Writing : a self-fulfillment ( Laura )

My love for writing

A library in my own house, this is what I had the chance to have. Having parents who enjoy reading, books were put down everywhere in my house : bedrooms, living rooms, entrance, and even kitchen were full of books of various gender. I am the youngest child of my family, and strangely enough, the fact to see my parents and brother reading a lot when I was little catched up my attention. At five years old, as most of the children, I did not know how to read yet. However, I was observing members of my family who were keeping these books in their hands for hours. How can they stand so many time in front of a book? Why do they seem so attracted? I really wanted to know what all these books were about. I was scared to never get to my answers… Consequently, I learnt how to read at the early age of 6 years old. I used to read different kind of books, including fiction and article for children. During my junior high school years, I began to read the so-called French literature. I did not like all of them, and personally, I think that a young child of 12 years old can not understand the all and deep meaning of it. However, I read one that really touched me, and this is how I became aware of the beauty of the writing process. The name of the book is “Les Mots” (words) from Jean-Paul Sartre, a famous French author of the twentieth century. In this book, he is explaining how each word evokes something to him. In a certain way, he deciphers the French language, taking account the meaning of the words as well as their spelling. Jean-Paul Sartre was an incredible writer and he was very specific in the choices of the words. In my opinion, this is what makes his books so famous. This is the author who makes me realize how gorgeous was the writing process. Thanks to the good choice of words, a book can make the reader escape from his own life, and he can feel every existing feeling of this world : happiness, excitement, sadness, nostalgic and so forth.

To my mind, the main purpose of writing is to share ideas and feelings. However, it does not mean that it is easy to do. In addition, sometimes you have to respond to specific criteria or format, which makes the writing more difficult. For this reason, the writing I like the most is Journal writing. We are free to write whatever we want with unspecific format and we have no rules to follow. We can let our mind write without being stopped by fences.

Unfortunately, this is not what we did the most in this class. However, the essays we had to write helped me a lot in different ways. Mainly, I learnt how to organize my thoughts and how to explain to my reader by which step I wanted to go through in order to get to my own conclusion. “English Composition” Class is important for every single student and even more for international students. I became aware that writing is definitely the key to improve English. This is such a difficult process for international students, but this is how we can cover every point of the English language, including syntax, vocabulary or grammar. Finally, the most difficult part for us when we have to write an essay is that we are always tempted to translate from our own language. Here is the mistake. Translating our thoughts from our own language to English will make the essay weak and clumsy. The difficulty is to think in English. It involves much more focus, but I am convinced that this is the way to improve my English in order to write and speak this language as if it were my native language.

 

No more unhappy Writing(Hugo)

I would like to talk about what I feel about writing in English. I really hate of writing English. Also Writing in English or even Korean has always been something I find to be disgusting to do. That’s why I just wanted hopefully English 2F class also finish soon. I received a terrible grade in English last semester so this really frustrated me. I came to the resolution that I needed to prepare better for my English classes in the future as I felt it was my entire fault for receiving a terrible grade. So I keep trying to improve my writing by constantly writing even though I hate it. In order to improve my writing skills I have always tried to ask my American friends proofread my writings. After I feel that I have gotten more confidence with my writing, I will continue to keep writing in order to progress with my English writing skills. And I am now getting enjoying writing at little by little. So I am used to starting from text message writing email and writing diary also in English. And I am really feeling this is so much pretty fun and I will keep doing. Lastly I would like to suggest to everyone who is especially international students to not be lazy when it comes to your writing stuffs. In the future and in the end I believe it will bring you sweet fruit for all your hard labor.

Writing…….
Writing was only for the Grade.
Writing was pain…..
Writing was disgusting…
Writing was fatal taste…
Writing was the object of one’s grudge.
But suddenly ………
Writing is come closer to me …
Writing holds my hand…
Writing encouraged me …
Writing is getting sweet…
Writing comes friendly…..
Writing is now my friend.
We will keep this friendship forever!!

Importance of Writing by Ramil Chabayev.

Importance of writing

As children grow up, they learn more and more things, discover something new for themselves. First, they learn how to walk, then they learn how to talk, and, finally, to read and to write. One of the most important part of our lives is the knowledge of writing. Writing affects us within our family, at school and especially at work.
Firstable, writing helps people express themselves. Writing can be a great tool to help you know more about the way you think, writing can solidify ideas and thoughts, and allow you to reflect on them better than if the ideas remained evolving in your head.
Writing is how much of the world communicates. If you don't write, you cut yourself off from a large community.
Writing is one of the ways that we translate our thoughts for other people. Some people are better at expressing themselves in writing than any other way, and you thus get a better translation when you read what they have to say rather than hearing them speak.
Writing assists you with other language tasks as well. Writing helps you learn how to form language, how to spell, how to put together a plot. You learn how to make a logical argument, or how to persuade, mainly through writing. Speaking can help you learn those things as well, but it is easier to self-examine and evaluate how to improve when you have something concrete in front of you, and can revise.
As for me, writing is a skill set that lets me convey my ideas in a way that lasts. Of course, a lot of students would argue about the importance of writing correctly, because usually friends do not care if e-mails or text messages are gramatically correct or have thesis statement.
Most of my friends probably don’t care about those things. They are willing to spend the time to figure out what I meant to say even if I wasn’t clear about it.
However, there are other situations like school or in the business world and other audiences like teachers and business professionals – for whom those things will matter. Those things will matter simply because paying attention to the details of good writing shows that you have the kind of discipline and professionalism that are prized in your career field.
You are only valuable to your employer to the extent that you can solve problems and produce results. All this work requires ability to think as hard as you can and often you will be asked to convey your ideas in writing. If those ideas don’t make sense, if they are not clearly presented, your bosses will move on. They don’t have the time to try to figure out what you meant to say, and they are unlikely to trust that you can produce the kind of results they want if your writing shows that you don’t pay attention to detail and don’t care about the quality of your work.
I think the importance of writing is obvious. It does affect a lot of parts of person's live and, in my opinion, the right thing to do is to be always grammatically correct, even when texting your friends or writing an informal e-mail.

