As a Chinese international student, English is not the first language for us. I think this is a double-edged sword. It has advantages and disadvantages for me. I can connect Chinese writing styles and American writing kills both to make my essay better. But as the second language, my English still has a lot of room for growth. My choice of word, grammar and organization are my weakness in writing. In this portfolio, I will show what I learned and what I should pay more attention in the future of class.  

After finishing Writing 39A, I have a clear understanding of the process of writing an essay. To brainstorm, make an outline, find resource and peer editing, these  are all necessary conditions for me to complete a good essay and gave me a lot of confidence to take Writing 39B. In these quarter I hope I could learn some writing skill in more depth to make my essay looks professional. After six weeks of studying, I found that what I learned in this class is exactly what I need.

During the class, we practiced many exercises to get close to our first assignment step by step.The first week opened our door to the novel. To be honestly, I rarely read novels before, which was a bit difficult for me at the beginning. But the teacher patiently explained and took us to read so that I have a certain understanding and interest in the novel. I understand the different genre of the article, the different rhetoric and the importance of rhetoric to the article, how it helps us better understand the article. For example, "the child" in the Omelas is the symbol of the unfair and injustice. Various rhetoric allows the author to better express his or her points of view. It also allows the reader to have room for imagination. I taught the use of arguments in the process of learning novels. Before that, it was difficult for me to master the use of thesis, which was always not accurate enough or even confusing. We practiced in the class by use the picture of story to write five parts of thesis, which are How, when, who, where and what. This gave me a very clear idea to write my thesis which helps me a lot. We also had a debate during class.It gives me a lot of different views on the article, and I can draw everyone's point of view from both sides of the question and answer. This gives me more evidence in the article.I can also extract my arguments from different answers to help me conceive. This is a very good brainstorming process. I hope that we will use it again in the future. After we finish the first draft of assignment 1, teacher taught us how to peer review. although we only have two chance to do peer review, I think it is very necessary for my article editing. My peer gave me so many fresh ideas because your peer can find out new things that you haven't noticed before, pointed out my grammar mistakes and remove the unnecessary parts to improve my assignment. 

I think the discussion is a good opportunity to practice. It doesn't have to be as rigorous as writing, but it allows you to write any ideas and share them with your classmates. It can be analytical, such as the discussion of the second week, we discuss the genre, rhetoric or the information that author wants us to know. It is also very interesting to let us try different types of writing. This allows us to improve our writing skills in the process of learning from each other.

In the end, I would like to especially thank my teacher for teaching us patiently. There is also great help to me during class. When there are many problems in my draft, you helped analyze and explain them one by one, let me understand the difference between summarization and analysis and helped me write my thesis, so that my article could meet the requirements. I am very grateful to meet such a responsible teacher, I believe that I will learn a lot more knowledge and skills in the later quatrer.