The process of writing

The Process of Writing: Breakthrough, Frustration, and the Fruit

 

              This class was extremely interesting, because I could feel many differences from the Japanese literature classes that I was taking in my home university. Reading, writing, and discussions, all of them were done in English and of course it was a little challenging to catch up with classes. However, each of them was so stimulus that I could experience not only frustration but also many breakthroughs and the fruits.

              My first breakthrough was that I came to feel 500 words writing as not so challenging. To be honest, at first I thought I couldn’t write such an amount of word for each reading, so I did not try it. Furthermore, my first reading response has a complicated history. Actually, at first I wrote it in Japanese and then I translated it into English. Of course, it took much time and made me exhausted. But as I tried some pieces, I gradually got accustomed to write 500 words. For example, I realized the same method that I used in Japan when I wrote reading response can be applied to also English books. I made a rule to mark the sentence that attracted my attention so that I can start writing about that point smoothly. And of course, I ceased to write it in Japanese. The second breakthrough was that I came to be able to think in English to some extent. At first I was always consult my dictionary when I could not think of the vocabulary. At that time I unconsciously created Japanese sentences in my head and tried to translate them into English. But as you know Japanese and English are far different languages, so most of Japanese sentences cannot be translated into English in the precisely same meaning. That is why I stack to write in almost every sentence and looked for Japanese meaning of the English words. However, one day I realized I was not using a dictionary so much. My writing process was changed from thinking in Japanese to thinking in English. I came to think what I could write within my English vocabulary from the beginning. This notion made my study much more efficient and even my speaking ability got positive influences. These two breakthroughs should not have happened if I had not taken this class, so I really appreciate this class.

              However, of course there were some frustrating moments. First is that while I was writing, I was not sure of my grammar being correct. I have been studying English for many years but still I can make many mistakes unconsciously. In addition, even if it is grammatically correct, some expressions will sound unnatural for native speakers. So, I always had to think if my English would make sense for other people. But, languages never improve without trying, so this was precious experiences. Second is that reading costed too much time. Writing seems to get easier relatively, but still reading takes much time. Especially, I did not know many non-academic words like cooking instruments or ingredients, because I didn’t see them in entrance exams in Japan. Of course, I could skip them but we were reading books about food so if I skip too many words of food, the context often came to make no sense. But, struggling with new vocabulary directly broadened my horizon so it was worth to tackle.

              As I mentioned, this class bigly contributed to my English ability. But this class enlightened me not only in linguistic aspects. First, I could realize there were many types of essays even focusing the same theme, food. For example, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner and The Omnivore’s Dilemma were totally different. The former was a memoir so I could enjoy how the girl changed along with story line, her complicated feeling of her identity and how and to what extent food was related to her identity. On the other hand, in the latter I could enjoy the journalistic aspects. The author told us the secret of our food industry and made us surprised. Also, through introducing the reality of food industry, he allowed me to meet the simple question, “What do I eat as usual?” Thus, the letter piece gave me new notions. Both of them were focusing on food, but the contents were very different. I realized over again that though it was easy to say “writer”, but actually that occupation has many ways of expressing their theme, and this diversity seemed very interesting. Second, through this class I realized the joy of journalism again. Actually, I was a little inclined to thought that journalism should focus on something political. But this class reminded me of natural attractions of reading and writing. I came to think that maybe the most interesting point of journalism is that it allows me to explore the world that I did not know. Through reading various books, I can experience many food and place that is difficult to eat and visit actually. Of course, political journals also give me information on politics that is difficult to know in a usual life, but the interesting work cannot be limited on only that area. Moreover, it is understandable that reading can satisfy my curiosity but it was really astonishing that even writing could broaden my horizon. Writing a memoir let me remember the precious feeling in Childhood, writing a restaurant review gave me new view points on seeing restaurants so that I could think about backgrounds of them, and writing an essay on perfect meal made me face with a real fact that we are too embedded in our food industry. This class offered me wonderful opportunity to look at journalism from many fresh aspect, what is more, in English.