cover letter

To Whom It May Concern:

I’m really glad that you take your precious time to read my writing portfolio. First, I would like to introduce myself to you. I am a sophomore in Fudan University and major in Accounting. I am an optimistic girl, loving to make friends with others and always willing to help those who are in trouble.

This semester, I entered a class called “Advanced Writing”. The course first attracted my attention because it was taught by a foreign teacher. I had always thought that foreign teachers are for oral lessons, and can hardly imagine a foreigner teaching writing. Maybe it was because of this reason that I chose this course. Then I met Ron here. Ron is a typical American, with a pleasant voice and elegant deportment. It is Ron who first show us what is free writing, what is timed-writing, what is plot summary, and what is peer review. All these really brought me a lot of progress.

Free writing is to write whatever comes to your mind on a certain topic. When you are doing free writing, great emphasis should be put on the content rather than vocabulary and grammer. When nothing comes, just write down “Nothing comes to my mind and I have nothing to say at the moment”. This is a new form of writing for me. At first, I can only think of little and focus on how to structure my sentence perfect. That can hardly improve my writing level. As we do free writing again and again, I got to catch the point. While I am writing, I can think of more and write more.

Exchanging our own work with others and discussing on it is another way of writing that I had learned from this class. I have alwalys been focusing on my own writing, and was not willing to let others work on my articles. But through the peer review, I benefited a lot. When I finished my essay draft one, I found it hard to edit and revise it by myself. It was my partners that gave me really good advice, some of which were even out of my imagination, but were really good ones. Without their help, my revising process wouldn't be that smooth. And that was the way in which my essay was worked out.

We have read four stories this semester. The first story, The Necklace, written by Guy de Maupassant, tells a story about a beautiful but poor woman, Mathilde Loisel, who lost the necklace borrowed from her friend just to “decorate” herself. She worked hard for ten years in order to paid back the debt, but only to found out that the necklace she had lost were not worth that much. The second story, The Americanization of Shadrach Cohen, written by Bruno Lessing, tells a story about Shadrach Cohen, a typical Jewish who refused to be Americanized by his two sons. He managed his company successfully and won the respect of his two sons. The third story, Dead Men’s Path, wrtten by Chinua Achebe, tells a story about Michael Obi, who had tried his best to turn a backward school into a high-standard and beautiful one. But by closing the villagers’ ancestral footpath by force, all his dfforts were ruined. The last story, The Grass-Eaters, written by Krishnan Varma, tells a story about an Indian refugee, who lived in an unimaginable life but told about his life in a rather tender way.

We have also done timed-writing for three times. This form is some what like the “writing” part in tests. We are given a topic or title, 45 minutes, and have to worked out an article. I first considered 45 minutes as enough. But after I have actually done it, I found it not that easy. I always have much to say, and have to organize my sentence perfect, which takes me a lot of time. By timed-writing, I realized that I still have a lot to do in my English writing.

In my going-on process of learning English, I will continue to use the ways that Ron had taught us, to make my writing better and better.

Sincerely,

Anna Y

7.6.07 15:57