Category: Writing Experience

Writing is the medium of human connection that presents words and emotions with signs and symbols. In most languages, writing is the expression of speech or spoken words. Writing is not a word, but a tool used to make languages be understood. Within the word system, writing relies on some of the same structures as language. Moreover, Writing is a form of communication that allows students to put their feelings and ideas on paper, to organize their knowledge and beliefs into convincing arguments, Concepts occur as abstractions or generalizations from happening; as the result of the change of existing thoughts; or from natural attributes. The difference between writing and writing is that writing is writing down something that has happened, agreed upon, or previously thought out. Besides, writing represents words or ideas with letters or other signs drawn on paper or another surface. Communicate with someone in writing something. Compose books and speeches.

There are six main steps of the writing process, the first step of the writing process is Anticipation. This step also consists of Prediction, Anticipation proper. Anticipation is more than being eager to find out what’s going to happen. When you anticipate something, you predict events because anticipation is not just a question without an answer, it has to be the kind of question where the reader thinks they know what the answer is going to be. The second step of the writing process is vocabulary. It consists of structural analysis, and the use of the dictionary. The second step is basically about how commonly vocabulary is defined as ‘all the words known and used by a particular person. Knowing a word, however, is not as simple as merely being able to recognize or use it. The third part of the process is making the inference. This step consists of inferring the meaning of an unknown word, inferring lost fragments of a text infer the hypothesis of cause and consequence. This Is about a result of a process. It requires reading a text, noting specific details, and then putting those details together to achieve a new understanding. The fourth part of the process is learning to identify the main ideas of a text. It also consists of underling, somber, schemes, and summary. This is about finding the main idea of the paragraph/story and putting it in your own words. The fifth process is Learning to identify the structure of the texts and the main idea, this step consists of generalization, particularization, enumeration, sequence, and contrast comparison. This step is mainly about identifying the main idea that is directly expressed in the text. The last step of the process is the conclusion, this step doesn’t consist of anything, this step is the ending of the writing, it is also similar to your introduction because you restate your thesis and summarize your main points of evidence for the reader.

The steps of the process have helped me ever since I started middle school. The reason why I say this is because back then I was horrible at writing. Every time we had an essay to hand in I always failed it ever since I took tutoring and they taught me the writing process it helped me a lot and made me pass with A’s. The writing process is extremely important for academic texts such as the work I do at the university. The reason why I say this is because the work you do in the university reflects on your future basically, I say this because in most carriers you are going to need to write reports and do paperwork the writing process will be the best thing to have/ do during these reports you have. Moreover, it’s also important because not only it reflects on your future, but it also reflects on the type of person you are and that’s the main part of it. I say this because it will also give you respect from other people and make others want to work with you.

When I think about the kind of writing I expect from my students, the term “good writing” first comes to my mind. It is fairly difficult to create ‘okay’ writing, but it takes time and effort to turn it into good writing. There is a variety of factors contributing to a great piece of writing. First of all, ‘good writing’ is well-structured with a clear introduction, body, and conclusion. Each paragraph has a topic sentence, followed by supporting details. Secondly, “good writing” contains strong ideas. During the whole writing process, especially brainstorming, writers should put down ideas on paper, and pick the most powerful and persuasive ones. They need to dig deep into their minds and try to figure out the new angles of the given topic. Besides, ‘good writing’ follows the basic rules of punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and grammar. Thus, proofreading is necessary to ensure a good surface level of the writing.

The writing process consists of different stages: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. From my perspective, prewriting is the beginning step and also the most challenging for me. In prewriting, I often ‘talk’ to my mind and ‘think’ about the topic. I use the strategy of brainstorming and freewriting to come up with any ideas about the topic. However, as I do not have sufficient life experience, I need to do research and read a lot as input for my writing process. Sometimes, I feel exhausted because I do not have any ideas for the topic. When going through all the stages and heading to the final stage – revising, I feel relieved. Revising and editing are the two tasks I enjoy to significantly improve your essay. Revising allows me to take a second look at my ideas. It is time to add, cut or change the information presented in the writing so that the ideas are clearer and more convincing, and more interesting. Meanwhile, editing helps in the way I expressed my ideas. I can improve my writing style and turn it into a polished mature piece of writing.

