201003568 - Wonchull Choi - p.24,25

1. What are your strengths as a writer: for example, creativity, ability to organize ideas, ability to express ideas clearly? List three of your strengths below, starting with the most important one. Explain these strengths by giving examples, if possible.

 

The three major strengths as a writer would be possession of many experiences related to the respective themes, the degree of interests about the themes and enough counsels given by surroundings.

As I had to submit a lengthy travel journal for the class I took during the last semester, I, first, decided to make a free-writing travel journal about a city of Germany called Duesseldorf, where I went to Middle and High School back then. Because I once had lived there and thereby had been knowing lots of features about the city, even so that I could call this city as an another hometown of mine, it came to me not that much difficult to write it as I made an assumption about it to be. All I needed to do was scraping all of my creativity up and therefrom replenishing the details (e.g. my own feelings about every single thing of the city or a plain description of a scene) to the features that I listed in journal.

Also, speaking about interests, all the contents including the topic of the finished draft of my travel journal indicated quite well how interested I indeed have been in Germany and all the features related to the country in general and thereby why I have been majoring in German Translation and Interpretation in this barren job-hunting world. (This is an absolutely subjective opinion of mine.) Without this kind of strength, all the minute written words couldn't have been formed. I'm a devout believer about existence of difference between those words made by fully interests and without any interests or curiosities.

Meanwhile a lot of my surroundings helped me by giving lots of advices, since many of them had also already been to Germany and known the country quite well like the general atmosphere etc... And there indeed were some of them who'd never been there, still they were really adjuvant like by tipping on as how this kind of scene should be interpreted and that. I got fully appreciated that diversities in thoughts predominantly improve the writing.

 

2. What do you find most difficult about writing: for example, getting ideas, organizing ideas, not knowing enough about the topic? List three problems you face in your writing, starting with the most serious. Explain these problems by giving examples, if possible.

 

To set limits to the cases in that I had to do writing in foreign languages like English or German, above all, the process of writing in languages that I haven't been using in my current everyday life isn't that simple as it might seem to be. My concerns, that I might make grammatical errors and so those kind of things might affect the quality of my writing or that I almost always get faced to the situation that there is a tremendous shortage of knowledge in words (literally, foreign words) and so I can't write anything without the aid of dictionary, make me kind of exhausted even before starting anything sometimes and so they might affect indirectly to results. This, therefore, always needs a certain amount of time for me to do writing and sometimes bothers me quite a lot.

Other two problems are pretty related to those aforementioned ones to the question 1.

I do get faced to huge problems when I myself am not familiar with the topics, especially ones that I'm not interested in and so have never thought about. I get bewildered and don't know where to start from or how to move into next steps. Also, if there aren't many people whom I could ask for advices to, writing (doesn't matter, in any languages) gets very difficult. In that situation, because there is only one, the professor who gave this kind of assignment, for advices, it is true that he or she probably would be enormously helpful, but there should be no diversities in thoughts which are counted by me for much.

 

3. Describe your writing process by answering the following questions:

 

How do you usually approach out-of-class writing assignment?

I mostly and basically go through Internet or go find books related topics, if needed. All kind of information that I need is right there and I try to stay close to the written information, pretty almost everytime if I have to write something about that I'm not familiar with.

 

Do you start early or put it off until the last minute?

I have been tending to put it off until late to the utmost. Now by answering these questions, I assume that all the reason for it was because all the topics of my past writings weren't that interesting or absorbing and so this kind of point is quite related to the degree of interests.

 

Do you write only one draft or revise your essay one or more times?

I usually do every writing based on free-writing kind and so make one draft. And then I modify the written words after or by reading it over and over or showing it to surroundings and ask for advices. This is always needed and doesn't have to do with in what languages I write.

 

 

 

 

Where do you go for help if you find a writing assignment difficult?

Mostly to surroundings or the professor, like mentioned. I count it for very much, whether a writing gets thoughts and opinions as much as possible, because as far as I can see it's directly related to the quality of written words.

 

4. In what ways do you hope your writing will improve by the end of this course: for example, more confidence in writing, more ideas for writing, better organization, ability to write more quickly? List three ways in which you hope your writing will improve, and explain why these things are important to you as a writer.

 

Most of all, I think this course will help me get out of those worries that I always have had in every English writings. I didn't get to the chances to learn exactly how to write like, step by step and also to the experiences to be wised fully enough by any professional experts after writing something. This process would include of course the better organization, ability to write more quickly - the general way how to get to write. Because of these kinds of points I get more afraid everytime I get to write and above all these affect to my grades quite a lot, too! I'm really looking forward that I in some points get better by this course.

 

5. What do you think will help you most to improve as a writer: for example, freewriting, getting feedback and advice from other students, revising your essays, conferences with your teacher? List three things that you think will help you to improve, and explain why you think these things will be helpful.

 

I think all those points written are based on the freewriting and means that all those process will be done and started from freewriting, so definitely and basically will those kinds of practices in freewriting improve my writing skills. Also about diversities in thoughts and opinions, doing well on college papers skill will be helpful in a lot of fields and very subjective for myself, writing in foreign languages without a dictionary should also improve especially my describing ability, since I think it is very important for a writer to be capable of making any scenes into a lot of different words and expressions as many as possible - this kind of skill is one of most valuable own assets of a writer.