ENG 095 Professor: Emily Foley Student: Yifei Wang Date: 2/1/2015 Read and Write as a skill Try to look back the first thing that we were doing in school. Read a book and write a journal was basically work we have done by day. But the strength that we earn from reading and writing helps a lot on academic. Even at this time with new technology, the weaknesses was enlarged. There are also opportunities we are good to deal with. At the beginning, reading is an extremely important skill. When I play as a reader, strengths are about understanding and organization. The most important one is the skill of understanding through what you read. As my experiences, it is such challenge to read something in English and understand it as well as in Chinese. The text has many unknown words, also it has long and complicated sentences. So, when you really read and understand it in English, you may find out the way to organize English text in English rather than translate to Chinese. So, the second parts of skill is organization. At this point, we have to organize several sentences to a strict paragraph, thus to make up an essay. It is pretty easy to learn the structure of writing from read. Things always have good or bad. There are also some of my weaknesses should be corrected as a reader. Sometimes, I tend to read fast and skip words. After a while, I realize it is a bad habit if I read a text. Actually, the vocabulary selection and figurative language are using a lot on a text book. When you read it carefully, it help you to improve writing a lot. But, there is no way to learn those benefits if you read roughly. Another weakness was I judge book by cover, I would like to read a book seems with more fun. Such as I have never actively learned a history book, because the cover always make me feel bored. If I turn to be a writer, writing is also a difficult skill which I have practiced since primary school. One of my strength as a writer is sentence structure. Firstly, my sentences never start with the same word or phrase. I think reader pays more attention if sentences are interesting, and that means using complex sentences, figurative skills, and appropriate connective. For example, in Chinese writing tests, most of points you could earn are from figurative language. It is the key that makes your essay dramatic. Otherwise, I am good at writing coming up with good ideas. It is like sometimes I am inspired by the smallest details, and spread it up to whole paragraph. As we know proof is one of important part on writing, there should be enough cases to prove what you want to tell about readers. However, there is a bad side for quickly come up with ideas as a writer. I have a very hard time to get the idea on the paper. Sitting down to do the actual work is what I struggle with. Like when I get up in the early morning, I might spend two hours to drink some coffee and getting warm to start writing. Nowadays, technologies not only occupy the way of human's entertainment, it also effects people to read and write. We use phone and computer more and more. Thus, there are online book store that we read on Ipad and laptop. Also, the way of traditional writing was changed, we put down the pen and paper to pick up a keyboard. Schools had submitted homework by soft copy. At this situation, we have to get into this new revolution and adapt it.