Last Essay =)

Dila Yolga
Dr. Leslie Bai

Write for Future You


I never thought that my English was improving day by day, until; I start to study for my finals. I was studying for my PR class, and reading my notes from the beginning, to the end of the semester. When I read my notes I noticed my improvement and which was noteworthy. This was interesting to see my improvement even though I’ve never noticed my sentences structures, spelling and words that I use was looking so much better at the end of my notes. That automatically made me happy to see any improvement that I have been through but I know I still have a long way to go.
Because of my previous education that I got, I have never been good at formal writing. I never focused on writing in a proper way even in my own language that is weird because I know the rules in English but not in Turkish. Anyway, even though, I cannot write formal in Turkish, I love to write. One day, me and my friends were discussing about “What would you do if today would be your last day” and my answer was “I would write something to the people that I love” and this is how writing is valuable for me. I love expressing my feelings by writing generally to myself, I write future myself. I just read my writings when I forget what I wrote about, generally years later, but I would never read afterwards.
I like writing when I’m angry to someone, I write things that I’ve learned from life, I write random things, with out any reason. Even though I do not write often, I always write meaningful, funny, serious, sad, happy things to myself without any rules.
Writing is something that brings people back, something, makes time stops. Speaking can never be formal if people would not save it. People leave hard copies after their speeches for instance in Obama’s election speech, his speech was in newspapers and it saved for the future. In the history beginning of the civilization is starts with first writings, and paintings. We could have never figure out the future if there would be no writing materials in the world.
Writing is something that starts everything, and it might be the thing that would end everything. Sometimes, it hurts people and sometimes makes people so happy. It has been articles that influence people; I love writing because it is so influential, and effective. It remains forever, and it can never be change.
Anyways, even thought I like writing for myself, I do not like to write in a formal way, especially if I have to. One of the hardest things in wiring is when you have to write about something, that you do not like. Restrictions, sometimes we need restrictions but it should have limits. In English 2F class, there were right amount of restrictions, for instance, topic was “Love” and we have to choose something inside of the pool. It is always easier to write if you find a topic which you can connect yourself, and find examples about your life. That is why, our first and second essays were so much fun to write but I really struggled with research paper.
Writing is not one of the best, and successful skill that I have but it is always fun to write anything about my life. There are so many people, who do not like writing in any way but I am not one of them. It is o.k. to write for a person that I love, but it is hard to write someone that I do not know. I think sometimes writing is so much easier than speaking, that is why people always text someone on the phone instead of calling them. People who just start to date; they use internet communication or texting first instead of talking. So sometimes writing is an alternative and easier way of communication.
Overall, writing has many different options that you can use, it will remain forever, and when you write something it is generally so hard to change, like history you cannot change the history and you cannot change the things that have written before too. Writing can hurt someone really badly or it can make people so glad, because words are so powerful, and effective. Me, I like to write for myself and especially for future myself because, you can always come back to the feelings that you felt when you wrote those things. It is kind of time travelling, when you read the things that you wrote, it brings you back and help you to remember those days. So writing is necessary, and meaningful try to write something just for yourself and hide it somewhere that you can not find and someday, the day that you least expect to see that writing read that, than you will feel something that you would never felt.

Writing-the confidence booster (Aakash Mehta)
Before a month or so, I was working in my room at night. My cousin brother came in my room to invite me for the dinner. He saw me and asked me that what I was doing. I replied that I am writing a letter to my grandfather in India. He got very much surprised to hear that. In this modern world of technology and internet, I was writing a letter on a post card to my grandfather. However, it is never unusual for me. In my life, writing has a very important identity. It is a kind of activity that I never take as granted.
I enjoy all forms of writing very much and I prefer writing on top of reading and speaking. In my personal opinion, writing is a primary and the most important basis upon which I commute to the society. There are many people who take writing just as a study course that they can get good score or credits of. Many more take writing just as a temporary subject for the academic semester or year. However, in this competitive world I can never restrict my writing to the subject or to one academic semester or year. I use writing on daily basis in my life. Writing is an important tool for me that explain my messages and express my feelings among the world. It is the base upon which my knowledge is being judged in the society. It is very necessary in molding my academic career. Writing makes my thinking clearer and more visible. It helps me in understanding the statements, facts, opinions and inferences. Sometimes excess speaking and listening gets tiring for me. I often get confused in live speaking if I miss any part or any part I don’t understand. I can’t go back in such speaking. However, writing is pretty straight forward to me. I don’t get confused in it as I can always go back and look for the missed parts or can search the meanings for confused words and/or sentences.
Moreover, writing organizes my observations, thoughts and ideas that provide me a clear path of working which is lacking in confusion. It is ability by which I can explain complicated situations to my readers. Writing is always portable. In other words, it is always easy for me to carry books, magazines or articles with. The debate has been going on since many years about whether the books are better than movies or vice versa. I always prefer a book on movies as in my opinion writing is permanent. I can preserve my ideas and reflect upon them later any time. Moreover, I can preserve writing for as much time I want. On the other hand, the CDs or DVDs of movies get useless after certain period of time.
For international students writing is very much important. In my own opinion, any kind of essay writing, articles or research paper writing requires a lot of reading and knowledge of the related topics. Thus, writing appears to be a role model in the improvement of the knowledge. Furthermore, it also improves the speaking abilities. Other than these, it also helps to improve vocabulary, intellectual flexibility and maturity. These tools are very important in the practical world. As I think, writing is an essential job skill for the academic path.
I enjoy all kinds of writing. However, personally I prefer academic writing such as, journals, articles or research papers. Because in such forms of writings I need to work very hard and it is always glad for me to be judged and credited by the academic individuals. I never expect anything when I write. I write as a hobby and not to prove anything. However, I always learn something new when I write. I always improve my word bank and my knowledge gets better all the time I write. Due to these, I can talk about any topic among the society.
In my opinion, a hard work in the field of reading and knowledge can make me a good writer. However, I am not a writer. I write as I am fond of it. I can never take writing tiring. My writings strongly reflect my personality. For me, writing is a great confidence booster.

Xinbei Xie (4th essay)

From a hating-writing person to a “writer”
Writer is a person who can use his pen to write an article that is popular in public. A writer can use his talent and inspiration to write a very wonderful essay. Of course, in my topic, the “writer” is just a exaggerated expression.
To be honest, I don’t think I could become a writer forever. A famous English writer Douglas Adams said “ Writing is easy. You only need to stare at a piece of blank papar until a drop of blood form on your forehead.”(Wikipedia) While for me, writing is really difficult. However one factor is that I have to stare at a piece of blank paper when I begin on a new essay. I still remember when I was in high school, my teacher said I didn’t have any writing talent. At that time, the full composition score was sixty, but I could only get about 42, maybe sometimes I could 48. 48 was the highest score that I got in my high school. At that period, composition was the most vexatious thing for me. Eventhough in my college entrance examination, my composition score was not so satified.
After the college entrance examination, I came to the USA for my further study. As an interenational student, language become one of the difficult barriers. As a freshman, I have to take ENG1F and ENG2F courses. Both of these two courses are writing. At first, I was so afraid to write essays. When I wrote a essay, I always translated Chinese to English. The sentence was always in Chinese style.My grade was also not so good.
In this semester, I take the ENG2F. Actually, ENG2F’s assignments are really much more than ENG1F. When I heard I have to write ten pages research paper, I really want to drop this class. Finally, I decided to follow through. Professor gave us many references to read, and I had to post blog on class wiki. That pushed me to read all these references carefully, and posted some short passages on blog. Through these articles, my reading skill had a improvement and I preferred to read these articles gradually. Furthermore, checking the class wiki has become one of my habits in my daily life. As I wrote more essays, I found out I would not avoid writing. I also went to writing center. In writing center, I gained more skills about how to write an essay in English. I also acknowledged the difference between the Chinese and English in writing essay. The assistant gave me a lot of help with my essay. When I wrote the research paper, I found that it wasn’t so difficult I imagine. I checked many references and did some analysises. I learned how to write a research paper. I think it is a good begining for my professional paper in future. I feel very lucky that I didn’t drop this class in the beginning.
In this semester, my grade is much better than the last semester. I think my writing has a progress through this semester’s practice. I don’t avoid writing. I learn how to write a essay much more professional, and I will not translate Chinese into English.
Writing is a necessary part in our study. If we fear of writing, writing will only become more difficult. If we enjoy the process of writing, it will bring us many wonderful things.
Thanks for professor Bai’s teaching in this semester.




