Self Evaluation of Writing in English - Essay Example

?Mogen Cheng English 101 Jun, 6, Writing an essay As a non-native speaker and of the English language, I used to make a lot of mistakes when writing an essay for school. One reason for this is because there are so many differences between the Chinese language and the American style of writing in English. A Chinese language essay is stylistically like a circle, which means the readers have to figure out the meaning through personal interpretation as they return to the original intention of the author. On the other hand, the American English essay is stylistically like a straight line, which means reader will find the thesis statement directly given at the beginning of the essay. Even though the process of writing an essay is similar in English and Chinese, it has been difficult for me to change from the Chinese style of writing, presentation, and organization to the American way represented in brainstorming, outlining, establishing a thesis statement, and completing the research in a structured pattern. Because of this, I have reflected on my own experience and mistakes in English composition to formalize a list of issues I need to correct in my own writing and work. When I was studying previously in the ESL program and taking a writing class at Seattle Central Community College, I typically did not “brainstorm” by writing down all of my ideas as part of my essay preparation. Frankly, I thought brainstorming was wasting my time. There were only forty-five minutes permitted for an in class writing assignment, so I always felt that I had no time to brainstorm. However, because of this, I always got stuck on the assignments where I had no idea what I should write next. For example, when I wrote my final, a timed writing assignment for my level three writing class, I did not write enough words because I had nothing prepared in advance that would allow me to continue to write on the topic after the first few paragraphs. After I got a humiliating grade on this final exam, I thought I had made a wrong choice and should have pursued a better topic to write about initially. I asked myself why I did not choose another question for the writing originally. In retrospect, at this time, I did not know the importance of brainstorming. Sometimes my ESL writing teachers would ask me to brainstorm before I started to write, but my brainstorm always was prepared after my rough draft was finished. Therefore, I usually changed my topic again after the brainstorming process, and I often could not finish the essay on time in the class period. Because I came to grief over this several times, I realized finally that the brainstorming process is necessary for a successful essay. Now, I will spend one hour to brainstorm in advance preparation for any of my essay assignments because it will save me a lot of time in the long run on the project. If I do a perfect brainstorm in advance, I can organize this information easily through an outline into a five paragraph essay with thesis statements and support examples. Following these steps, I can finish my essay faster and easier. In addition, it is important to brainstorm before writing because I can also correct my mistakes before I write. For instance, when I was writing an argumentation essay, I had included the wrong ideas as examples to support my thesis statement. Before I started to write the next assignment, I presented my outline in advance to my teacher. She helped me to change the wrong ideas and figure out a new approach to organizing the essay. Brainstorming is easy for me as a study method and saves me a lot of time in writing the final essay. After the brainstorming process is complete, the thesis statement should be developed as the central theme of the essay. However, I always made mistakes when writing my thesis statements when I was in ESL program. Likewise, I always wrote outside of the topic area if I forgot to check my thesis against the question repeatedly. When I made sure my thesis statement was a condensed version of the answer to the essay question itself, I would then further brainstorm to develop information and examples for my body paragraphs in the essays. Through this process, I found that I always did a good job on preparing the first body paragraph of an essay, but my mind would become confused and this was reflected in the writing sometimes after I finished the second body paragraph in the essay. Additionally, I never went back to check my thesis statement before I began a new paragraph in the essay and because of this my teacher always said that my third body paragraphs were confused and non-supportive of the thesis statement. Furthermore, my thesis statement was usually not clearly stated overall at this time of my writing development. In Chinese language writing, I also had this problem where I could not tell the readers what my central point would be and instead assumed that the readers would be able to find it out by themselves. Because of this, even in my Chinese language writing, I always wrote a “hook” instead of a thesis statement, and my arguments themselves were not clearly organized through writing at this time. However, these days I can make a clear thesis statement and use it to organize a complex essay by following the multi-step organization and composition process. During the brainstorm session, I will now reference my thesis statement all the time in developing support examples. Because I always check the thesis for central organization, I have never allowed my writing to stray outside of the topic again, and all of my ideas support the