My 1st Writing Experience

      My writing experience varies in difficulty based on the topic I’m given to write about. Being an international student, I would say that I don’t have a lot of writing experiences, my first writing was a big challenge for me especially in English where it has different writing structure than I used to in Arabic. I didn’t know the first step and it was hard to understand how to put an essay together. Every time I would start typing I would delete and have to start all over again. I feel that I have a lot of thing to say but don’t know how I should start and how to put my ideas together.

      The first essay I wrote “My Classmate” was not that hard as the others because it was kind of open and wide topic though, it was stressful and I was so nervous because it was my first blog where every body can read it other than the instructor. It took me couple hours to prepare what I’m going to write and I think that one of the reason of taking that long time while other students might took half an hour is because I tend to translate the assignment to Arabic first then think of simple English sentences to translate them to Arabic. By following this way I ended up having couple few sentences in this assignment that don’t fully explain what I intended to say. During the preparation of this essay, I reviewed couple American blogs and saw the way they express their thinking about the education and tried to follow their way in writing. I also looked at couple Saudi articles and tried to translate them in English. 
     Another problem that I have is that I don’t have enough vocabulary; I took long time to decide the points that may not need difficult words. So, vocabulary is one of the things that hinder my progress in writing. After jotting couple sentences, I asked my wife for help in expanding some points and how to say some sentences in English. Then, I checked the spelling and the grammar in Microsoft word office. My final step was visiting the wright center to review my paper by checking the content, grammar and punctuation marks.
     My wife has been a good motivation as she is trying to help to over come the habit of translating each single sentence and she suggested me to practice thinking about the topic in English and start writing right away. She helps me in forming couple long sentences and increasing my vocabulary and how we use them. My kids are also being helpful as I always ask them whether this sentence makes sense or not and how to say it in different way.  The writing center is also helping in reviewing my paper and makes the necessary correction.
     I still feel that I need to improve my writing skills. Whenever I received my paper from writing instructor, I see a lot of comments on my paper either because I went out of the topic or the instructor couldn’t understand what I was trying to say. Sometimes I feel really angry about myself when I read other blogs, I see them very clear and have a lot of vocabulary that I understand them but couldn’t know how to use them. I will graduate by spring 2018 with a degree in Business Administration with a concentration in management. I hope by that time I would improve my writing skill and talking it with me to my new career.