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Yuanxu Liu(Abby)

Professor C.Pierson

ENC 1101

11 October 2017

My Writing Process

As you know, I'm an international student. For every international student, English is

not our first language and therefore we must learn English. As we all know, learning a new

language is a new challenge. I started learning English from elementary school but for

contact with English writing was in middle school. As far as I am concerned, my writing

process is different when I write in Chinese and when I write in English.

I started writing journals in Chinese class in elementary school and it was just a

homework for me, but now it is a habit for me. Our Chinese class is similar to English class,

writing a composition is a part of the class and also is a part of the exam. We need to take an

exam before we go to college. The exam is called Chinese Gaokao or Chinese entrance

examination. Gaokao is the most important exam in school-days, you will ask why this exam

is important for students? After students graduate from high school, they are only allowed to

enter the universities when their scores high than the minimum qualifying score for schools

that they are applying. If their scores are lower than the required score they will lose the

opportunity to enter a university.

Before Gaokao we have lots of exams to prepare for Gaokao. Like our midterm exam,

we have 90 minutes to finish those questions, including writing, reading, grammar, and

multiple-choice. Writing is the last part of Gaokao and also is an important part of Gaokao.

Why writing is an important part? On the one hand, we need write our compositions to get

high score. Going to college depends on your score, getting a higher score is the only
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gateway to go to college. On the other hand, I can check my writing skill and practice writing

to improve. In general, the writing part will be used in a few words to explain what you are

going to write or to tell a topic directly. Most of the writing belongs to the narrative, and only

needs to describe one thing to express our views.

As far as I'm concerned, I only have 45 minutes to complete my composition when I

finish the previous part. Because of the time limit and word count, which must be more than

800 words, I do not have time to write a rough draft and also no one can check your

grammar. When I see the introduction of the composition, I will spend 10 minutes thinking

about what I should write and what content I need to write. After that I start writing and write

5 paragraphs according to the teacher's requests, which include the introduction, the main

paragraph and the ending. Our teacher said that when you write compositions, your

conclusion and introduction need a long paragraph instead of one or two sentences. So my

writing in Chinese just like normal Chinese students. We just follow teachers request to

finish writing. Because it is written on paper, if your handwriting is good, you will get a two

points bonus. Actually, I always get the bonus, and this bonus can make my score higher than

other classmates.

When I came to an American high school, there were many differences between

Chinese writing and American writing. The first one is that writing a composition does not

need to be written on paper, instead Google Documents or Microsoft Word are used. The

second one is that English composition is more like a research paper and Chinese

composition more like telling a story. The third one is that I do not need a long paragraph

instead one or two sentences to express the conclusion and introduction. The last one is that I

have enough time to prepare and complete the paper, also someone can help me check my

rough draft. When I write my first English essay, I try to write my paper in English first. So
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that I do not need change Chinese to English and do not worry about the grammar. But it is

not a easy thing for me. Because my first language in not English so when I write something,

Chinese goes up first in my mind. In order to have a good essay, I give up the idea of writing

in English first.

Writing in English is more difficult than writing in Chinese. For example, the first

paper for this class, when I saw the introduction of the composition, I almost understand what

the introduction said and what I had to do, but I was not pretty sure about that. At this time, I

used an online translator to understand the main words of the introduction or asked the

teacher and classmates to help me understand. When I write for this class, I like to write at

home or library. I need a peaceful and quiet environment to work on my paper. After I

understood the introduction, I made an outline(Berkenkotter)to plan what I should write and

what content I need to write. Sometimes I get ideas before I go to bed or after classes at

school. When I have some special ideas I like write them down or put a reminder on my

phone. I used to not make outlines before I taking this class. Right now I think there is no

better way to write than by making an outline, because after I make an outline, I can clearly

know the content and more details about the paper. Then I will write my paper in my free

time, I have enough time to think about this paper and I do not need to finish the paper in 2

hours even one day. I can do my paper before the deadline.

( make this the beginning of a new paragraph)When I write my paper I like to write

my paper in Chinese first. Maybe you will ask me: Why do you like to write your paper in

Chinese first?The reason is that I write my opinion and what content I need to write in

Chinese because it is more fast and easy. As we all know that we have different grammar

rules and vocabulary. For this situation, Chelsea made several observations supporting this.

We usually don't use clause. We have little expressions like which. We usually have a
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long adjective out of descriptive words before the noun (2015). I agree with her opinion, like

me sometimes I do not like use clause in my essay; I just use simple sentences and words to

describe. For example, I like to write a main sentence first at each paragraph and complete

sentences around the main sentence. After that, I will think about the content of the main

sentence and use my words to explain my opinions. Then, I will search for some more

information to make my paper clear. After I finish the composition in Chinese, when I

translate your paper into English, there are some mistakes or challenge for me. Like some

Chinese words can not change to English. So I need to change words in Chinese first and then

use this words change to English. This is a complex process and this is also a improve

process that can memorize vocabularies. After the most important part I will correct the

grammar, because we have different grammar in Chinese and in English. It's a complicated

process for me.

Above all, my writing process is somewhat similar to Netos. He was bilingual, which

means he can speak two languages. From his article, we can know that he reads in English, he

thinks in his first language and then writes in English. He also developed a checklist of his

own writing process in order to check things that can let him focus and keep everything. He

used his own research and research on the writing processes of native English speakers to tell

us to take breaks to avoid fatigue.(2014,Neto) Actually, I like to have a rest during my

writing process, because I can not pay attention for a long time so have a break is a good

way. Different people have different writing process, like Chinese students and American

students. There are three researchers, one American and two Chinese, read and responded to

essays written by students in China and America. They conclude that, while there are marked

differences in both the student writing and teachers responses to the writing, these

differences stem not solely from different rhetorical traditions but also from a very di erent
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view of the role of writing in student learningthat is, whether writing is viewed as a way to

learn or a way to demonstrate learning. (2012) In a word, we have different thinking and

habits. For American students, they do not have a certain style and without limit, so their

writing process more relaxing.

For what has been discussed above, writing is an ability that we all have. Different

people have different writing skills. Writing is also a process to improve our skill in some

ways. Like English writing skill and logical thinking. We need to do more practice to

improve and to find the joy of writing.

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Works Cited

Neto, A. (2014). Tug of war. In E. Wardle & D. Downs(Eds.). Writing about Writing: A

college reader (pp.774-785). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.

Pigg, S . (2014). Coordinating constant invention. In E. Wardle & D. Downs(Eds.). Writing

about Writing: A college reader (pp.711-732). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.

Perl, S . (1979). The composing processes of unskilled college writers. In E. Wardle & D.

Downs(Eds.). Writing about Writing: A college reader (pp.774-785). Boston:

Bedford/St. Martins.

Bawa, P., & Watson, S. L. (2017). A phenomenological study of graduate chinese students

English writing challenges. The Qualitative Report, 22(3), 779-796. Retrieved from h

p://nsuworks.nova.edu/tqr/vol22/iss3/7

Townsend, M. A. & Zawack, T. M. (2014). Conversations in process: an observational report

on WAC in China. The WAC Journal, 24(2013), 96-109. Retrieved from

https://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol24/vol24.pdf

Sommers, Nancy . (1980). Revision strategies of student writers and experienced adult

writers. In E. Wardle & D. Downs(Eds.). Writing about Writing: A college reader

(pp.858-870). Boston: Bedford/St. Martins.