Dear Portfolio Committee,
During the ten weeks of UWP study, I made big progresses in all aspects of reading and writing skills. Thanks to my instructor’s patience and careful teaching and instructing, I really gained a lot that is useful in all of my future studying. I used to be a problematic English writer. I had a lot of issues in both organization and grammar. I could not say I can do all things well now, but I can confirm that this class assisted me to develop a lot that I can do far better than I could do before.
It was difficult for me to write papers in different genres and keep interactions with my audiences. During this quarter’s lectures and practices of papers, I’m now familiar with a new genre: newspaper and know a little about how to write a simple research summary. I know clearly about how to organize different structures of different genres and change tones when I have distinctive audiences. The interactions with my audiences was actually a part I neglected in the past. In all the essays practice, my instructor’s emphasis of the audience brought me attention to this aspect. I started to keep this goal in my mind that made my paper more convincing and thorough.
Grammar is also an area that I improved a lot. Before I took this class, It was easy for me to make mistakes in verb tense, transition and sentence structure. These were my biggest problems that confused me for a long time. For example, my examples in other readings used to be full of verb tense mistakes that I wrote “ I saw two girls who are confused about my appearance.” These were the mistakes I knew how to correct, but hard to find out by myself in the first draft. Besides, I used to use “so, but” at the beginning of my sentences. I then found they were totally wrong after my instructor highlighted all my “so” in a paper. This class effectively reminded me of the importance of those transition words that I did not notice before. Time writing was the most useful project to improve my grammar, since it could always reflected our common mistakes and mistakes we most easily to make in the midterm and final. When my instructor highlighted those errors for me, I could check whether I made those kinds of mistakes unintentionally or I really did not know principle of that kind of grammar. I could then decide to ask my instructor how to correct or remember those errors in order not make same mistakes next time.
This class is extremely useful for me to utilize all the knowledge I learned from this in the future courses and studies. As an international student, writing essays in some academic areas is always the most difficult thing. I could not express all my thoughts in appropriate ways that made my essays become hard to understand. After the frequent and long time practices in writing and reading during this class, I can make some improvement in most of my courses. Like in a sociology class, it requires a large amount of reading. I can then use the ways that my instructor asked us to read articles and finish homework: raise some questions by myself before reading and carefully finding relevant answers. Summarizing a little will also assist me to save more time and catch all details. Besides, I can keep doing vocabulary journal when I read those articles where I could check all the words again and gain new vocabularies; the speed in reading will also be improved. Also when I am asked to write some research paper, I can effectively use the ways taught by UWP instructor about how to raise questions, interview a person effectively and make a thoroughly summary. I will no longer be unfamiliar with things that will be required in those major class.
I’m really appreciate ten weeks studies. Grammar is a part I have to improve more in my future study to reduce the errors in first drafts. Besides, I have to do more summaries that will make to easier to express my or others’ thoughts more concisely. As an writer, UWP 23 class effectively assisted me to become more comprehensive and skillful that I start to develop more own methods and thoughts when write an essay. I’m now become more confident and proficient when I am asked to write papers in my major classes. I hope you can see my progresses through my works and I am really appreciate your patient reading. Thank you so much.
Sincerely,
Wenjing Liu