I Can’t Write Papers Anymore
March 21st, 2011 | Categories: School | 8 CommentsI have not written any sort of essay, paper, or thesis since April 2010. To top that off, I have been (intensively) studying nothing but Mandarin Chinese since September. So, let’s imagine for a second what happened when I tried to write my term paper proposal for my only English class this semester, Chinese Media Studies.
If you guessed that it sucked, that’s a very, very kind guess.
I can’t seem to string together a coherent argument anymore. My sentences have become repetitive, identically structured, and lack the power of persuasion an argumentative research paper is meant to contain. A lot of this is probably because I’m simply out of practice at writing papers, but I think I’m also out of practice with using the English language in a formal context. Or in any context, really. Yesterday, it took a friend and I five minutes to come up with the correct English definition of the Chinese word “矛盾” (textbook definition is contradiction or contradictory, but I find a more accurate definition is conflict or conflicted). It wasn’t that we didn’t know how to use the word in Chinese, we just couldn’t think of how to explain the meaning in English!
Right now, I have a (very) rough term paper proposal written up. Every time I read it over in an attempt to fix the many things wrong with my writing, I cringe. I’m a communications major; writing is my passion. I’m good at it, dammit. But now my writing reads like English isn’t my native language. The writing in my proposal has a slight awkwardness and stilted feeling to it – and that has never, ever happened to me before, no matter what type of writing.
I guess it’s nice that my professor’s first language isn’t English, so maybe he’ll look kindly at my much-left-to-be-desired essay writing, at least for this proposal. But now I’m worried about how I’m going to cope with my classes senior year, when I’m taking the last couple course requirements for my comm major…
Tags: essays of doom
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Hi, I'm Manda. I'm a college student studying communications and languages. I like to read, shop, bake, and travel. I have a tendency to listen to my favorite songs on repeat for hours on end. Sometimes I catch myself thinking in a language other than English. 
Immersing yourself as you have I think it’s natural you’ll have lost a bit of fluency in English, hopefully you won’t be penalized for it.
On a positive note, although essay standards are different, this blog post reads well.
I used to have this happen when I was in French immersion in high school. Writing anything for English was always quite the challenge because you’d get so used to doing everything in French.
On the plus, I think this is a good sign for you since you had wanted to go abroad in the first place to learn the language. Clearly something’s working right, so yay there! ;D
I never thought that from living in a foreign country for a year, you’d be able to lose your ability to speak your native language. Guess it makes sense after all.
I wonder if writing repetitive sentences in Chinese has screwed with your English. (Not to say that your Chinese is not good, just that people learning a new language usually use repetitive sentence structures as part of practicing.) I’m sure that you can finish your essay and do well with enough revision. After all, your blog posts are still in coherent English that isn’t too casual.
Whoa, Mandarin, Cantonese, and other languages :O Which
country are you from? I speak Mandarin at home, and English in
school, I try to keep a balance, and yes, sometimes I do get essay
blocks in my mind. But I just keep writing, I don’t know why; I
guess my prof in school doesn’t accept excuses :P
I’m from the US – half-Chinese, half-American.
I feel like it’s really easy to get out of practice with formal writing, no matter what language you’re writing in. I’m so used to blogging and journaling that the other day I got an essay back and realized that I had used about twelve contractions in it. I know I know better than that, but it was easy to forget between last June, when I wrote my last English essay, and now.
[...] I am a good writer. While this blog doesn’t always make it evident, particularly in light of my year of intensive Chinese language study, I am a damn good writer. From analytical to creative to everything in between, writing is [...]
[...] Writing… my final paper for my media class.
The fact that this is the first paper I’ve written in an
entire year is a little worrying, because I am so rusty at both
writing papers and using the English language in a formal sense.
[...]