Dear Professor Stark,
As time flies, here comes the end of this quarter. I am really appreciative to have had this UWP22 with all the help from Professor Stark and every peer in class throughout this quarter.
In fact, I used to be very afraid of writing and was always struggling in it because I did not know how to express my turbid thoughts into an essay with one thesis. At the same time, I had a lot of grammar problems when I was writing; what’s worse is that I cannot discover them even when I look back and want to revise. However, after having UWP22 this quarter, I’m becoming more confident and starting to know how to write in a professional way. Particularly, I find myself getting better in grammar think to all the time writings in class and the self-editing. Self-editing is really important for a writer. As a matter of fact, everyone makes mistakes in the first draft, so the main standard of judging writing skill is how well they can correct their essays. Eventually, I’ve developed the ability of controlling myself to write something more professional with fewer errors in a very short time now.
The biggest problem for international students has always been the language. For reading and writing are the main tasks in learning and using English, it is urgent for international students to get used to it and catch up with native students. Therefore, UWP22 gives us a great opportunity to practice and improve. During this quarter in UWP22, we have had a lot of long readings and long essays. And now I’m becoming comfortable reading textbooks. Although I didn’t have other classes with writing assignments this quarter, I’ll have classes like Physics and History later, which all require writing reports.
I am a person who has many thoughts, and ideas are truly important for a writer as it decides the level and depth of their essays. So, I consider it to be my strength as a writer.
However, everything has two faces. My various ideas give me trouble about what to choose. Sometimes, my logic in an essay may be confused. So, I consider that I need to be more logical and learn to choose effective materials to have more control of my essays.
In my portfolio, it includes two class papers. One is the summary response and the other is the OP-ED. Both of the essays have been edited a few times by peers, Professor Stark and myself. The process of writing the summary response gives me deep impression. So far, I had written many essays to criticize from different points with the help of information from given articles without knowing them as a whole. But after this practice, I start to learn the ability to control the given information more integrally. Actually, the process of revising was tough because I did not get the purpose of summary at first. In the first three drafts, I picked a lot of main sentences and words directly from the article, which caused plagiarism seriously. I did not realize it until Professor Stark warned me and taught me how to write it patiently. In spite of the hardship during the process, the result turned to be good.
To sum up, I’ve certainly learnt a lot from Professor Stark and made progress in writing. In spite of the end of UWP22, there’s still a long way to go to grow as a writer, for instance, a better ability of developing ideas and a more logical essay structure. Therefore, I’m thankful to have all the UWP classes now and later, and will keep working hard in the following courses.
Sincerely,
Haonan Kuang
haonankuanguwp22portfolio 