Introduction of Profolio.
Write "out of box"
Write "out of box"
Do you see the sunlight penetrating through the window on a warm morning? No one believes that it is May already. This school year is about to finish in three weeks. Time flies very fast, and I still remember clearly on the first day I came here. I was timid to face a new school, a new environment, and many new friends. However, we shall overcome difficulties in our lives. This writing class helped me to have a lot of progress not only in writing, but also in critical thinking, speaking, and analyzing as well. Last time when I opened my blog and we had written 111 blogs from September to May, so I went back and saw my previous work, which made me laugh for a while. I was just amazed by how many grammar mistakes I had made, and how many comma splices I used to have. Looking back this year, I have totally reborn and changed: my sentences are very logical in my work,which make the writing cohesive, and I have less grammar mistakes or comma splice, most importantly my pieces of writings are straight to the point but don't lack any humor.
To start with the most obvious change in my writings--the logic of the content. Logic is very crucial to a piece of writing because it is like a wire that connects all the points together as if the points are scattered pearls. My blogs that were written in September are good if take a first look at it. But if you read for a few more times, there are some points that don't connect very well, so they don't make a perfect sense. For example, there was a blog that I post about a cup called Rango. In that blog, my sentences were not well-organized. Even though the idea that I was trying express is very clear in this blog, yet I wrote " I named it Rango(the bottle) because it's like a friend to me, since 70% of human body is made from water"(Jiang). Although this sentence made my point, it still made the readers feel that the connection was not strong enough. Nevertheless, I revised it again started with " I named it Rango because it's like a friend to me, who can reminds me of drinking water when I forget, since 70% of human body is made from water." In this way, this sentence would make more sense, and the personification made my description more vivid. So, the logic of an essay of paper plays a significant role, a good logic will make the readers understand better of your point that you want to show. Therefore, I think I see a lot of progress on logicalization owing to the fact that my sentences are more likely to be cohesive than those in the beginning of the year.
Additionally, I have made a lot of improvements on grammar and the use of punctuation. The first time when I was asked to write a formal essay in Toefl, I was very confident and I wrote an essay that exactly followed the rubric of Toefl writing. However, the sentences were not only logical,I could see at least two grammar mistakes per sentence. One thing that made me proud was that I have made this far to Writing and Comp III. After this year of practicing and revising my blogs words by words, sentences by sentences, I can see at most one grammar mistake within two sentences. The grammar mistake I have been working on is the tense of the words. For example, there is a blog post that I found a lot of mistakes in, the blog was about rice noodles and how they represent my miss for my grandparents. At first I used present tense to describe how delicious rice noodles were , then I used past tense to describe my childhood memory. Eventually, my first draft was very confusing because when I should use past tense, I used present tense; sometimes the other way around. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to revise it again. After this year, I had less comma splice; the funny thing was that I was wondering why my sentences were awkward before I knew that the awkwardness was actually comma splice. Thus, although I still have mistakes about use of tenses, I see progress on my grammar and use of punctuation and I can even use more tenses to write.
Last but not the least, the most obvious change I notice in my writings is its organization and use of languages. Before taking this class, there was only one type of writing for me; I wrote a specific “Toefl” type of writing with no sense of humor. This “Toefl” type of essay usually had exact five paragraphs, and they were so organized with repetitive points. I had been writing that type of writing for years, and I never realized that writing could be so fun. My works were always long and tedious, and I honestly did not know what I was thinking when I wrote those long essays and papers. Nevertheless, being at Writing class made me to read more examples and discuss how to make a good piece of writing. To speak frankly, boring essays do not capture potential readers’ eyes, and humor is an important element in a good essay. After infinite practicing, my writings now are more humorous but the theme I try to express is very clear. One of the important things I realize in a good piece was the hook. A good hook can not only lead to the theme, but also it can make the readers interested in this writing. There was a blog about winter break that we were asked to write, and I just started like “ Reunion is the most precious thing to me”(Jiang), do you want to read through this writing if you see the first sentence? Absolutely not. The hook needs to be appealing, probably I can revise into " what is the most important thing in my life? Treasure? Score? It is the reunion of my family." When I look at my blogs, my writing style is more relaxing, and I am glad that my pieces of writing have a clearer theme and a sense of humor.
In general, the improvements in my works are very gratifying. Writing and Composition Three teaches me to write beyond being a writer, but it teaches me to be a creator: not only think out of box, but also write with creativity . If logic resembles a line of a necklace, then the grammar is where the line is attached, the clear theme is the diamond, the and the humor is the decoration.
