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A place for Writing 12 students to read each other's writing, to critique, to suggest, to improve.
About Me
- Brad
- Former adult teacher who loves island beaches. Happy homebody and family man; once devoted dog owner, now without Tashi, my Tibetan Terrier. I prefer the absurdity of the imagination to the absurdity of imagining nothing.
3 comments:
What I Learned in Writing 12 Class
While attending Writing 12 class second time, I improved my writing skills in grammar, composition and stile.
There were many possibilities in this class to improve grammar. The most effective for me was editing- in- class exercise with the teacher’s analysis of different kinds of students’ mistakes. Another useful exercise was editing of students’ works on the Whiteboard; I did it several time, every time revising grammar rules, checking words definition and spelling in the dictionary. Then, I always learned something new by comparing Brad’s last editions of the works published on the “Buzz” and students’ writings. All these methods, together with intensive reading, helped me tremendously.
As a result, I felt more confident about posting writing on the Blog, although I had a lot of doubts about articles.
I also felt more confident about composition. This time I wrote on a wider spectrum of themes, then before (last semester I wrote mostly about music). By improving my observation skills, I found more interesting subjects to write about. After Brad showed us the statistics on popularity of students’ works on the Internet, I understood the magic power of an attractive title and became more careful about my choice. I noticed that my writing became more entertaining; before it was mostly informative and seemed to be dull.
This semester I tried to develop style of writing different from informative style that I practiced last semester. I tried to create a certain mood in writing by making more vivid descriptions and by trying to show rather than to tell. I think, I managed to move in right direction. During last semester I failed to write even an interesting short story; this time I made my first attempts to show humor in writing (“How I Robbed My landlords” and “Victoria Day Adventure”). I can admit that my writing is still wordy, even though I was fighting with this weakness constantly.
It was very satisfactory to find that I was able to improve my writing skills. The best proof of this was the fact that the process of writing became less painful; I had no problem to find a theme to write about. As it was during previous semester, I was never bored in this class studying not only English, but also different cultures and people’s lives experiences through my classmates’ writings.
396 words
Three “C” s in Writing
For the last ten months I have been learning quite unique ways to examine myself by taking “Writing 12” class. Different from speaking, sentences will remain forever and writing about something require many skills such as; vast knowledge of the topic, imagination, your own conception, experiences, power of expression and grammatical correct sentences. On top of those hard tasks, you have to attract reader’s attention otherwise all your efforts will be in vain. After many writing exercises, I realized three important elements to be a good writer; be attractive, be concise and be honest with you.
First of all, whenever you start writing a thing, you have to find or create a point which will catch the reader’s interest. When we started the “writing 12 “class, our teacher gave us an assignment to state descriptive sentence on which we saw a scenery outside of the window. In his sample sentence, we read sensational description with appropriate adjectives, his imagination and even a prediction. That was an astounding start for me. Later, I wrote a story by using restricted ten words which required me imagination and methodical statement to draw readers. There are many ways to captivate the readers. How to use it is depend on the topics and contents. Once they start to read your sentence with interest, your work has been done well almost half way.
Next step is to keep writing about the topic with a concise style. To do that, you have to cut out fats which will make sentences awkward and redundant. For instance, to write a travel article you don’t need to explain how to get there or where is a good point for sightseeing. Readers can obtain that knowledge by a guide book. Important points are your own experiences and impression about the place you visited. State clearly and paraphrase in plain language. If your description became an old-fashioned, use some writing technique such as metaphor or similar. Try to avoid making grammatical mistakes which might happen easily in a long sentence. Always remember the readers. Compendious sentences are easy to follow for them to keep reading.
In the final stage of writing, you have to conclude your opinion or philosophy about the topic. Be yourself. Do not hesitate to show your guts out. In other words, don’t be a flatterer by using somebody else’s fair argument. By writing with your own words and thought, honesty will surely attract and impress readers no matter how ridicule your conclusions are. Whenever you are writing your ideas, be honest with you all the time. Then, the more you probe deeply into the topic, the more you will find out your unnoticed thought. That is one of main reasons why writing is so important in our daily life.
Captive, compendious and conscientious sentences are three important elements in writing. Writing requires correct usage of grammar, vast knowledge of words and flowing sentences. It is the synthetic work of English and your comprehension about the topic. For the last ten months I have been struggling with my poor English to achieve good result. Once in a while, I was satisfied with my writing, but most of the time I felt that I am a failure because of my poor sentences. Nevertheless, writing will reflects myself and makes me think about my philosophy. I enjoyed “Writing 12” class and I hope I could be able to express myself in the near future much better than now by keep in mind throes three elements of writing.
Second draft 590words June 9th , 2008
Can I Write a Story?
After stressful English 12, I choose enjoyable writing 12. As an essay writer, I soon found that writing an enjoyable story is not easy, and I have to become a story writer. In a relaxed atmosphere of writing 12 class, even the teacher, Brad, was not same with before. Therefore, how I could write enjoyable stories was my major concern. I learned many skills from Brad, but as a writing beginner, using dialogue, setting, and the five sensuous descriptions were three things which most impressed me.
Primarily, dialogue makes my writing vivid. Instead of a long-winded and tedious statement, a dialogue can clearly and tersely tell things in an entertaining way. Sometimes, I use funny words in a dialogue to make a light tone. For example, in “What is that Teacher’s Name,” I used some funny dialogues to amuse readers. Also, dialogue can clearly tell the character of related person which is necessary to testify something in the story. In the same story, L’s patience to students was shown by dialogue. It is much easier way to describe a person. After these, I understand why Brad always reminded us: “Don’t forget using some dialogue!” That’s really an effective method for a lively story.
In addition to using dialogue, I also learned to create the setting in stories. From Brad’s “Chatting on the Web Cam,” the charming alpine hostel gave me lots of imagination and inspiration. I realized that creating a setting is important to build up an atmosphere of the story. It provides readers a physical and sensuous world of the story. In “Biology 12,” I choose the place, number four classroom, to create a warm, animated, but intensive class atmosphere. Moreover, I learned using social environment as the setting of the story to explain the social and cultural phenomena. In “Ancient Beauty,” I wrote about binding feet, an interesting thing of my culture, with social environment of admiring small feet. Setting is really helpful to arouse readers’ emotion, and it’s a vital element of a story.
Compared to dialogue and setting, the five sensuous descriptions are most significant writing skills to describe real experience in a story. By seeing, listening, touching, tasting, and smelling, readers’ sense are stimulated, and they would feel what the writer feel like. Their imagination and reaction are aroused by these sensuous descriptions, and they would have some deep impression and forgettable memories to the story after reading. Besides, the five sensuous descriptions can rich the writing and add some colours in the story. Learning them is interesting, and I become more sensitive to observe, experience, and express things in my life. In the future, I’ll still work on these skills to write stories, and they are really useful tools to write a story.
Dialogue, setting, and the five sensuous descriptions are essential ingredients in writing stories like salt, soy sauce, and sugar are indispensable in delicious Chinese recipe. If you are talented in writing, you could be a better writer with these skills; if you are not gifted in writing, you would still be confident to write a story by using these skills.
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