Dear New English 110 Students,

In this English 110 class you will learn lots of useful skills of writing and analysis by practicing different assignments, such as blog, a good way to communicate with your classmates and share your ideas; and ARP, a nice training of using appropriate sources to support your main argument. This is an interesting course; you will get a really good grade on it if you work hard. It is really a happy thing for me to have English110.01 class this quarter.

At the very beginning of the class, you will get a theme, which you will be worked on for the whole quarter. Mine is about food and foodways. I was kind of worried of how can I write a long analysis paper of this theme at first. But, please relax, every doubt will change as time goes on. It’s more about linking ideas together than criticizing your work. The instructor will teach you the best way to find your sources, and then you need to push yourself hard to discover the inner meaning of your source. You will find a style of writing that works perfectly for you. You may also look forward to the Commonplace essay. It is much more exciting than creating an academic piece of writing while giving you the chance to expand your thoughts on a given topic, as well as expand your abilities as a writer. Blogs have the same significance to you also. Your writing will become much more public, therefore much open for expressivity and public opinion.

After this course, I become aware of writing is really a good way to express you own ideas, especially when it can be something fun and interesting, like foodways for example. For this course, although you may be given a theme to write about, you can still make it very much your own piece of work with insightful details, claims, and anecdotes that express who you are.

A final thing I suggest is getting to know your classmates. This is a fabulous chance for you to know each other in your class since this is one of the parvus small class-size courses at OSU.

Good luck in English 110.01.

Sincerely,
Xuechen Zhang