Blog post 1
Thirty-day challenge: An amateur of story writing
Have you been doing a challenge for 30 days continuously? It sounds easy, but It’s way too much harder than you think. There are many examples of 30-day challenges such as being a vegetarian for thirty days, or writing a journal,or making different recipes for thirty days. After seeing all these examples, I had been struggling for days . At first, I have decided not to tell a lie in thirty days. I first thought about this not because I tell lies( and 99% of the time I don't lie),but people tell lies even they don't notice. However, I gave up that idea because I couldn't come up with a 500-word blog, besides it’s not interesting enough. Then I changed my mind, and set it to write a simple little story every day.
One simple reason for this is that it will be a good practice to improve my writing skills. From my perspective, story writing doesn't necessarily have to make sense because the story is probably imaginary; as long as readers can understand what is happening in the story, and the story appeals the readers to keep reading, it is a good story. So writing a story requires imagination, and in my daily writing,it seems like my works lack some kind of imagination. This challenge certainly helps me with creating interesting stories, even I can't come up with anything imaginary, I will squeeze my brain until I have one. Then when I write I will have to think about the plots of the story such as origin, vertex ending, and etc. As a matter of fact, the changes in plots will definitely influence readers' emotions, so I need to really work on that. As a result of this challenge, I believe that my writing level will be increased surprisingly.
One simple reason for this is that it will be a good practice to improve my writing skills. From my perspective, story writing doesn't necessarily have to make sense because the story is probably imaginary; as long as readers can understand what is happening in the story, and the story appeals the readers to keep reading, it is a good story. So writing a story requires imagination, and in my daily writing,it seems like my works lack some kind of imagination. This challenge certainly helps me with creating interesting stories, even I can't come up with anything imaginary, I will squeeze my brain until I have one. Then when I write I will have to think about the plots of the story such as origin, vertex ending, and etc. As a matter of fact, the changes in plots will definitely influence readers' emotions, so I need to really work on that. As a result of this challenge, I believe that my writing level will be increased surprisingly.
Besides that,writing a story every day also help me with my other skills such as drawing. The cartoons make the story more vivid since cartoons could visualize stories. I am less likely to be an artistic person who had barely no experience of drawing. So, drawing is actually a challenge for me that I never done before, but I want to step up and take a shot. Plus, cartoons can help the readers to better understand the story because the cartoons can make people see visually, and they will make the stories even more appealing. That is the reason why younger kids love reading comics. I can also paint the drawings with colors, which will make the cartoons much more vivid.From my perspective, we should always try things that we are not good at, so I wish my cartoons will be looking good although it will be the first time drawing for me. Drawing cartoons not only benefits myself, but also benefits the readers because it will be a vivid image to help the readers to comprehend the story.
Finally, after 30 days challenge, I will be proud of myself and tell people that I am a story writer. As teenagers, leaning is a long process. Story writing is a good skill to own, and doing is this challenge I have never done before requires effort and the qualities of a writer. The more you learn, the better you will be benefited in the future. Creating stories is the whole point of this challenge to me, so does drawing. I am sure that I will learn how difficult it is to be a story writer.I have started one yesterday since I felt like there was something in my mind. I could simply describe it as a love story because it was a story about a boy climbing up to the sky to pick up the star for the girl he loves. I would definitely started with writing very simple stories and then write stories that have deeper meanings.
In general, creating stores every day will be absolutely challenging to me. I will have the opportunity to open my mind and make up stories. These stories will narrate emotions inside me, and they will express the most of my imagination.
Blog post 2
4 out of 30 days challenge: drama is like life
“The zombie is consuming my brain little by little.” I said to others when they asked me how I felt about creating stories. Today is the fifth day since I started my 30 day challenge, and I have been struggling what I can write about every single day. Guess what? There are still 25 days to go. Writing a story every day is harder than I thought because I couldn't come up with some very interesting stories, but this is the challenge I chose, and I could just write as much as I can.
The first story that I wrote was a story about a girl and a boy who fall in love with each other. The girl wants the most shiniest star in the abysmal sky so bad that she cries for it. The boy uses a ladder to climb up in the sky and the he finally gets it for the girl. And then, of course, they live happily ever after. How did I come up with this story? Honestly speaking, I wrote it after I watched a love story film which was called "starry sky", in this movie the boy dies and the girl looks at the sky every day as of the boy is alive. Perhaps the first time you read my story , you find it is usual and not creative at all. Yet when you think about it, it is some sort of romantic, and the part that the boy picks up the start is not real. The main theme of the story is love, and that is most likely the main theme of all my stories.
