My Portfolio Introduction



I come from Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei province. Now I am a junior student and major in Sociology. I like this subject for it asks and gives us hints to discover some interesting things behind social phenomenon. English of course is important for my major, because sociology originated from Europe and is booming both in Europe and America. Before went to Fudan University I had studied in Wuhan Foreign Languages School for six years. There I set out my first step of learning English and gradually gained progress. We didn’t have lessons specialized in English writing, but the fun of reading stories, watching movies and attending dramas made me fall in love with this global language. Aside from this I have many hobbies, such as play the piano, attend debate competition and recently I am fond of playing Chinese flute and have joined a course.

Before I express my feelings about writing, I think we should first consider the classification of it, especially about Chinese writing. One kind of writing is as an assignment that classes force you to do and the other kind is one put down some words just to commemorate his experience or feelings. I like the latter kind much more. It is more flexible. English writing is always be done as homework. I once tried to keep a dairy in English but gave up after a short time, for the attentions for word, grammar and sentence structure killed the joy of expressing. We pay a attention to different things when writing in mother tongue and in a foreign language. In the former one we care more about whether the words are graceful or whether we used tropes, but in the latter one, factors mentioned above are the first barriers. I myself feel writing more smoothly after enlarging my vocabulary.

I felt very happy when I can join this Academic Writing class given by Ron. Learning English from a native speaker is really a fun. We are not only experience the language but also gain sense of using it and feel more about the culture. Ron gives the class in an American way. He just mentions important paragraphs and leaves the rest for home reading. He provides us more chances to think and discuss in English about the stories and characters in the book. After this, writing is no longer for the purpose of practice a language but for expressing ourselves. When having the motive to write, the work becomes easier and happier. Finally I want to give a little suggestion to Ron. So far we’ve written several reading logs, could you pick up some and give comments on them? So we can know both our progress and on what aspects we can make further progress. Thanks:)

Cover Letter


December, 26 ,2006

Dear Portfolio Reader:

Writings and essays below are works I did in the Academic Writing class this semester. In the class our teacher Ron gave us various types of practices to develop our writing skill. Below are selected things which include an introduction, two drafts of the essay, the final essay, five reading logs and three timed-writings.

At the beginning of class we are expected to do a 10 minutes free writing. The thesis given by Ron was always simple and closely related to our daily life. I like this part very much for it was free and casual just as the name of this exercise. Ron did not ask us to hand in the writing and always emphasized that what ever we wrote, we just kept doing it, if we did not know what to say we just wrote that we did not know what to say. This gave us a big chance to deliver ourselves of at will while did not care that much about grammar. At the beginning I was not accustomed to such practice and can not gather enough things to fill up a 10 minutes writing. But gradually I find that 10 minutes is always short for me to finish expressing. Free writing as a start of the class can really inspire some inspirations of writing.

Reading logs and essays each approximately took us half semester. We perused five stories and composed reading logs for each of them. In this kind of writing I learned how to analyze a story from different aspects. In the class we read out some essential parts of the text book. The Guidelines part especially helps. This part is much easier than the essay because we always had some thing to say after reading a wonderful story, and the writing is more flexible.

The essay is the most challenging part. It lasted almost six weeks and we produced two drafts and then accomplished the final one. During the process I found that fixing on a thesis is the toughest job. My first thesis is “” Obviously it was long and not clear. Then I read through the story again, finding out some specific hints which finally leaded me to the idea that “” So ultimately they became my thesis. When a clear and strong thesis comes up it helps to deduce the paragraph and organize the essay, thus it did not cost me much time to compose the trial draft. Then we did a peer work. Adopting my partners’ suggestions I edited the draft, using more details and quotations from the story to support my viewpoints, and then finished the draft two. The final draft is a correction of grammar or other mistakes on the basis of former draft.

Timed-writing is an interesting exercise. The “Da Da” sounds coming from keyboards while we typing brings a sense that we are skilled and productive writer. The most challenging thing about timed-writing is that we should organize the passage properly by narrowing down the topic and picking valuable things up from all the trivial ideas stimulated by the subject. I really appreciate the discussions Ron held for us in class. It likes a brain storm that gave me chance to express my point of view and I was also always inspired by his and my peer’s ideas.

In a summary, I learned much about how to analyze in English. And I also learned some skills of composing a good essay.


