blog 6 : A Review of My ESL Writing

 

When I first came to the United States, I did not speak English. The only thing that helped me to understand and communicate with people was French, because there are some similarities between English and French, although French pronunciation is different than English. The French alphabet contains the same 26 letters as the English alphabet, and the colon in French may introduce direct speech, citation, summary, or explanation; however, quotation marks don’t exist in French; the guillemets « » are used. My first academic writing class in the US is ESL 106, which is helping me improve my ability to summarize texts, articles, video, and pictures. I have always had a problem with separating my own ideas from the writer’s thoughts. I think since I took this class I have become more aware of the expectations for writing effectively in English. I learned from Professor Benson about verbs and their use for summarizing a text and how it’s important to choose the right verb, informative or descriptive.  While descriptive verbs are used to give the main idea of a topic, informative verbs help give details. After summarizing, there is a response part, which includes our ideas, opinion and whether we agree with the writer’s opinion or not.

  

Plagiarism is an important issue at OSU. This is the first time that I have written about this topic of avoiding plagiarism. Plagiarism has become more important to me than just citing a reference. I still have difficulty paraphrasing an idea or expression in a specific part of the text because sometimes I add information from another part to it.  Writing a paper in English is not easy for me because I don’t have experience in the language’s grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. Fortunately, there are many great opportunities in this class that help us practice our skills in writing. Grammar exercises, tests, quizzes and editing more than two times, will help us get into the habit of writing.

This spring I had the chance to write a story about my grandfather. In the beginning I was not sure what exactly a digital story is. What do the readers want me to show them in my story? And where am I in it? After I saw some videos of digital stories from the previous class, I got a better image of mine and how it should be prepared. Professor Benson gave me some comments about my first essay, like shortening the historical information and explaining how I can relate my grandfather’s story to me. My story started with the conflict of war, followed by the discussion and arguing. My story is filled with emotions, with a mixture of happiness and sadness. The key in my digital story is that anybody could be my grandfather, even for a short time, and that enemies can exist not only in the war itself, but also in the people.  I used to hear that the perfect story doesn’t exist. In my opinion, the closest you can come to perfect is by transferring your feelings, words, voice, images, and music as a piece of art that will hold the viewers’ interest.