Work cited
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. 2, May, 2009. <>

Sehoon Kim

Last essay

Title: Why is writing important for everyone?

For people in the world, there are many things that are important to live. As soon as people are born into the world, as a social existence, they want to know everythings near them. For this reason, they have exprienced to read, see, listen to, and write something. I think writing is most important thing to be, compared to these things. Writing has some meanings. Let me talk about what writng is.

Firstly, writing helps people to understand how people live in the world. In general, writing is written word. It means that writing is something that has been written or printed. It is made by people recording. Even very long time ago, people did want to record something near them. They wrote books by using written word. These written words help people to understand how they lived and is living.

Secondly, writing is the activity of writing. It indicates the activity especially of writing books for money. This activicy is necessary for students. For example, most students have to write essays to enter in university. Parents help children to write something. At this time, the activity that students are doing and children doing makes them have good feelings.

The next is about way of writing. Also, writing is called the way that people write with a pen and pencil. Depending on period time, there have been some changing in writing. As the tool for writing is developing, writing is also developing. For example, in ancient time, people presented their feeling of desire, drawing something on the wall. Then, they wanted to represent their opinion more correctly. They finall made tool such as pen and pencil. Nowadays, while technology is developing, new tools appear, which is a computer. For this reason, people can approach somebody's writing more easily.

For these reasons, writing is very important for us to live in a society.

Last Essay (Donghyuk, Na)

Donghyuk Na
ENG 2F - 002
Prof. Leslie Bai
Apr. 29th, 2009

The ideas to improve writing skills

Most of the students including me have studied English for long time. Moreover, even at this moment, I study English. However, it is not easy to express myself in English and that fact hurts me a lot. From the beginning of my English learning, I have studied grammar, vocabulary and idioms with enthusiasm, but in Korea such practices are mainly scheduled for the entrance exam in college. Therefore, I think that I did not learn alive and active English. In spite of my lack of ability in writing, I want to learn here self-confidence that enables me to write even a single sentence.
Writing is important way to express my thinking and opinion. In my major field, which is business field, I need to write a lot of thing to do such as business plan, market analysis, etc. From this reason, writing skills are very important for me. Here are some ideas, based on my personal experience, how to improve my writing skills in English.

1. Spend at least one hour everyday listening to news or some other English programs. It's hard to understand what they are saying when you first begin to listen to them, but gradually you'll get used to the speed and tone. Then you can get a brief idea of what they are talking about, although you can't get the detail.
2. Spend more than one hour every day on reading English news or articles. Reading builds up your vocabulary, idioms, phrases, and the concepts of English structures. If you do enough reading, it will save you a lot of time since you will not need to spend more time on building your vocabulary or grammar. Also, read out loud when you do your reading so that you can improve your pronunciation at the same time.
3. Make friends with native-English speakers. This is the most difficult task because of the difference in culture, but you can't really master English unless you can communicate with a native English speaker fluently. You have to know enough things and have good listening skills if you want to have good conversations with an American. From the conversations, we can learn many English structure concepts.
4. Watch some English TV. TV is the best and most inexpensive teacher to learn real English. Not only you can learn formal English from news or debate TV programs.
5. Use an English-English dictionary and bring your dictionary wherever you go. If you find some words that you don't know, look them up in your dictionary immediately. There are some example sentences that can help your writing skills more effetely.
6. Use your newly-learned idioms or vocabulary. Once you use the words which you memorized, you will never forget them again

All these ideas are about the way of improving writing skills more successfully. These ideas also can be good way to increase speaking, reading, and other English skills.
Most students spend a lot of their time for learning English writing, but their achievements are different. Why is the difference? How much time you spend for learning English writing is not important. The answer is study habits.

Chongran Hao (Essay#4)

Chongran Hao

Professor Bai

English 2F (Essay 4)

Apr. 22nd, 2009

How to develop writing

As we know, writing is a part of communication skills. To my knowledge, writing is the best way to record everything in detail. But writing varies according to different levels, that's why we call it a "skill". It could be beautiful and attractive. This kind of writings make readers want to read, even sometimes the readers can not stop reading those fantastic articles; writings also could be mess and boring. I'm afraid the readers would feel sick at this kind of terrible writings. Obviously, writing is a really important component in our life which we have to develop seriously.

Writing is an interest. For students, writing seems like a burden, because writings always act missions in our schools. To be honest, those missions made me piss off, they really gave me hard times. I struggled an hour, a day then a few days, there was still nothing in my mind. Fortunately, I figured out the reason in the end. I put a label which is called "mission" in my mind from the beginning. In this way, I do not have any passion to create, because I paid much attention to how many words I 'd write and how can I get a best grade. Actually, writing is about what do we feel and what do we want to tell readers, if we consider writing as a mission, we will care too many components which are out of our minds, and it's hard to keep close to what we want to write. The first thing to develop writing is, we have to love writing.

Secondly, the desire is necessary. A strong desire can make us to write daily. And it's better to consider writing as a habit. The development of writing can not be completed in a short time. That requires us have to practice every day. Writing has many different forms, blog, journals, fictions, etc. We have to find some ways to spread the desire. If we do not have a strong desire, we will loss our patient for sure.

However, the develpment of writhing starts from the interest and desire.

Why I am Writing

GuangDi Zhu
Professor Bai
English 2 F
Essay #4 Informal Writing
26. Apr. 2009
Why I am writing?

I like writing, but maybe I am not interesting with the writing class. Sometimes we have to writing with out reason. I was really enjoyed in writing when I was in the middle school. i have to write a journal every week when I was in middle school. I want be a writer at that time. I remember I made a long story like book, it almost has forty thousand words and I made it in one week. The story’s name is “conjee(porridge) in a decisive battle”, it is funny story and I was proud of it. When I give the story to my teacher, she even didn’t read my story. The reason is the story is hand writing, and it is too long for a journal. My teacher also criticize me spend a lot of time on it, because I was writing in her class. I lost my courage at that time, and that why I’m not interesting with the writing class anymore.

I am not a good writer, even use my mother tongue. I have another hobby: I like manuscript, and I heat writing something by typed. I will make my essay’s outline by hand writing, I will made it like a picture. I put the topic in the middle of the paper than make it like a tree or a labyrinth. I can get a lot of idea when I write down on the paper, but when I typed on the computer I feel lost. Actually I feel a little right now.

