Jung Aa Ahn / Writing Experience (wk2) / Thursday 1-3pm

201501855 Jung Aa Ahn

I first learned English when I went to live in the States in 2004. I barely knew how to speak, and of course, how to write in English. The first sentence I learned to speak and write for myself was "I cannot speak English". I had no choice but to say and write that to the friends that came to talk to the new Korean girl in class. I still remember this one day in high school when I found a journal from elementary school. Then, apparently, I wanted to say that "I went on a trip with my family." However, because I did not have grammatical knowledge at all, I ended up writing "I tripped with my family." That is the first memory I have of writing. I used to think that mother was joking around with me when she told me that I would someday become better at English than her. Writing, let along English, seemed so difficult at the time.

This gradually changed as I went through the hours of writing classes at my school. I was very lucky to meet excellent writing teachers. The first teacher that I met mostly taught me about the importance of reading, in order to become a good writer. We wrote in every class about everything. I barely remember the material, unfortunately. What I do remember about the class was the fact that the teacher asked us to make a reading list. She did not ask for a log, but she did ask for a list of the books and to fill out the information, including the date of publish, author's name, and more. It was actually very interesting, because she asked us to write how long the book was as well. I learned in a Educational Psychology class last semester that this was not a good way to motivate children, but at the time, it was one of the best motivation that anyone could give me. My friends and I became obsessed with reading after that assignment. Through reading so much, and by developing a taste for certain styles of writing, I began to unconsciously mimic the writing styles of my favorite writer.

I refined my writing skills in the freewriting sessions that I attended. I used to go to an academy every weekend to take an SAT Writing class, which, actually, was just a class for intermediate school students to get started with writing. The instructor always gave us about three topics to write about every week. He timed us and told us to write. We were told to memorize words in order to make our writing seem more professional - to get better scores. The topics typically included the ones in which we had to take a stance and to persuade someone. For instance, we once had to write to persuade someone to recycle.The teacher mostly commented on the structure of the writing. In the beginning, I was a terrible writer. I did not even know the basics of writing. He mostly taught us to write with the introduction, the three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. It took some time to get used to the structures, but I gradually got used to it. I actually began to like writing, and the fact that I could actually express whatever I wanted to within such a short period of time. The experience taught me to not be afraid of writing.

Through those experiences, I ended up enjoying writing. I rarely restrict myself from writing with slang words when I am writing for myself, especially when I believe that it can help me express myself better. It was actually very interesting because I ended up not using not as many slang words as I thought I would. I enjoyed the process of writing, and refining it to make it sound better. I still have a long way to go in order to become a good writer, especially because I often get a little too lazy to keep writing. I believe that this class will be a good motivation for me to become a better writer.