Oleksandr (Oleks Litus) Mrs Stockman ENGW 1111 First-Year Writing 4 September 2018

Story of the Ukrainian Student and his Essays

Hello Mrs. Stockman, I am glad to be placed in your class and excited about our course. I love some aspects of writing and hate others, but I will tell more about my path as a writer in the second paragraph. Firstly, I would like to introduce myself and say a little bit about my story. It should bring some light on why and how I am writing. My name is Oleks Litus, as you already might know. I was born and grew up in Kyiv, Ukraine. It is a fantastic place, and I can someday tell you more about it. My first language was Russian as I grew up in a Russian speaking family. However, all the classes in my school were in Ukrainian. As a result of such inconvenience, I became bilingual from early on. It was complicated, and as a kid, I used to mix up languages, which made lots of teachers and students laugh. It was embarrassing, and as a result, I got strong feelings about learning other languages, such as English or German. However, after my decision in 11th grade that I want to pursue my career in the United States, I started extensively learning English. It was hard, but I passed TOEFL with 94 points and went for two years into the boarding school in Worcester, MA. That is where my journey with essays began.

Back in Ukraine, creative writing was the only type of assignment we were given. In which you were asked to find a problem or an idea and discuss it in your paper. There was no concept of structured essays: no thesis, no roadmap, no stable paragraphs and no citations. Instead, it was only the problem and your thoughts with some conclusion in the end. As a result of such writing background, on my first day of school when I was asked to write the essay on the given topic, I was shocked and confused. My first grade turned out to be 59/100. I worked hard with my junior year American Literature teacher to figure out what essays are, how to write them, and most importantly why do we need them. I found the answers to the first two questions, nevertheless, to this day I do not know why all written communication between teacher and students needs to be in the form of an essay.

My teacher recommended me, and I joined our schools writing club. We wrote a couple of essays and analyzed them. I thought my writings were impressive; everyone else found them confusing. I asked peers for help, and we identified my main problems. They were: weird, unusual structure, bulky sentences with high complexity, low vocabulary, and inability to correctly use citations as a support for my thinking. To fix low vocabulary I started to read and watch movies in English, and slowly but steadily my language improved as I learned new words and phrases. Next, my friends showed me how to find and implement citations in my writing. Finally, the teacher tried to explain me five paragraph essay style and all the rules involved within. Simultaneously he was showing how sentence structure in Ukrainian and English is different and what seems to be a logical connection in one language might have no sense in the other. After two months of training, I got 71 out of 100 for my essay. I was happy, but it was not 100/100, so I still was unsatisfied. This time the main problem was in the structure of the piece. I tried to explain to my teacher that I do not think in the standard format: thesis - roadmap - first point, the second one and so on. Instead, I prefer to find the answer for the reader and myself while writing the essay. My process looks more like: problem/idea - general opinion and information on it - possible solution with downsides and upsides - a different (maybe radical) solution - and then the conclusion. In my essays, I show the complexity of the problem and describe our abilities to solve it, not the exact way to do it. He did not get it, and I did not find a better way, but to change my teacher.

My new teacher knew more about the European education system and described to me the difference in details. He did not try to push the American standard high student format into me. Instead, he suggested to write an essay the way I want it to be, but keep using citations and create some form of the structure. Additionally, to this, he gave an option to modify the topic of the essay so that I will be more interested in it. The new way worked out greatly. I got 91/100, and my only problem was grammar. I found my style of writing to be more effective as it gives the reader the ability to see the full picture instead of concentrating on one particular part of the problem. After that, I was continually improving my style and efficiency of the language. I fell in love with doing in-depth researches on the topic during my writing. The process gave my ability to understand the subject better, learn something new each time, and use citations effectively to support my ideas.

In our class, I expect to learn more writing techniques, improve my writing skills and better understand the reader of my texts. I believe it will be great to determine how the structure of the book and wording influences the reader, giving him a different perspective each time. Also, I find it fascinating to research the problems previously unknown to me and try to build my opinion while I am writing. Additionally, it would be great to have class discussions and learn more about how my peers think and write.