Portfolio – Introduction

What did you usually think when a whole year passed already? My sophomore year nearly ends. By looking back to the works for the whole year in my writing class, I found that I did get lots of improving. I did lots of works over the year, and I could see many big assignments and projects throughout the year. Fortunately, it was clear that I became to a writer, who is much stronger than the one I has been at the start of my sophomore year. The improvement and success I could see supported that I didn’t waste my money and time on taking the writing class. In the writing class this year, I became a better writer by improving the writing efficiency, having less grammar mistakes, especially for comma splices, and having a better organization of my essays.

I would like to start to tell my improvements of my writing efficiency for the first. It seemed to be impossible if anybody told me that I should write a 500 words blog post three times each week. In the start of this year, I would say it’s even hard to write 500 words a week. That’s the amount I wrote in the English final exam last year. However, it became possible now. Even thought it was still hard to find topics to write, especially in the 30-day challenge blog posts, I could always finish the works that I have to do. And to say that proudly, I could always finish them really well. Thus, I understood that the most useful for me to write better was to have more practice. By the way, the experience this year gave me a great example to show me how could I improve.

On the other hand, the better using of grammar helped me a lot to be a stronger writer. Comma splice was a common mistake that I would made nearly in all the essays I have written at the start of the year. For example, in “The letter to Patrick”, I wrote, “Many couples left each other because of tons of reasons, sometimes they still love each other, but they left because of really small problems” (The Letter to Patrick). There weren’t any of the FANBOYs, the conjugations, between “reasons” and “sometimes”, so it was a comma splice. Since I liked to write long sentences so much, this sentence showed a common condition of all my works last year and the start of this year. However, because of the grammar lessons in writing class, the structure of sentences became much more clear than before. The lessons helped me not just on simple comma splices, but also clarified all the correct grammar using in writing a sentence. Even though I’m still not perfect, I would continue working on it.

After that, I have worked on the structure of each work I have to write a lot. Having a logical and clear organization might make students a neat essay to see. It was kind of hard for me to have a well-structured essay, but I tried a lot to improve this year. From my works in the vary beginning of the year, I could usually have a clear introduction and well organized body paragraphs. However, I never know what to write in a good conclusion. For instance, in “My writing life”, I just ended the whole blog post by a one-sentence conclusion: “So, that’s my writing life and I wish I would be improved when time passes this year” (my writing life). Maybe sometimes I might just repeat my thesis to conclude. Throughout the year, I new that people could write the conclusion with some thoughtful ideas or some expectation about the future that related to the thesis. Thus, for now, when the year ended, my conclusion has become more colorful and better structured. By the way, the well-organized essays have graced all my works.

Admittedly, I have been working so hard this year, and I can see my advance by reading all my blog posts from last September till now. The writing class seemed truly worthy for me to be a more reliable writer. Furthermore, I still have problems that needed to be fixed. I have to accumulate more vocabularies to eliminate the repeating of words; and I have to read more books to learn some more interesting ways to describe details. Even though I could never be perfect, I will always try my best to make me stronger and stronger. Believe me that people will see a better me even just after the summer break!

Citation:

"The Letter to Patrick." Cherrie's Blog. N.p., 30 Sept. 2014. Web. 26 May 2015.

"My Writing Life." Cherrie's Blog. N.p., 14 Sept. 2014. Web. 26 May 2015.

Body 2

On the other hand, the better using of grammar helped me a lot to be a stronger writer. Comma splice was a common mistake that I would made nearly in all the essays I have written at the start of the year. For example, in “The letter to Patrick”, I wrote, “Many couples left each other because of tons of reasons, sometimes they still love each other, but they left because of really small problems” (The Letter to Patrick). There weren’t any of the FANBOYs between “reasons” and “sometimes”, so it was a comma splice. Since I liked to write long sentences so much, this sentence showed a common condition of all my works last year and the start of this year. However, because of the grammar lessons in writing class, the structure of sentences became much more clear than before. The lessons helped me not just on simple comma splices, but also clarified all the correct grammar using in writing a sentence. Even though I’m still not perfect, I would continue working on it. 

a body paragraph

I would start to tell the improvement of my writing efficiency for the first. It seemed to be impossible if anybody told me that I should write a 500 words blog post three times each week. In the start of this year, I would say it’s even hard to write 500 words a week. That’s the amount I wrote in the English final exam last year. However, it became possible now. Even though it was still hard to find topics to write, especially in the 30-day challenge blog posts, I could always finish the works that I have to do. And to say that proudly, I could always finish them really well. Thus, I understood that the most useful way for me to write better was to have more practice. By the way, the experience this year gave me a great example to show me how I could improve.

