Do I Feel Confident Writing?

 

 

 

 

Do I Feel Confident Writing?

 

 

 

          When I saw one of short essay topics, “Do I feel confident writing?” for the first assignment of English 300, my answer was “Not really.” This is the main reason for me to take this class in this Fall Semester. I still feel uncomfortable writing English essays, even though I took English 1A at El Camino College in Torrance, CA in Summer 2004 and English 1B at MPC in Spring 2005. Thus, I looked back upon my school days of writing practice in Korea and my last 16 years of living experience in the USA, in order to analyze myself what caused me to feel fear writing English.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             First of all, I hadn't had much of a chance to write even Korean essays during my school years. When I was in school, we were so short on teachers and staff that most of our school's curriculum was focused on obtaining knowledge from various school subjects instead of developing individual analysis based upon what we had learned. For example, we studied for preparing multiple-choice exams on each subject, not expressing our own thoughts from what we had gained. Consequently, we only had a little practice on writing short daily diaries and several book reports for summer and winter break assignments, yet no evaluation. Particularly in my case I spent most of my time practicing drawing instead reading and writing to prepare for Art College in my junior and high school period. Hence, I preferred to express my emotion through drawing in abstract ways rather then illustrating in the literal sense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             Furthermore, I had lost the chance for either speaking or writing in my native language, Korean, since I moved to United States in 1990. Because I didn't know anyone except my husband who is Korean but cannot speak Korean, I had to stop speaking or writing in Korean. Besides, I have not been exposed to Korean communities in America where I could actively keep up with my Korean. Consequently, English has become my primary language to communicate in my everyday life, yet it is still my second language so that I cannot speak or write it as freely as I would like.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             Finally, I realized that I am in the middle of a dilemma about my linguistic skills because I have not developed fluid ｅxpression in Korean nor established a solid basis in English. Thus, I decided to train myself through reading and writing not only to improve my English, but also to develop my ｅxpression through English 300.