My Overall ENGL 150 Self-Evaluation

       I think my writing skills improved a lot after studied the writing class. Before took this class, I thought I could not complete such long essay. But after the teacher’s direction and read essays in the book, I knew how to choose my topic, how to expand my essay and how to organize my essay to make it more meaningful and logical. For instance, when we began to study the first chapter— Autobiographical, I was worried that what topic I should choose and how to write it. However, after read some essays in the book, I knew the logic and methods these authors used and I tried to imitate them and began to build my organization in my brain. I wrote a small story of my childhood as an essay in the book. And I told people what my childhood was and some of my personality. That is what teacher and book taught me— wrote what you wanted to show your readers.

       Writing the observation essay and concept essay are big challenges to me. When I prepared the observation essay, I had to plan my schedule which include chose topic, interviewed related people, prepared interview questions what you wanted to know, and arranged time with the people I wanted to interview. These works were all new to me so I felt stressed about this essay. But the first essay told me just fellow the teacher’s direction. So I did as teacher told us and completed works step by step. Though I did not get a high grade in the essay, but I did try a lot of new things and learn a lot. As for the concept essay, I wrote an anthropology essay which was similar with this essay. So I knew the process of such essay preparation. But what made me felt challenged was time. Writing academic essay requires a lot of materials which I had to take long time to find. But final was close, I really had no enough time to get so many materials. Thus, I tried to find a topic with which I was familiar. That would decrease the demand of materials. Then I searched materials on the internet and library and concentrated some useful articles for my essay. Finally, I completed my essay on time which advanced my confidence again.

The main things I learned in this class are the skills to develop essays and good attitudes when I faced difficulties. I will apply these skills to my finance articles, and I think these skills can help me write more high-quality articles. And I appreciate the attitude I learned in this class, which are careful, serious and clam. These attitudes will make me not feel loss when I face heavy works of my major.

I think I did not do my best in this class. Sometime I did not read all of the essays teacher required and did not analyze why the authors wrote like this. I think if I completed these, I would write better essay than before.

Reflecting on reflection essay

What I am most pleased with my essay is that I compared the habit differences between China and U.S. and reflected current society situation in China from these habits. I was inspired by the reflection readings— The “F Word”, which described some stories about author’s name. And the author reflected some challenges and entanglements that immigrants had to face in America by these stories. I got some inspirations from this essay and thought I could write my experience in America and compare it with my experience in China to show people the civilization gap between these two countries.  Thus, I opened my essay with a detail that Americans opened doors for me and leaded to other life habits in America and China. And I tried to show people the change that appeared in Chinese as what the author of The “F Word” wrote in the end—Americans began to learn new names.

Developing ideas about the way people are and the ways they interact by personal experience and observation is limited fairly. But, it is an effective genre to show what the society is and what people think. We are all members of the society and we all have our value to judge the society. There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people’s eyes. Though the data getting from researches and interviews is more fair and objective, but personal ideas can show the original thoughts of every person in the society. Adopting a conversational will be more vivid and attractive than a formal tone. I think both gender and ethnic group influenced the ideas I came up with for my essay. The differences that Chinese and American societies treat women made me feel loss when I experienced it. I think women should fight for their rights and Chinese people should improve ourselves in quality to avoiding being criticized by the world. I could always read reflective opinions and essays on the Internet. As previously I write, personal experience reflects personal value and these values are limited. When we read others’ reflective essays, it makes us know others’ opinions and realize our own weakness and remind us to change to be better.