central point of the thesis. Furthermore, I use my thesis statement now to show the reader the emphasis and personal interpretation I will introduce through the writing in the essay. For example, if I want to talk about the importance of equal opportunity for children in education or the environment, U.S. foreign policy, and other issues related to current events and social justice, then my thesis statement and essays will have a similar structure and organization across all of these multiple topics. Thus, a clear thesis statement is the central focus of my preparation for the essay. Both brainstorming and preparing a clear thesis statement may help me in finishing an essay through concise and focused organization around the theme, but I often did not previously write excellent essays for my projects and classes because I did not reread and proofread my essays. Typically in the past, when I finished my essay for the ESL writing class, I would throw away my pen and yell “I am done!” Nevertheless, when I would receive my paper back from these efforts, I always felt sad because there would be hundreds of grammar, word choice, and spelling mistakes all marked and corrected by my teacher and returned to me with the grade. Additionally, if I used Microsoft Word to type my essay, having my cat around the room would also cause me to make more mistakes on the final paper, because I failed to proofread and edit it. For example, once when I was typing a five page research paper, my cat jumped up to my table and sat on the keyboard to ask some food. After I fed her, I finished my last paragraph and saved the file on my USB drive. When I printed out the final version and stapled my paper together before the class, I found that there were many strange letters on the pages. I had to fix these mistakes before I went to class, and because of this I was late for class that day. Therefore, proofreading should be considered a good habit for anyone to practice after writing an essay, and essential to presenting a polished and mistake free final copy for publication or grading for a class. Because proofreading is such an important part of producing a final essay or publication, I now re-read and edit every one of my essays multiple times before submitting it. Proofreading can help me to improve my final product and is thus reflective of my overall skill in writing. During the proofreading process, I can fix the careless mistakes made during the previous stages of composition. For instance, if I missed a word, typed the wrong grammatical tense, forgot to capitalize letters, or made other typographical mistakes, it is easy to find and correct these through the proofreading process. Also, through this method I can personally assess how much I still need to improve my writing and composition skills in the English language. If I keep proofreading and correcting my own essays over a long time period, I will come to know whether my mistakes go up or down, and which kind of mistakes I make most frequently. Furthermore, when I use Microsoft Word, I can take advantage of the automatic spelling and grammar checking to simplify this proofreading and correction process. Because of this process of reflection on my own personal composition process in English language writing, I now know how to research more effectively the sources of information from our school’s library and computer facilities that support my ideas and thesis statements. It is also helpful for me to base my writing and argumentative essays on reliable source material and examples from research databases, online journals, and e-books from peer-reviewed journals in building projects. I need to further study the different types of academic citation for research writing and learn better how to quote outside source material into my essays through the use of citations. To be honest, I still need to proofread and revise each of my essays multiple times before I submit them to my tutors and instructors in class, but I think that the number of revisions will ultimately be reduced in the future through the adoption of better organizational patterns in preparation for each project or writing assignment. In conclusion, although I am not naturally a good writer in the English language, I have adopted a positive attitude towards English composition in order to improve my writing skills at school. Because of this, I now love writing in English as much if not more than writing in the Chinese language, though each are unique and different experiences. Although I only have five chances currently to prepare essays for my English 101 class, I have studied and engaged in a lot of advance preparation for each research paper. My short-term goal is to be able to do a good job on my final exams in Business Administration at the University of Washington this year. There will be two compositional essays on the final exam this year, and both of the tests are very hard. Therefore, I need to practice my English writing and composition personally much more before I sit for each exam in order to prepare sufficiently. While, this quarter is only a beginning to my academic and business career, I will need to keep improving my writing and composition skills in English every year in order to progress well at the school and in life. Brainstorming, outlining, writing clear thesis statements, proofreading, and editing are some of the most effective ways I have found for organizing an essay in English, and these methods can be used across many of my different classes in other fields to make me an effective communicator and researcher in my academic field of study. Read More