Dear readers:
Welcome to my blog!
I am Richard, a student of Fudan University in China. This is my first blog in 20six.co.uk. You will see my writing portfolio here, which includes a series of works that contains my endeavor and accomplishment in the Academic Writing Course I took this semester.
The reason why I choose this course is a bit extraordinary. As my major is mathematics, a discipline alien to literate arts, Academic Writing is really a challenging course for me. Furthermore, when I first knew about this course in elective system, it was named Advanced English Writing, which sounded more forbidding. (I have never taken Intermediate English Writing) However, I like self-challenging and have a spirit of emulation by nature. With a sudden impulse that I could dabble in linguistics and succeed, I chose this course.
The portfolio includes one reading log, two draft essays and one final essay. In the first five week, I was scheduled to finish one reading log each week, then draft, amend and finalize my essay in the remaining semester. Although the process sounds simple, it yet involved twists and turns throughout the semester.
At the beginning, believing that reading log was simple for me for I could write whatever I thought of the story, I put more emphasis on using more accurate and flowery words and phrases. But it had bogged me down in a mass of details. I cannot write fluently because I would stop and think whenever I was unsatisfied with a certain word in my work. Furthermore, I often found my contention departed and forgot that the reading log should be composed by my own thought.
The condition changed at the third week, when my instructor Ron sent me email that my work should center on my own feeling because he cannot find one first person singular pronoun such as “I” or “me” in my work. Since then, I paid much heed to my self-expression by associating my work with a virtual conversation with my readers when I was writing.
In this way, I amended the first two reading logs I had finished. One named “Fate, not Fault” for the story “Necklace” was the only reading log chosen into my portfolio. “Necklace” is my favorite story and Mathilde, the heroine, is the most emotional character I have read. In brief, this reading log is centered on my admiration on her bravery, honest and hardworking rather than her any possible defects.
Besides, another reading log “A long-awaited but lethal ecstasy” for the story “The Story of an Hour” is my recommendation to you. This story is not among the appointed ones my instructor has ordered so I cannot select it into my portfolio. But it does give so much resonance to me when I first read it that I cannot help writing one reading log for it. Frankly speaking, it’s the easily and most spontaneous work I have done in this course. Anyone who is interested in it can leave message on my blog on 20six.cn.uk.
The experience of writing reading logs has rendered me much help to the sequent essay. Since then, I’ve realized that it’s much easier to write about something that can stir my emotion at heart. So I’m highly prudent to fix the topic of my essay. A basic request is that the topic should not be “too obvious” while there are still enough evidences in the story to support it. However, I attach more importance to finding one that can strike a chord with me. Thus, my essay can reflect my sincerity in full.
Finally, my topic is settled as “Ajit Babu’s optimism can never shake off his poverty” while the relative story is “The Grass-Eaters”. The general reason is that I find the characters in other three stories have all experience some heartbroken adversities. Mathilde spent ten years paying back her “accidental” debt. Shadrach Cohen went to great lengths to fight back the erosion of Americanization, while Micheal Obi affronted the taboo of local villagers and demolished his own achievement at one fell swoop. But from the whole account of Ajit Babu, I cannot find any grave setback but only simple optimism through his life. Thus I wanted to probe into his unchanging destitution.
It was not difficult for me to finish draft1. But the amendment racked my brain since I found my topic not prominent in my draft. Therefore I rewrote the beginning and ending of almost every paragraph to enhance its link to the major idea of the essay. In addition, I consulted several books with reference to the bygone Indian society---the background of the story--- so as to make my essay more persuasive.
During the amendment of draft2, I went to great lengths to improve the logic of the essay. Some paragraphs were rearranged and several conjunctions added. In this way, every reader could clearly discern the skeleton of my essay: from individual to society, then to the relation between them. Besides, the general content of each paragraph was clearer after recapitulative sentence was rewritten more strikingly.
In draft3, the final draft, I paid more attention on details, such as the removal the contractions and the avoidance of using first pronoun. One trying business was to avoid frequent long quotations from the story. Instead, I should extract a segment of quotation and embed it into my own interpretation. Sometimes it was not until my tenth amendment of a single quotation that it finally satisfied me.
In the end, I want to show my sincere gratitude to whoever has helped me in this semester, including my instructor Ron, who has enlightened me when I met the crossroad halfway, two classmates Carol and Purple, who shared me their techniques to quote cogent arguments properly, and my dear friend Athena, who has sent her elaborate manuscript essay remark and suggestion to me by letter. There is no doubt that this portfolio is not an accomplishment of my own. Of course, if you have any suggestion to my works, please leave your message on my blog in 20six.co.uk. Your support will be my strongest stimulus.
Cordially,
Richard Deng