I think writing a letter is a good way to communicate with others. It is the way for me to communicate with my father, because when I writing I can expression my thought clearly than talk. Also my father and I are very subjective. We will flite when we are talking. If we didn’t have a happy ending for our converse, I will give him a little, explain what am I really thinking about, and he will give me a reply. That is the way we how to untie our problem.

I like writing, because it is the way to think about myself. I will keep writing, may be I will actualize my dream someday in the future.

about writing (Chen Jin)

What is write? This is a interest question. Honestly I am not sure, and I think this is the hardest essay I have never write. It takes me almost 1 hour to start. When I begin it, I remember the first essay I wrote in English. This 1 page essay takes me 3 hours to finish it. During that time, I was really hate about writing, I though I will never write a essay more than 2 pages, and I was really shy to share my essay to someone else. Whereas, when I came to the university everything was begin to change. I start to wrote 4 pages, 6 pages, or 9 pages, I think writing is not hard for me anymore. Nowadays I can write a 5 pages proposal in 3 hours, and I am not shy to compare my essay to the American students anymore. I realize the reason I am writing now is to prepare for my future class, for example, I know how to write a research paper. I think writing is a tool to help me study.

Other reason for me to keep write is I find out that my English writing style is begin to change. When I saw the essay I wrote last year, there are a lot of grammar problem and unmeaningful sentences. Those problem makes my essay are difficult to read. Whereas I start to think my essay in the different way now. I am begin to think the thesis and details of my essay, and to think how to make my essay easier to understand.

I know I still have a lot of things to work on, my grammar is still poor , and I feel nothing to say in the essay often like this one, but at least I know what the problem is, when I write a English essay, I usually think Chinese too much, at the beginning I though that was not a big deal, but now I realize this is not good for my English writing. I think I will look carefully in the future, and to reread my essay after write, to make sure everything looks good. I will try to write an essay just like an American student. I want to think as an American, writing as an American, and talking as an American.

Those are my experience and feeling about writing. At the end of the essay I must say that I am really should thank for this course, some people say this course is useless, and waste time, but for me this course is very useful, some of my friends knows that how bad writer I use to be. I do not even know what writing is before I taking this course, When I was read perterit essay I still cannot believe that I can write a essay like that. In my next semester, I do not have any English class, but I will keep working on my writing skill, and I believe things I have learned in this course can help me a lot in the future.

learn from writing (Mengmeng Chen)

When I came to America and started my academic year in the university, I found writing become more and more difficult for me and it is full of challenge more than ever. I love writing especially when I was in the middle school. Unfortunately, I love writing but can only write a good essay with my own language. When I took the ENG1f course in my first semester, it seemed like I spent a lot of time on translating my own point of views or ideas into another language-English. At that time, because of the language problem, I think writing is no longer a freedom stage for me to express my ideas, experiences or thoughts, and sometimes it is even hard for me to describe my meaning accurately in my essays.

During the time of writing course, I had learnt a lot from writing essays and journals such as the structure, organization, the importance of the thesis statement and many new words. It is also a good chance to learn new information when we are doing research works for writing. I enjoy the moment when I finish an essay even though I know maybe I have to rewrite it. I know writing is an important part for students because it is required for many college courses, and also I may apply it for my future job. It needs a lot of time to practice in order to develop our writing skill.

Writing is sometimes hard and time-consuming, but sometimes it is easy and interesting. I love writing when it is not an assignment. Actually, I don’t like write in a formal way or limited by any format or topic. I think writing is to use words to record and express my ideas or thoughts freely. It is full of emotion and attracted people by its authenticity. That is why I prefer to read or write stories like personal experiences rather than academic articles.

Writing can establish relationship to make us understand each other better, and we can learn more knowledge through writing.

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.

in my process of writing (Satomi Minegishi)

Student: Satomi Minegishi
Professor: Leslie Bai
English 2F (Essay#4)
April/27/2009

Writing is defined as one of the communication tools, which informs people’s ideas and opinions. Also, the skills are thought of as a useful way for people to grow and make logical ideas. Without writing opportunities, people could not make other people know their ideas through logical process. This lack of skill causes problems because people cannot take contexts in correct way. That is why most high schools and universities have academic writing classes for their students. By making sure what students write, they can build up and brush up their writing abilities and can improve what they want to say. In this sense, people learn how to write papers and essays while they are students. But their writing purposes are different from each other; getting writing abilities, receiving high grades or passing their classes in school, preparing for their future before going to companies.
In my case, I usually attempt to write good essays and try to get high grades in academic writing classes. In the process of writing, I certainly know that I have a lack of logical thinking. Although I overcame some difficulties little by little in the department of writing, I still feel how poor my English skills are. At first, after coming to this university, Long Island University C.W.Post, and taking the English 1-F class, I could not express and explain what I wanted to say on my essays because of my lack of English abilities. Then, I spent so much time on that class. Even though I wrote a lot of essays when I was in a Japanese university, I could not write them smoothly in English. That is because I had no stock sentences in English as American people had. What I felt hard to express were my feelings in English due to my lack of experiences in this language. I cannot write essays fluently in English like I can in Japanese that is because English is not my first language and I am not familiar with English literature. It means I did not endeavor to study hard in this department. After figuring out this fact, I started to read English books and articles gradually. As a result, my writing skills are developing slowly but surely.
To be honest, I do not like to study hard, but my attitude for writing essays has changed recently. The change is when I try to overcome the difficulties, I find solutions, even though I need somebody’s help. These works take long time and use a lot of energy of mine. However, after finishing off paper work, I have a sense of achievement. The reason is because the writing skills are connected to my future plan, becoming a subtitle translator. The subtitle translating department is not well known by people. But the work is essential nowadays. People could choose subtitles such as English, Chinese or Japanese while watching a movie, if the story uses another language that they do not know. By reading those subtitles, people can be allowed to wallow in nostalgia and feel good moments from the story. I want to get this kind of job and give an opportunity to people to be impressed by the story. For getting the work, I need to improve my English abilities and to become a professional writer. That is the reason that I continue to write essays.
However, acquiring writing skills does not depend on people. Generally, people are needed to acquire writing skills by their society because these skills are essential for their lives. If a person wants to get a job in publishing company, the person has to study hard to be a good writer. It is obvious that people cannot escape paper work as a tool of communication.
In this sense, university students learn how to write academic writing as one of the requirements. That is because their society expects that people will be able to write essays through correct ways. Writing abilities promote people’s conversations and their work.

