Before I came to college, I lived and studied in China, where everything
is completely different from here. Because the large population makes everything
so competitive, we studied writing only to deal with exams which are the most important
things in ourlives.
Theoretically, we could use three different genres of
writing, which were argumentative paper, prose and poetry, but actually we were
encouraged to write argumentative paper since it is easier and safer during the
exams, which is kind of like SAT essay but we write in Chinese. Just because we
needed to write during exams, we had to write in a short time like fifty
minutes to an hour while making our paper interesting and reasonable at the
same time. It was pretty hard at first and then went better.
The criteria of a
good writing are whether if the paper fully explain and prove its argument in a
fluent way and is it entertaining and amusing for readers to attract their
attention and the most important- good hand writing. Our teachers would grade
our writing based on those criteria.
This kind of writing helped me with
logical thinking although it was in Chinese, but I don't think that is enough
for me to do writing in college. I took EDU T&L 107 and 108 classes, which
are both writing classes for non-English native speakers, and I found there are
huge differences between what I did in China, such as format, researching and
especially plagiarism, and I need to write in English.
Fan, you inspire me. The writing experience you had in China seems very strict and difficult. I was so used to typing out papers and being extremely creative with my writing that I didn't have to really write in a certain manner. I enjoyed creatively writing rather than a serious argumentative paper. Of course the transition from the Chinese culture to American culture is probably devastating at first, I believe that through writing you will discover more and more about this country's culture. By doing research and looking for sources, I myself have gained a lot of new knowledge and learned terms and phrases that I never knew existed before! Prepare for a boundless amount of information to come your way that is exciting and intriguing!
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome mon, and yeah, writing did helped me to learn about this culture, like plagiarism, it's, different.
DeleteDitto! I had similar academic writing experiences as your when I grew up studying in Hong Kong - My writing assignments often had a very specific marking scheme and structure to follow, though I'd guess the requirements may not be nearly as strict as the ones in China. It did take me a long time to adjust to the writing requirements in America too, and mastering the use of a wider vocabulary is perhaps the very first step. Frankly, I am still struggling with creative writing, but I'm hoping after this writing class I will be able to think outside the box!
ReplyDeleteyeah I think the language part is the most difficult to me cuz you need to think differently in another way, and I think this class is helping us to think logicaly.
DeleteI'm excited for you and others to take a crack at creative writing toward the end of the quarter, when we'll learn a very different type of approach. Structure is still important, but it's a different way of thinking about structure.
ReplyDelete