My life as a writer in English has not been so long. Although I have been using English for couple of years, I did not write formal English writing on purpose until soon. Starting with the life in KMLA, I began to write English essays and literal works. Through a semester with Ms. Choi and Mr. Johnson, I learned public essay writing styles, right grammar to use, a better diction for the meaning. Plus, the class “Introduction to English Literature” by Mr. Yoon helped me to get to know the basic ideas about writings and English literatures. It is confident for me to say that I have improved through those great teachers, but it is true that I’m not good enough to be called as writer.
So far with those classes, I learned my style, weak points and strong points. To say about my style, there are only little to say about. Since my career as a writer is very short and limited, there aren’t any distinct features in my writing in my opinion. If there is one thing to say about my style, it might be creative theme. I learned a lot of stuffs in Korean such as politics, economy, philosophy, etc. Based on what I’ve learned in Korean, I try to use them as my writing’s theme. Though I feel difficulties in translating those ideas into English, the theme and the situation (which is not much related with one’s English skills) is what I have confidence in. I look forward to let my ideas in English without any problems someday, and that day will be the turning point in my life as a writer.
As for the weak points of my writing, as mentioned in above paragraphs, I still feel my lack of skills in English. Even though good ideas came up to me, I couldn’t express them in a very good sense. This is maybe because of my lack of vocabulary. For some words I don’t know them in English and for some words I know easy dialogic words but not fancy words which would be most appropriate for the situation. My vocabulary is not the only problem, but also grammar. I still feel hard for grammars, especially about definite and indefinite articles: ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’. I always confuse their usage.
My strong points are also said in the second paragraph, theme and plots, but I guess there are more. For instance, I think my writing has good description about surroundings. I imagine the view of the situation and try to write them in English, so there are lots of descriptions about surroundings, and I think this helps readers to focus more and to feel more realistic about the writing.
To pick one writing piece that I’m proud of, I will pick my term paper written about determinism and indeterminism (free will). This was done in Mr. Johnson’s class. Because the topic could have been anything, I chose what I had my interest on, therefore making me to feel comfortable in writing this paper. This feeling had helped me to be enthusiastic about this work and I did a lot of researches and put great effort on it. Even though the limited amount of time made me to have no time to revise a lot (therefore it can seem little bit messy and unorganized), I’m pretty confident about this piece of writing.
Because I have experienced a lot of teachers in last semester, I have really obtained faith in KMLA teachers and I do not doubt about their depth of knowledge. I believe all teachers have their unique strategies for teaching, and I think it is not exceptional for Mr. Garrioch also. I believe anything you do is beneficial to us, so as long as you do ‘anything’, I’m satisfied. I don’t have preference, but I hope if you have time, I want to get some advices about my writing from you. :D