“The zombie is consuming my brain little by little.” I said to others when they asked me how I felt about creating stories. Today is the fifth day since I started my 30 day challenge, and I have been struggling what I can write about every single day. Guess what? There are still 25 days to go. Writing a story every day is harder than I thought because I couldn't come up with some very interesting stories, but this is the challenge I chose, and I could just write as much as I can.
The first story that I wrote was a story about a girl and a boy who fall in love with each other. The girl wants the most shiniest star in the abysmal sky so bad that she cries for it. The boy uses a ladder to climb up in the sky and the he finally gets it for the girl. And then, of course, they live happily ever after. How did I come up with this story? Honestly speaking, I wrote it after I watched a love story film which was called "starry sky", in this movie the boy dies and the girl looks at the sky every day as of the boy is alive. Perhaps the first time you read my story , you find it is usual and not creative at all. Yet when you think about it, it is some sort of romantic, and the part that the boy picks up the start is not real. The main theme of the story is love, and that is most likely the main theme of all my stories.
Then the second story is about two bears, which live in a cave in the mountain, and they look out for each other. The magic thing of this story is the natural instinct of two natural creatures; it's just too amazing to find that how creatures look after each other when they probably don't have high Intelligent Quotient as human does. I drew some cartoons of two bears together. Although I am really bad at drawing, I tried my best. And it turned out it wasn't as hard as I thought. The cartoon part of the challenge made the challenge more fun and I didn't have to sitting in front of my desk and write all day. I was standing outside JJW, feeling the air, watching squirrels galloping, and I saw nature. Then the idea of this story just popped up in my mind, which enabled me to write a story about bears.
However, the third story is a little bit different: after writing about nature and animals, it is important to connect my stories with human too. I wrote the third one in the library when I was doing my homework. To be frank, I found peace the moment I looked around people when I was sitting in the library, and there was an emotion telling me to write it down. There is an invisible connection between story and life: they resemble each other sometimes. I have heard of an old saying " life is a drama." Drama does not necessarily happen in TV shows, anything happened in a story could have happened in real lives, happen between you and me. This is the beauty of life.
For the last one, I have to say, it's a truly sad story. Since I had a bad day yesterday, I turned my emotions into words, pictures, which I found that it was also a good way to make "masterpiece". On the one hand , I think that is probably why some writers could write amazing stories because they put their emotion in the stories. on the other hand, it is quite a sad one: there is a little girl who jumps off the cliff to find her soul. She is trapped in her mind, because she doesn't feel free. I certainly would not jump off cliff or buildings, but writing this story sets my mind free. After writing it down, I felt much better and I realized that this challenge did not always drive me crazy because I couldn't come up with any stories, but also it helped me to express my feelings.Do You realize it? Making up stories is a good way to pour out all your negative feelings and emotions. I'm glad that doing this 30-day challenge can help me with coping myself and be more of a positive person.
All in all, the fact that I've been doing this challenge for days and I had a small success of it really surprised me. Writing stories teaches me to try things that I've never tried before,I learned more than I was expecting, and it will be so much fun during the rest of the challenge.
All in all, the fact that I've been doing this challenge for days and I had a small success of it really surprised me. Writing stories teaches me to try things that I've never tried before,I learned more than I was expecting, and it will be so much fun during the rest of the challenge.
Blog Post 3
A week or a year? Times is a very tricky measurement; sometimes it is sneaky, but sometimes one minute is like a year to me, Although it felt like I have been doing this challenge for a year, but unfortunately it only has started for seven days. In the past seven days, I learned one thing: creating is harder. To be frank, if you never write a story every day, you wouldn't find how hard it is. When I was young, my mom read so many fairy tales to me, and I listened to thousands of cassettes of story telling, I read a lot of stories. But when it comes to make a story, I have to squeeze each word from my brain. I literally don't know how those famous writers like Hans Christian Andersen, and The Grimm Brothers come up with ideas about fancy stories. However, I do find something to write about after "squeezing " myself.
Speaking of the Grimm Brothers, have you seen the TV show "The Grimm"? It is mainly about a cop who is a Grimm( a hunter for monsters) fighting not to hurt many monsters but to protect them. It is one of my favorite TV shows. Yet many people don't know that the content of the show is based on The Grimm Brothers' stories. It is said that the Grimm Brother's stories have their dark sides because they are famous for the monsters, witches and etc. Of course I didn't copy from the show, but I just thought if I could write about some fiction stories, which I never tried before, would interesting . I was trying not to depict a character who is evil, because my theme was about purity, nature......Well, you get it. Many mysterious stories always start with "Once upon a time.....", so that is probably the most popular beginning of a mystery.