Outline

1. Intro
2. Strength
3. Weakness
4. Piece 1 process
5. Piece 2 process
6. Piece 3
7. Conclusion

thesis

In the writing class this year, I became a better writer by improving the writing efficiency, having less grammar mistakes, and having a better organization of my essays.

Bone Chiller – Who is the killer?

The Spring Theatre came to students in Cheshire Academy last Thursday, and I went to see it as a required task in both my Writing and English class. Actually, I wasn’t that unhappy to be required to watch the play, I remembered the one this winter was so fun. This time, the theatre group brought us a thrilling one, Bone Chiller. In winter, “the 25 annual spelling bee” was fantastic and I still can remember most details of the show, so I looked for the coming up presenting of Bone Chiller for a while. After finishing it, I found the show was fun. I would like to see the plays like this for next year if it’s possible.

13 people gathered together for fixing the strange will that Josiah Travers left for them. The will wasn’t normal that it was a rebus, which is a kind of puzzle that waited the others to fix. In the rebus, the 13 peoples found out it contained the information of where his money in and who was or were the people that killed him. Basing on the logical inference of Jerry, the thirteen people finally find out a killer between the 13 people. In the progress of inference, the butler, who usually been thought as the first people to doubt as the killer, died. And finally, after a heart-stopping progress, they defined the lawyer, Addie, and a “policeman” as the killer. Then, the whole play ended successfully.

As I have already said, I like the whole play, but it was a little bit confused. There are 13 characters, and all of them were main characters. When the teacher told me about the basic information of the play, I didn’t mark that as a big deal, but in the play, I quickly found that each of them have an important role. Thus, during the play, there were thousands of times that I used the dark like to check in my little sheet of introduction of the play to see who was the person on the stage. Fortunately, it helped me to fix my face blindness totally, and I even don’t have any problems with miss identifying during writing this blog.

Otherwise, the play was tremendous that each character was acting well. When I found that the cook was hanged in the closet, I was scared as the actors did. When I found that Addie, the lawyer might be the killer, I was thrilled as the actors did. My mind was moved with the characters on the stage. I was thought about who the killer was for the whole time, just like what everyone who seen the play might do. The inference was so brilliant that when I heard the one about the last Sunday of October, I even wanted to clap for the whole theatre group. They seemed like they made all the characters alive.

Admittedly, it was another excellent show that the school theatre group brought to the students. I wish too see some more great works next year! Also, I would like to appreciate and recommend the whole play for the others as well.

Final portfolio

The ones I would choose are:
1. The start of my 30 day challenge
2. Reading should be precious
3. An unexpected but understandable hero
4. Literature in movie version and book version
5. The ending but more than just an ending
For the final portfolio, I would like to add some details to the events I wrote. I might not focus too much on the plots of the book I had chose in the 30-day challenge. For example in the second one, I would add more about my expression and how I felt when I found the book was boring. And I would connect the event I had said and my feeling better. There were many grammar mistakes in these blog posts, so I would fix them. And I might delete a few things about the plot in the posts that told about some personal experiences. But in the posts that related to the plots and characters, I would tell more about my personal opinions. Also, I would make the structure of the posts more clear.

The ending but more than just an ending

I thought I would feel great when the 30-day challenge ends, but I didn’t. I thought I would feel so relaxed when I wouldn’t need to focus on the boring plots anymore, but I didn’t. I thought I would feel happy everyday when I wouldn’t need to rack my brain to find topics to write three times a week, but I didn’t. Actually, I found something had lost from my body when I went to check the book I read in the challenge, and it was finished; I found something was empty when I turned on my laptop and prepared to write a new blog, but there was nothing to write about; I felt bored by having nothing to do these nights, but I just automatically left that time period alone. Then I new that, the ending of this challenge wasn’t just an end, lots of new things, new challenges, might start soon.

In the 30 day challenge, I read two chapters of Emma, which was a classic written by Jane Austen. I have complained for thousands of times about how slow the plots went through and how boring were the characters in the book. There were only parties, balls and meetings in each house for those characters to spend their spare time all over the book. I have complained for thousands of times about how many things I had to do everyday. Even in my second post, I already started to complain, “How can you imagine that I have to read 2 chapters of Emma and there were a 500 words blog waiting for me?” after “my whole day of full of classes, the golf practice for more than an hour and the long and boring sit down dinner” (The Second Post). It was so hard to read and write in these days, and it seemed still hard even the 30-day challenged had already rang the bell of ending. However, I was so proud of myself that there wasn’t one second that I wanted to give up!