Thanks indeed for your attention and tiem of reading my writing portfolio. Do not hesitate to write down any comments ^-^

Essay Draft One


Thesis: She surrendered to the fate but she were unaware of it
Part1: She surrendered to her fate
Part2: She were unaware of her surrender
Part3: My comment

Part1:
Our heroine was so sensitive inside that she unconsciously let herself follow the steps of Aunt Yifen, believing that happiness does not belong to cosmeticians like her and surrendering to this fate. It’s very obvious in the story. She assured herself that she had become a continuation, a copy of Aunt Yifen. She had a premonition that her fate would be the same as Yifen’s. She firmly thought that Xia would leave like Yifen’s lover. Her only hope was never had to make up the face of a loved one, but not to change a job or to struggle for true love. She soliloquized again and again that a woman like her was actually unsuitable for any man’s love.
What factors lead to such miserable frame of mind? They are the love experiences of her younger brother, of dear Aunt Yifen, the bad ending of the young couple she once worked on and her deep inferiority complex. She hold the believe that love is actually extraordinarily fragile and pliable; puffed-up courage is really nothing but a layer of sugar-coating. She considered she would not be qualified to any other jobs due to her lacking of knowledge and her present profession as a cosmetician.


Part2:
She said she should have nothing to do with anyone who lacked the courage to resist the forces of fate. And finally she refused to do cosmetic work on the yang couple who had died in the love-inspired suicide pact. Judging from this plot we may consider that the heroine was strongly against such living attitude and herself was a strong-hearted person who holds the fate tightly in her hands. But she also expressed that since she was only human, she lacked self-control and merely went where Fate took her, one ordained step after another. It’s seemingly a contradiction. Maybe in the heroine’s view，a capitulaitonist to fate is who can not resist the forces and give up his life. But is it a courageous behavior that just following the fate that full of grief with no logical explanation? The majority will not agree. The follower is another kind of capitulaitonist to fate. But our heroine was still unaware of it. The strongest evidence of this is the way she chose to deal with the relationship with Xia.

She thought that showing Xia directly the place she works without any hints by word is a kind of test. She made no effort to try to talk with Xia specifically about her occupation. would the test work? Certainly, it wouldn’t. As flee was a common action of anyone who suddenly came up with the lying cadavers. The result of the test was fixed that Xia would be shocked away. Is the action of directly showing Xia the truth a purposive test or just a reflection of the heroine’s own dread in front of fate?
It’s complicated to discuss but to some extent giving hints of her work to the lover first by talking to him might be a better way. If true love really existed between them, Xia would not leave her. What he need was not the sudden test but time to think about the whole thing and to see whether the power of love is strong enough to beat the inner fear of death which everyone has. This point was proved by the heroine’s parents. The mother had once said that she was not afraid, and love was the reason. Obviously our heroine was not that indomitable. We can see that she had already prepared to accept the result of her lover’s leaving without the least try of detainment by discussing the daily job of her with him first. She considered her following the fate of Aunt Yifen’s is a kind of facing the sad fate bravely. Actually, it is not. She was also a surrender for it is making effort to hold the true love that a true brave behavior. But she did do so, and was still unaware of it.


Part3:
First, fate is not a mysterious thing. It is social life constructed by varies factors of the society. A famous sociologist Max Weber stated that an individual’s market position strongly influences his or her overall ‘life chances’. What we should notice is the effect of society is influence but not decide. Although we are affected by the society, to some degree, our life can act independently from the power of the society. Aunt Yifen passed her skills on to the heroine but not her fate.

Second, the heroine’s believe in true love is too faint. Although there are cases suggested that love may not be that unyielding, true love still exists if the couple are match and believe in it. The heroine would not definitely follow her aunt’s step of being abandoned for she didn’t walk with her aunt’s lover but her own boy friend Xia. So she shouldn’t have lost the confidence in the love between themselves. If there’s a true love, it will help them to overcome fear and prejudice.

Essay Draft Two


By Barbara Bao
Nov. 29 2006

Cosmetician, in the majority’s view, is not a common profession. Many people have prejudice against this job. This not only cause problems in the range of society but also affects individual’s life who is involved in such a job.

In the story “A Woman Like Me”, the author Xi Xi vividly described a women cosmetician’s inner feelings which was deeply affected by her occupation. She did not have confidence in love and thought her boy friend would leave her once finding out what her job really was. We can tell between the line that she somehow surrendered to her fate but she herself was still unaware of it.


