Cover Letter:My Tour in Academic Writing

       Writing is a very useful and effective tool to express one’s view and communicate with others. So I think it is important for me to learn it well and that’s the main reason that I chose to take Academic Writing Class.

       Although it is called a ‘class’, I would rather regard it as a tour in academic writing field. I feel really interesting during my traveling. Every time before we set out, we would have a ten minutes’ free writing. It is like a warm-up. Whatever we write, the only goal is to let us change into a writing state so that we could have better effect in the following ‘tour’. It also shows us one of the spirits of writing, as our teacher, Professor Ron Corio, said: ‘Just keep writing’. As before, I would always think a lot and could hardly put my pen on the paper. So it led to a bad cycle that the less I wrote, the poorer my writing skills became, and then I wrote even less. While after this class, I will never fear to write although my writing skill is still poor.

       After the free writing, Ron would lead us to a real writing travel. He would firstly review the former class and have an evaluation on it, and then he would give us new things. In the first five classes, we went through almost every corner of the world. We went to Louisiana to listen ‘The Story of an Hour’; we saw the necklace, which destroy a vane woman’s life in Paris; we witnessed the Americanization of an old man in New York; we tasted the tough life of the poor in Calcutta. Different tour give me different feeling and I gained a lot. I was attracted not only by the interesting story but also the fantastic sentenced the writers gave out. They taught me how to let a story vivid and how to give characters spirit. It really gave me great help on telling stories.

        As our main target is to improve academic writing skills, we have learned a lot about how to write an essay in the following classes. From plot summary to thesis statement, from finding evidence to writing drafts, we experienced the long term of writing an essay. Through this process, we have also had several peers reviewing which give me chance to exchange my ideas with my classmates and read their essays so that I can learn a lot from the others. Also Ron taught me many skills and gave me many advices on my writing. My progress could be obviously seen in my three drafts. In the first draft, I have only build up my main idea and the evidence was hardly illustrated. In the second draft, I wrote more in my own words but I thought it was still not enough. After the last class’s discussion with my peers and receiving the instructions from the book, I began my draft three. This time, I knew more about how to use the evidence in the passage richly. So I could express what I want to tell.

       To tell the truth, my weakness is the limitation of vocabulary, which can be easily seen in my sentences, and the lack of ability of expressing my viewpoint. Even though my ideas are profundity, the readers who have read my essay may not find out. Through this class, such ability has improved but it still needs to be enhanced. While in the other hand, I think the structure of my essay is clear and logical. I thought a lot about the structure before I set out to write. So what I need to do in the following time is to keep my logic and develop my expression.

       At last, I would like to show my deep thanks to Ron and all my classmates, who helped me a lot in my ‘tour’ of academic writing. Thank you!

22.6.07 15:31