| <Self Evaluation> After I have read the last essay of the students� sample essay, I knew that I could never be able to get an A in this class. I was amazed and, at the same time disappointed. That essay is what I�ve always wanted to write; therefore, I took this class. I�ve always wanted to improve my writhing. A lot of my friends told me not to take English 101 with you as the instructor because they think you are harsh and difficult to get high grade. I had struggled for a long time because it really need have a high grades for international students in order to be able to transfer to UW, but at the same time, I want to learn something. I don�t want my leaning to be controlled by taking some easy-A-classes. I want to learn English! I knew that it would be easier for me to get high grades from other teachers, but I really wanted to improve my written English. In the middle of this quarter, I realized I�ve made the right decision. I understand the writing process more and know how to deal with some difficult topics. The free writing method is quite new and effective for me; I used to sit in front of the computer and wasted a lot of time working on the plot. Now I can just sit down, type anything I wanted and gather them. Another improvement is how I read others� essays. I can follow the writer�s plot and understand what he or she is trying to say. I can point out their main problems in the essays. I felt that I had improvements on my writing. I think my best essay is paper #3 because I am interested by the topic. It really made me did a lot of thinking�believes or inquires. I�ve related the both aspects to nature. I�ve always think that nature is our father and mother, what we do will directly affect the nature. Therefore, we consider our action, what effects it has when we believe and inquire. I don�t know when I�ve came up with the answer that we should believe and inquire at the same time, but I think this is the most reasonable answer. For every aspect, I think, we shouldn�t do too much: we shouldn�t sit in front of the computer too much, we shouldn�t work too much, we shouldn�t play too much and we definitely shouldn�t eat too much! My second best essay is paper #2, �Are you insane?� It was a real situation, I was quite surprise when I first saw him. What made me remember him is that I met him in Factoria Mall one day. He acted very normal when he didn�t put his headphones on. He just kept greeting everyone, and smiling to everyone. I was a little scared because that�s not what a �normal� American would act. I didn�t know how to respond him, I just smiled back. I had a little struggle on whether to put this example as my introduction. I thought may be I was the only one who thought he was insane. Amazingly, when my friends read my paper, they all told me they have seen that young man before although he is not extremely insane. It caused me to think of the people who we thought were insane in the past. Quit interesting that, many great people were viewed as insane in the past. May be that young man will be the president in the future. Who knows! The third best essay is my summary draft. I had done a lot of hard work on that (may be it�s the first essay), and there are so many pre-work: Descriptive outline, Topic outline and a lot of discussion in the class. This essay was quite difficult for me indeed. I�ve never tried to summarize a chapter of a book before. I really have to �read� the chapter and understand it. The process helped me to read books more consciously and how to locate the main point. (I was shocked when you said all the dialogue was not important!) In the past, I didn�t really care who says what in the book, I just get the very general meaning of it. Now I go one step future and I become more efficient during reading materials. Essays #4 is a disaster! I had a very time to come up with a thesis. I did a lot of thinking and have a lot of struggle with the question: �What are people for?� After weeks of thinking, I came up with the answer that the function of people is none. It seems to me that all the inventions and work they do is just for themselves. All we can do is to make mistakes. We don�t care about other creatures on the world. I was very confused, I knew I shouldn�t say that because that�s not the main point of the essay, but I just cannot come up with a definite answer of the function of human. What I�ve just wrote was just the different stages of human. I was so frustrated by the fact that human has actually made no contributions to the world. During the whole quarter, I�ve learned a lot, especially on how to generate ideas. I�ve never wrote that much English in my life! Sometimes it�s difficult to convert what I wanted to say from Chinese. I was also very surprised what I�ve learned in Chinese Culture class in Hong Kong is actually useful. The class taught me so much about the way Chinese viewed the world. In this class, I had a chance to compare the values both Western culture and Chinese culture has�which is quite different. Although I didn�t really speak up in class, because I was too shy to, I did a lot of thinking myself. Personally, I had gained a lot in this class. How I have to plan my schedule to work effectively will definitely help me to succeed in future classes. |