writing experiences by Amy Fu

My writing experiences
Writing is a way of expression. We could express our thoughts, ideas, feelings and emotions through writing. I would like to write down my feelings and emotions on my personal blog because it is a way of releasing my stress and recording my thoughts. I enjoy writing on my blog and diary because writing is a process of sharing and releasing for me at that time. However, the writing assignments in English class are suffering because most of topics are boring and meaningless to me. The other reason makes English writing suffering for me is that we should write it in English which is not my first language. I have to pay attention on my grammar, sentence organization, vocabulary and spelling while I am writing. I even could not find a word or vocabulary to express my idea correctly and accurately sometimes. Compared to writing in my fist language, the process of writing in English takes more time, attention and consideration. I always believe that I could write much better on some topics if I could write it in Chinese which is my first language. Because of paying lots of attentions on grammar, spelling and sentence structure, I always lost my ideas when I am writing in English.
Even though I don’t like writing assignments in English class, I tried my best on most of them. It is not only because of course requirements, but also I did improve a lot through writing class. Before I take English 1F and 2F courses, I always wrote the long and complicated sentences which most of them were hard to understand. I still remember my first grade in English 1F class was C. From professor’s comments, I realized that I had a lot of perspectives to be improved in my writing. After that, I went to writing center several times and asked writing assistant to help me on correcting my essays. After the first semester’s writing class, writing in English is not as hard as before. My grades were also an evidence of my improvements in English writing.
English 2F is totally different from the writing assignments in English1F because most of the topics are concentrating on certain issues which are more academic and formal. Honestly, I really don’t like the topic of discrimination because I am not interested in doing research on discrimination and writing about it. However, I learnt a lot from English 2F class which most of knowledge was not mentioned in English 1F class. The most important is how to write a research paper which is useful in our college study and career. I learnt how to distinguish the reliable information in our research paper and how to cite our quotations in our paper which are really helpful in my academic writing. Moreover, I became more effective and efficient on writing in English after two semesters English writing classes.
I am also taking another WAC class this semester which is my major class Federal Taxation Law. Actually, writing assignments in this class is much easier for me than English 2F because I am more interested in Taxation Law’s assignments and familiar with most of topics. So my average writing grade in this class is 9.8 out of 10 which proves that my writing is closely related with my preference. I think most of people have the same problem as me. Most of us could do much better at writing about topics that we are familiar and interested in. Contrast to writing about discrimination, I would rather to dealing with the tax problem and write an analysis or research paper on it.
However, basic research knowledge and writing skills I learnt were from the writing assignments that I wasn’t interested in. So I think it is important for us to try to do research and write about the things that we are not familiar with and not interest in because we could improve and learn more English writing skills through writing an unknown topic. In the rest of my college life and career, I think there are still a lot of writing assignments. Whatever I will write about, the writing skills that we learnt in English classes are the most basic and necessary. Moreover, I am trying to write my blog and diary in English because it is a great way for me to improve my English writing.

writing is like... Lucy Jiao

writing is like emotion, it is never limited by situation.
who cares about the real world? we express out our emotions regardless the situation. we have our own silent way of revolution. pen is the weapon and paper are the bullets. we criticze the ugly part of lives, we carol the little detail even it is as little as a ladybug in Spring.
we shout out, do not judge who we are by appearances, cuz you wont get to know us unless you see what we write.

writing is a decision, there is never a right or wrong.
i dont love him anymore, so i put it into writing; just in case i change my mind in the last minute. wring becomes a decision maker, or i call it decision nailer; it nails down my thoughts which is as improtant as money. see there is never a right or wrong when a guy write a love letter to a girl, or a boy, that can be the one mean to this boy.

writing has its own function, imagination never dies.
J.K. Rowling doesnt know Harry Potter would ever become a legendary hit in history. she did not write these series for any commercial purpose. she writes whatever pops from her mind. now, writing has provided a stage of imagination for the old and the young. i used to be a millionare in my stories, maybe i will in the future. i encourage myself to become a hard-worker in the story, and in real life, C'mon, you know me.

writing is like a fountain, you never know wht is coming out next.
do you know what im going to write. well, i dont know either. writing is having sex, if you dont like this sexual topic, change your channel in the next two secnds. back to the topic, wring is like having sex with a random guy, he might look handsome, but his sex could depress you; a normal looking guy might suprise you. lol... writing has been a pain in my life, but also gives me a blue sky holiday when my leaves are fallen.

My process of writing(Dmitry Ustyantsev)

Well, writing process was never a nice part of my academic life since I was at high school. Why? Because I don't have neither talent to write easily nor attitude for hard and annoying work. Annoying for me, I understand that it is very subjective point of view. I actually enjoy much more receiving audio and video information. I always try to find news sources that would tell me what is going on using video reports. A text given in addition to the report would not be that great. If I need to make a report or a presentation I rarely write some speech or plan and actually get annoyed if somebody making a presentation reads the text like a robot. That doesn't catch attention and certainly is harder to understand than a live, maybe scripted, speech. However, I like to read, especially well-written fiction. When a writer is talented enough you stop seeing the text but start seeing pictures of what is written about. 

Writing is an understandable necessity for my academic career because any student has to take a certain number of writing courses. Despite I don't enjoy writing at all, I understand the necessity of that because some degree of writing skills is valuable not only for academic but, very possible, for professional success on many fields. 

Writing courses are a great misery for international students. That is my opinion. The obstacle on their way to completed good essays are simple low level of foreign language skills. It doesn't mean that none of them speaks English but the lack of practice and mistakes in their writing or speaking style, very annoying for their reader or listener, are the main obstacles on their way to well-written work. However, they have to pass it if they want to learn to write better in English. Practice is the only way to improve your foreign language skills.

If I choose a type of writing I prefer I would choose the less formal types such as journals or blog postings because those are closer to natural speech. My hate of formal writing was mentioned above already.

Two things are required to be a good writer: talent and lots of hard work. Those two things multiply each other. You have less talent- you have to work more and put more effort. And otherwise.

The writing courses I've had taught me organization of my writing mainly and of course lots of minor mistakes were corrected in my essays that let me improve my English generally. 

They gave me some practice necessary for writing better works for other courses. However, I hope I will need less of those skills in my life. I would better hire an editor if I have to.

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.

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.

Have to do, then enjoy (Jianle Pan)

Jianle Pan
Eng-2F
Proffessor: Leslie Bai
21/Apr/09

Have to do, then enjoy
When my first time to write essay in Eng-1F course as three page paper, I feel unbelievable and confused. Before I came to America, I feel so hard to write ielts writing about 250 words. However, I have to write between 500 and 1000 words essay in Eng-1F.
Eng-1F has total four essays to write. Every time we got essay homework, I always took three or four days to write essay. First day, I just write title and thinking of this topic for long time and get result: tomorrow continue writing. Second day, I still spend a lot of time to thinking of topic and writing, but I just write few words and still have no idea. Third day, it’s the last day of deadline. I have no choice, but to finish. What made me feel so hard to write essay? Main factor is grammar, which are the most international students weak. Once my friend told me, even American housewife just know not very much words, she still can talk to everyone. That means even you don’t know many words, good grammar also can write a perfect article. Of course, vocabulary, organization, content also is very important.
I suffered from essay last semester, and really tired and confused about writing essay. Every time I think of I must take Eng-2F course, I feel so terrible and consider my life wouldn’t be better. I know I have to do.
Fortunately, our professor asked us to write outline first therefore I can write essay quickly. Since I have outline, my idea about topic is clearer than before, and also I can think deeply in this area. Therefore, words are not a problem. Now I can finish first draft in a one day even just one afternoon if I have a good outline. When I did my research paper, I always look for information online. Since I have outline, it is very clear to search information and write paper. I feel more confidence and more pleasure to write such a long paper (2000 words).
Writing essay is not seems too hard and too boring now. Outline makes everything simpler. If you write more detail outline, it is help you more easily to write essay. And also you cannot lose idea any more.
Gradually, I enjoyed writing essay instead of extreme hate. Thinks to my professor, I found how to write essays and how to organize article structure well. Structure is the first step of writing. I know that I still have big problem of grammar and vocabulary, at least, I like writing now so I believe I can improve writing by myself.