Speaking of the Grimm Brothers, have you seen the TV show "The Grimm"? It is mainly about a cop who is a Grimm( a hunter for monsters) fighting not to hurt many monsters but to protect them. It is one of my favorite TV shows. Yet many people don't know that the content of the show is based on The Grimm Brothers' stories. It is said that the Grimm Brother's stories have their dark sides because they are famous for the monsters, witches and etc. Of course I didn't copy from the show, but I just thought if I could write about some fiction stories, which I never tried before, would interesting . I was trying not to depict a character who is evil, because my theme was about purity, nature......Well, you get it. Many mysterious stories always start with "Once upon a time.....", so that is probably the most popular beginning of a mystery.
"Once upon a time, a soldier discovered a wounded deer in the woods. " (Jiang) Writing this beginning is a pattern for fairy tale stories, and I thought this beginning was good for a reason,because it set a mysterious tone which would make the readers want to continue reading . "He brought it home because of his sympathy. After two weeks, the deer finally recovered. Before the deer left, He told the solder......"( Jiang) Anyway, the end was that the soldier made his dreams come true. For a neophyte like me, I am satisfied with what I have done now, and I will accumulate my words and my resources day by day. Writing is a gradual process, and we need tons of practices in order to make the best work.
All in all, we have made it to seven days! And since now I know how to find sources, I am pretty excited about the next 23 days. Story writing sometimes doesn't require any literary techniques, and probably the only thing you need is your imagination and passion. I have the feeling that the words are floating in my brain and I want to write them out, like Maya Angelou said"There is not agony than bearing an untold story inside you"(Angelou).
Blog post 4
9 Days out of 30-day challenge: failure strikes me
You probably have guessed what happened when you saw the title.Although I did not want to admit, I failed yesterday. Until now, I just realized that I didn’t write my story yesterday because I was too excited to watch “Running Man”,which is a popular TV show, and forgot about the whole thing about challenge.
Yesterday was Friday, and I really hate Friday, and if you ask why, there are millions of reasons. First, “I DON’T HAVE FREE PERIOD!!!” I need to shout it out loud. Friday is the most tiring day of the week and I have to work from the morning to the end of academic day. Second, I have second lunch, which makes me starving for quite a while after tiring classes. Third, I have golf practice after school; after “I DON’T HAVE FREE PERIOD” thing. Thus, I feel like it is very normal for me to immerse in the TV show after academic day ends. However, all these things were excuses that I forgot to write my story. I always keep things in my reminder to remind me of doing them since I have a bad memory. Luckily, iPhone reminder is my best friend because it helps me to record things down and remind me to do it on time. Yet I forgot to put my 30-day challenge in it, so I was totally depressed.
You probably have guessed what happened when you saw the title.Although I did not want to admit, I failed yesterday. Until now, I just realized that I didn’t write my story yesterday because I was too excited to watch “Running Man”,which is a popular TV show, and forgot about the whole thing about challenge.
Yesterday was Friday, and I really hate Friday, and if you ask why, there are millions of reasons. First, “I DON’T HAVE FREE PERIOD!!!” I need to shout it out loud. Friday is the most tiring day of the week and I have to work from the morning to the end of academic day. Second, I have second lunch, which makes me starving for quite a while after tiring classes. Third, I have golf practice after school; after “I DON’T HAVE FREE PERIOD” thing. Thus, I feel like it is very normal for me to immerse in the TV show after academic day ends. However, all these things were excuses that I forgot to write my story. I always keep things in my reminder to remind me of doing them since I have a bad memory. Luckily, iPhone reminder is my best friend because it helps me to record things down and remind me to do it on time. Yet I forgot to put my 30-day challenge in it, so I was totally depressed.
The good news was that I have accomplished writing a new story,and I made amends for my failure in challenge. The story was about an innocent witch, who was accused of abusing people. “Once upon a time, there was a witch.” In my last blog, I said that the reason I wanted to use “Once upon a time” as my beginning, owing to the fact that I thought it gives the readers a sense of mystery. It was a classic beginning after all, which was used thousands of times by Andersen. My inspiration for this story was from the movie Season Of The Witch, and the movie was about a witch who people all believe she was innocent, but she wasn't. The pope locked her up because he thought the witch caused disasters and plagues.. And it turned out part of her was kind; another part of her was evil. Yet what I wrote was that the witch was actually threatened by the village head. In the end, Hades, who is the god of hell, set her free by killing the village head.
When I wrote it, I set the background information to be medieval time on purpose, because the medieval time was a time filled with mysteries, so it would have more connections to religion and witchcraft. But because of the word number restriction, I didn’t use many words to describe the setting. After times of practices, I began to think about the setting and background as important elements of a story. It was because setting and background information set the basic tone of the story, whether it was a scary one, or a happy one. I was happy that I found some important elements to a story-writing, and I will do my best to finish the rest of my 30-day challenge.
