| Getting Ready to Succeed No matter how talented you are or how much you want to improve your writing in English, you won't get very far if you don't do what it takes to succeed. As we all know, it's easy to start things. It's a lot harder to finish. I have not been in your shoes. (That's an idiom that means I have not had your exact experience.) But I have a lot of experience at learning things and I also have a lot of experience watching students take this and other ESL classes. Many of these students are very nice. Many of them are very smart. But being nice and being smart are not what makes people succeed. (Wait a minute! Being nice helps! So does being smart! But the fact remains there are lots of nice, smart people out there who want to improve their English (and lots of other things) and still aren't doing it. So what does it take?) Here's what I recommend that you do if you want to succeed in this class: 1. Be patient. Learning takes time. Find a pace that feels good to you and stick to it. There is a fable (that's a story with a little lesson) that talks about this. Youcan read about it by clicking here. 2. Save all your work. Read it over. Try to see and reflect on your strengths and weaknesses. Pick an area that needs work and then focus on it. That might be articles or it might be the way you present your information. It doesn't matter. By focusing on thing at a time, you can make real changes in your writing as a whole. 3. If you have time, rewrite your work using my feedback and corrections as a guide. When you write correct English you actually create little pathways in your brain for that correct English. Using your hands to type or write will do this much more than reading correct English. 4. Use the resources provided and any other resources you know of or find. That means using the class website, the other websites listed there and the Write Share Project. All these things are there to help you. Working on your writing without using these resources is like entering a car race but refusing to put gas in your car or have a team of mechanics ready to help you change a tire or check your oil. 5. Read. Reading is to writing as listening is to talking. If you want some advice on reading, go to SOME ADVICE ON READING. 6. When you get tired, take a break. (You'll notice, I didn't say quit. I said break.) Breathe. Eat dinner. Talk to your friends - in whatever language you like. Remember that life is made up of all kinds of things and writing in English is just one of those things. Most importantly, YOU are the reason you are talking this class. Stay in touch with that. Remember why are you taking this course and what motivated you to do this in the first place. (It can be helpful to write up why you're talking this class and putting that up somewhere you can see it every day, on your bathroom mirror or the refrigerator.) 7. Get back in the saddle. (That's an idiom that means after falling off your horse, don't get too scared. Get back on your horse and try again.) In other words, don't let problems stop you. Problems are why we are here. Problems are our friends. Without problems, we would learn nothing! Make a friend of your problems and let them teach them why they are here. Figure them out! Make them dissapear! And then get some new ones! ;-) 8. In life and learning, there are plateaus. What are plateaus? They are the big mesas in the deserts of Southwestern United States. High, flat places where you can see forever. When you are on a plateau it feels like you can go no higher even if you want to. It can be pretty but it can also feel stuck and yucky. It might feel like you try and try but really never get anywhere. This is normal. This is how people integrate what they have already learned and get ready to make a leap. My aunt called it "bunching her muscles like a snake getting ready to strike." When you are on a plateau, relax. Know that you will not be there forever. While you are there, breathe deeply and enjoy the view. 9. Writing is hard work. Writing is different from talking. When we talk we often get immediate results. We get food, a kiss, a job, a green card. Writing can also bring us food, kisses, jobs and green cards but usually, not as fast. Writing is important. We live in a literate (writing based) society. Most people on the planet do. Without the freedom to express yourself in the written word, there is no real freedom in such a society. But writing is hard. It is hard for native speakers and it is hard for non-native speakers. There is a kind of loneliness to it. We can write with other people but mostly we write alone. It can be hard to keep writing. It can be hard to do it when no one is doing it with us and there is no one to tell us to keep doing it. But writing is strange. Writing can give us the world like talking can't. We can't talk to one million people. (Well, okay - we can - through the miracle of modern day video technology! But most of us don't have access to that technology.) But we can write to one million people. What's more, we can write to people not even born yet just like we can read the writing of people who died thousands of years ago. Writing can connect us to people in ways talking can't. Writing can take away our loneliness. Writing can connect. But to do that we have to push through the loneliness. We have to write even when it is hard, boring, lonely and scary. Push through. 10. Use the Write Share Project. The WSP is there not just so I can communicate more easily with the class as a whole but so you will feel less lonely, less isolated, less likely to quit. It is only as good as the students make it. If you don't use it, it's less good than if you did. Make it good. |