Last Essay; what is writing JunHyung Park

Writing Raise Me Up

JunHyung Park

Eng 2F

4th essay

When I first came to America, I had to take English 1F course. At that time, I spent many times writing five page essays, which was very annoying to me. However, this situation was not only for me, but also most international students thought like me. However, I could not avoid writing essays as long as I am a student. Therefore, if it is imperative to write essays, I will decide to enjoy writing essay rather than hate it. Even if my first grade did not fulfill my expectation, the low grade will provoke me slowly to do writing eagerly. When I read books, newspapers, and journals, sometimes if I find nice expressions in these reading materials, I underline, or keep memorizing expressions to use for my essay.
I have always been trying to do my best for my writing for a high grade. However, since I felt my writing skill improved little by little, I suddenly wanted to write to make me a good writer, not just to get only high score in my courses. Maybe I am avaricious to be a good writer like a famous American writer. Sometimes I cannot hold my tongue, when I am reading a book. If I find a beautiful composition, I usually say to myself, “how could he make this beautiful writing?” Even though my writing skill is not enough to touch someone to the heart, I believe that if I practice steadily, someday, my dream might come true.
I have seen most international students afraid of taking composition class. The reason is they have to write many pages to pass the writing class. However, for international students, they have big obstacles to overcome. For example, Korean and Japanese people are used to making sentences like ‘the subject + object + verb”, contrastingly, in America, people make sentences using ‘the subject + verb + object”, which is a totally different style to write in. That is, like this reason, many Asians think of how they will say, or write before they really say, or write. In my opinion, like the reason of the problems for international students, writing is more necessary to the internationals. It is obvious that the more the students are difficult to do something, the more the students need practice to be better in the area, which they feel is difficult.
We are almost done with English 2F class, and cannot wait for the end of the semester. I think back to the past days what I have learned, and how much my writing has improved in English 2F class. When I undertook to write a research paper, I actually had no idea how I write a research paper, and really obscured how I designed the outline, and even chose the topic of the research paper. However, like my professor said, I will have confidence to write after I finish the research paper. At first, even five page essays were really hard for me, but now, five pages writing became piece of cake. Writing is how much you are interested in, and how much time you spend writing. That is, writing is definitely improved as much as you do your best. Suddenly, I look back when I first came here. I was ESL student at that time. Most ESL students feel embarrassed to write 2 through 3 pages, and I also felt like them. However, now, I turned into a much better writer than before, and it is unbelievable. I am really curious about how much my writing skills will be improved after one year from now. I am still writing, and I will practice more to be a better writer from now.

Easter? Nothing for me. (Chongran Hao)

There is nothing to do these days. The life is like a glass of cold water. To be honest, I hate holiday sometimes. It makes me missing. As a foreigner in the U.S, I don't really have good feelings about festivals, because I don't understand what those festivals mean. Just like Easter, it gave me couple days off, for what? OK, hopefully I know, but I still don't think there is anything for fun in those festivals. Maybe that's why I'm called foreigner in this country. KK, I would like to be a foreigner in this way.

All right, maybe I'm a bored person, maybe those festival are really funny, but definitely nothing for me. I'm smoking around and "enjoying" the time with bullshit.

This semester is almost over. And it's a hard time to while away until I go back my country. kk, just keep *** around~lol

Vote (Pengcheng Gao)

I would like to vote "How can we respect each other?" which is the best article in my mind and it was posted by Satomi Minegishi.
Her article offers forceful and reasonable argument. Moverover, we are able to become aware of how hard she was working on her assignment. She really read "Choosing clothes, but Not Husband" very well.
Therefore, I vote for her, even though, I have been lated for a week....

"Choosing clothes,but not husbands" By Amy Fu

“Choosing clothes, but not husbands.”

After I read this essay, it reminds me think of Chinese old traditional marriage and society treat women at an unfair way while the arranged marriage still exists nowadays. In Chinese old traditional marriage, most of woman had no right to choose their husbands and the rest of their lives had to live with a man they even didn’t know. The most terrible is that they even can’t devoice with their husbands, or they will be named a bad reputation.

Fortunately, society’s evaluation on marriage is getting much better than before. We have freedom and right to choose the people to get married. Moreover, devoice is not so humilities as before. In my opinion, it means society is getting better on breaking the old traditional because everyone has equal rights to choose their husbands and wife, or even devoice with them that they don’t want to live with.

However, another problem is arisen at present, that is, the pressures from work and economy make people more difficulty to build up a marriage. some of people choose the arranged marriage by their parents or marriage agent. In one word, as society and cultures’ developed, everyone has different opinions and decisions on marriage.

Choosing Clothes, but not husbands by alex

after red this assay then i couldn't believe it is still happening because nawadays man and woman are more educated and they are working together some jobs want to hare only woman because they are more careful and hard workers. also some woman are working for governments in United state of america and some other countires. some woman said they want to work more and married later. many married woman is woking now they are no longer just stay at home and do house work.

Religion and equality as something individual by Ramil

When I finished reading the "Choosing clothes, but not husbands" article I wasn't shocked or disappointed. Yes, all religions are different in a lot of ways: Traditions, believes, etc. Some of them we may consider crazy or inequal, but that is just an oppinion. Even if a person of particular religion has some certain believes, it doesn't mean that all the other people of the same religion as him follow these rules and traditions. For example, I am muslim but I will never make my wife cover her body or hair! Of course, I follow a lot of muslim traditions, but only the ones that I consider normal for modern world. It all depends on a person and his parents!

Some people argue that women and men are still not equal. However, as the time goes by, more women are offered good jobs that even men can't do! I agree with some blog posts that I read here that people talk about inequality only when they think they have a problem.

