Saturday, September 14, 2013

Jungha Lee/week2 assignment/Tue5-6 1pm

 LEE JUNG HA

 

1. Write about a pleasant experience you have had with writing. How did this experience affect your attitude toward writing?

 When I was an elementary school student, school held some writing contests that dealt with various topics that ask student's thinking about public things, for example, 'Unification of South and North Korea', 'The way to save water/electricity', 'How we can conserve our green nature', etc. I had to participate in most of those events and fortunately, I got many prizes. I became confident in my writing. Although those events were obligatory, I quite enjoyed writing much more than now. Furthermore, my mother is a teacher who teaches Korean to students in school. She trained me from childhood regarding to proper use of speaking and writing Korean. I think that effected me greatly when I wrote some text for contests. She was the person who taught me a concept of 'revising' for the first time and gave many advices when preparing contests. At that time, I enjoyed writing.

2. How do you feel about writing in your first language compared to writing in English?

 The word order of Korean is different from that of English. And even with same connotation, there are so many different expressions in Korean and English. English has a number of synonyms or words that have slightly different meaning. For instance, there are hundreds of vocabularies that express 'laugh', such as 'giggle', 'grin', chuckle'. As I'm not familiar with that nuance, I'm often complicated when I finds words for Korean replacement on dictionary. Complication become a feeling scared with thinking of possibility that reader may not be able to understand my writing. It leads me to make diffuse sentences and makes readers not to understand more.

3. Have you ever done any writing for yourself only - letters to friends or relatives, journals, diaries, poems? If so, explain how this writing was different from the writing you did for school assignments.

 I have been doing writing letters to my family and friends on special occasions especially in their birthday. I do not enjoy writing journal or diaries. So when concerning letters, writing is quite informal because I use slangs or words that only we can understand, even draws small things. All I have to do in informal writing is to send my message from the bottom my heart just for certain reader. I can write anything freely in personal writing. On the other hand, when I write for school assignment I try using formal words and complying with rules and forms that I have to obey. Essays are somewhat comfortable, but especially when writing about debatable topics, words I choose become more dry.

 

2 comments:

  1. Your family and friends get a nice present I think.
    Jina Park

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  2. I think Korean is a lot harder to differentiate between nuances, if you think about it.
    Young-Lee

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