The Person Who Changes My Perception About Writing
Alvinston anak Henry Stephen Ms Bobbi Olsen ENGL 150-Writing: Rhetoric The Person who Changes My Perception about Writing Writing is one of the medium that people use to communicate and express their ideas to other people.
It has already been used since prehistoric time even though it is just through drawing but it has helped human to understand what has happened during that time and slowly after billions of years we have advanced to this globalized world that enable us to write in many different type of language and present our writing. Nowadays, through writing alone we can earn money.For example, Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling. In just a blink of an eye she became millionaire through her fiction book which has attracted people regardless their age. I learned how to write when I was in kindergarten or pre-school.
That time I was around four years old. Everything is so mysterious to me because I was forced to learn a new language that is English. As for me, English is my third language. The process of learning English is really annoying and difficult as I have to memorize and understand the meaning of each word. Moreover, the grammar makes it worse.That time, my brain only can focus on playing and joking around with my childhood friends. No one would care about the importance of writing when they were still a child.
That goes the same for me. Luckily at home I have my parents and elder brother that help me with any task that is given by the teacher. Each of them has their own positive impact on my writing. But the person that has the biggest influence on my writing is my English teacher when I was in my primary school. I used to address her as Sister Wee. That is what everyone called her since she is a nun.She is a typical Chinese that have that pairs of famous small Chinese-looking eyes.
She taught me English for six years since I was seven until twelve years old. Along that period of time, I have countless of unforgettable memory with her. Sister Wee was forty plus years old when I first met her. She is as fierce as the tiger even though she looked like an angel with her silky white nun habit. Even the car that she drove is white! I guess it is a Chevrolet coupe small model and I used to name it ‘The Unicorn’ because it has one huge antenna attached on the side of its hood.One funny thing about her is that she wears a pair of big spectacles that makes her looked like an old grandma and a nerd which is a hilarious scene for me every day. Her voice when she screams really can break glass into million pieces.
The frequency is a bit high compared to an average person when they screamed. But that is good criteria as a teacher that as it makes me more alert in the class as I tend to get sleepy in the class. She was the one that taught me more in depth about writing.Without her guidance I would not be able to write a good essay because through her I learned how to construct a paragraph, what kind of information that I should include in my paragraph and many other knowledge on writing that have been programmed and installed automatically in my brain throughout the years. I really enjoyed the moment when she entered the class and started to speak to the students. Because she was taught by some British nun when she was small, she had that British slang with her. Her strong and thick British accent is the reason why I enjoyed the class.
Even sometimes my classmates and I try to imitate the way she speaks. That’s the funniest part since speaking in British accent need time to practice and we tend to make our conversation sounded so wrong. It just sounded like a dog trying to speak to a cat. But, imitating another person action is one of the ways how humans learned a new skill. It is so funny remembering the good old days. She was always into literature. Almost every day during class time she will read out some poem in which I always considered a waste of time as all my classmates tends to get sleepy hearing that unrecognized, complicated and meaningless sentences.
Just imagine how a child that is around seven years old can understand such a well-written poem by the infamous William Shakespeare. At that time I hardly can grasp the meaning of the sentence that is being used in poetry, but I know that the writer must be a really remarkable person especially in linguistic as they know how to manipulate and use words differently in their writing. The way how they wrote amazed me even until today. Through that method, she had unconsciously provoked my writing instinct and interest that has been buried and locked within myself.The only thing that I really hate about is the punishment that she gives to students. Every time the students make simple mistakes on grammar or spelling she will pinch their stomach, pull their ears or can them with ‘Rotan’. ‘Rotan’ is a type of climbing palms species that is so durable and elastic that always being used by teacher in my country to punish students.
Even I not excluded to get canned by her ‘Rotan’. Even though punishment is made to act as a reminder and to discipline a person but I really don’t agree using brutal force and physical torture will do any good.As a child, being punished really causes psychological effect on me. It makes me really afraid to study under her because always being haunted by the punishment that she will give if I accidently make any mistake in my writing. Despite all that, I still appreciate her guidance as she had taught me so much basic skills that I need to know about writing in English. That is why she is the person that had the most impact and influence on my writing. Her strictness in class is one of the main key points that I would say really had large impact on my writing.
I always try to prevent making any stupid mistakes especially on grammar and spelling in my writing to avoid the punishment. I never thought in the end it will produce such a wonderful result on the way how I wrote and expressed my ideas in my writing. She had helped me on how to develop my ideas each time I going to write an essay. That is really crucial as every essay must have a topic sentence and it must be clear so that the reader can know what the writer is writing about. Sister Wee also has makes me love reading. Since small, I extremely hate reading.I always run away every time my parents ask me to sit down and do some reading.
But after I entered her class, I found that reading is important because it will help me to improve my grammar and vocabulary. She advised me to read some simple story book and slowly advance to next level. One month after that, I ended up reading a newspaper instead of simple story books. That was a shock event even for me because that time I was only a playful seven years old kid that can perfectly read and pronounce each and every word in the newspaper without making any mistake.Reading has remarkably helped me lot on improving my writing. This is how I improved greatly on my grammar and vocabulary. By reading books, we will unconsciously getting used to the correct way of writing a sentence and we will tend to write in the same manner accordingly to the memory that we had on our reading.
Every time I encounter problem on my reading material, I always consulted her and ask about her advice. Other than that, every time I get my assessment paper back after she has graded it, I will surely read all the comment that she wrote about my essay and try o think about my mistakes and what should I do in order to improve my writing. Sometimes, she even talked to me individually about my writing and explains to me more in depth on what I should do to make my essay better and interesting to read by the readers. The way how she spoke and wrote really shows and proved that she had all the criteria that an English teacher should possessed. That is why I always considered her as my icon. One of her meaningful words that until today I still remembered, “Writing is the most powerful form of communication that we have in this world.We can do a lot of things with our writing.
” Now, I really agreed to what she had said back then. It does make sense because writing helps us to communicate with deaf and dumb people. Other than that, writing also one of the tools that nationalist use to provoke nationalism. Just imagine with words alone nationalist can unify all the citizens that comes from different ethnics and religion to fight for independence of their country. Even to the extent of provoking a war! It has never come across my mind that writing has that much of power.Now, the knowledge and ability that I have on writing is basically all being gained from he. She is now almost reaching sixty years old.
She currently lives in the convent about one hour drive from my house. I did manage to visit her before I came to United States to further my study. She was a bit shocked when out of a sudden one of her naughty student came and visited her. I chatted with her for few hours about my life and what I have been through all these years. She was really interested looking on how I have been grown up from a naughty boy into a young man.Last piece of advice she gave to me, “You really make me feel proud as a teacher and don’t ever forget to go to church and pray when you are in difficulty because God is always here with us. ” Droplets of tears flows down on my cheek when I walked out of the convent while trying to embrace the advice she had given to me.
Nowadays I truly thanked her for all her endless guidance and teaching during my process of learning English. Without her teaching, I would not be able to go this far and writing an essay would be a troublesome task for me.
