Xiaomeng Wang
704 Fifth Street
Bowling Green, Ohio43402
e-mail:wxiaom@bgsu.edu
April 28, 2012
Kimberly Spallinger
ESOL Program Director
Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, Ohio 43303-0001
Dear Kimberly Spallinger,
In the second semester of the 2011/2012 academic year, Jason Andrew Clevenger provided me ten individual tutorials about academic and professional writing, which was one hour per tutorial and 10 hours in total. In these tutorials, I completed a fifteen pages ethical paper and also learned much grammar knowledge.
With the help of Mr. Clevenger, my writing skills have been improved significantly in three aspects, grammar, structure and effectiveness of communication. In the beginning of this semester, I have big problem in these three areas. As to the grammar, choosing the wrong verb tense and lacking articles were the most common grammar errors I had. Mr. Clevenger spent two hours to introduce the rules of verb tense and the use of article. By now, I can select the most suitable verb tense in my article and also figure out whether I need an article in a specific situation or not. As to the structure, I seldom used transition between both sentences and paragraphs. Now, besides having suitable transition, I have theme sentence in every paragraph and also use enough evidence to support my opinion. Additionally, my article couldn’t communicate effectively before this semester. I was used to writing long sentence and tried to put all my ideas in one sentence, so the sentence was difficult to understand. Now I pay attention to the use of conjunction and organized the ideas logically in sentences. Therefore, after the tutorials, my writing skills have been improved significantly.
In the future, I also need to improve the effectiveness of communication of my article. Although my article is understandable, I still need to focus on whether it can express my ideas in the most effective and efficient way. To achieve this goal, I firstly need to learn the communication method of native speakers. I subscribed to The Wall Street Journal, and read the news every day. Through the reading, I not only can know what is happening in the business word but also learn how to communicate effectively in business world.
The article posted in this blog is the one Mr. Clevenger and I reviewed in this semester. I modified it three times. Therefore, I think that article in the portfolio show that I am capable of writing academic essays in English.
Sincerely,
Xiaomeng Wang
704 Fifth Street
Bowling Green, Ohio43402