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Gulei Liu

Mr. Myers

ESL 1070

November 12, 2019

Reflective Essay Draft 1st

Learning how to write a Synthesis essay can help people better evaluate articles and collect

materials. That was the first time I write a synthesis essay for my English Composition class. I

am a Chinese student major in psychology, I could bring some new perspectives to my class

because I think critically, and I often think in special ways. The Synthesis Essay’s topic is about

Global Warming influence environments and human life through the living environment,

resources, diseases and so on. There are two articles be used in the Synthesis Essay, which

are Science Says: Arctic Not so Chill this Record Warm

Winter from https://www.moppenheim.tv/, and The Uninhabitable Earth wrote by David

Wallace-Wells, both them talking about what influences from global warming. The first article

talking about global warming has caused earth-shaking changes in the whole natural

environment, and there are many data and examples to support it. The second article talking

about global warming has caused massive melting of glaciers, rising sea level, extreme

temperature, decreased food production, increased diseases and easy transmission, weakened air

quality, war, economic decline, and death of many living things. If human beings do not

significantly reduce using the number of natural resources and the emission of pollutants, human

beings will lose their living environment. Before I read the articles, I knew that global warming
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is caused by the greenhouse effect and greenhouse gases, which are from all humans use things

that generate a lot of heat, even humans. I also know that global warming has caused the melting

of polar glaciers and the loss of homes for many living things. It has also caused the sea level to

rise and some low-lying areas will be flooded soon. Based on what I already know, I found that I

didn't use all the ideas that would better support my ideas, and I didn't use the ideas of the two

articles equally.

When I read the articles, I focused on the first and last sentences of each paragraph, which was

successful because I got the basic information I wanted, and where there was no intensive

reading was some examples and data, not the main idea. However, reading in English is a

challenge because students who are non-native speakers of English read articles with specialized

vocabulary and it is a problem to figure out the exact meaning of each sentence. After reading

some long articles, some ideas and data will create confusion. Because over a long period of

uninterrupted reading, some of the ideas that emerge in the middle, including its examples, are

lost or partially confused. This leads to more time spent rereading or searching. Therefore,

language and memory are my biggest challenges, but my successful strategy can help me solve

both challenges if I strengthen it more.

When I think about how I could use the articles I had, I compared the two articles and

successfully found their similarities and differences, so that I could have a good understanding of

what is the most common problem of global warming and analyze the unique problem. However

It is unsuccessfully got information from the first article, it was too short, and I didn't have much

information to use since most of the support was presented as data, so I couldn't find any specific

examples to cite in my article. In addition to the short article, there was challenging to make my
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article reliable, the second essay is a collection of examples, most of them are predictions rather

than actual events, although many of the arguments are convincing. These ideas are predictions

based on the current state of science, and we don't know if anything will change in the future, so

they may not be completely reliable. Comparing the two articles allowed me to find their

common problems, but the lack of information and unrealistic predictions would affect the

reliability of my articles.

When I was writing my synthesis essay, I was successful in linking some related problems

together, so I could list solutions that were specific to them based on similar problems.

Nonetheless, it was a challenge to write a new type of article for the first time. I had no idea how

to write this kind of article. I could only look at some examples or follow the outline given by the

teacher to finish it. When writing this kind of article, organizing language is a challenge. Because

I need to gather ideas from two different articles, it is difficult for me to make logical

connections between two ideas in this way of writing. This makes my writing stiff. Although I

can combine similar ideas in the article and get more development, the organizing ability of

language and my unfamiliarity with this type of article is a big challenge for me.

Fortunately, I clearly understand my shortcomings, the lack of language skills. Specifically, the

amount of words and reading is too small, so I can't read the article quickly and remember the

content clearly. And I learned that I wasn't going to use my limited resources to get things done.

I was thinking about what else I could get, not what I already got. Moreover, I am short of the

ability to analyze and integrate data. Some data that is too complex and intertwined will make

me confuse. For my writing skills, language is still my biggest problem. My language level is not
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up to a certain standard, which cannot express the vivid image of the article. Still, have to new

things fitness is not high, need some time to absorb new knowledge.

In conclusion, language is main challenge in this case, whether reading or writing, and it also

took me a lot of time to analyze the articles. Therefore, I will keep my successful strategies and

reinforce them and strengthen my English study. I need to recite more words, read more English

books, let my English level rise. I also want to develop more mathematical thinking, to be able to

get the most information from the existing data.