Therefore, as a future educator, I look forward to involving my students to master the step of pre-writing. To foster and enhance a community of young writers, I have to inspire and motivate them from the beginning. This is the stage to stimulate the students’ creativity to think about effective approaches to the topic. Ideas are the main focus in this stage; hence; one of the great strategies that I hope to guide my students to tackle the pre-writing stage is a mind map. From a word in the center, students can make a connection between it and related words and phrases.

I value the role of writing as an economic power. For example, applying for a job entails several written communication, from filling out an application to writing a cover letter and drafting a resume. Also, online job seekers are always judged based on the quality of the written work given. How well-written your resumes and cover letters are, a minor grammatical mistake or the use of spoken language in written work can cause your application to fall behind others. Another influential impact of writing on economics and businesses is communication via emails within an organization. Employees should be good at writing emails to work with other colleagues or sending emails to prospective or current clients and customers. Once employees can write comprehensively and professionally, channels such as emails or reports help to foster effective collaboration within the office and spur the business to success.

Communication means sharing information between two or more individuals, considered as the act of conveying information. Communication has so many components, and each plays a vital role in building effective communication. In my opinion, the addresser is one of the most important as they need to know how to initiate a communication process. The combination of a wide range of techniques including writing skills, strong arguments, and good command of grammar makes the process of communication smoother, thereby facilitating the message, another crucial component. The message serves as the main idea that the addresser hopes to convey. The message should be clear and detailed to obtain understanding from the receiver. If the receiver cannot get the message across, the whole process almost fails.

While everyone’s process is different, teaching the writing process is still essential. Students who learn the writing process can know the nature of writing and apply these skills to all types of writing. The teaching writing process encourages and produces lifelong learners, who do not learn specific skills assessed on the test. Teaching the writing process is one thing; motivating students to follow it is more important. As long as students are inspired and see the value in applying a writing process, the teaching of the writing process is more valuable and important for students. Anyway, success in writing greatly depends on a student’s attitude, motivation, and engagement.

Effective communication offers us several merits. It helps to minimize misunderstandings between people when exchanging information, thereby allowing more accurate access to information and higher levels of productivity. In addition, effective communication enables people to build strong relationships with each other. Once people have trust, they tend to work and cooperate more efficiently with others. They can work better as their voices are heard and respected.

References

1. Lindemann, Erika, and Daniel Anderson. A Rhetoric for Writing Teachers., 2001. Print.

Greg and Jeff

Destroying dreams during the daytime, relaxing through the night

“You’ll need this in life” “you’ll use it in life” Jeff thinks that’s right

Jeff Gives information for the future to come

This information full of lies like a bread bun

Greg Works hard through the daytime and worry’s through the night

You’ll need this in life, that’s what they say but Greg knows that’s not right

Greg is given information and a magical “important” sum

Though what’s used from this information? A few measly crumbs

There is lots of Gregs around the globe, though very few speak up

Jeff has lots of information, almost as full as a cup

Sometimes Greg has no idea what to think or do and Apparently Jeff knows best

Though this is wrong, completely wrong it needs to be put to rest

The purpose of my poem is to show the audience a different perspective of teaching environments. My target audience is people who are in “Greg’s” position. An audience who feel that the people who have authority over them are not always correct in their decisions and statements. I believe I met the needs of the target audience by simplifying the situation and showing both views. By putting a name to both perspectives I was really able to show how immoral and corrupt ‘Jeff’ can be. Without these names I think the language used would be more vague and the audience may not have understood the poem to its maximum potential.

