Reading and Writing Experience

Journal 1: My reading and writing experience

I love readings books. I began to read English novels when I was in primary school. Alice in wonderland, Black beauty, and Charlotte's Web, all these fascinating novels (though in simplified version) made me addicted to read English books.

When I was elder, my English was better. So I decided to read novels in original version, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was the first book I chose. I admired Tom’s courage and his brilliant ideas. Since then, I jumped into the sea of reading.

After I entered high school, I decided to study aboard and started reading academic books in English. However, the experience of reading academic books is totally different. There are so many academic words that I don’t recognize, so I have to consult dictionaries every minute. In the beginning, I read the essay word by word, instead of sentence by sentence. When I finished reading, I can’t understand the academic points, since I didn’t read the essay as a whole. I learned from this lesson, and changed my reading process. Now, I will read the whole essay without dictionary at the first time, and try to understand words depending on the context. It helps. The perfect score I earned on AP test is the best evidence.

One thing that I’m good at is to associate the academic ideas with daily life. Several years ago, my parents ordered a wardrobe. When the worker delivered the wardrobe to my home, it wasn’t perpendicular to the ground. However the worker insisted that everything is ok. I thought of an experiment I read on a book, so I tied a cup to a rope, and put it beside the wardrobe, said, ”If the wardrobe is okay, then the rope should perfectly match the edge”. In the end, the winner was I. Associate academic ideas with life not only let me understand the text more, but also strength my memory.

But being a good reader never means being a good writer. I do have strong points on writing, my point of view is often different from others and I can think of many excellent examples to support my statement. However, my weakness in writing is very obvious. I have problem express myself clearly and sometimes I can’t organize the language very well. My writing model is somehow locked and I always write in the same pattern. After reading the Models for writers, I know where my problem is.
I always use weak nouns and verbs, like run, sing, or laugh, which makes my writing imprecisely. Readers can never have a clear picture in their minds when they read my essay. And my vocabulary is not enough, that’s why I can’t avoid redundancy in my writings.

Besides writing style, another thing I have to prove is my writing process. When I begin to write something, I first analyzing the assignment, and make a brainstorm. I try to write everything that bomb up in my mind on the paper. Then I choose my title first, and start to write the beginning. However, after few paragraphs, I often find the title doesn’t match the thing that I wrote, and the beginning seems not that proper.

When I finish writing, I seldom reread my essay, not to mention revise or edit it. Now, I have realized my mistake, and reread my essay several times before I submit it.

My father told me that practice makes perfect. I believe the more I write, the better my writing skill will become. Now I begin to read from a writer’s view, and write from a reader’s view. I know that step-by-step, I will come to the next level to both skills. That’s what ESL 33C aimed to, that’s what I want.