What did I do wrong?

6 comments

1. If this is related to classwork I do not want to give any answers outright, but the biggest issue I see is that you have made it overly complicated compared to your ability. Where is the wa and ga particles? Instead of trying to make an English thought into Japanese, try expressing in Japanese that you know.

   <Because my handwriting is very bad><particle><desire to correct it.> or something. Do not try to make it long, just get to the point and move along.

2. off hand, there’s no だ after したい, and と is probably the wrong if-form to use – it’s mostly for natural automatic processes not mental processes, also 書こうとしている is perhaps too complex for a subordinate clause

   i’d aim for

   手書きを上達したいけど、教科書に書いたら、苦手だと思います

3. I believe you should use causative here for one, as in 私は手書きを上達させたい. 上達する on it’s own is intransitive. Here’s a [thread](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/97934/why-do-you-say-%E4%BD%95%E3%80%85%E3%82%92%E4%B8%8A%E9%81%94%E3%81%95%E3%81%9B%E3%82%8B-and-not-%E4%BD%95%E3%80%85%E3%82%92%E4%B8%8A%E9%81%94%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B) with more info.

   Second, だ shouldn’t follow ～たい. You don’t put だ after い-adjectives.

   EDIT: Edited to remove some confusing comments I made about conditionals that I ended up not agreeing with.

   Ultimately though, I feel like the sentence is overkill, and the whole sentence could be reworded more naturally.

   I’m not a native speaker though, so take this with a grain of salt, of course.

4. 私は字が下手なのでうまくなりたいです。でもこのワークブックに書くときはいつもきれいに字が書けません。

   したい form doesn’t need the だ after it. 書こうとしている means when you’re about the write, meaning you didn’t write in it. So doesn’t make sense.

   Also your English is a bit weird as well. You want to improve your handwriting, but when you write in that book, it’s not good. To me this sentence is weird because, of course your writing isn’t going to be good, that’s why you want to improve it.

   I think better English would be “When I write in this textbook (or workbook tbh, textbook still seems weird to me) my handwriting is bad so I want to improve.

   Or like the Japanese above:

   I want to improve my handwriting, but when I write in this textbook it’s not always good. Depending on what you want to emphasize

5. As another comment mentioned, it looks like the main thing that made the teacher go “this makes no sense” was that したい and not させたい was used. It sounds like “I want to improve handwriting,” with no clarification on if the subject is literally you or something else.

6. I’d rewrite it like this

   手書きを上達させたいけど、教科書に書こうとするととても苦手だと思ってしまいます