The context of the poem requires little to no background knowledge. For example, most of the audience reading the poem may have been in Greg’s position, i.e. not able to speak up and constantly given material and data for no specific reason. These are the people I want my poem to really affect. Again, though I am not implying anything many people who have been in the schooling system may have been in Greg’s “shoes” at some stage. These people are who I want my target audience to be. I want them to know that they are not alone.

In my poem Greg and Jeff I used a variety of poetic techniques, these include but are not limited to, Repetition Alliteration and Rhyme Scheme. The rhyming scheme I used in my poem varies each stanza. The first 2 stanzas include the rhyming scheme of AABB though the last two differ from this, The rhyming scheme of AB is used. Alliteration is briefly used in the first Stanza of the poem: “Destroying dreams during the daytime. . .”. Repetition is also used throughout the whole poem. In the first two stanzas many similar words are used though just the perspective of character is changed Many words are the same though have new meanings as the character has changed. This technique was able to show the parallels between Greg and Jeff. These techniques were used to emphasise my belief and reinforce the meaning and structural pattern of the poem.

Overall the writing experience and outcome of the poem worked very well and I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process. From thinking of something to write about to developing my first few lines I thoroughly enjoyed the progression. Luckily I was able to find something that I believed in and felt that I could write a very insightful poem from it. This powered me to continue writing and the words poured onto the paper so to speak. If I did this again I would have probably extended the length of the poem to furthermore continue my poetic techniques. The self-reflection process really made me think about what I as writing and I am glad I used these methods and techniques.

When signing up for my classes this semester, CO-150 was the class I was least excited about. As an Electrical Engineering major, I couldn’t grasp the idea that this class was going to be beneficial for my major at all for a multitude of reasons. I found that the only motivation I had in the beginning of the semester was knowing this class was a requirement to graduate. However, as the class progressed and I started learning more and more, I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed this course. Not only was the class very informative and fun to participate in, but I feel I am coming out of this class with writing skills that will help me down the road in my profession as well as my life in general. In terms of writing, I learned how to properly summarize an article, write a proposal to a specific audience, and develop elaborate research papers. Outside of writing, I feel as though I have enhanced my skills in properly citing sources as well as using the CSU library database to get scholarly and popular sources. These skills can dramatically help me down the line with engineering research as well as writing proposals for my future employers. Lastly, I feel this class has taught me how to become a better critical thinker. I noticed that a lot of the articles we read were somewhat long especially during our A3 research, and skills like investigating sources, annotating and summarizing deepened my understanding on what authors were writing about and their purpose. All in all, my learning from this course has exceeded my expectations and I feel I have excelled on all projects in this class because of the skills I learned.

The first topic that I feel I successfully achieved in this class was the “Deepen Rhetorical Knowledge” category. To me, rhetorical knowledge is the process of analyzing a specific text and understand the who, what, when, where, and why’s about the paper. To deepen that thought, rhetorical knowledge focused on evaluating what kind of audience the writer was writing too, the overall meaning or purpose of the paper, and the background knowledge and context that was created. One example that I really had to use my rhetorical knowledge skills was writing my argumentative paper. In the process of planning and writing this paper, I needed to address a specific audience with a direct purpose. I chose to write about the harmful effects that electric cars have on our environment and if they really are more eco-friendly than traditional combustion engine vehicles. The audience I chose to address were the companies Tesla and Coda Automotive which are the top producers of today’s electric cars on the road. My purpose was to remind these companies that they are truly doing more harm than good to the environment and more research needs to go towards cleaning up the CO2 emittance in the air, battery recycling practices, and power grid cleanliness. Through a constructive voice and tone, I feel my argumentative paper was very convincing and had a very appropriate tone and format that my audience would respect and connect with. Without learning about rhetorical knowledge when writing a paper, I would not have been as successful as I was.

