On account of every person has their own background, personalities, styles, and experience, the way we write may be extremely different. I, myself, do not really follow any formal writing method, but depending on the topic of each writing assignment to choose the suitable process. I usually try to find common points between what I am writing about and what I have experienced or have knowledge about. Moreover, doing a quick research about the topic also helps me to understand more about what I suppose to write. As an international student, English is not my mother tongue. I started learning English when I was in sixth grade, the time I started middle-school in Vietnam. However, most of our English lessons were just only reading and grammar, but not much about speaking or how to write a paragraph in English. In the period of open economy, I realized that foreign language like English was essential because …show more content…
That was when I decided to go to the United States of America to continue my studying. For the English proficient requirement of Lutheran High School in Elk Grove, CA, I took the TOEFL iBT, which is abbreviated for the Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet-based Test, a standardized test to measure the English language ability of non-native speakers, and got 15 out of 30 for writing part.
When I was studying at Lutheran High School, I took several English as Second Langue (ESL) classes concurrently with other classes. Those ESL classes helped me to improve my English a lot, especially my writing skills, since teacher was so nice and kind. She spent a lot of time to instruct me how to write good essays and reports, and even helped me to revise and proofread every single essay and report that I had to write for my classes. Those experiences helped me to get a better score when I took the TOEFL the second time before I graduated high school in 2015, which I got 23 out of
With the help of relatives, we learned English and from then on we felt like the world was at our feet. The feeling of being able to completely understanding what someone is saying and having the ability to respond properly became my new favorite thing. Once we learned English many doors opened up for my brother and I. We were moved from ESL classes to regular classes so that we could further our knowledge. The first two years of school in the U.S. for me were spent trying to learn English, while my classmates were working on learning to write properly. Those years set me back a little and to this day the effects are noticeable when I am in English
When I was in the high school, I used to write a lot of essays, short research papers and presentation in three different languages. However, I was excellent just in Russian essays, while my English level was not so good. I had much more grammatical and punctuation mistakes. Also, one of my biggest problem was word order in sentences. Moreover, in my school English teachers did not require using of a proper academic writing.
Challenging me to be the very best version of myself that I could possible be. She worked with me all year long, before school, after school, and even during the summer between 4th and 5th grade. She gave me the most important gift of all, her time, she made sure that I as learning and growing in her classroom. She spent countless hours working with me to make sure I was successful. She created the turning point in my academic career.
reflecting on my progress thus far in this course, I have not only become cognizant of my writing skills and habits, but improvements I need to make to become a better writer. Although writing has never been one of my strong suits, I have learned valuable writing skills and strategies that are applicable to both the professional and academic field. Transitioning from the way I have been taught to write as a high school student has been the most challenging and influential change I have witnessed in my writing. To elaborate, in high school, we were taught the basis for writing any essay regardless of the audience or topic was the rigid five-paragraph essay structure.
I practiced learning and using it from a very young age. As I got older, my parents decided to transfer me to an international school where I started to learn English as my second language. The new school environment transformed and gave me a passion to learn another language, and this was a strong foundation that helped me to make the decision of pursuing a degree in the United States 6 years
Throughout my time in Writing 101, the learning outcome to which I directed my focus is Exploration and Argumentation: Students will use writing and other modes to analyze text, explore unfamiliar ideas, engage with thinking different from their own, develop sound arguments, and reflect. I consider this outcome to be the most significant in my learning experience because of how it has led me to become a more enlightened and open-minded writer, rather than one that dives directly into flaunting my own opinion. Although I still occasionally find myself oblivious to alternate viewpoints, working towards this learning outcome taught me how to familiarize myself with a topic before forming an opinion, be more accommodating to alternate opinions, and to be a more considerate writer overall. Out of the three writing assignments, my argument paper, Paying Tuition One Grant at a Time, was the most related to my learning outcome. The argument assignment was most significantly related to the
Throughout the term there has been many writing assignments —big or small— that helped reflect my writing process or the process itself. In the beginning of the course I felt like I was an “ok” writer, but lacked some skills such as: organization, sentence variety, and vocabulary. Also, I did not like to write and had a feeling of dislike when forced to write. I felt like I improved on everything I wanted and was seen throughout the semester. I know how to organize my ideas, the worksheets given in class to work on sentence variety really helped, and vocabulary was built on some level.
English Language Development was the class I was enrolled in throughout elementary since I was a Spanish native speaker and lacked English language skills. Nevertheless, when it came to fifth grade I found something in me that pushed me to read books and speak as much English as possible. As a result, by the end of fifth grade I was at the top of my ELD class, even ready to become promoted and move into normal English with the rest of my peers, yet this was not enough for me. I was not going to accept normal English classes so I persevered and pushed my English language skills further and eventually found myself taking the highest English classes while also being among the top students, not forgetting that I was fluent in two
I had learned English from watching American TV shows. It’s true! Well, I did have English classes back in Puerto Rico but I learned more from watching TV. In school, my favorite classes were English, Art, and Music.
Over the this past semester in freshman composition I have learned how to write a college level paper. Going into this class, I was a little unsure and scared that I wasn’t going to be able to do the things that were required for me to do. As the semester passed I could definitely see a change in my writing. I learned how to use the appropriate punctuation, how to write and refute an argumentation paper, which I believe is my strongest piece of writing and how to research and gather information to write a strong research paper. I knew coming into this class that I was going to struggle with my punctuations, word choice, and the overall flow of the paper.
Learning English was very natural, and I bet my parents thought I might communicate better and have more opportunity to go outside Korea if I become fluent with English, which most people in the world speaks. The learning started with being able to read alphabets, pronounce it, and write it. Teachers soon taught to combine those alphabets to make some word, even long ones too. The word became sentences and I was able to do such simple and easy, daily conversation such as ‘my name is…’ ‘I am….’.
ENG-122 Reflective Essay My writing process has changed tremendously over the course of this class. I feel more accomplished, confident and I feel sometimes that my ideas and thoughts just come in to my mind out of nowhere and I start writing about anything now. I pay attention to my punctuation and grammar more as I have polished them more now, not only when I write but then others write as well. I am constantly looking for errors and I highly think this is helping me a lot in my career.
Writing project 3 has shown me the importance of writing something that is of interest for you, an issue that you are passionate about. I think that I have started to get somewhat better at the structuring of my writing and using outlines before I jump into a draft. I am no longer as scared and hesitant to write, as I was the first writing project. I think a good goal that I accomplished from this project was using diverse sources in my writing. I was able to utilize a magazine post, newspaper article and research journals to form my argument and provide support.
At first, I was slightly apprehensive about critiquing a fellow classmate’s written paper. The first thoughts that popped into my mind were, what if I give wrong advice on any corrections? What if my classmate gets offended by my comments? On the other hand, I had to make myself realize that the critiquing assignment was not about what was “wrong” or “correct” in their written work. However, it needed to be seen more as helping to make my classmate’s paper better.
First of all, my experience of learning English was a great process which took fifteen years as a Turkish native speaker. When I was seven years old, I started to learn English and I am able to learn languages. When I was five years old, I was watching cartoons in English and in my opinion it was so helpful for me to learning a new language. I have been learning English for fifteen years including my college life. I studied American Culture and Literature in Bilkent University.