Begin as A Beginner

Hi Visitors! I am Tianai Guo. I am from Shanghai and now study at the University of California, Irvine as a mathematics student. I am fond of science, music and cycling. I also love travelling and explore the colorful world with my own eyes.

Previous Writing Classes

I took two writing courses in my high school. One was for TOEFL writing. I would be given a controversial topic and write my own opinions with about 400 words in 30 minutes. The most pivotal thing I learned is to write in a clear paragraph structure, which was unvalued in my Chinese writing class. For the body part, I would present the topic sentence first and then explanations and examples. The other course prepared me for academic writing in college. I practiced to paraphrase, summarize and write long essays about a social issue. These essays were longer and more complex and needed more research than TOEFL essays. I knew most of the rules when paraphrasing, summarizing and making citations.

Self-Assessment

Honestly, I am not good at writing, though I want to improve my writing ability. Vocabulary and English expressions are what I am pursuing. I did not memorize a lot of vocabulary in high school since I thought it was a boring process and I was often blank on using the new ones. Besides, I have not read many English literature books. Therefore, I always worry about my expressions while writing.

A trouble I used to have was paraphrasing in high school. I was usually stuck in changing the words in the original paragraph. I thought many of them looked special and unique enough and could not be substituted. However, the samples always told me I was wrong. So, I revised my answers repeatedly and did more paraphrasing exercises. As the amount I went through accumulated, I found I could think of the words more rapidly. Finally, in the paraphrasing and summary test, I performed well and won a nice grade. Now I am confident with it.

Language and Grammar Diagnostic

When I looked at my score, I was a little surprised. I expected to have a higher score than 92. I figured out two of my four wrong questions were careless mistakes: I did not pay attention to “avoid” and “cannot”.

And then I learned the reasons of the other two. One was about citations. The fact, which can be accessed or verified by common people does not need a citation. Instead, the content from an editorial, an interview or a picture needs a credit whether being paraphrased or not.

The other was wrong because I did not see the grammar structure of the sentence “That scholars believe Ebrum may be Eber, the man from whom the Hebrews believed they were descended, is perhaps the most intriguing idea that has come from the discovery of this Bronze Age city.” The “that” at the beginning was not a determiner but a relative. It can be transformed to “Perhaps the most intriguing idea (that …) is that scholars believe ….”

Core Elements of Writing 39A

This course is reading, writing and due dates intensive. I should have been mentally prepared for it. It is not a p\np class, which means I have to do as well as I can rather than expecting an average result. Additionally, I will use a variety of media and platforms to complete the tasks, including a Zoom online meeting with Dr. Haas.

To train us to be a “better communicator”, this course will help us build good habits, reading and writing confidence, the skills to deliver information, the use of diverse media, etc. Apart from these, I will strengthen my understanding by reflections.

There is an easy to-do list to gain a B. Yet I should pay more efforts to reach an A: I must think more thoroughly and often. I should try to develop perplexity of my mind and project it to essays.

-Tianai