Self-Assessment

This is my almost fourth year studying in the United States, and it was after I came here that I really began to learn English writing systematically. For two years in high school, I took plenty of writing courses, from the very basic ones which teach students how to construct a complete structure of an essay and how to use a specific writing format, to the advanced writing classes that help improve our critical thinking and close-reading abilities. That was when I first learned and formed some of the critical writing skills. After entering college, the essays I encountered are much more complex, and they also require more in-depth thinking. By taking Writing 39A and 39B, my writing skills improved further. We learned how to identify the purpose of a book or an article, and what the intentions made by the author through a piece of work; we learned about rhetorical situations, how to recognize them and how to apply them in our own articles. I’ve written imitative articles, some book analysis, and also academic papers. During this process, I found out that the ability to provide in-depth thinking is at most important for writing an essay, and it is also where I need to improve the most.

For Writing 39C, I suppose we are going to be practicing academic articles, which requires researching and gathering of information, and also using academic language. Therefore, being able to integrate the crucial contents from reports is what I think one of the most important skills that I need to build up this quarter. Furthermore, I will also need to learn to construct a professional language and dictionary, because unlike other articles I’ve encountered, academic articles will have higher requirements for language professionalism. For this course, I think I will be mostly using my analytical skill and improving the rhetorical application.

I use Google very often, especially Google docs. The great thing about Google Docs is that it can automatically save my works so I will not be worrying about losing them. Also, Docs provide a grammar check system so I can avoid some basic grammar mistakes. However, since I am currently in China right now, using google here is much more inconvenient than using it in the United States. So, after I came back to Beijing, I spent less time using Google Docs.