What is writing to me? By Lei Gao

Lei Gao
Prof. Leslie Bai
English 2F (Essay#4)
Apr 26, 2009

Writing Is a Life Style

Sometimes, writing is painful to me. I am an emotional person. I hate persuasive writing, but like emotional writing. For me, writing is a life style. This life style should be a way to make me keep progressive. However, we are facing stress from teachers as college students. For instance, we have to be limited by topics, when we are writing. We have to worry about the page numbers, which are required. Whatever we feel, the nature of writing is to express my attitudes towards some things, such as the world, human beings, and the understanding of myself. It is naturally creative, short and accurate, complicated but direct.

I believe everyone is an inherent poet. People are creative when people become emotional. Sometimes, when we feel sad or happy, we want to express ourselves to others. However, speaking is not a proper way to express some private points. Therefore, we chose to write some words through blog postings, or writing in internet spaces. All of those emotional words can perfectly express our thinking. I usually feel curious that how an inarticulate person can write such profound words and express such deep thinking by posting blogs. In order to know the reasons, I try to write some words on internet. I find that I become more creative when I write there. To search deeply, the reasons may be that there is no topic limiting in emotional writing. We can write whatever we want, even if we can post one word as an article. Generally, emotional writing is a life style, which includes liberty and freedom of expressing.

However, compared with emotional writing, our college writing is less creative but persuasive. We not only write to express ourselves, but also persuade others to trust us. It is different, and harder for a lot of reasons. For one reason, we are limited in a specific topic or a small statement. Maybe the topics are what we were never interested in. Secondly, we are lack of professional knowledge about it. Furthermore, we have no choice to copy or agree with others’ ideas. Emotionally, I do not like this kind of writing. However, it is significant to learn to write this kind of essays in college, such as research paper. That is because we can have progress if we continue writing professional essays. In this point of view, college writing is a life style of facing new challenges.

It is important to keep the words accurate when we are writing. Actually, I am not good at choosing proper words to write an essay. Sometimes, my ideas come up immediately when I am writing the outline. Also I can organize the ideas together quickly. However, while I am writing the draft, I feel it is hard to using words well to illustrate my ideas perfectly. In my view, there are many differences between English writing and Chinese writing. Based on the logic of Chinese writing, my English writing is sometimes hard to be understood by foreigners. For example, when I was writing the first essay in the English 2F class, I misunderstood the word “remember” with “memorize”. I thought the word “memorize” was the same meaning as “remember”. After professor’s explanations, I found that I still needed to learn more vocabulary to improve my accuracy of using words. It is like our life, which should be improved in details. Therefore, English writing is the life style, which emphasizes detailing.

I still remember that my previous teacher said to me “short is long when you are writing”. To express ideas simply is really important for writers. Basically, we feel complicated with our lives, so we have various emotions. Usually, I am eagerly going to express my various opinions in my essay, and use a lot of words or sentences to achieve it. Oppositely, the effects are not really good. For example, when I was writing the research paper, I really want to emphasize the government’s attitudes toward same sex marriage is shifting. Then I used a lot of words to explain, but actually it is not necessary. I only need to state my opinion, and then put the materials in to support it. Therefore, to state ideas shortly is really useful for audience to understand the essay.

In addition, writing should directly expressed writer’s statement. When we are doing Chinese writing, indirect expressing is sometimes better than direct expressing. We would try to make audience guess and then understand the real meaning. However, direct expressing is mostly better than indirect expressing in English writing. It is especially necessary to write research paper. That can make audience easily know what the main points are. Therefore, learning English writing is to pursue the American life style, which is direct and clear.

In conclusion, English writing helps me with integrating the American society. It also changes my life attitudes gradually. To evolve the writing skills is to make me keep forward in college studies, because writing is useful and important in each major. For instance, in future, I should read more books to learn more vocabularies, and correct more mistakes in my essays, in order to evolve my writing. I think writing has become one of the most important parts in my life.