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Heechan Kim
College Writing R1A, Sect. 23
Professor Teri Crisp
7 May 2019
Baby Steps

Learning how to speak English was one of the greatest achievements of my life.

When I was 13, my parents moved to the Philippines for work and brought me along with

them. I was given half a year to learn English if I wanted to survive in an American

International School. There was a significant amount of pressure on me because I constantly

feared not being able to make any friends in school due to my language barrier. However, I

spent a significant amount of time every day practicing, and I was eventually able to

communicate with the English-speakers. For the next five years since then, I improved my

skills in reading and writing. Eventually, I came to this realization: “Wow, I’m pretty good at

English.” However, coming into the College Writing program proved me wrong. My writing

skills still needed significant improvement. Maybe the English I learned in the Philippines

was different from the English spoken here, but regardless, I knew that I had to step up my

writing if I wanted to fit into one of the greatest academic institutions in the world.

I did not know how to prepare for a six unit class at first. However, Professor Crisp

was very encouraging and patient with us as she understood how challenging learning how to

write professionally could be for students whose first language was not English. In every

class, she was very enthusiastic and took all the opportunities to train us to become better

writers. She read and edited a significant amount of our essays over this semester and I felt

really appreciative of the effort she put into each detailed note and comment.

One of the reasons I found this course really helpful is that it helped me see the

common mistakes I used to make in writing. As we wrote different types of essays every

week, Professor Crisp’s comments and edits on my papers made my mistakes clear to be
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seen. Being able to see my own mistakes was much more helpful than I thought because I

could work with them on other papers as well. One of the biggest essays our class worked on

was a text analysis on a book called The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature

by David Suzuki. I believe that this text analysis assignment definitely helped me improve

my writing the most. Focusing on one chapter allowed me to think deeply about the topic and

what the author had to say about it. It was an opportunity not only to see what the author talks

about in the chapter but also to analyze how he builds up his argument. Observing a

professional writer’s writing style was a new experience that I had never done in my high

school education. It was really intriguing and refreshing to notice how Suzuki, and many

other authors, played with words and strengthened their claims.

The most challenging time I had throughout this course was probably when I got back

my first draft of the text analysis on The Sacred Balance from Professor Crisp. I thought I did

well. I thought my writing improved a lot since the beginning of the course and I was ready

to write a strong paper. However, the paper I received back was an essay with comments and

edits on every sentence in different colors of highlighters and this gave me a crisis. Professor

Crisp’s careful and detailed comments on every single mistake I made helped me realize how

much I have yet to work on. However, she still continued to encourage us and helped us push

more. We spent a great amount of time and effort to improve our thesis, analysis, evidence,

and conclusion and eventually, I was able to come up with a much cleaner draft. The process

of improving the quality of the paper was absolutely useful. I noticed that the common

mistakes I kept making were usually directionless paragraphs, poor sentence structure, lack of

evidence, and too much of summarizing rather than analyzing.

After polishing the text analysis of The Sacred Balance, writing became much easier

for me. Mind-mapping and making an outline of the paper were some great tips our professor
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taught us. It was really useful when I was gathering different ideas and coming up with a

specific focus and direction for my next papers. As I wrote down new essays, I went back to

my Suzuki paper to make sure that I did not make the same mistakes. I tried to work much

harder on my weaknesses and cut down on my common mistakes. Consistent communication

with the professor helped me make sure I was on the right track as I shaped my essays.

Taking this class and going through all the challenges in writing definitely upgraded

my writing skills. Compared to the beginning of the semester, I should say, my writing has

improved in various aspects. Despite the improvement, I still do notice a number of mistakes

and parts of my essays that I have to work more on. I believe this course was just beginning

of my writing enhancement. I believe that taking next level writing class and writing essays

for different classes for three more years will turn me into a better and professional writer.