Jiran Qiu

Jiran Qiu
Eng-2F
Professor Bai
Apr 25th 2009

It is enjoyable

It is the last essay in English 2f and this essay is required to be kind of informal. It is much easier for me, I believe, to tell what I exactly learned from this course.

At first, when I came to United States, I chose English 1f for improving my English. When wrote those essays, I felt they were too hard for me because I did them as finishing jobs. Even, for more words in the essays, I often added a lot of useless words. So my essays at that time were very boring and uninteresting. I only got a C+ in that course so I felt very unconfident on writing. And, I knew I had to take English 2f, I could not imagine that. English 1f is so hard for me; English 2f would be much harder than 1f. I did not know what to do.

But, in English 2f, I found my confidence back and even felt writing is exactly interesting.

I still remember my first essay which was named “Why does he always say those to me”. The essay talks about the relationship between me and my father and also expresses the change of my thought. I tried to write that essay with my true emotion and real feeling. When I was writing the essay I recalled a lot of things happened before and felt very comfortable to tell those stories by my writing. When I finished it, I read it then even was moved by it which was written by myself. That was my first time to feel that to write is enjoyable. I realized that, if I want to cause others to think my essay is good, first I have to cause myself to think it is really good. Then, finally, I got my first A in writing. It was the second essay. That was about my personal experience and I told a nearly crazy story in my paper. But it is true anyway. I told the story about my tattoos. For me, that is a successful essay because I believe the reader will be moved.

I wrote the research paper several days ago. When I saw there is such a huge paper I have to write on class syllabus, I even did not know how to start it. Eight to ten pages, I had not even write any papers with so many words in Chinese. I was very, very confused about it that felt I was not good at writing. But the things go better than I thought. Professor Bai told us some ways to do the research and when I started to write, I read a lot of material on textbook then I felt much more confident. I believed that it was not that hard and I could do it. I also did an interesting interview that was to ask several people about their thoughts on homosexual for the research paper. I asked three people in Kings Hall and wrote everything they told down. Then I listed them as a form, and quoted them in my paper. It was not that boring, I thought. From that interview, I got a lot of interesting information. When I asked a person about homosexual, she described it with a word that is “disgusting”. I could not believe it because before it I thought that it is quite normal in America. In my opinion Americans treat the homosexual as a very ordinary thing. Then I realized “not all Americans can accept homosexual”. That was really interesting that it not only was a way to practice to communicate with others but also told me something I did not knew at that time.

I am really very lucky to choose this class because my writing improved a lot and I also became interested in it. And, the most important thing I learned is, if I want to write a good essay, I have to write it not only with hands, but also my heart, and real emotions.