Hello my friends! It has been such a pleasure and an honor to work with you over the past week or two. You should both be proud of the essays you’ve written this week—I’d definitely say they were even better than mine! I’ve worked as a writing tutor during the past three of my four years here at Penn State, so I have lots of experience working with students whose first language is not English, many of whom are from China. One of the most impressive things in the world to me is a well-written essay by someone writing in a language that is not native to them, and that’s exactly what you’ve written here. I took a year or two of Spanish here at school and there is absolutely no chance that I’d be able to write an essay nearly as good as yours in a second language!2057230076 wrote: ↑Mon Apr 27, 2020 9:39 am Reflection
Two weeks of communication across the ocean is almost over and we have many thoughts about it. At first we feel a little bit of resistance for it takes us too much time and energy to wait replies across seas. However, with time elapsing, by interacting with students in U.S. and other classmates in our school, this activity completely changed our mind and now we fall in love with it! Because, during this period, we’ve learned a lot not only from other students but also from ourselves for this communication provides us with a great stage to exchange ideas and reflect on ourselves.Here we’d like to share what we’ve learned from this activity.
First is language expression. When we are writing, especially as Chinese students, we usually consult a dictionary once meet difficulties in expression. Sometimes, we are lucky to correctly use some words or expressions, but sometimes we make mistakes unconsciously and our expressions can be unnatural and incorrect, such as Chinese English and wording errors in preposition. During the process of communication, Austin directly pointed out our mistakes and offered us help in revising our wording expressions. We think that his suggestion is very constructive and we also appreciate that he is very honest and sincere. Besides, when we are reading Austin’s and Max’s essays, we learned a lot of natural expressions and new words they use. They didn’t make mistakes like repeated reference but we did. Our lack of skills of expressing like a foreigner and resources of vocabulary will enable us to work harder in our major and encourage us to learn more from others patiently. In the future, we will pay attention to our word-use and word-choice to make our articles better!
Second is structure. We think that both Austin and Max have good structures in their movie essays for they can not only express their ideas clearly but also arrange and connect each paragraphs logically. It’s quite good for us to learn! When we are writing, we come up with five points to analyze the essay and simply explain some quotes. It seems to be content-rich and singular in some aspects but actually it lacks logical cohesion. It is our mistake when we connect aspects that makes readers feel confused why we write some paragraphs or contents. Austin pointed out the drawback of our essay again and also tells us his thoughts about how to revise essay. He reminded us of our writing purposes, social backgrounds’ impact on images and narrative techniques’ impact on the overarching theme. We think his three rhetorical questions according to our lack in logical cohesion really inspire us and let us know how to reflect on ourselves in the essay writing in the next time from different angles. In the future, we will pay attention to relationships between each paragraphs to let them serve each other and serve the purpose better!
Third is content. On one hand, our essay didn’t do well in our last paragraph and just ended it hurriedly. We know that but we don’t know how to do. Max offered us help when we asked him for his ideas of improvement. He told us that we’d better strengthen our points and sublime in the end. We think his idea is very helpful for us to do better! Besides, two points mentioned above have close connection with the third point. Hence, we will try to make progress on our disadvantages to polish our articles and let it seem more professional. On the other hand, when we read other people’s essays, we can clearly find their drawbacks in content, which helps us encourage them to revise and also helps us reflect on ourselves objectively.
Forth is culture. During this period, we’ve learned a lot culture and American culture from American students. For example, Austin mentioned “ideology” that is a new word for us and lets us know that we read too less books and encourages to read more. So we search some information and talk with him to get deeper understanding of it. Besides, when he had difficulties, he also asked us for help. Austin asked us questions about feminism and individualism, which enabled us to learn more and then taught him our culture knowledge. We think it’s great for it’s a good chance for both of two sides to learn new knowledge and exchange ideas to help us to analyze movies. Moreover, Xie Ting and Xiao Junqi mentioned women rights and gender equality in their essay, which enables us to learn more too. Hence, we think this across ocean activity is very wonderful for it is completely a great banquet of sparks of thoughts from different students, from different countries.
Fifth is manner. When we write to reply to others, we try our best to express in an euphemistic and polite way instead of saying harsh or sensitive words. Also, we’ve learned manners about writing replies, such as saying hello,xxx in the beginning and saying best wishes/hope these helped/hope hear from you soon in the end. Good manners can bring everyone comfort, so we should pay attention to writing format and wording expression. Moreover, this activity taught us to be patient when waiting replies for American students have jet lag and also our Chinese students have much homework to do and can’t reply in time. We shouldn’t urge others because it’s rude and impolite. Instead, we should wait patiently and leave our contact information politely for pleasant communication.
All in all, we really like this activity for its effect is beyond our expectation and imagination, and we not only learn new knowledge and know how to revise essay but also we have a precious and unforgettable across-ocean experience in our campus life because it’s our first time to exchange online and we also get acquaintance with new foreign friends during this special period! We really cherish it and want to participate in such an activity again in the future! We hope that teachers can choose to share online courses across ocean more and let more students exchange their ideas and grow up from it! Thank our teacher for providing us such a great opportunity to learn! Thank Austin, Max and Xiao Junqi, Xie Ting for interacting with us! Thank you all!
Your essay is even more impressive to me because I know Chinese and English are two particularly different languages. I know you don’t need me to tell you, but it’s clear that you both have a very strong grasp on English and are both very talented writers. If I didn’t know we were communicating from across the ocean, I’m not sure I would be able to tell that your essays were not written by native speakers. Don’t beat yourselves up over the little nuanced aspects of the language like occasional word choice quirks—English is very weird sometimes and you’ll definitely be able to fine tune that the more practice you get! For what it’s worth, I’m so impressed by your writing. Thanks so much for helping me out with mine too!