I would suggest you guys here to treat every person as an individuality, but not as a part of some religious group.

what do you see as a source of happiness? by Miyako Okuda

This article "Choosing clothes, but not husbands" gives us difficult issue. Because I think protecting own culture is important but I cannot really agree with this manner even if it's their culture. The custom lacks respect to female. I've red one article and I got shocked. That was about a 16 years old girl who was raped by 51 years old man and she was subject to capital punishment. Because there are three kinds of capital crimes under Islamic law, based on Sharia code; murder, drug smuggle, extramarital sex. she would be guilty if could not prove that the men raped her. But it is very hard to prove to be raped in Iranian court and men's testimony is taken much more seriously then women's so her situation was hopeless. The court didn't tell her family about this capital punishment. Her age was witten down in document of court was 22. Because the cases under 18 don't come under regulation by Sharia law but they altered her age to punish by the law. Her family even could not say good-bye to her. This is so sad. I understand a lot of culture exist in the world and those have different beliefs or values or whatever, but that is just so sad. I believe that all people should have equal opportunity and rights. However no one should judge other culture by one's standard and what you see as a source of happiness is depends on the person.

Changing clothes but not husband ( Laura)

The custom of early marriage and arranged marriage explained in this article moved me a lot because a part of my Family is concerned. In fact, I have a part of my family living in East France who are Jewish and very religious. I had no contact with them during a long time and I recently re keep in touch with them, being aware that I have some of my cousins I do not even know.
I was surprise to see some of my cousins married at the earl age of 18 years old and already pregnant. In my opinion, these kinds of customs can not match with the world where we live nowadays. I did not really understood why theu choose this sort of life so I began serious conversation with them.
Of course, being married at such an early age is difficult and I do not even imagine to have a life like that because I think each period of time has priorities. For the moment, mine are my studies, and Iwant take care of myself and my future, before thinking to have children. But in fact, I realized talking to my cousin that it was not her choice. Dhe did not even think about that. These are customs, values, that are recognized as the best way to live their life, and they are used to see that around them. They mightbe aware of the drawbeck of thoses values, but following their religion, they will tr to take the little advantage of the life they choose.
She told me that she understand eprfectly my opnion about arranged marriage, but she also explains me that with time, she found it convenient and that she is perfectly happy with her hsband;
To conclude, I would say that everyone has the freedom to choose the way to live their life. One prefers to take as priorities their customs coming from religion. Others prefer to compromise religion and social life. But etiher way, this is everyone's choice. If one is not happy with it, he can only be angry against him.
I am a traditionalist jewish eprson and there are lots of special days I decided not to do. I know what are the consequences of it, but I assume and this is my opinion;
Customs and values shapes a lot the personnality, however, it is very important to be in agreement with his mind and not do it by force. After that, whatever is your religion, custom, values, you can be happy, if this is your choice.

Lucy Jiao-what domaniates the guys' mind?

chosing clothes, but not husbands is talking about that Afghan women basically have zero rights, and those women who are obligated under their religious control have to do whatever they are told.
compare to the acient China, those Afghan are still suffering under their religion, or we can say, they still follow their rules. In China, ladies used to tie their feet into 3-inch long, in order not to going out; and acient Chinese women were mostly engaged before they were married.
in France, same thing happened. females were not allowed hanging out without their parents permission, and they had to wear dress everywhere they went.
it was not until Coco Chanel porpulized the pants to women's revolutionary world, women did not only changed their way of looks, but also their minds. a rebel of women equal rights spread out to the whole world started from Australia.

Man- cry in your heart, smile to your family(Andy Su)

As a man, we have a lot of basic rules, too.
When I was a child, my elders always told me man does not easily tear. As a man, blood may flow, but we do not easily tear.
As a man, we have the responsibility to bring happiness to the people who care about me and the people who I am cared about.
As a man, we have been told that owe must reported. In the right or wrong question we can not lost ourself.
God is fair to each person, even man and woman. It is precisely because we have different sex, so we also have different rules. No one can say which rules are more difficult, because rules can not be compared.

We are not totally equal NOW(Jiran Qiu)

From the article i knew people were unequal because of gender in some countries. I saw a lot of movies about family life reflected the relationship between men and women is unequal. The men made money for families and the women stayed home, do some houseword and had much lower social status than men. And, men had right to choose their wives but women can't decide who to marry. But now the situation gets much better. Women can work as well as men and have good social identities even better then men. However, in China, a fraction of people are more willing to have a son. Their ideas are probably staying 25 years ago. They see sons as the best present given by god and feel ashamed when having daughter. I have to say that a kind of ugly social phenomenon nowadays.

i vote "How can we judge whether it is gender discrimination??? (By Lei Gao)" (Jiran Qiu)

I vote this not just because this is the longest one, it also focuses on a specific point: men and women are created equally. The sentenses are also easy to understand that make me interested in it.

something about gender (Xu Yuan)

After reading "choose clothes, not husbands", I get some ideas about gendar. In accient time, women can not go to work outside of family. All they have to do is doing house work. They have to take care of babies, clean the house, cook for family, weave clothing and so on. Thier husbands do some heavy works. They should do farming or earn money outside.
There are some reasons for differences between women and men's works. Firstly, men are better for some works because they are stronger. Secondly, woman are not allowed to work outside for customs. Also, house works are really heaviy at that time, women can not find enough time to work outside.
Nowadys, more and more women find jobs in the society. It is a tendency with the devolopment in the society. Modern technology provides people more free time to do what they like to do. Women get equal rights as men. They are more independent than ever. In the past, they belong to thier husbands. Today, they are individuals.

Gender discrimination by Mengmeng Chen

Gender discrimination is a sensitive issue and it does exist in every area especially the work place. I think there is no point to talk about those questions like who has higher social status, male or female? Why do we have to distinguish it so clear?
First of all, I think female and male is supposed to be absolutely equal. In many cases, this should be a kind of balance in this world. People could not be stopped chasing their dreams because of this gender problem. Everyone has his/her own choice and right even though it is really hard to have a real equality in this world. If right is an unavoidable issue, i think the foremost right that we don't have is to comment other's capability and judge others. Female and male can learn different things from each other and i think most of them are going to be an optimistic and positive way. Therefore, I hope there could be a real sexual equality one day, and i mean hope.

we are the one by chen jin

After I writing this essay, I think love is the thing that I must choose by myself, sometimes even our parents cannot choose for us. We cannot choose our parents, we cannot choose our color, but I think we can choose our love and fight for it. This is unfair that some of the people only can choose who they parents love to.
Other idea is why only girl cannot choose who they want to be with. I think we are equal, no matter who we are. If girls cannot why would we can, all the life begin from the mother, girl is great. We are all part of the society, I didn’t see any different between me and girls. I think only difference is we have different opinion when we face the life.

We are not equal because of genders(Chongran Hao)

We are not equal because of genders. That's what I know when I read "Choosing clothes but not genders". That's a really interesting title. In writer's opinion, women cannot choose husbands in her country. That's sex discrimination.

In old ancientry of China, the women could not choose husband as well. And the state of women was really low in the history of China. That's why I chose this topic in essay#2. I think the genders really make us different and not equal.

We Can Change (Shuhua Lu)

we can change

After reading two articles, I thought about many things.