I would say that the blog posts drained my energy and time. They might not be the best works of the whole year in the writing class, but I’m sure that they were the ones I put all my efforts on. I still remembered each time I sat next to my laptop and thought about the topics that I could write painfully. It was funny that when I found something interesting in the book during the challenge, the first thing came up to my mind was how lucky I! If there were lots of events happened in a chapter, I would try to leave something for the next day. Actually, I seldom saw any chapters with more than one big event. There was a day when the challenges were half finished; the teacher asked me if I could fill the blogs with better ideas. It’s hard to forget that how graceful I was when she told me some possible topics of the blog. Thus, these blogs exerted my utmost effort; they were the result of my hard work, and it would prove my perseverance.

Well, I knew people would ask why I was always complaining about how exhausting and terrible the 30-day challenge was. However, that was the way I remembered things. Without any suffering, I could not have any improvement. I have said it was difficult, but I still finished the difficult task, that I thought I could never reach it before. I knew how I recognized and appreciate myself after the 30-day challenge. I have learned and earned lots of skills and knowledge in this simple challenge. It was the first time that I read a classic in English, which wasn’t my native language. By continuing reading the book every day, I have learned many kinds to write descriptions, details and foreshadowing. I couldn’t imagine how my writing skills improved in the everyday writings and trainings. It was a hard task for me to write 500 words before, but it doesn't matter now. The challenge helped me to know how important to keep doing one thing that the result of success seemed so sweet to collect.

Finally, the 30-day challenge on reading a book and writing blogs ended, maybe not perfectly, but at least joyfully and successfully. However, as what I have just said, it was only the challenge on reading a book, and it wasn’t the ending. People’s lives were always full of challenges, and I should keep working. By noticing the ending of my “dear reading tasks”, I truly should find some other fun, or maybe challengeable things to satisfy my mind, which accidently started to feel excited. Next time, I might try to cook different foods every day; I might go to weight room every day to lose weight; or I might try to write a novel for a challenge. My future is multiple, I can see the start of the new challenge already.

Citation:

“The Second Post." Cherrie's Blog. N.p., 14 Apr. 15. Web. 12 May 2015.

Blog post 11 - Literature in movie version and book version

As I finished the reading of Emma, I decided to watch the movie of Emma, which was established in 1996. I wanted to watch it since I first read Emma, but I didn’t want it spoiler the up coming plots. As I have already said, I had just found out who the hero of this book was at the start of this week. Thus, I restrained my curiosity and left the movie for the last. Then, I think in the movie, the plots, the emotions of characters, and all the details were showed perfectly. Actually, the movie helped me a lot to understand the book better.

The language in the book was kind of difficult, because Jane Austen, who lived hundreds of years before me, wrote it. Also, English isn’t my native language, so the old version of English would be even harder. Also, Emma was one of the last few works of Jane Austen. In my perspective, writing slower or writing more detailed might comfort her mind. I truly should apology for my disrespectful on this great writer, but that was the only way I could say why she made the plot so slow. However, after I have seen the movie, the problems were all solved. The movie only took about 2 hours and 10 minutes, but it showed everything appeared in the book. I can see people’s emotion easier from the movie by their facial expression.

In the movie, I finally found the entangle feeling that Emma had when she faced Jane. Actually I didn’t know why she was so mean to Jane and her aunts usually, and I think the author didn’t tell enough details about their relationship. However, in the movie, I knew that Emma was kind of jealous her. Jane’s aunt always couldn’t stop talking about how great Jane was and it made Emma felt jealous. The book was written in Emma’s perspective, even though it’s in the third person. Thus she wasn’t that reliable that we can really watch things from her sight, she was young, naïve and kind of granted with everything in her life. She wouldn’t tell all her feeling in the book, so I couldn’t know that happened. But in the movie, I could see her complex emotion in her face. I knew that something strange was just made Emma, Frank Churchill and Jane related from the movie. As a result, the movie version gave me a more profound impression of the whole story line.

On the other hand, the movie was so beautiful! It was truly beautiful! When I see the dance party, the ball, in the movie, I saw Emma and Mr. Knightley’s dance. It reminded me the dancing between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice; I always thought the dancing between young couples were so cute, although there haven’t been couples at that time. I can even see Mr. Knightley’s love to Emma from his eyes. In the movie, I saw lots of things showed his love, but I cannot find anything from the book. Overall, it was a splendid and perfect thing to see their dancing and communication.

Overall, my dear reading task was already finished, and I finally got the details and the complete plots and ideas of the book from the movie. The 30-day challenge helped me a lot. I wish I would always make a good job on everything that I would do.