05/06

I have learned a lot from this class. The novels are very special and fresh for me. They are different from novels I read before. I was forced to read a few short English articles in high school. They were almost single stories with one or two characters. I feel my reading ability was remarkably improved by reading this semester. Other students in class were really nice and friendly to me, especially my partner Kristin who rewrote Tiger’s bride together with me.

The ELIC novel was really hard for me. The story is long and complicated. I felt it difficult to grab the main idea. Finally I found someone else to help me read it. Also the essay requirement is quite different from ENG 111 class. I did not really know how to analyze the evidence from the novel. After rewrote the first novel I got some experiment. I tried to ask myself how and why question during writing and argue with myself. Then I felt somewhat easy to continue.

I think the PowerBook is kind of easier than ELIC. I like the love stories in this book, especially the View As Icon chapter. The girl and the boy both ended in death but happiness, like fairy tales. That story reminds me of the story of Romeo and Juliet and Abelard and Heloise. But I didn’t choose that story for my second essay because I am not good at analysis of love story and don’t know where to start. At last I chose the story about the dangerous exploits of two friends.

The Bloody Chamber is my favorite among the three books. I love fairy tales very much. I read Roman fairy tales, Grimm’s Fairy Tales and Andersen’s Fairy Tales since I was very young. But they were already translated into Chinese. It was a lot of fun to read those adaptations. Among those adapted version, I like the Werewolf most because I felt this story included more creative imaginations than other stories. And instead of relaxed and joyful plot in the original fairy tale, this story was kind of scary and nervous. And I like that feeling. Again, although I like this story most, I chose to rewrite Tiger’s bride because I think that was easier for me. I don’t think I can rewrite the Little Red Hat story better than the Werewolf.

Actually I don’t really like Tiger’s bride. After I read this story, I felt the behaviors of both the girl and the beast in this story were strange. The reason why they get-together was not clear. So when Kristin and I rewrote this story we decided to make it more realistic. We let the girl personify the worship of money and end up with poverty. We let the beast be wealthy and captive to her beauty. But we still give the beast a happy ending because of his good heart.

I did a presentation of Tiger’s bride in class. This is my second presentation. Last semester I did group presentation in ENG 111 class. So this was the first presentation all presented on my own. I was afraid I could not take 15 minutes and I prepared some irrelevant questions. The reason why I chose this story to present at the beginning of the semester was that I thought it would be a story about a pair of tigers or a wonderful couple. I thought tiger represents good-looking. So after I read this story I understood tiger was the beast and I thought that was interesting and decided to put it into my presentation. But I was not sure whether they would like my questions so I brought some small gifts.  

Through the whole semester, I felt my reading ability was improved but writing ability is still weak. Thanks to my ENG class, my reading speed was raised, and I can feel that when I read the second novel and read textbooks for other class. But my writing ability still needs to develop. For example, I am writing a reflection now and I feel it not easy to reach 700 letters, and I always have grammar mistakes.

At last, thank you so much for helping me with my essay and presentation. I really had a great ENG class this semester.