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Hanqi (Isaac) Shao

CWR1A, Section 23
May 9, 2019
My Path in College Writing R1A

As an international student who never had received systematic English writing training

except the standard five-paragraph SAT writing, I felt both excited and fear of taking College

Writing R1A. I was so nervous when being asked to write a letter to Professor Crisp to introduce

myself. Although she had assured us that we could write anything that we wanted to let her know

about us, I still could not help the feeling that I was asked to write an application essay. Looking

back this semester, I found that it was unnecessary because introducing myself was definitely not

the biggest challenge in the College Writing R1A class.

The first challenge I encountered in this college writing course was reading. I have been

through the test of SAT and TOEFL reading, however, I never thought that reading English

reading would be enjoyable like reading in my mother language. Reading English is a task for

me. Plus, because the amount of reading material in this college writing course was way more

than the SAT test, the task was only getting harder and harder. Furthermore, the requirement of

marking the keywords and main ideas with highlighters while reading had made reading even

more boring than before. Marking was an additional mission while I was trying to fight with the

great amount of English words I have never seen before. However, as I was getting used to

annotating while reading, the skeletons of passages started to form in my mind. Summarizing

argumentative texts became much easier than before. I am now able to identify key ideas in each

section of the text quicker than before. This habit has significantly improved my efficiency.

Besides, I also started to discover the beauty of these argumentative articles as Professor

Crisp led us to analyze Letter From Birmingham Jail written by Martin Luther King. I could

never feel the deep connection between my emotion and the words written in my mother
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language when I was reading in English, but I did feel something for this article. Through his

systematic analysis of Public Statement by eight clergymen, I realized every hypocritical lie that

the clergymen used to convince African American people to give up their nonviolence action.

But what Martin Luther King did was so much more than that: his sharp words striped off the

sweet promises of African American people getting their rights by the court given by the

clergymen, proving that African American people would never have the chance to achieve their

rights in a political system dominated by white people without taking actions that forced the

government to pay attention, refuting every accusation that trying to make him as the worst

enemy of the peaceful society, showing the public that the eight clergymen and the political

power stood with them were planning to pacify the anger of African American people with the

peaceful imagination instead of real action on eliminating discrimination. When Professor Crisp

guided us reading through the article, I felt that my anger was awaken by Martin Luther King’s

impressing logic and writing strategy, which was the first time that the English words touched

my heart so deeply. I stopped to resist English reading and turned to accept it as an entertainment

like I was reading in my mother language since then.

Writing was absolutely a more difficult challenge than reading in CWR1A. When

Professor asked us to write an analytical essay for The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place

In Nature written by David Suzuki, as you will see in my portfolio soon, I was at a loss because

writing an essay is not simply summarizing anymore. The keywords and main ideas that I

marked in the book could only help me with summarizing. However, analyzing was another task.

It was not what I feel about the passage, but how the writer made me feel like that and why the

strategy that the writer uses could make me feel that way. I kept thinking about my essay

following the instructions that Professor Crisp gave us -- what did the writer want to illustrate,
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how did the writer convey the idea, why was the idea important…….Sometimes I felt like that I

had an amazing universe for the essay while what I wrote was boring words repeating the main

idea. I wanted to run away from my draft with all the marks on it because I doubt whether I can

fix tons of problems in my essay as the drafting for the first time seemed like I had already tried

my best. However, I still need to fix them. I sat down in Moffit and read through the letter that

Professor Crisp wrote about my draft, calming myself down to forget my first essay, following

her suggestions and opening a blank new document, starting to redraft the whole essay. From

dust to down, I sat on the sofa, focusing on the revising heartlessly, treating my first draft

without any emotion but just a stranger who supposed to reshape it into a coherent essay. And I

did it when the sun raised upon the mountain, shining behind the Campanile. I conquered the fear

and hesitation to write and revise an analytical essay.

CWR1A brought me a lot of valuable experiences of both reading and writing. Although

the workload was heavy, the progress I made in college writing was significant. Now, I invite

you to check my achievement in CWR1A.