autobiography

One of the biggest challenges in my acquiring English academic writing was when I took a major course titled Research Practice in Academic Writing and English Language Learners. That was my second semester in the US. Writing a critical review of a research article for that course was practically my first time to write an academic paper at a graduate school in the US. I guess my challenges were two-fold: on the one hand, I was not familiar with what an academic paper is supposed to be like, and on the other hand, I felt that my command of English was not strong enough to reveal my voice. Not surprisingly, I got a bad grade on that critical review with brutal comments that actually hurt my feelings.

But at the end of the semester, I became confident about writing and enjoyed the delights of accomplishments because those brutal comments were the start of my learning, although I realized that after I finished the class. What turned hurting-emotions feedback into a constructive learning advice was the professor’s continued dedication throughout the semester. In the beginning I revised my drafts multiple times because I appreciated the teacher’s time and energy that she put into my work. I knew that it was pretty hard for her to give the sheer amount of feedback to each of the multiple drafts for one paper. Whenever I revised my draft, she allowed me to send it to her via email and sent each draft with her written feedback. Thanks to her, I was able to get a sense of how logical can be considered ‘logical,’ how developed can be counted as ‘fully developed,’ when I need citation, and how I can support my ideas and so on.

Working a piece of paper in a multiple-draft setting like that was a process of learning of what an academic paper is like in a given discourse community. Through a series of getting feedback and responding to them, I interacted with the teacher, who represented the academic discourse community. The more familiar I became, the more confident I felt when I voiced while writing.