Chen
NSCI-105
09/22/2011
Issue Kai in Biology
Reflection
Welcome to my COMM-102 Portfolio. My name is Kai Chen. I am currently studying
Business Administration major at the University of Charleston. My career goal is to become a
Professional Analyst in the financial industry.
Writing in English has been a difficult process for me. I used to struggle with writing a
300 word paper before, so I experienced a lot of problems when taking my biology course and
completing my COMM-102 portfolio this semester. However, when I overcame those problems,
I felt like my English writing skills improved a great deal.
The COMM-102 class had very strict requirements in terms of format, references, and
content. This is also the first time I wrote the lab report essay. The lab report required a logical
structure and I needed a logical structure when recording the lab experiment and finding the
results to support the hypothesis. In the beginning this was difficult and I made a lot of mistakes.
My first draft of a lab report had a huge discrepancy in one requirement, not only write in terms
of the content, but I was also confused by the APA format. Finally, I understood that I needed to
use the references along with my own words and not just copy them. However, a positive aspect
of this was that I learned the academic requirement of high-level writing.
The essays in COMM-102 were very different from the COMM-101 essays. Firstly, the
topics represented in the COMM-101 were completely different to those in COMM-102. In
COMM-102, the topics were far more vast and controversial. The second difference was the
COMM-102 class required more words for the papers. This difference forced my writing habit to
change. I used to write essays without any preparation, because I did not need to prepare too
much under the COMM-101 requirement. In the COMM-102 class, I started to learn how to
write summary a before I started writing. This change really brought me a lot of benefits, and
writing an essay does not seem as challenging any longer. So this was another advantage that I
learned from the COMM-102 class.
I had also encountered some troubles in finding references. English is my second
language, so sometimes I could hardly understand the professional articles, especially when
writing a biology related essay. Therefore, when I had trouble reading English articles, I just
searched for the Chinese version of this article and it helped me understand the references better.
My strengths throughout this course were definitely realized at the end. The first
improvement was writing skills. Because English is my second language, so I used to write
English sentences in the Chinese formation. Finally, after a great deal of practice I fixed this
problem by completing my COMM101 and 102 portfolios with the help of communications
consultants in the CRC and from instructors. Another strength of mine was the ability to
research. It used to be very difficult to find references because I was confused by the content
written in English. Therefore I tried to find some relative references in Chinese and let myself
understand the meanings first. After that I could use English references better. My weaknesses
were definitely centered on my difficulty in understanding various grammatical rules. I tried to
overcome this by visiting the Communications Resource Center and re-drafting my work. That
really helped me a lot.
In my first semester at UC, I was confused as to why should I have to take writing classes
which were totally unrelated to my major. But now I have benefited a lot from the writing
classes. I have bettered my writing skills and it has also helped me prepare for my future career
practices, which will undoubtedly include some form of writing.
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