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Cloris Zhang

Dr. Warwick

WRIT 109ED

June 5 2024

My 109ED Story

As an international student whose native language is not English, I often feel unconfident

about my English writing skills. Throughout my past writing journey, this lack of confidence led

me to avoid starting an English writing, using this avoidance as a shield to mask my self-doubts.

Whenever I attempted to begin an English writing task, I often found myself getting distracted by

various other stuff as I prepared to begin writing, using this way to prolong the process of

starting. The first step of starting writing is the most challenging part for me. I used to believe

that there were plenty of other people or AI tools that could write things much better than me, so

I often wondered what is the purpose and meaning for me to struggle and write. However, my

perspective shifted through the journey of the 109 ED course, it made me realize that my

thoughts made up of my personal experiences and of my own stories thread in a line together to

contribute to the unique ideas I expressed on a paper, which are the essence of my writing. The

understanding shifted my focus away from tiny grammar mistakes and toward the significance of

expressing my ideas. Therefore, I became more confident on beginning writing and expressing

my thoughts through it without thinking too much.

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The teaching in 109 ED builds on my understanding through various activities, including

the free writing exercises at the beginning of each class, the brainstorming process before each

project, and also the readings that point out theoretical concepts about my previously contorted

thoughts. My teacher used some ways to help me shift my mindset to positive and let me first

believe in myself as a writer during the course instead of forcing an engagement. The free

writing activity was a new experience for me to have 5 minutes to clear my mind and think either

about the picture given or about things that happened around me, giving me a chance to write my

ideas freely. Different from other types of writing, free writing does not require me to write in a

formal language or with all-corrected grammar, therefore, it helped me not to be afraid of starting

a piece of writing. Since there were only 5 minutes, it forced me to stop negative self-talk since

there was no time for me to hesitate. Also, there was often a time for meditation before the free

writing, which made my ability to clear my mind to improve through the exercise. When the first

time I had a meditation practice, I did not truly deepen my mind, instead, I concerned about

many other things such as what to eat after class. But with having more classes of practicing, I

feel being more calm down during the process. I began to feel my body from my head to my

toes, and being relax. The activity gave me a chance to stop my busy schedule to think about

myself and look at tiny things happening around me. Stories and memories are constructed by

people, but we often did not notice them during a busy schedule. A stop inspires me to observe

my life and also myself, help construct and express my ideas.

Similarly, since I am always not sure about how to start with writing a big essay, the

brainstorming part assigned by the teacher greatly helped me to begin with an essay. Since I got

the idea that it is only brainstorming, I can easily begin to write my ideas without worrying about

the structure of a long essay. The teacher would give us several small questions about the prompt
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of the essay, which inspired me to write some pieces that helped with the final draft. This

assignment helped me step out of the hardest step of my writing journey. All of these small

activities taken in class helped me to start writing a piece without hesitation. The course made

me become more confident to write and express.

In “Shifting Academic Mindset in the Learning Partnership”, it defines the concept of

positive and negative mindsets while pointing out the importance and how to help student shift

their mindset to positive (Hammond). As Hammond points out, the real root of the problem is the

students’ self-doubt which leads to a negative academic mindset that makes students unwilling to

work harder. When I read this article in week 3, I realized that this mindset had appeared in me:

“It fits me since I sometimes give a subject up when I believe I cannot do it well before trying it”

(Week 3 Reflection) During my past journey of writing, I have a fixed mindset that tells myself

that I cannot write an English writing well since it is not my first language. With the internal

belief that I could not be successful, I was stuck on the idea and turned into a loop. I keep telling

myself that I cannot do it, and then I believe what I say and use reason to avoid the bad result it

brings. It seems like I got a shell from the self-talking and got a reason to escape from starting an

English writing. This idea also resonates with “attribution bias”, which “makes systematic errors

when trying to find the reasons for our behaviors” (Duncan). The idea shows that “people tend to

resist the truth and blame other factors using the power of narrative with conviction, which leads

to storytelling in lies every day and we all engage in daily fiction”. We may be misled by the

story we tell, and ignore the true reasons of the problem. I may stuck in the idea that I cannot

write an essay well because I might make grammar mistakes, and therefore ignore the problem

that I should take more time to explore my thoughts to write a better essay. The videos and

readings I learned in the course gave me a clearer sight of my previous behavior using concepts.
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By finding realizing my problem logically and theoretically, I will be more likely to stop being

influenced by a negative mindset in the future. When I am stuck on a topic of writing and find it

hard to begin writing since I feel that I cannot do it, after learning the concept, I stop negative

self-talk and discuss it with my friends or teachers or anyone who is expert on it to get some

advice and ideas. I should jump out of doubting myself, instead, I should find ways through

actions.

