English is not my native language; my experience in writing was very minimal, I starting writing when I came to college.
First, when I star to write a sentence in English, I have an idea in Chinese. However, I have to write it in English, the confusion starts when I try to translate my previous idea. And the structure of a sentence, like we put the time and place at the beginning of the sentence in Chinese, but in English we put it at end of the sentence.
After I come to college, I learn how to write an essay in English. I did several writing including arguments, personal essays, and research paper. I also learned how to build sentences and paragraphs. The limitation of the English vocabulary made it hard for me to put my thoughts together and clear about certain subject to present it to my audience. I also face difficulties with grammar, specifically with sentence structure. I am always confused what type of sentence I should use, or how to word and punctuate a sentence to express the idea I want. I struggle in transitions throughout paragraphs and thoughts, and give my papers a smoothness that I would like to.
Every time whenever I get my essay back, the teacher puts circles all over the paper. They keep telling me that I need to redo this the entire paragraph or something is not clear and that I need to write more when I've explained everything I could about the topic. Also, my essays are so short, which is why that I am constantly getting low grades for my English classes. I can never think of anything to write about to make the essay longer and it is very frustrating. On the other hand, I was wondering why there are some students that get excellent grades on their essays like it's nothing very easily. I started to look for my weaknesses and strengths in writing and how to improve my language.
Writing in a foreign language has been a really good experience, People always say “Practice makes