I took three English writing-related courses at Tamkang university this semester. One of my classmates said that I am a WWW (three writing classes) student this semester. Once I took three writing classes, I found writing is the most difficult skills among the four language skills. Of course, you have more time to construct your ideas, edit your drafts, and make multiple revisions; however, the most challenging part of writing to me is that you should be careful about what you write, for it is black and white (or 0 and 1 in this digital age). Therefore, people can retrieve it and any obvious errors will be easily spotted. Speaking, on the other hand, has different challenges. In most situations, we do not have time to organize our ideas or rehearse it before we speak out. Nevertheless, you can "deny" your errors unless someone talk to you records your conversation.
The other day, one of my classmates asked a question in one of my writing classes. I think it is a pretty good one. She asked whether we English teachers should become good English writers before we can teach English writing. That is to say, can we teach English writing if we can't write English properly? Think about this question if you are an English teacher. I will talk about this issue in my later postings.
I will try my best to write something and post it on this blog, probably a couple of postings every week. Let's see how it works.
