Summary of the first month

I got a lot of knowledge during my first month in the U.S., I learned a lot of things, especially English. Not only I learned English from daily life, but also I improved it from ESL class. During the time learning the first Unit, academic writing become more familiar to me than before. This was not the first time that I wrote a diagnostic essay, but this was the first time that I wrote drafts for a diagnostic essay. When I compare my first and last drafts, I am very happy and proud of myself. All the differences between those two drafts are signs of my improvement.

  The most important knowledge that I learned from this unit is not about how to write a good essay, but is about plagiarism. In China, we do not pay so much attention about using other’s ideas or copying other’s words. But in this month, I realized the seriousness and the dangerousness about plagiarism. I didn’t know that I will be expel of the university if I use other’s idea. I used to read others work in China to find inspiration, but now I know that the serious and dangerous consequence, and I won’t do that again.

If I can improve more about my essay, I think I would work harder with punctuation and connecting words. I always write one sentence after one without connecting words and ending with an “.”. If I can change this problem, I think I can write beautiful essays.

  I think I still have some difficulty with coherence and cohesive. I often confuse with those two things. It is difficult for me to understand what a long and full of difficult words sentence’s meaning and then summarize it, especially for me, a person witch English is not my born language.

  I think what I learned from ESL classes is very useful for my future writing. All I learn in this class may apply to not only my major, this can be applied to all subjects. I will benefit from this class for all my life.