In last week’s blogpost, I talked about the gender equality, which should be this week’s topic. I criticize that” it is absolutely a stupid, bossy and arbitrary opinion, which should not exist in modern society.” Also, I believe that Individuals are born equal and everyone’s natural rights such as, receiving education and pursuing love, will not change because of nationality, race or gender.

Dila comments” this is the way they learn, their father did same things to his mother and he learned like that… So everything is not easy to change or judge” I agree with a part of them. Children will copy their parents’ action and think about the things like their parents because of closeness in both physical and emotional. It is natural and genetics. However, I can hardly accede to the opinion that everything is not easy change or judge. I think that people always do the thing which they think is right because of different education and culture background. I am not judge the people who is under that kind of constitution, but I make comments to this kind of constitution, which I barely agree.

I believe that everything can be changed, especially the wrong things. For example, after the War of Independence, the slavery is legal in south of America. The majority of people supported that because it could give them a lot of cheap labor forces, which eventually led to the high profit. That is wrong and hard to change. Nevertheless, the slavery was abolished through the Civil War. The war cost enormous but the benefit is liberty. That’s worth.

Therefore, I think that everything can be changed even though it cost a lot. We have to change it if we think it should.

Hard Choice and Easy Choice (GuangDi Zhu)

When I read "Choosing Clothes, but not Husbands" I think it is too stronger. First we can choose our clothes and our lover, but there different kind of choosing. We can choose clothes again and again, and we can throw away the clothes which were choosing by our self. We just have only once to choose our lover.

The problem which the article was discussed about, I think it was not just happened on the female, it also happened on man. Parents also help their son to choose his wife in China. The pivot of this problem is we can have a choice for everything, if someone wants to stop you that mean it is just a hard choice.

Against the Racial discrimination (Jianle Pan)

This apple seems people's heart, however nails stand for racial discrimination. Don't treat people like that or people's heart and characters will be sharp just like that. We don't allow racial discrimination happen in our world.

I see this picture online and read the paragraphy.

"Racial discrimination is against the law. It is a criminal offence to discriminate against people because of their race, colour or ethnic nationality. It is also illegal to incite racial hatred. This includes the publication and distribution of written or visual material."

I think most people agree with this. You see, white and black hand together looks so nice and harmonious. As this girl showed:We are love each other but does not discriminate.

Vote ( Jianle Pan )

I vote “The archivement of desire” by Satomi Minegishi is the best article in the blog.
Because she not only written her feelings about family education, and also written her own experiences on family education. It seems more real feelings from her that convince reader her opinion were true.

How can we judge whether it is gender discrimination??? (By Lei Gao)

Male and Female are created equally. With the world's developing, nowadays the world is equal for both men and women. Maybe some one disagree with me and say there are still gender discriminations in some regions or countries in the world. However, have you considered the true ideas in people's hearts? In my opinion, the world now is mostly equal for women and men.

Firstly, i want to ask a question that how do you judge that women were discriminated in mideast countries. For me, i was influenced by some photos, texts, movies. Those things are personal ideas created by parts of people. Through these, we may be tricked, and then awfully believe that mideastern women dressing hijab are anguished. Absolutely, in summer the hijab dressing is not comfortable for every one. However, they respect their beliefs and religions through this way. This may be a kind of satisfactions for them. In another point of view, maybe they can win respectation from others. Therefore, under a specific cultural background, some deviant customs of males or females cannot be related to gender discrimination.

Considering the different distributions of males and females, some one may judge that the world is not equal for women to look for a suitable job. However, some investigations have proved that women are really important and have entered the mainstream nowadays. For instance, in American government, the speaker of House of Representatives is female. The value of this position is considered important as the President's. More than this, many women have succeed in Business.

Absolutely, gender discrimination also exists in the world, but opposed to the major tendency of the world. By reading the article "Chossing clothes, but not husbands", i feel pity that some women may not have choices to choose husbands, or should be responsible for family honor. However, maybe that is just a life style.

How can i judge whther it is gender discrimination? That is not important. People are too sensitive toward this issue.

how can we respect each other?(Satomi Minegishi)

After reading this article-“Choosing Clothes, but Not Husband,” I was surprised how ridiculous these ideas are. This article shows the audience the discrimination of culture and gender. This male chauvinism in this essay gives me uncomfortable feelings. Half of Afghanistan women cannot go to high schools and acquire same education as men can. The reason is because women are thought to be second to men in the society. I wonder why women are not treated fairly and why women suffer from others because of their gender. As the audience can see, there is a saying of gender discrimination -“The food your husband feeds you does not come for free.” Oh, such a ridiculous idea.
On February 13, I read an article in New York Times, “Starting at Home, Iran’s Women Fight for Right.” It picked up an example of male chauvinism in the world. According to this article, Razieh Qassemi, a victim of gender discrimination, was beaten repeatedly by her husband and his father for divorce in hope. Her husband is addicted to methamphetamine and has threatened to marry another woman to “torture” her. This case is not uncommon in Iran. However, rather than endure the abuse, Ms. Qassemi took a step that might never have occurred to an earlier generation of Iranian women: she filed for divorce. (“Starting at Home, Iran’s Women Fight for Right”, New York Times February 13)
I was impressed with the news, even though women from lower classes and religious are among those moving up and down the stairs to fight for divorces and custody of their children. Recently Iran’s women determine to gain more control over their lives with increasing educational levels and the information revolution. Although, I am not fanatical about feminism or gender discrimination, I strongly believe that men and women must be treated fairly. In other words, people have to respect each other regardless their genders all over the world.

Gender discrimination problem in korea (Donghyuk Na)

I think that Korea has many problems due to its speed development during short time, but the worst social problem in Korea is gender discrimination.

When I was in Korea during a last summer vacation, I saw a middle aged man and a woman with her daughter were arguing. Though just simple arguing, the old man keep using the word "woman" during his speaking. For example, “Does any woman mean to defy man?? If woman is bad-tempered, she gives birth to a daughter. That was a right saying." and so on.
Although the woman’s giving birth to a daughter has nothing to do with the reason to their argument, he was making her angry by saying so.

Besides, there are so many similar examples. When female driver goes slowly, or makes accident, usually man is speaking like this way, “You should cook in your home, instead of driving a car in the road." This situation has been seen easily in Korea. Furthermore, in Korea, there is a word such as "Women’s high school", but no word like "Men’s High school".
Most Korean people usually speak the word "man" prior to the word "woman". This is a sharp contrast the western rhetoric such as "Ladies, Gentleman"

The most basic solution is that people change their mind.
Of course, it is very difficult. Therefore, to accomplish it, it should be done in step-by-step manner.
First, in individual base, "Men shouldn't ignore women, and women shouldn’t depend on Men. Second, companies should throw away such a stereotypic mind that men is superior to women, giving equal opportunity to any gender. Third, Government should provide the same education regardless of gender. If these solutions are carried out very well, I'm sure that Korea will be the most gender-equality country.