Academic writing class, Fudan University, spring 2007
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Cover Letter
To Whom It May Concern:
Time is always running fast. I still remember that it was the time when the willow tree gave birth to its new leaves that I entered Mr. Ron’s class and began to learn academic writing with other partners. And now, I suddenly find that the end of this semester is around the corner, as the lotus has occupied the whole pool. It occurred to me that it is the very time to review whatever I have learned in this semester.
Firstly, please give me the honor to thank for the hard working and help of Mr. Ron and the valuable suggestion from my group members, Claire and Jascha. Furthermore, thank you for reading my portfolio in which I have selected the best reading log out of five and the three drafts.
Secondly, when it comes to me, to be frank, learning English is a hard task for me. It seems that I was born without the sense of language which causes the fact that I have to pay much more efforts to learn English. However, after taking the course of academic writing, I find that learning English is such a great joy for me that I hoped for each Thursday to take part in the class. We are encouraged to express our thoughts in our reading logs. When I finished reading “The Americanization of Shadrach Cohen”, I made generation gap my log’s topic though other students choose to analysis this article from other angels. I used to be told that I had better to do anything like others. However, in the academic writing class, I was taught to express my own opinion without restriction. I felt really free to express my feeling in English which later aroused my passion for English writing.
During the course, I learned a lot about the American academy. I learned the different writing hobbies between English and Chinese. As a matter of fact, foreign writer tends to express their ideas directly. Instead, Chinese tend to express their ideas in an indirect way. And another difference is that Chinese writers have the trend to develop their stories in a smooth way, however, American writers prefer to set great surprise for the readers.
Apart from realizing the great difference existing between the English and Chinese writing, I also learned how to writing logs and English drafts during the course. I used to finish an article once without further touching. After learning the process to writing drafts, I find that a good article needs several drafts to go first. Then with the help of different methods we gradually finished the article.
Thirdly, the word “swot” seems familiar with me. When I am learning major class, we tend to do “swot” analysis on many business-cases. When the method is used to do analysis in English learning, I successfully find out my “strength” and “weakness” in English writing. On one hand, I am good at relate articles to the background of the society. As a result, I am sensitive to the reason why the authors wrote these kinds of stories, then feeling more about the meaning of the stories. On the other hand, there also exists weakness in my English writing. Sometimes, I will have the trend to use Chinese-English to express certain meanings. For instance, I used to express the meaning of comparison by using the words “drop height”. As a result, my article sometimes will be misunderstood by foreigners who come from English-speaking countries.
I will finish the learning of academic writing very soon. However, it is just the very beginning of my learning in English writing. I will do my best to maintain my interest in academic writing and continue the improvement in my English writing.
Thank you for taking the time to read my papers. I hope you enjoyed reading each article and that you learned from my ideas.
Sincerely,
Student Sophia Qiu
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