Rongfei Bao
Monday, 21, 2014
ESL 400 My Writing experience

Writing is a process that takes lots of time, commitment, and understanding to really help us develop our ideas and put them on paper. Through this English class I have learned about a lot of valuable topics which have helped increased my knowledge about the extensive informative history of United States laws (Essay 2&3) that have helped me become a more aware member of our society. The different literary ideas that are structured around the theme of Gender and Ethics helped me to really push the boundaries of my thinking to question and analyze so I can become a better writer. The most important thing, I learned in this class was the ability to question while reading and using the process of making drafts and structures to build my essays that have helped me become a better critical thinker and writer. It is very important to question any form of reading because it helps to better understand the meaning of the different reading devices. For example on the
My Life’s Sentences by Jhumpa Lahiri says “When I am experiencing a complex story or novel, the broader planes, and also details, tend to fall away. Rereading them, certain sentences are what greet me as familiars.” While reading, most often the details in the text tends to fade away while one concentrates on understanding the bigger picture behind the story. It is often necessary to go back and reread text to catch the details which may further lead to find much more hidden

and deeper meanings. Rereading while trying to connect with our own life experiences often makes the process of reading much more meaningful. Moreover, by having a personal reflection with the readings, one can come upon ideas that help create a more in­depth analysis and efficiently focus on the critical points. Critical thinking is one of the most important parts of reading because it helps the reader set aside their preconceived notions and ideas on a topic by looking at it through a broader lens that doesn’t constrict their understanding in one area. It helps to combine different ideas to come to common understanding. Throughout this class, I have learned through different reading and writing that it is very important to stay focused and on the task when writing. As English is my second language, I have always had trouble to put my ideas together into sentences. According to Jhumpa Lahiri in the article
My life sentences, s he says “
Knowing — and learning to read in — a foreign tongue heightens and complicates my relationship to sentences.” Having English as my second language, it is often difficult for me to express myself because I have grown up knowing and learning to read in Chinese and share a complicated relationship with English.
Also I tend to have a really difficult time starting my essays because there are so many ideas and possibilities floating around in my head that I get distracted on how to separate the important from the unimportant. Thankfully, the essay structure process that I have been taught beginning of this semester has helped me solve this issue. I have paid a lot of attention in class and I have followed all the grammar instructions to help me build better sentences in order to create paragraphs with good quality.