The second topic that I feel I successfully achieved in this class was the “Deepen Experience in Writing” category. This category was very effective in my writing progression for a multitude of reasons. Deepening my experience in writing means that I learned how to develop recursive strategies for generating ideas, revise my own work as well as others, and proofread more in-depth when editing my papers. A great example of a way I deepened my writing experience in this class was the peer editing workshops we performed. This helped my paper immensely because I could get more than just my own perspective on my topic of discussion. As for reading and proofreading other’s papers, I learned to read aloud and check for proper flow, locate and find grammar mistakes and provide my own perspective on how I would deepen their thoughts in my own way. This would also teach me how to edit and improve upon my very own drafts as well. Also, post reflections were a great way to deepen my experience when writing because it gives you one last opinion on how you did as a writer and address if your purpose was convincing or not. Overall, deepening my experience in writing was a category in this class that I feel I excelled and will use in my future classes.

Being a very creative and intuitive person, I feel I excelled in the “Deepening Critical and Creative Thinking” category in this class. Being able to evaluate the relevance of articles and synthesize other points of view within one’s own was very crucial in my success within this topic. One great project that I got to display my skills from this category was through the Rhetorical Analysis summaries we performed in our A1 project. In this project, we had to read and summarize different articles found in the FEW Reader and have a strict 250 word limit. This was hard because these articles were particularly long and trying to synthesis and narrow our word count down was a struggle. Since there was not a lot of room for elaboration, learning how to read critically made narrowing down the relevant information and the author’s purpose very easy. Creatively, I was then able to write a short summary with only relevant information while still expressing the author’s purpose in only a few words. This project not only awakened my creative mind, but challenged my critical thinking skills. I was able to focus on the little things like tone, purpose, effectiveness and audience which overall made me a better writer.

Taking previous English classes before this one, I always struggled understanding the proper way to cite and use sources in my writing. However, thanks to the “Use Sources and Evidence” category in this class, I can proudly say I learned how to site a source without the use of online sources like easy bib and evaluate the relevance of these sources when I was conducting research for all my papers. One example that challenged this category was the annotations we had to create when conducting research for our A3 argument proposal. Through the CSU library database, we found sources that were relevant to our topic and had to take important points and concepts from these articles and use them in our final paper. This meant we needed to cite sources to prevent plagiarism. After we found out the legitimacy of the source, we could then move on to see what kind of source it was. Although there are many different types of sources out there, we focused on the difference between scholarly and popular sources and reasons for when you would use one or the other. This heightened my literary skills and made my writing more mature and respectable.

I have been stuck with reading and writing for past 13 years. I have always been highly value reading and writing, but my feeling to them has always been complex. I hated writing once and I loved it later. I liked reading, but it bothered me sometimes. Along the side from primary school to middle school and from high school to university, I keep running into new difficulties. These problems made me headache but solving them was pretty worthwhile. This complicated relationship can be traced down to my childhood.

My attitudes towards writing shifted greatly before I went to high school. Writing was some dreadful work to me at about seven years old. Essays in primary schools were mostly to express personal feelings. Unluckily, that was not something I was good at. My parents were demanding about my performances. They would criticize me for being wrong, but seldom praised me for being right. In order to get their praise, I tried to hide my feelings. For instance, I pretended not to be jealousy when other kids get dolls from their parents but I didn’t, because mommy loved kids who saved money for family budget. It was a good scheme, but there was a problem: if one pretend for a long time, he or she might have trouble knowing what he or she truly feels, and if one is having trouble knowing true feelings, he or she might not be able to write good essays about them. I was that person. I used to spend hours on what to write and even more hours on how to reach the minimum word limit. Opposite to writing though, reading was my hobby. In fact, I loved all sorts of activities as long as they could keep me away from homework. Reading was the most affordable one, since there were plenty of books in my house. I read biographies, history and zoology magazines, fictions, novels, poetries and fairytales. Thanks to all those books, I began to love writing when I entered middle school. Argumentative writing was first introduced in middle school. In China, one can write a good argumentative essay by putting beautiful phrases and stories of the famous into fixed writing structures and flows. I happened to remember a lot of phrases and stories from the books I had read. My essays were always the ones of the best. Expressing feelings was still a difficulty, but it no longer concerned me. I got what I craved for, praise, from my teachers, and I loved writing. Although, deep down in my heart, I knew I wrote things that I did not quite understand.

