Writing center

Yichen.Li

English II IS

Jennifer Guarino

12.14. 2015

This is not the first time I met Ms. Swift. Because I have writing class, and my writing teacher told me that I needed to find Ms. Swift to revise my paper.  Last time, she gave me the advice about how I can revise my paper. She said that I wanted to tell more things to readers, but my english writing skill was not good. My sentence would always make the readers confused about what did I want to say.  And this time before I went to the writing center, I read my paper twice times, because I did not want to Ms. Swift be disappointed, and I was not a person who wanted to do the wrong things twice time. So I asked my roommate to read my diary, and then asked him that can he understand my thought clearly. When my roommate said it is OK, then I went to Writing center to find Ms. Swift. 

She did not read all my diary, she just read my first and second paragraph, and then she said I am glad that your writing skill became better, and your sentences are more clear. I am happy to see that. But there’s one more thing you should figure out. I think your english teacher may tell you. It’s called the comma splice. See your first and second sentence, you use many comma in it, but we know that we use comma when we think next sentence must have some connections with last sentence. If you read carefully about your sentences. You would notice that there’s not enough connections between each two sentences, so at this time which means you need to use period to end this sentence and to begin a new sentence. And your diary is not vivid, even thoughI can understand why are you trying to say. But your diary does not have a point to attract others. Why they want to continue to read your diary, because of interests. Your diary must have some vivid details. “But this is not only your fault, many foreign speakers have this problem.” She said to me.  Then I asked her a question about grammar, “ Why we say go back to dorm, and we have to say go back home. Why there’s no to in the latter sentence. Does the latter sentence have any special part?” She answered:” Well, there’s no special part in it, but I am glad that you have this question. For this question, my answer is that it is just an habit when we use it. Because native speakers always say it, so they would not be strange about it, but you are a foreign speaker. You need to learn everything from the native speakers. If you have your free time, you could read a magazine. It’s called National Geographic, there are many beautiful pictures in this magazine, but your goal that read this book is not seeing the beautiful scenes. You need to see the explanations that are next to the pictures. After you read their explanations, and then you can try to write your own story about that scenes. When you finish your story, you can compare your story to their explanations. You could see why their explanations are better than yours. It’s not only the grammar or lack of words. It shows how they use english to describe things. One magazine you can watch for one month, it is useful in order to improve your writing skill.