Our heroine was so sensitive inside that she unconsciously let herself follow the steps of Aunt Yifen, believing that happiness does not belong to cosmeticians like her and surrendering to the fate. We can conclude that from many hints provided by the author. The heroine assured herself that she had become “a continuation” (155)of Aunt Yifen, “becoming as taciturn as she, as pale of hand and face as she, and as slow in movements as she”(155). Since that she was convinced that her fate would be the same as Yifen’s and there was “a bad omen” for she and Xia that Xia would undoubtedly leave ——ending the relationship by the same way Yifen’s lover chose. The heroine, In the story, has a fairly passive attitude towards life. We did not see any of her effort to struggle for a much happier life or to seek a way helping her love relationship work out. Her only hope was “never [had] to make up the face of a loved one”(155), but not to change a job for the sake of love or to discuss with Xia in detail or any other kinds of strive for the love she treasured. She just soliloquized again and again that a woman like her was actually unsuitable for any man’s love. The passive attitude of life is some kind a surrender to fate.
There are four love stories in the heroine’s mind, the love experiences of her younger brother, of dear Aunt Yifen, the bad ending of the young couple she once worked on and her parents’ story. Among the four, both happy and grief thins happened. But she just see the sorrowful ones and came up with the believe that love is “actually extraordinarily fragile and pliable; puffed-up courage is really nothing but a layer of sugar-coating”(160). Why is the courageous power of love proved by her parents too week for her? Probably because she did not choose to seek power from it. It is another hint from which we can tell she had surrendered to fate. Once a person loss the hope to struggle for her own new life, he is pessimistic and tend to see the pessimistic side of thins only.


She said she should have nothing to do with anyone who lacked the courage to resist the forces of fate. And finally she refused to do cosmetic work on the yang couple who had died in the love-inspired suicide pact. Judging from this plot we may consider that the heroine was strongly against such living attitude and herself was a strong-hearted person who holds the fate tightly in her hands. But she also expressed that “since [she was] only human, [she] lacked self-control and merely [went] where Fate [took her], one ordained step after another”(154). It’s seemingly a contradiction. Maybe in the heroine’s view，a capitulaitonist to fate is who can not resist the forces and give up his life. But is it a courageous behavior that just following the fate that full of grief with “no logical explanation”(154)? The majority will not agree. The follower is another kind of surrender to fate. But our heroine was still unaware of it. The strongest evidence of this is the way she chose to deal with the relationship with Xia.

She thought that showing Xia directly the place she works without any hints by word is a kind of test. She made no effort to try to talk with Xia specifically about her occupation. Would the test work? It appears not, as flee was a common action of anyone who suddenly came up with the lying cadavers. This was proved by Aunt Yifen’s lover, so the result of the test was fixed that Xia would be shocked away. But it is not due to unstable love, it’s just because of human’s deep common inner fears of death. Is the action of directly showing Xia the truth a purposive test or just a reflection of the heroine’s own dread in front of fate? Subconsciously she might want to give up, for she convinced herself that been with Xia would be hard as she thought all people considered her profession weird.

It’s complicated to discuss but to some extent giving details of her work to the lover first by talking to him might be a better way. If true love really existed between them, Xia would not leave her. What he need was not the sudden test but time to think about the whole thing and to see whether the power of love is strong enough to beat the inner fear of death which everyone has. This point was proved by the heroine’s parents. Her mother had once said that she was not afraid, and “love [was] the reason”(161). Obviously our heroine was not that indomitable. We can see that she had already prepared to accept the result of her lover’s leaving without the least try of detainment by discussing the daily job of her with him first. She considered her following the fate of Aunt Yifen’s is a kind of facing the sad fate bravely. Actually, it is not. She was also a surrender for it is making effort to hold the true love a true brave behavior. But she did do so, and was still unaware of it.


The heroine appears like that, just because there is a self-humiliation inside. The orphan childhood, the little education, the cosmetician profession and the fear of intense competition in the real world all constitute such self-contemptuous plight. She doubted that “how can a woman like [her], with little schooling and not much knowledge, compete with others in this greed-consumed, dog-eat-dog world?”(154-155) However, it is true that she had a miserable past but we can not attribute only to factors mentioned above. There are some thing wrong about the way she thinks and the attitude she takes.

First, fate is not a mysterious thing. It is a social life constructed by varies factors of the society. A famous sociologist Max Weber stated that an individual’s market position strongly influences his or her overall ‘life chances’. What we should notice is the effect of society is influence but not decide. Although we are affected by the society, to some degree, our life can act independently from the power of the society. Aunt Yifen passed her skills on to the heroine but not her fate.

