:

• Living overseas

• The parent’s lengthy deployment

• Frequent moving

These are sure to catch the attention of the admission board and officers. Moreover, they may also display a sense of resiliency on the part of the child posturing him as an adaptable and strong person.

Military children should without fail, seize this opportunity to mention all their unique experiences in all their college applications. Admirable qualities such as the following surface:

• Adventure

• Honor

• Sacrifice

• Hardship

• Service

Truly, not even a high-ranking GPA can outmatch these.

If you’re a military parent and your child is considering doing a college application, make sure that you make an effort to meet with the institution's guidance counselor. This provides you with an opportunity to indulge them on your child's background. This aids in smooth transitioning as the child will be given due consideration and some special consideration. It is also essential to discuss in depth on matters concerning college fees with the required party in the college institution. This discussion has to take place face to face so as opposed to over the phone. A budget can be drawn so that in case you’re out in deployment, things run smoothly.

Conclusion

Military life experiences should serve as leverage in college application just like other narrative essay topics. Are you of the same sentiment? Take the opportunity to indulge the admission officers and the entire board on your experiences and why you think it’s shaped you for college.

Every student has certain obligations: to visit classes, to do homework, to do research, and to write term papers. It does not matter whether you are studying in your own country or getting the education in foreign college or university, you still need to do everything that is required. Of course, not all students like these obligations, especially if they work or have additional courses to visit.

They may miss classes or skip homework, but still, they need to write their term papers. The matter is that a term paper is one of the most important papers that determines student’s academic grade. In some colleges and universities, a term paper is one of the main requirements to pass to the following stage of studying.

Writing a term paper is always frustrating, and it becomes even more complicated if you need to write it in another language. The first problem is that you need to catch an idea of your research, and the second problem is that you need to find proper words to explain your thoughts. To simplify the process of writing term papers for English language learners, we have collected several effective tips and tricks that will be useful for everyone. We hope you will enjoy this article and find some new ideas on how to make your writing better!

1. Choose a subject for your investigation

The first thing you need to do before you start to write your term paper is select a subject that will correspond to the demands of the college or university and at the same time will be interesting to you. Besides, you need to make sure that this subject is not too complicated to be described in English. Always remember that you won’t write in your mother tongue and you need to give yourself an opportunity to get a better grade by choosing a less complicated subject for investigation which will not require knowledge of some specific terms.

2. Do a research

Everyone knows that writing a term paper requires a research. However, not all students really do this research. Most of them prefer just to read a couple of articles and make their own conclusions basing on the results of this research. However, to get a good grade, you need to do everything possible to do sufficient research using all possible sources.

For students who learn English, research has a double importance. The matter is that when performing a research, a person can find some new words and phrases that will help them develop an advanced vocabulary for a paper.

3. Consult a professor

If you want to get a good grade, you need to understand what your professor wants to see in your paper. In most cases, students ignore the opportunity to ask questions and in this way, they only get more problems: they spend too much time on writing a paper that does not correspond to the demands of their professor. Thus, they get bad grades or need to re-write the whole work. Do not hesitate to consult your professor if you have some questions or if you are not sure that you’re doing everything correctly.

4. Organize your work

Another important step of writing a term paper is organization. It concerns everything, starting from the planning or research and up to the time management.

Here is a small checklist for the organization of the whole process of term paper writing:

1. Decide how much time you need to spend on research

2. Make sure that you have all permits to conduct the research (for example, if you need to visit some organizations)

3. Find all necessary literature

4. Write a step-by-step guide to conducting your research

5. Plan your schedule in such a way so that you have time for doing research and writing a paper

6. Divide the process of writing a term paper into several steps and set deadlines for each step

5. Write a thesis statement

To make sure that you’ve done the research properly and that you really understand the idea and the prospects of each of your steps, write a thesis statement where you will explain why you’ve chosen this topic and why you’ve decided to perform this research. A thesis statement will help you to define the drawbacks of your writing and to find out what you need to do additionally to be able to fix the mistakes. Do not forget to show your thesis statement to your professor – they will definitely be glad to see that you’ve really worked hard to make a good term paper and will give you some recommendations on how to make it better.

6. Find a proofreader and editor

Proofreading and editing are important for every paper. Misspells happen all the time and it is better to fix them before the paper is read by the admissions board or your professor. However, for students who just learn English, proofreading and editing are perhaps of primary importance. The matter is that your English may not be good enough to check your writing for mistakes by yourself. You may use grammar and stylistic constructions that do not exist in English. To fix this problem, you may ask your English-speaking friend to read your writing to check for the mistakes. However, it does not give you the guarantee that your term paper will be edited properly. It is always better to order professional services. Thus, you will get a piece of writing that is free of mistakes and reads easily.

If you have never written a term paper before, you may be a little bit confused by our list of tips. We have collected them to show you that the writing can be easier, but if you think that you may skip some of them, you can do that! Of course, in this case, we cannot guarantee you that the process of writing a term paper will be easy, but you are the one who decides how to organize your writing. Always use the maximum opportunities that you have and eventually you will see that studying and writing are easy! If you have some additional tips on how to improve term paper writing, you may share them in the comments below.

Your pronunciation is the representation of how good you know the language. In English, pronunciation is the basis for advanced language knowledge though even native speakers may have some problems with the correct articulation.

The English language has a rather complicated phonological system that creates multiple problems for those who study it. One letter does not always represent one sound. Sometimes, one letter is involved into a morpheme that creates a sound. And sometimes, one letter is silent. It means that the letter is written, but it is not pronounced: we write hate, but we tell /heɪt/.

