The 4th essay (Pengcheng Gao)

Student: Pengcheng Gao
Professor: Leslie BaiEnglish 2F (Essay#4)April/28/2009

Informal Writing

Since the ancient time, language indeed has been a necessary condition for development of civilizations. Language makes human beings more special than other creatures because that makes human beings are educated. In fact, language is the fundamental condition for advanced education. The unique ability of communication leads the development of human races to a modern area. That’s the reason why mankind is able to dominate the earth for thousands of year. Only human beings are capable of speech so that intellect distinguishes humans from other animals. Nowadays, Chinese is used by most populous language in worldwide and English is used most widely in the world. Therefore, people are willing to let their children go abroad for learning the latest technologies and concepts as well as the language.

At present, I am studying in Long Island University which is situated in countryside of NY. I already learnt in this university for two semesters. In the first semester, ENG 1F is a compulsory course so that I have to picked it up. I was really wondering to learn it because I consider my standard of English is really weak, even though, I have been learnt English for abrading study since I was studying in primary school in China. I encountered many difficulties after I came to United States, such as the Food, the culture, the climate and soon on. Language is definitely our biggest barrier to studying abroad like other international students do. English is referring to Speaking, Writing, Listening and Reading mostly. My weakness is the speaking and writing. In personal, I am really shy since I was born. I afraid to communicate face-to-face with other strangers, that impacts me a lot. Every time I speak to other guys in English, I will be really nervous. Due to my weakness of grammar, I will think the grammatical mistakes which I was going to made for 2 to 3 seconds before my speech but finally I still made them. I am not meant to be impolite to them, but I am really unconfident to face them.

At the beginning of learning ENG 1F, I thought it is not too hard to learn as my expecting. I was able to understand every word my professor said, but only in class time. I still remember how impressive my first essay is. It was named as “two advertisements”. I have been misunderstood what the requirement of this assignment is. I only get a “D” grade for this assignment. After I received the comments of my professor, the professor copied a part of my essay and dealt it with every classmate as an example of weak paragraph. I was really disappointed and upset when I notice how worse I am. However, that is an extremely huge blow to me. Finally, my GPA of ENG 1F only is “C+”. I have tried to go to writing centre to improve my English. Furthermore, my standard of English still improves slightly even unchanged.

Prior to I was studying in United States, my parents and teachers always advice me to trying to communicate with Local American as much as possible. Nevertheless, I didn’t follow their advice because all of my friends are Chinese. The only chance to speak in English is to communicate with my roommate who comes from Japan. At a risk of sounding impolite, I think his pronunciation is worse than me. He only beat me on grammatical and vocabulary areas. I am really lack of the chance of speaking in English like other Chinese student do. In addition, I am not keen on with studying at all, not only in English and also other subjects, because I am lazy. Therefore, I have nothing to complain about, only myself.

Undoubtedly, there are no excuses to studying badly like me. In this semester, my standard of English still remains the same like last semester. The words I speak out are named as “Chinglish” in worldwide. I picked the ENG 2F up in this semester because it is still a compulsory course. In fact, I love this course very much. For me, this course makes feel I am not lonely because it is the only course I can study with Chinese or someone I know during these 9 months. ENG 2F is more tough than ENG 1F for sure. Nevertheless, I thought it is not that hard for me like last semester somehow. Anyway, I have reached a not bad achievement in the ENG 2F. At least, my grade is supposed to be “B-” which is better than my expectation.

To concluding, I have to say thank you to my professor Mr. Bai. She really helped me a lot. At the same time, I have to say sorry to her also, because I used to chatting with my classmates during her lecture. I hope my English is going to be expert in one day.