Incomplete Recipe (by Mirim Chang)

Incomplete Recipe
Writing was really not an enjoyable process to me, much less English writing. It is fact that writing in English is not an easy work as an international student. However, it is an essential process like a mountain to go over to study and to get a job in America. As I have taken the English writing course, I have tried to put my thought into the frame of English writing whenever I had to write essays with new topic and new style. Now, I am in an early stage of English writing like beginner cook who knows a new recipe for some food but don’t know how to cook it well. I learned a basic frame of English writing but I still have what I should improve in my essay.
The first thing which I consider is the basic frame of English writing when I start to write an essay. Through finishing several essays, I surely learned the basic frame how to organize well. The frame consists of a creative topic, an attractive introduction, a clear thesis statement, supporting the idea in the body, well summarized conclusion and MLA format. As I repeated to write according to the frame, I got eyes to distinguish good writing. Now, I try to find out a thesis statement even if I read some articles or other’s essay. Besides, I look over whether each body supports the idea or not.
Of course, it’s not mean that I fluently write, and at least I can find out what problems are in my writing and try to fix or improve it. I think that these basic skills make me confident to write in other subjects.
In addition, I could naturally learn American’s culture through the English writing process. I could understand more about American as I wrote about American’s culture. For example, when I wrote about American’s culture through American’s food culture, I realized that two big flows of fast food and slow food culture exist in our time in America even though various foods coexist in America. Reversely, if I had to write my culture in English writing, I need to know more about American’s culture because I wanted show Korea’s culture which is distinct with American’s. In addition, when I wrote essays like research paper, I could learn America through searching a lot of information on the net for reliable. For instance, I knew that the 70% of married women are working in America and I understood the situation of adopted children by homosexual parents in America. I believe that these knowledge what I got indirectly can be helpful to not only better writing but also a daily life. However, I still have the high wall to conquer to be a good writer.
I have difficulty to use proper and profound expression in English. My writing has no depth and there are a lot of wrong expressions in English. Sometimes, I feel pain to explain my
intention in the sentence when my professor or other Americans don’t understand some sentence or some words in my essay. Therefore, I change the sentences to simple sentences at variance with my first intension or eliminate the sentences completely. Sometimes, I make weird sentence since I choose the literally translated word in Korean –English dictionary. For example, it happens that I make a strange sentence “Creative education become manure of success” when I want to express “Creative education become nutriment of success.” Unfortunately, it takes long time to use completely proper expressions in English and continuous efforts to think in English are required.
In conclusion, through writing several essays, I got the basic frame from interesting opening to well summarized conclusion to organize essay well. I could also naturally understand American’s culture in the process to search some information for more reliable essay. I still have difficulty to use proper and profound expression in English. However, I strongly believe that I can be a good writer in the future if I continuously make an effort to think in English and
Don’t be afraid to express in writing as if a beginner cook can make complete his own recipe through continuous repeating and improvement based on the basic recipe.