Writing: One of the Most Important Skills in the University(Liu Yang Xue)

It is amazing that the time just flies so quickly and this fall semester is going to the end. I have written quite a number of papers since I came to the university. Now I am also going to finish the ENG 2F course soon. I really found that my writing has been improved a lot and at the same time I have realized that the skill of the writing can be one of the most important skills in the university.
Personally, I used to hate writing, especially when the professor asked for a 10-page paper. It would annoy me a lot because I didn’t know how to make the paper long enough to meet the professor’s requirement. However, this situation seems to have been released as time goes by. Though I am still far more than a good writer after writing so many papers and taking all the English writing courses, I do feel that I became more familiar with writing. At least, I won’t be scared when a long paper is required. I know how to use good strategy to write a paper with a clearer idea and a better structure.
After taking this writing course, I believe there are several elements to write a satisfying essay.
First of all, a good outline is the key to write a good essay. No matter how long the essay will be, the structure of the essay is the same. In order to keep the writer’s thinking logically, listing an outline which gives a brief structure of the essay is useful and important. If we give out an outline before we write the essay, the essay will sure to be well organized.
Second, when we are writing, we had better avoid translating all the time. Mistakes usually happen when we use those translated sentences to write our essays. Though it is hard to get rid of this, we should try to avoid translating our own language to English. Maybe another good way is to read the essay again and again when we finish writing which can help us revise the strange expression appeared in our essays.
Thirdly, to write a professional essay, reading is extremely important. We will always get confused that how we can make our essay more like the one written by the native speakers. I think the only solution is that we should read more works written by others. Nowadays, people, including me, don’t like reading. However, we have to read as much as possible to improve our own writing skill. When we read the works written by the academic writers, we will be attracted by the beautiful expressions which are exactly the ones we want to express in our own essay. We will be surprised that how smart these writers are. Though what we want to express is the same, the academic writers can write it in a more brief and accurate language. If we keep on reading these works, we will have a tendency to imitate the way that the writer writes his work. As time goes by, we can form our own writing style. If we desire for a satisfying essay, read more. In this course, Professor Bai noticed the importance of reading and provided us some good materials to read. However it is far more than enough.
Though I didn’t write a lot of essays in this writing course, I do get improved from these practices.
In the first essay, I got a score which frustrated me a lot. Now when I look back the first essay now, I believe that I can do a better job if I rewrite it since I have got some mechanisms during this semester. In addition, I also knew that we can use the visual images in our essays to make our writings more interesting. I think the Class Wiki is a really good tool for this class. We can write Blogs on the website and add the videos and color pictures in our Blogs. Then, no matter the professor, but also our classmates will have chance to read others’ writings. We can share the ideas with each other. This class also gave me a lot of “first”. For example, it was my first time to write a Blog in my whole life even though it was required as homework. And I am thinking about to start my own Blog if I have enough perseverance.
In the second essay, I tried harder on it and made a good outline. Finally, I got a better score than the first one. However it made me realize another problem: plagiarism. A large part of my essay was taken from the Internet or other materials, while I never cited them. Later I know it is called plagiarism which is treated very seriously in academic reading. Though I didn’t do it by purpose, the second essay reminded me to pay attention to the problem which I had ignored before. It is necessary to form the habit of citing others’ works in order to make our own work academic.
Perhaps, the biggest progress I have ever made in this course is the research paper. It is also my first time to write research paper. In some run, I feel I really have grown up if I can write a research paper. It sounds ridiculous, but it is really what I think. When I was really young, I heard that those older brothers and sisters who were in the university were always troubled by the so called research paper. I was wondering what kind of essay it is. And now I began to write the research paper myself. Though the process was hard, the result really cheered me up. Though Professor Bai said this research paper was just our first attempt, I got a lot of experience in writing the research paper. I could remember the different feelings when I was doing this paper. At first I thought it was really easy and all I need to do was just find the resource online as I did usually and then write whatever I like. However when I really began to work on it, I found it was a really tough job. Even the outline of my paper would change all the time as I updated the resource I found. It was not just once that I had no idea about how to write this essay. Luckily, after talking with the professor and revising the outline several times, I finished the task. I was happy that I made it. What’s more, in that research paper I knew how to use the bibliography and “MLA” format correctly which can help me away from plagiarism.
In a word, there’s no doubt that the writing has become one of the most important skills in the university. For the university students these days, their grades not only depend on their exam scores, but also depend on how well they did in their papers. Therefore, it is seems more necessary for international students to improve their writing skill in order to do a better job in their class.
I was taught a lot in the writing course and got a lot of experience in the essays I have written. The experience I have got will help me do better in the future study.