Blog 6

Reflection

Nina Yang

W&CIII

Ms. Guarino

10/30/2014

    At the beginning of the school year, I set three goals for this year. The first goal was that I want to improve my vocabulary. As an international student, how to use vocabulary well and how to use good vocabularies are really important to us in writing. The second goal was that I want get more recourse such as quotes from famous books or people and meaningful stories, etc. After I put these recourses in my essay and enrich my content, they can make my essay looks knowledgeable and interesting. The third goal was that I want use grammar well. Grammar is the basic of an essay and it’s really important to know how to use it well.

    Since we had a lot of lessons on different types of grammar and did many practices and quizzes about grammar, I made an obvious progress in grammar. For example, I can now use the tense correctly when writing a story without using different tenses in one story. I also made progress on using articles and punctuations like comma and semicolon. The lectures that everyone gives in the class really help in grammar. Some good suggestions can be that to practice grammar by doing more practices. Besides that, I also had progress on vocabulary because I made a list of vocabularies that I have to memorize everyday. This made me memorize tons of vocabularies and increase my vocab immediately.

    However, I didn’t really gain much quotes and stories, which I can use in my writing as I supposed to gain. As the result, I have to work harder on this part in the future. I think I can read more books or stories so that I can write down some famous lines. In addition, I can also write down some useful vocabularies.

    Later on, I can keep on doing what I’m doing now, such as memorize the vocabulary. I will also read more books and stories as I mentioned above. Since “practice makes perfect.” I will write more in order to practice my writing skills and grammar. I hope that I can really working on what I’ve decided to do in order to make more progress than this.

Hand out 1

Nina Yang

10/21/2014

W&C III

·  Comma VS. Semicolon in a compound sentence

·  Comma：

·  Semicolon：

·  Compound sentence：

1.     Independence clause, (FANBOYS: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So) Independence clause

2.     Independence clause; Independence clause

·A compound sentence is consisted by 2 independent clause, but you can not put 2 independents clause together by adding only a comma or a FANBOYS. However, you can either add both of them, or just by adding a semicolon between the two independent clauses.   

Blog 5

How to analyze a story

Nina Yang

W&C III

Ms. Guarino

10/18/2014

    To tell a story to people is always easy since it’s easy to say what you remember the things that already happened. However, to analyze the story you tell is kind of hard because people seldom conclude what they’ve learned during an experience. Therefore, I think to analyze the story of my significant moment is the hardest par of this paper for me.

    My significant moment was the first night in Australia because I went there all by myself when I was in fifth grade. It was pretty tough for a 10-year old kid to stay in a totally unfamiliar country, which doesn’t speak any Chinese.

    The first difficulty came after I wrote the first draft. What I wrote was pretty much all the things that happened during the first day and what I thought at that time. There was not many analyzes in my first draft. Then, in the next draft, I had to think about what I learned after the first night in my home stay. It was hard to think what I should write because I had to related what I learned to my thesis which is I became a mature and thoughtful girl. Then, I had to write about what I learned to make me became mature and thoughtful.

    The hardest part came after that because I had to analyze my story to show that why I became a mature and thoughtful girl. I had to write about the difficulties I faced and wrote about the feelings I had at that time. In my opinion, to analyze a story is to tell a reason of the result. I had to show the reasons clearly enough so that my readers could understand what I’m talking about and why I became mature and thoughtful.

    Finally, I wrote another new paragraph about what I learned from this experience and what should I do next. I wrote that because this experience I learned that how to pack up my stuff and take care of myself. After this experience, I was able to handle situations all by myself. I learned how to become independence. In addition, I was able to put myself in other’s shoes when I face a problem with someone. Also, I really appreciated to my parents and wrote my appreciation at my analyze paragraph. Besides, I wrote the equal length between my analysis part and my story part.

    From this significant moment paper, I learned that how write analysis of an experience. First, I have to write the most important part that I can analyze and related to my thesis. Then, length of the analysis and the story should be pretty much the same. Last but not the least, the analysis should be what you learned from the story, and it should be something valuable and worth to learn. Besides, I should also write something afterward in order to show I actually learned it and use it in later of my life.

2nd draft

                    Grow up

                                                                                           Nina Yang

W&C III

10/09/2014

Ms. Guarino

    “My mom is going to abandon me.” That was what I thought when I was in fourth grade and knew that my parents were going to send me to a homestay in Australia for a month. At that time, the fear was even greater than the sadness or any other feelings in my mind. Besides that, I didn’t realize how I would change after time. After the first time experienced a real separation from my parents and went to a totally unfamiliar country where didn’t speak any Chinese, I became a mature and thoughtful girl which was helpful for my future because I was independent enough to handle things by myself and always think about others.

    I actually didn’t realize the task in front of me after talking with my mom before boing to Australia. My mom said the only thing I need to do is to take English course in a University and hang out with people in my homestay. I felt like it’s not going to be hard for me. Then, I held a pleasant feeling as if I was going to travel and relax, and got on to the plane all by myself. I felt like I was an adult at that time, but a 10-year-old adult.

    After a long-distance travel, I arrived to Australia, which was a country had a bluer sky and fresher air than China had. The most people I saw was white people and the people who came to pick me at the airport were someone I had never seen before. I knew that they were my homestay parents. They were really nice to me and I also made friends with their 3 children. Two of them were bigger than me and one was in kindergarten at that time. The first task in front of me was the food because it was totally different from the food in my hometown, so it was kind of hard for me to adjust it very soon. However, my homestay parents were afraid I couldn’t use folk and knife so they prepared chopsticks for me.

    The first night in the homestay was like a tragedy because it was the first time I left my mom this far and slept in a stranger’s house although they treated me really nice. I couldn’t stop crying and thinking about my mom and my dad. My parents love me so much and I was thinking about the fights we had the day before came here only because I was too lazy to pack up the stuff so my mom did it all for me. “How are you able to take care of yourself when you grow up if you don’t know how to pack up your stuff? You have to force yourself to learn and grow sometimes.”  After came here, I really understood what my mom had said to me. I really forced myself to learn how to take care of myself since I was alone. I had to clean up stuff and washed all my clothes by myself. That’s something I had never done before. The whole night, I was thinking about my parents. They had to take care of me all the time and I felt so regret for always making them feel disappointed and angry. I sometimes dislike the food my mom makes, but right now I missed the food she cooked. I should have listen to her since she said that for the sake of my future. I was crying all night and only slept for less than two hours.

    As a ten-year-old kid, I was living for a month by myself for a month. Many parents can’t take the risk of it, but my parents decided to let go of me. They forced me to learn how to wash the dirty clothes, clean up my room, and pack up my stuff. In addition, I spoke English even though I was not good at it at that time for a month. That’s a challenge of me but it really helps me improve my English a lot.

    Despite the pretty joyful life in the rest of the month, the first night forced me to grow up immediately. I understood all my parents did for me and decided to say sorry to them for all the things I’ve done that made them feel upset. I decided to be a big girl and handle things by myself if I’m able to. This experience helps me adjust new environment very soon. The first day at Cheshire was great and I also helped others who were homesick at that time got over it. In addition, I learned that I should help my mom to do the housework afterward since she was tired of work and it’s my responsibility to help her. Last but not least, I really appreciate the decision they made to send me to Australia. I knew that life is going to be tough sometimes in the future, but people are growing up during every task they are facing. “You know what, Nina. I’m glad you understood.” Said my mom after I first time talked to her about that night recently. “This is life.”