The course also uses the strategies of “help students connect with their current expertise

and competencies” to shift my mindset and improve my confidence toward writing (Hammond).

During Project 2 which is group work, the teacher first gave us a chance to write out our

preference of what we are good at and not good at before assigning the peers. As Hammond

points out, by having students state in writing and share with others their area of expertise, you

are helping stimulate those regions of the brain related to self-concept and competency”. By this

way, it gave us a sense of “get good” since we can do what we good at in the group and

therefore gain more confidence to do more. Also, there was a process of having a short talk with

the classmates, asking their questions either about their abilities or expressing our own abilities.

All of these are helping to access better collaboration and engagement of students in class.

Another key skill I learned from the course this term is how to revise my writing. During

my past revising process, I often felt afraid to delete too much of my content and mess up my

structure, the problem caused by my lack of confidence came up again. After watching the

videos of “How to Revise” and having plenty of revising practices during the projects in class, I

realized that the most important thing for a revision is to “kill your darlings”. A revision process

often does a lot of rewriting and making critical changes, where we can have new perspectives
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and new sentences, paragraphs, or pages during this process. This changed the way I approach

writing. As I reflect on Week 4, I always edit and check the grammar of my paper for the first

step, before revising the content and structure, since I believe checking the grammar is lighter

than rethinking the structure. “I learned that it might be a waste of time since I need to edit again

after the revision and the revising process might change the whole article” (Week 4 Reflection).

Therefore, revising before editing will be more efficient.

There is no perfect writing so what we can do is to make it better through self-review,

talk-to, or peer review. The course gave me opportunities to not only learn theoretical knowledge

about how to revise but also take it into practice. As I reflect, “By reading their essay and giving

their advice, I also learn from their project. There are some things that we can adopt in our

project. Therefore, I believe the peer review process is a really helpful process for both those

who giving the advice and those receiving the advice, especially if all of them are doing the same

task. Overall, last week’s assignments were really helpful for me to be a more mature writer”. We

have done plenty of pair reviews during this term. Every time I gave comments after reading

their essay, I would gain some new sights of ideas. As I pointed out in my Week 1 reflection, “

Writing things that can also contribute to someone else’s well-being or simply make them feel

your writing is interesting will make our writing more meaningful”. Although I did not begin

with a peer review process at the moment, I was ready to get the idea and meaning of a peer

review through readings that related to self-value. When it came to Week 5 when I actually doing

a peer review, I chose the comments that I thought were helpful for my future revision and added

them to my revision plan with specific steps of what I should do. This was a great chance for me

to rethink my essay and improve it. “Through this process, I learned the importance of pair

review because I can get a view of others that I might not think about by simply self-reviewingz’.
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Therefore, revising and giving others comments to help with their revising both help me become

a better writer.

Finally, the change in my attitude toward writing can also be shown when I writing this

109 ED story. I can obviously feel that it is easy for me to start telling my stories for the quarter

and be free to express my ideas. I stop hesitating and escaping, instead, I enjoy expressing and

shouting out all my ideas and changes. I stop worrying about things like grammar, language, or

any tiny mistakes, instead, I focus on the structure and idea of the story first. I realize that I

should first be confident in writing out, other things can help the revision and editing process to

improve.

I realize that I do not need to think too much before writing. Do not overlook and be

shocked by a big, long essay. Instead, begin with expressing ideas freely. It could first be without

a clear structure and definitely without all-corrected grammar. Then, revise it time by time to

make it closer to a complete essay. Do not be afraid to change for a whole page. It could be seen

as a process of improvement. Edit is always the last step to do. In this way, it would be more

efficient to write a good essay. Just start to do it and stop negative self-talking. This seems to be a

common problem for me of hesitating to start due to lack of confidence, not only shown in

writing but also in my academic studies struggles reflected in Project 1. As I mentioned in

Project 1, “Turning over the first page of a new book is the most difficult thing for me”. Thus,

when this course helped me adjust this mindset, its impacted more than just in my writing.
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Works Cited

“The Dark Side of Storytelling: Suzanne Duncan: Ted Institute.” YouTube, 12 Jan. 2016,

youtu.be/3SUIiF-ifIM. (Duncan)

Hammond, Zaretta. “Shifting Academic Mindset in the Learning Partnership”. Culturely

Responsive Teaching and The Brain.

“How to Revise: Study Hall Composition #5: ASU + Crash Course.” YouTube, 28 Apr. 2020,

youtu.be/b3v9UKKStqk.

Zhang, Cloris. Weekly Reflection.