To Whom It May Concern,
I am Tiphanie, a sophomore majoring in Public Administration, in the school of International Relations and Public Affairs, in Fudan University. I fancy learning foreign languages. I have a command of English, French, Japanese, and a little German. And I have attained the certificate of the advanced interpretation of English and scored high in the TOEFL IBT. I am proud of my language talents and I strongly believe that the languages, as a tool of communication, are one of the key factors of one's success, for the forthcoming era is one with a more tremendous explosion of information.
This semester I attend a course delivered by an American professor, Ron. I have reaped more than I expected in the course, Advanced English Writing. I am more than willing to share with you in my harvests and my experiences in this course.
The first time I was in the class of the Advanced English Writing，I was surprised for I had never expected to attend a class of an American teacher. Ron, my new English professor, is an approachable man, always wearing an affable smile. He comes from Virginia, a very beautiful city in my impression. In a word, he left a very good impression on me the first time I saw him.
I am full of expectations to see if Ron could make a difference in pedagogical methods, and the effect of teaching. Actually, Ron really gives me a succession of surprises in teaching methods. To my great joy, I gradually discover that I have learnt more than I anticipated, including not only the writing skills but also a learning attitude.
Specifically, I am fond of Ron’s Free-Writing, Writing Portfolio, and the task of creating a blog for the wring portfolio.
They are new to me. Usually, the learning of English writing in China is learning a structure first of all, gives priority to grammar. The contents and explanations of the points, instead, are not as important.
That’s why I fancy the free writing. I can focus on my thoughts and understanding of a topic instead of a “perfect” structure with no grammar mistakes and no concrete contents. Let me give an example.
Vanity, as a topic given by Ron, aroused my wish to put down all I thought about, positive and negative comments, examples, and comparisons between Mathilde and the successful women nowadays. However, I remember writing about this topic in my senior high school, and it was really just an assignment which could not present any enjoyment of writing.
At that time, my English teacher's advice was that, to avoid complex explanations which could bring about many grammar mistakes, we students are supposed to write at most 3 simple points and organize a “beautiful” structure.
What a difference I am experiencing now. I harvest a joy of writing in free writing. Writing is no more a burden but a reflection of life. I wrote whatever is related to vanity. I argued that vanity was not bound to be a bad thing after citing many people’s negative comments on vanity. I compared the main character in The Necklace with the current women elites. They embrace many similarities. In fact, we Chinese students can not risk writing these stuff in senior high schools in order to get a decent score in English exams for these arguments are not welcome to some teachers and they are sure to cause many grammar mistakes.
As to the ICA, writing portfolio and the blog for the writing portfolio, what's my feeling about them? It is also totally new to me. I knew nothing about them before I attended Ron’s class.
All my friends know clearly that I am weak in my computer skills. I can not count how many times I failed to blog my compositions onto the internet as required, and how many times after I finished my comments of other students’ reading logs, I was not able to save them because of my laptop’s problems. All that is concerned with the internet operations is time-consuming to me. And that is why I leave the settings of my blogs to the end of my work. What I concentrate on is to perfect my compositions.
Frankly speaking, I am worried that Ron would doubts my diligence and involvement in this course, for what I wrote were not updated on the internet and my blog is always with some problems. The technical problems bring about my anxieties and self-doubt.
However, after many frustrations and tries, I must admit that the process of obliging myself to create blogs, and to surfer the internet to see other students’ compositions in the conferencing benefit me a lot. Now I find it quite interesting to blog my pieces of writing and share my thoughts and life with friends. What's more, updating the information in my blog can expose me to daily English writing exercise. Now it is my habit to compose free writings as long as I am not so occupied, and I am not only fond of writing but also crazy about updating my blog.
What’s more, the task of blogging a writing portfolio exposes me to different genres of writing. Through the guidance given by Ron in class, discussions with classmates, and repeated revisions after class, I acquaint myself with rules and points of different writing genres. Actually, reading log, essay, and cover letter are supposed to be handled with various tones, styles of writing, or even uses of words. I maintain it will be helpful one day!
Moreover, I am so grateful to Ron and the course. It is Ron’s continuous assignments of the course that make me immersed in English writing this semester and thus help me maintain my linguistic sense of English.
This semester witnessed the fulfillment of my dream along with painstaking efforts for further accomplishments. I got the offer from Sciences-Politiques, one of the most prestigious universities in Europe, where 80% of French officials and 40% of French CEOs graduate. That means I have to spend most of time in learning French from scratch. Now through 6 months’ diligent work on French, I can manage the daily communication with my French friends.
Leaning French causes a confusion with English, and less time in English learning. Fortunately, I attend Ron’s class. Every time when I am less familiar with English, Ron’s American accent evokes my memory and feeling of English and my New York accent which I devoted long time to gaining comes back. His interesting assignments keep exposing me to the frequent contact with English.
Last but not least, I want to refer to learning attitudes. From my view of point, learning attitudes outweigh everything. Though I am engaged in the application for my dream university for master degree, in dealing with some stuff for my summer internship, in organizing a grand feast for receiving dean of my school, in taking care of several associations and in other courses this semester, I still one hundred percent involve myself in this course because I like it. And I always say to myself no matter how busy I am, I should attend every class, take notes, listen carefully, finish the assignment earnestly and only in this way can I learn what I expected to gain from the course, and I make it!
A thousand thanks to my respected teacher, Ron!
A thousand thanks to my communicative classmates!
A thousand thanks to all my efforts devoted in the course!
It is you that make me gain writing skills, taste the enjoyment of writing, and more interested in my English learning.
Yours sincerely,
Tiphanie