The difficulties of pronunciation in the English language can become a real obstacle to a further studying of the language. This is important both for public speaking and for conversational English in general. Even if your speech has been written in advance, you will not be able to perform well because have problems with pronunciation. However, if you know several basic rules, you will definitely understand the principles of reading the most important words. To make the understanding of silent letter sufficient, learn the exceptions, and no one will notice that you’re just the beginner in learning English!

Why there are silent letters?

This is the first question that we ask ourselves when we just start to learn English. Why do we need to introduce silent letters to the words if we do not pronounce them? Why should spelling be so complicated? In fact, the answer is quite simple. English has 29% French words. It means that almost each third word has a French origin. Looking at the French sentence and listening how someone pronounces it, you can notice that almost each word has many letters and a few sounds. Most of the letters create diphthongs, and there are many silent letters as well. There are also many words of Greek origin, and their pronunciation is also affected by Greek phonetic rules. For example, there are many words of Greek origin that start with ‘p’ letter followed by another consonant. In this case, ‘p’ letter is always empty. Increasing your vocabulary, you find more and more words of foreign origin.

Why do we need silent letters?

Silent letters are tricky but they perform several useful functions.

• Assistance in a distinction of homophones.

English is full of homophones. For a learner, this is hard to catch the meaning of the word from the first sight. When reading, it is possible to understand the difference between know and no or whole and hole.

• Assistance in a distinction of meanings.

As it has been previously mentioned, silent letters frequently change the pronunciation of a word. An open syllable with e at the end sounds differently from a closed syllable. For example, in the rat, we have closed syllable, but in rate, we have open syllable.

• Lengths of vowels

Again, e vowel affects the pronunciation of a word. Here, we talk about the length of the vowels. For comparison, check the words cop and cope.

The theory may look quite complicated, but we need to understand the idea of why silent letter exists in the English language. And now, let’s move to the most interesting part – the pronunciation of the words with silent letters.

Rules for silent letters

There are several basic rules that will help you understand when the letter is silent and pronounce it correctly.

• Letter B is never pronounced when preceded by M being the last letter in the word.

How would pronounce the limb word? Laimb or maybe even leemb? In fact, in this case, you should not pronounce the last letter B (according to the rule stated above). This word sounds like /lɪm/ and there is no B at the end of the word.

Crumb and dumb are also the words that fall under this rule. Just try to pronounce them. And do not forget: B is not pronounced. Also check: thumb, tomb, bomb.

• Letter B is rarely pronounced when followed by T being the last letter in the root.

Remember: the words debt, subtle and doubt do not have T in pronunciation! If you pronounce it, it is no longer the English language and people may not even understand you. At least, they will notice that you just started to study English and you make gross mistakes.

• Letter C is never pronounced being a part of SC combination.

If you want to say the word muscle, you do not pronounce the C letter. This word will never sound like /mʌskl/. The only proper way of pronunciation is to omit the C letter.  This rule has several exceptions. Learn them carefully if you want your English to be perfect: skeptic, sclerosis, Sclera, asclepiad, muscovado.

• Letter C is rarely pronounced when followed by K or Q.

It is difficult to pronounce c+k or c+q physically. You do not need to suffer from the impossibility to do that, just omit the C letter, and the pronunciation will be correct and easy. Just try to do that with the words acknowledge and acquaintance!

• Letter D is rarely pronounced when in a DG combination.

• Letter E is never pronounced being the last letter is the word, but prolongs the vowel of the previous sound.

You should not pronounce e at the end of the words such as write or note, but you should remember the exceptions. For this rule, the exceptions are the words with the unusual stress falling at the end of the word: brunette, gazelle, cassette, giraffe.

• Letter G is rarely pronounced when followed by N.

You do not pronounce the letter G in words sign and foreign, but you should pronounce it in the words magnet, cognitive, signature and igneous.

• GH combination is never pronounced when preceded by a vowel.

The exception to this rule is the only one: both of the letters are pronounced if the word is compound.

• GH is pronounced like /f/.

• Letter H is never pronounced when followed by W.

• Letter H is frequently not pronounced being the first letter in a word.

However, there is a list of words where the H is pronounced being the first letter. For example: happy, hereditary, hill, history, height.

• Letter H is rarely pronounced when followed by C, G or R.

• Letter K is never pronounced when followed by N at the beginning of the word.

• Letter L is never pronounced when preceded by A, O, and U.

Remember the words where L is always pronounced: halo, hold, fold, bulk, sulk.

• Letter N is never pronounced when followed by M in the middle of the word.

• Letter P is never pronounced when is a part of PS, PT and PN combinations at the beginning of the word.

• Letter S is never pronounced in the words island, isle, aisle, and islet.

• Letter T is never pronounced in the words castle, Christmas, fasten, listen, often, whistle, thistle, bustle, hasten, soften, rapport, gourmet, ballet.

• Letter U is never pronounced when preceded by G and when followed by a vowel.

• Letter W is never pronounced when followed by R at the beginning of the word.

For an advanced comprehension of English pronunciation, check the vocabulary where the traditional pronunciation of each word is indicated.

Silent letters are rather tricky. That is why the spelling competitions are so popular in the English language. If you do not know (hey, did you notice that know is the word with the silent letter?) how to pronounce and spell the word, you just need to spend more time mastering this field of the English language. Practice leads to the perfection, so do not waste your time and learn the language!