Final Essay Assignment:What did you learn about writing this semester?

 Wanyi Li   

 12/04/14

 ENG101  

 Professor Alexander

What did you learn about writing this semester?

          This is the first time that I study in College and have College courses. During the whole semester, I have many challenges, and I also learn a lot. Fortunately, I'm honored to meet my first writing professor: Chris Alexander. He was very patient with me, even if sometimes I can't understand what he said, he always explains on the other way which was easy to me to understand. I appreciate him very much.

I have many challenges in this class. First of all, Writing is a really important skill in College courses, but I am not good at writing. For example, the first article on real significance is “The Park”. The professor Chris required us to describe three persons and one animal. The focus is to express each character's details. The description of details needs subtle observation and accurate description. Unfortunately, this is my shortcomings. A lot of tiny places I have found them out but it were difficult to me to describe them. And I also don't know how to organize my language. So that finally, I have a really low score. If it was any disappointment but I know it was probably temporary. I need to improve myself and change my way of thinking. After writing, the Professor Alexander teaches us how to change grammar in other ways, and he also makes many cases to guide us in writing. I start to find other ways to describe one thing. Its help me a lot. In addition, our Professor likes to let us make a group to discuss the problems which he asked. And we also change the essay with each other to find out the shortcomings of others. Here I have to introduce my new friend who was sitting beside me——Catherine. She is a warm-hearted and sensible girl. When I ran into trouble, she always helps me to solve the problem in patience. I think if I study without her, I will lose much information in the class. And she is very important to me, some time I meet some difficulties and want to give up, she always encourages me: “you can do it!” It let me have the courage to face the difficulty. I am so proud of that I meet her and we are good friend.

Then the next challenge comes: “the yellow wall-paper”. This is a horrible novel; we were required to write a comment for one of paragraph in this story. I choose a paragraph which was one of the most obvious features of the yellow wall-paper, but it was not very long. Thus, I need to discover a lot of very fine details. I think it's a good chance to improve my observation ability. I try to explain one feature in many ways and with a lot of point of my own view. And I also try to analyze what the author thinks about. It’s really funny because I start to imagine that if I was the author or the major character. I was so surprise that I really found a lot of details and describe them easily. It let me find the direction of writing. Of course, I still have many problems, but if I solve a little every day, I guess there will be prefect one day.

In my opinion, the secret of writing is to discover the details of things. The most successful detail description will let people relate to this picture in their mind. Of course, the way of description is also important. More detail is not worth a precise expression. So I have to learn more vocabulary to make up my lack of ability of expression.

All in all, I have a great semester in LaGuardia Community College. I hope in next semester, I will have more obvious progress. And I am looking for the next semester and meet more new friends. In my opinion, English 102 will be more difficult, but I will try my best to do that!