Choi, Won-joon/Exercise2 (p.11)/Narrative Composition Tuesday 9-11 a.m.

My Past Experiences with Writing

What are your earliest memories related to writing?

I have my first memory about writing when I was the third grader in elementary school. After the endless semester, finally, summer vacation started. Every day, I hung around with my friends playing soccer, basketball and computer games. Unfortunately, my enjoyable party time flew away like an arrow. And then, at the last day of my summer vacation, I came up with my homework that had been completely forgotten; to keep a diary. The summer vacation was about forty days. I had to be accurate with the date and weather during the period, so I searched for weather forecast data. What is worse, I had to make up every day's story and some kind of feelings and impression from experiences. I don't know how but I managed to make it without sleeping. Maybe, I was afraid of my teacher quite a lot. All I remember is that it was totally horrible night fighting with sleepiness and racking my brain. However, that night was not only terribly challenging but somehow rewarding. I came to know that I am not that bad at creating stories. Although the diary was written in Korean, this is my earliest and most horrible memory I have about writing.

l  How do you feel about writing in your first language compared to writing in English?

Absolutely, there is a barrier to write in English. There are far more things to be considered whenever I write in English compared to Korean. Writing assignments in Korean language requires me to think about my personal opinion at a certain topic and to make an outline of the structure that can effectively convey my ideas. Most of the time, I also find this process not that simple but, after that, I can complete the article in no time. However, for English writing assignments, I have more problems to struggle with; the level of English words I use, awkward expressions, and tone problems. Because of these problems, I happen to spend a lot of time looking up some words in the dictionary or searching for Google. It is quite a burden that I want to be free from.

l  When you are writing a paper for a class, do you try to please yourself or the teacher?

I didn't have any ideas about for whom I was writing. But now that I think about it, I think am accustomed to writing to please the teacher. In the middle school and high school, I studied listening and reading English a lot, while English writing has never been the main subject. And I believe it might be the case of many other Korean students who have not been to any other countries for studying English. Thus, it doesn't matter to say that I started English writing in my twenties. I learned it through taking TOEFL classes in PAGODA and other writing classes in HUFS. In those classes, especially in PAGODA, I was programmed to write based on the standardized structure, so called template; Even the order of sentences was arranged in one introduction paragraph, three body paragraphs and one conclusion paragraph with main ideas and supporting details in each. Being out of that template, my writings were pointed out by teachers. For that reason, I tried not to be out of that outline rather than concentrating to write down what I really wanted to say. That is, I wrote for teachers, not for me. Now I think that it is not that desirable and trying to write free from all those regulations.