Second, the heroine’s believe in true love is too faint. Although there are cases suggested that love may not be that unyielding, true love still exists if the couple is match and believe in it. The heroine would not definitely follow her aunt’s step of being abandoned for she didn’t walk with her aunt’s lover but her own boy friend Xia. So she shouldn’t have lost the confidence in the love between themselves. True love works only on people who believe in it .If true love really exist, it will help them to overcome fear and prejudice.

Final Draft, The Essay
Barbara Bao
December, 26, 2006



A Pitiful Cosmetician, A Surrender to Fate



Cosmetician, in the majority’s view, is not a common profession. Many people have prejudice against this job. This not only cause problems in the range of society but also affects individual’s life who is involved in such a job.

In the story “A Woman Like Me”, the author Xi Xi vividly described a women cosmetician’s inner feelings which was deeply affected by her occupation. She did not have confidence in love and thought her boy friend would leave her once finding out what her job really was. We can tell between the line that she somehow surrendered to her fate but she herself was still unaware of it.


Our heroine was so sensitive inside that she unconsciously let herself follow the steps of Aunt Yifen, believing that happiness does not belong to cosmeticians like her and surrendering to the fate. We can conclude that from many hints provided by the author. The heroine assured herself that she had become “a continuation” (155)of Aunt Yifen, “becoming as taciturn as she, as pale of hand and face as she, and as slow in movements as she”(155). Since that she was convinced that her fate would be the same as Yifen’s and there was “a bad omen” for her and Xia that Xia would undoubtedly leave ——ending the relationship by the same way Yifen’s lover chose. The heroine, In the story, has a fairly passive attitude towards life. We did not see any of her effort to struggle for a much happier life or to seek a way helping her love relationship work out. Her only hope was “never [had] to make up the face of a loved one”(155), but not to change a job for the sake of love or to discuss with Xia in detail or any other kinds of striving for the love she treasured. She just soliloquized again and again that a woman like her was actually unsuitable for any man’s love. The passive attitude of life is some kind a surrender to fate.

There are four love stories in the heroine’s mind, the love experiences of her younger brother, of dear Aunt Yifen, the bad ending of the young couple she once worked on and her parents’ story. Among the four, both happy and grief things happened. But she just see the sorrowful ones and came up with the believe that love is “actually extraordinarily fragile and pliable; puffed-up courage is really nothing but a layer of sugar-coating”(160). Why is the courageous power of love proved by her parents too week for her? Probably it is because she did not choose to seek power from it. It is another hint from which we can tell that she had surrendered to fate. Once a person lost the hope to struggle for her own new life, he would be pessimistic and tend to see the pessimistic side of thins only.


She said she should have nothing to do with anyone who lacked the courage to resist the forces of fate. And finally she refused to do cosmetic work on the young couple who had died in the love-inspired suicide pact. Judging from this plot we may consider that the heroine was strongly against such living attitude and herself was a strong-hearted person who holds the fate tightly in her hands. But she also expressed that “since [she was] only human, [she] lacked self-control and merely [went] where Fate [took her], one ordained step after another”(154). It’s seemingly a contradiction. Maybe in the heroine’s view，a capitulaitonist to fate is a person who can not resist the forces and give up his life. But is it a courageous behavior that just following the fate that full of grief with “no logical explanation”(154)? The majority will not agree. The follower is another kind of surrender to fate. But our heroine was still unaware of it. The strongest evidence of this is the way she chose to deal with the relationship with Xia.

She thought that showing Xia directly the place she works without any hints by word is a kind of test. She made no effort to try to talk with Xia specifically about her occupation. Would the test work? It appears not, as flee was a common action of anyone who suddenly came up with the lying cadavers. This was proved by Aunt Yifen’s lover, so the result of the test was fixed that Xia would be shocked away. But it is not due to unstable love, it is just because of human’s deep common inner fears of death. Is the action of directly showing Xia the truth a purposive test or just a reflection of the heroine’s own dread in front of fate? Subconsciously she might want to give up, for she convinced herself that been with Xia would be hard as she thought all people considered her profession weird.

It is complicated to discuss but to some extent giving details of her work to the lover first by talking to him might be a better way. If true love really existed between them, Xia would not leave her. What he need was not the sudden test but time to think about the whole thing and to see whether the power of love is strong enough to beat the inner fear of death which everyone has. This point was proved by the heroine’s parents. Her mother had once said that she was not afraid, and “love [was] the reason”(161). Obviously our heroine was not that indomitable. We can see that she had already prepared to accept the result of her lover’s leaving without the least try of detainment by discussing the daily job of her with him first. She considered her following the fate of Aunt Yifen’s is a kind of facing the sad fate bravely. Actually, it is not. She was also a surrender for that it is making effort to hold the true love a true brave behavior. But she did do so, and was still unaware of it.


