Reflection 5

During the past few weeks, we were working on the pre-research portfolio and the process was long, hard, and time-consuming. Although the process was difficult, I still learned a lot of things. Before today, I never thought that a pre-research could use me so much time. Before, I never spent more than 1 days in one research, but now, I spent several days and nights on a pre-research! I could not imagine that!

  For me, the most tough and difficult part for me was choosing the topic. As a person with choice phobia, I always hesitated between several topics. I was interested in all of them but I did not know which one I should focus on. I had not decided which topic should I use until the last minute. At the beginning, I chose How to Prevent Harmful Algal Blooms as topic, then I did a lot of research on this, and I could not find too much information on google. However, I learned how to use university library database to do research. I did find a lot of research in school database after searching for a long period of time, but all the organizations cannot give me different solutions, and some of the organizations give me a lot of chemical things that I do not understand. So I decided to change my topic to How to Prevent Underage Drinking.

I have learned a lot in this chapter. It is pretty hard to find some good articles by myself, but after learning how to use school library database, I do not need to spend hours after hours on searching a good article. Also, by using the skills teaching in scanning and skimming, I can read much faster than before. This skills really help me with finding articles.

I cannot imagine how difficult will the next chapter will be because this chapter is just a pre-research for the next chapter. But I will not be panic or flurried. I will success in this class.

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.

I have been here in campus for 1 month already. Actually, the weather is not as great as Beijing, even though the air pollution is much more less than Beijing. The weather here can change too fast that I cannot even imagine. I always find out that it rains heavily outside after class and I did not bring my umbrella with me. After two times being like a drenched chicken, I always remember to take the umbrella with me. BUT this is not enough! Once the wind was so strong that my umbrella was broken by the wind, and once again, I was like a drenched chicken. In the following days, the weather become so cold that I did not even want to get out of my quilt in the morning. Then I decided to buy a coat to fight with the weather. Unfortunately, the weather is becoming warmer than before when at the day when my jack arrived! I do not know what I can do with the weather because it is so weird!! But the landscape is so beautiful that I took photos every days. I do not know what it will look like when it begin to snow. But I believe that it will become more beautiful than what I see now. Here are some of my picture and I hope you guys enjoy it!!! I took those picture with my phone, I believe that if I have a single lens reflex camera, the picture will be better. However, I do not have money to get one. I will keep posting my picture on this blog and I hope you guys can follow me in my Instagram where I put most of my picture on. My user name is wan_ttt and also, you can follow my facebook or twitter, but I don’t use them often.