Although I failed writing a story for one day, it made me understand how to keep going on the rest of my challenges. This 30-day challenge is a long process, and most importantly, it requires my willpower to finish it. It is amazing to notice the improvement that I begin to know more about story writing, such as organizing, setting, imagining; all of these are very important for me to achieve not only in story writing, but also in writing and composition class as a whole. So I open my day counter, and 21 days to go!
Although I failed writing a story for one day, it made me understand how to keep going on the rest of my challenges. This 30-day challenge is a long process, and most importantly, it requires my willpower to finish it. It is amazing to notice the improvement that I begin to know more about story writing, such as organizing, setting, imagining; all of these are very important for me to achieve not only in story writing, but also in writing and composition class as a whole. So I open my day counter, and 21 days to go!
Blog Post 5
The last thing you should do in your life--give up
Have you stopped on halfway when you trying to have a perfect body shape? I have. Giving up halfway is my biggest weakness; I have given up halfway on playing guitar, on kickboxing, on swimming, on piano…and on many other things. However, I usually give up once I have achieved something. For example, I have played piano since I was four years old, but I haven’t played it for almost a year now. Even I play sometimes, I couldn’t remember most of the songs that I have played before because I didn't have any practices. This weakness is consuming me little by little in deed. Thanks to 30-day challenge, it kept pushing me to be persistent and finish my story every day, I can do better now in doing things. It also made me to realize that giving up would never lead me to success.People learned different things from 30-day challenge, but I picked this special view to be introspective of what I learned. I have talked about a lot of things in my blog including the use of imagination, the organization of stories, and creativity. Yet the biggest thing I learned from this challenge is persistence.
The first week of 30-day challenge was tough for me. I used a notecard to write my stories down, and my first story was a love story since I really didn’t know what to write to start my challenge. When I looked back, my first story was nonsense. Why? The reason is that it was not even a story. It talked about a story of a boy picking up stars from the sky for the girl (Jiang). That’s right. That’s the whole story was about. It wasn’t interesting, neither creative. But I made a 500-blog post about it. The next few days I made couple of stories like that and I was about to give up. I don’t remember exactly when, I just know that in the first week I failed, which means I didn’t write my story for a day. Most importantly, I knew that I should write a story that day but I didn’t do it, and I made amends the next day. It was such a failure to me; I didn’t expect that i gave up so fast. The first week of this 30-day challenge made me depressed, and it also made me disappointed at myself.
However, the next few weeks became better, but I didn’t avoid failing to write stories for a few days. Gladly, I made them up the next day. My brain was squeezing like sponges and struggling with making stories. I have thought about that I could just leave my work there and no one would know about it as long as I could put 500 words in my blog post, I would 't have to make something up. Yet it was literally the first time in my life that I didn’t give up. When people asked about my challenge, there was one word to describe “Hard”. It indeed was hard, and I kept looking for sources that I could use. In those few weeks, my brain cells were dying rapidly. Every time I sat in front of my table, and finally gloated that I have finished my homework. Suddenly, I realized that my everyday story awaited me for a long time and I sighed. Some people gave me some suggestions about my story writing, so I started to look up online about some ideas. In order to make my stories more interesting, I asked my friends to assign me some topics, so I could write about it. Surprising, it was even easier for me to write assigned topic.Amanda asked me to write about the tree outside VDP since the tree was really looking weird, and it reminded me of a Greek story that two lovers became a tree together, so I wrote a love story about it. Then I realized: as a matter of fact, I know there is something deep inside in my mind, I just needed a trigger to push me, and I had to keep going.
In the end, the last few days of 30-day challenge were much more easier for me. Although I have given up on many things half way, I found that passion was the thing that kept people moving. Why is that? In the last few days of 30-day challenge, I felt there was ideas rolling in my head, and I really wanted to express myself. Besides, I learned how to create interesting and appealing stories, which made me feel like I was good at it. After browsing so many stories, even Andersen’s fairy tales, I knew how to make up a story that could actually have deep meanings. For example I remembered a story that I created about time machine, which was very confusing. But I was glad that I could make a story that confuses people, and it was a very interesting story if you can have the opportunity to read it.Thus, my passion was like the wave, and I was the boat; passion pushed me to move forward.
Generally speaking, this 30-day challenge teaches me not to give up easily because you will never know what’s across the river, on the bank of success. It is not easy to stick on something and keep doing it, because many people are just passionate about one thing for a while, and when their passion goes away, they choose to give up. I believe I was part of that group of people as well, but after this challenge, I have more confidence in being persistent.