The heroine appears like that, just because there is a self-humiliation inside. The orphan childhood, the little education, the cosmetician profession and the fear of intense competition in the real world all constitute such self-contemptuous plight. She doubted that “how can a woman like [her], with little schooling and not much knowledge, compete with others in this greed-consumed, dog-eat-dog world?”(154-155) However, it is true that she had a miserable past but we can not attribute only to factors mentioned above. There are some thing wrong about the way she thinks and the attitude she takes.

First, fate is not a mysterious thing. It is a social life constructed by varies factors of the society. A famous sociologist Max Weber stated that an individual’s market position strongly influences his or her overall ‘life chances’. What we should notice is that the effect of society is influential but not decisive. Although we are affected by the society, to some degree, our life can act independently from the power of the society. Aunt Yifen passed her skills on to the heroine but not her fate.

Second, the heroine’s believe in true love is too faint. Although there are cases suggested that love may not be that unyielding, true love still exists if the couple believe in it. The heroine would not definitely follow her aunt’s step of being abandoned for her not walking with her aunt’s lover but her own boy friend Xia. So she shouldn’t have lost the confidence in the love between themselves. True love works only on people who believe in it .If true love really exists, it will help them to overcome fear and prejudice.

Timed-writing


Barbara Bao
December,21,2006
Timed Writing 3

“How is Chinese becoming more similar to other countries because of the developments in communication and transportation” is really a big question. The change of China can be described in many aspects, from economics to culture, from old people’s life style to teenagers’.

As students in collage, they can strongly feel that the world around them is changing. Because this special group is some kind the future of the society, changes happened to them may be representative ones to answer the question.

The most apparent current of similarity is in the language. Nowadays, there is no student in university did not learn a foreign language. Due to the development of Internet, more foreign literary and video material comes into China, learning a foreign language becomes more convenient. Language is the first step of globalization. It is the foundation of further communications between China and other countries.

Life style is another aspect in which we can find the change obviously took place. Young people’s live style among China and American are becoming more and more similar. On the internet in Fudan University we can see the whole 10 seasons of the TV play “Friends”. Many of my friends are mad about watching it. I believe the way of life described in the show is somehow affects the young students’ life in China. For example we have and enjoy Christmas and Valentine's day now. Other similar habits are easy to be listed, we walk or study with MP3 playing, we are used to hanging-out with our friends in Café, we addicted to Internet, and so on. These things never appeared in China 15 years ago.

More deeply the way of thinking maybe is also changing. Since universities have introduced in the text books in foreign countries, much of the theories we learn is developed by western scientists or scholars. Meaning time we learn the knowledge we also learn their western ways of thinking. It is rationalistic, which is different from ancient China.

Barbara,
You respond to the question with several examples of how China is changing as a result of improved communication and transportation. The writing is clear and well-organized. There are a number of language errors, but they do not interfere with meaning.
The best way to improve your writing and reduce language errors is with extensive reading in English.
Best Wishes,
Ron

Reading Log for Swaddling Clothes

As a novel it doesn’t have stimulating plots, what absorbs me is the meaningful depiction of different scenes given by the writer. He use such description to help him create the atmosphere the story need and to imply the mood of the character. Among all the sceneries described by the author , there are mainly two kinds of emotions which the author wanted to represent. Let me quote some and analyze them.

As the story happened at night, there are lots of night scenes, and, in my opinion, all of them devoted to build a dismal tone. When Toshiko passed the theatre, feelings of dreary could come out by seeing the turned-out lights and the fake blossoms made by scraps of white paper. Passing the Imperial Palace moat the lights were certainly dim through the pinpricks from blocks of tall building. Even till the final part we encounter the pitch dark and utterly silent forest. Why did the writer intended on telling these depressing sceneries? So far as I am concerned, It’s mainly an accompaniment for the somber mood of our heroine. The baby also born unlawful at such a gloomy night, may the atmosphere also indicate the bastard’s fate.

I also noticed that the author mentioned the cherry blossoms several times. As we know, cherry blossoms not only look pure but also represent grace and wisdom. Here I guess they intend on that Toshiko hoped the baby become such a person but not live a miserable life just because of him born illegitimate. But the florescence of cherry blossoms is very short, seven days only. This may be a metaphor of the frail life of the little baby.