Things became different in my high school. It was when I decided to apply for American universities and when I learnt more about English reading and writing. I noticed the differences between English and Chinese, and these differences changed my view of reading and writing. In my perspective, Chinese and English differs in accuracy and structure of writing. Chinese writing allows ambiguous sentences which English writing doesn’t. For example, for a Chinese essay I can start a sentence with “it…” without mentioning anything that can be referred to “it”. It is the readers’ job to guess what “it” is. Often, there will be many hints about what “it” is in a good essay, but it takes effort to interpret. These undefined pronouns, like “it” or “they”, leaves blanks for readers to imagine. Just like the ending of Inception filmed by Christopher Nolan, ambiguous sentences in Chinese writing are beautiful because of incompleteness. However, English seems to value straightness and accuracy. Not only does it have more vocabulary changes to indicate the changes in tense and the quantity of noun, English also requires more clear structure in academic writing. Thesis sentence, the answer to the topic question, is usually placed in the beginning of a paragraph, and after the thesis sentence comes explanation. This sequence of writing is not required in Chinese writing. At the beginning of learning English writing, I ran into a lot of troubles: What is the subject that I want to refer to “it”? What is my answer to topic and how can I rephrase it? Because I needed to explain the logic clearly between my thesis statements and examples, I could no longer write things that I did not understand. In all, what I leant from studying English is that to explain ideas clearly is more important than to put complicated words in writing. This knowing makes me feel more comfortable about writing even though I would not have advantage in writing any more. I began to write diaries in plain words and to reflect about my daily life. Writing meant less pretentious, but more interesting to me. It became a tool to think and sharpen perspectives.

Now studying in American for one year, I have encountered more difficulties in reading and writing. American university requires much more amount of reading than I have ever did in high school. For instance, I took seven courses last semester. A single course asked for 50 pages reading assignment a week. It took me three to four hours for one reading assignment and about 25 hours for all seven courses. I never had homework like reading textbooks before class in high school. I read English textbooks slowly, sometimes painfully if I had lots of unfamiliar words. To read fast, I learnt to jump read: I read the first two sentence for a paragraph, and guessed what this paragraph was talking about. Then I read an example if there was one. If this example talked about same things as what I was thinking, I would jump to next paragraph. If there was no example or the example was about something different, I would look more specific into the paragraph. This skill does help me a lot when I have many pages to read, but the price is that I won’t be able to remember much and sometimes I will miss key points.

I know I need to do a better job in English reading and writing if I want to succeed in university. I tried to improve myself by reading English novels in vocations. I brought Arthurian Legend to read last summer, but after spending an hour on the first page, I realized that it was too early for me to read. I also played a writing game with my friend. We were required to write short essays on certain topics every night for a month. If one of us forgot to do so, she would give 10 dollars to another. I finished this one-month self-training, but the more I wrote, the more I wished there were a teacher to give me feedbacks on my essays. These efforts I spent on improving English reading and writing received little effect. I still look forward to improving my English by taking w131where I can get good readings and feedbacks from the professional. I hope that I can enlarge my vocabularies and organize my sentence more concisely by practicing in this course.

My relationship with reading and writing, though, is more complex than ever. On the one hand, I do enjoy reading and writing. I read biographies of game characters online, and translate them into Chinese. It is my way of relaxing, away from homework at weekends. On the other hand, as to reading and writing for homework, things get complicated. Occasionally, I did feel the sense of achievement when I solved problems by reading textbooks, but for most of times, reading textbooks is just tedious because of their large volume. It is like an entangled relationship in a love story in which the heroine loves a vampire but hates him for killing. I hated writing when I was little and then I loved it. I liked reading when I was little, but it makes me headache after I became a college student. If this is a story, I hope it has a happy ending where through practices, I can read and write in English easily and nicely.