Cover Letter

For my instructor Mr. Corio, who helped me going though the whole semester,
For my peers Shirley Xue and Rachel Zheng, who gave me precious advice most frankly.

To the one now reading:

Welcome to my writing portfolio and experience my bittersweet studying process of the Academic Writing course at Fudan University in the spring semester of 2007.

During the semester, I read four story and chose one to analyse under my instructor’s help. I accomplished reading logs for all the stories, three timed writings and three essay drafts. The five essays below all concern about The Grass-Eaters, which display my improvements of writing completely and effectively.

I learnt a great many writing skills, including the strategies of composing a strong thesis statement, incorporating effective quotations, and polishing final draft. My first essay draft lacks many basic elements an essay requires: Quotation marks for direct quotations, citing and documenting sources and so on. I revised all these mistakes and make my last draft a formal interpretive essay.

Besides the writing skills as most students gained from this course, I also learnt to articulate my point of view. That is, to compose the right thesis statement of my true feeling, to select the suitable evidence to back up my thoughts. I chose the five essays about the same story to reveal this progress.

The reading log demonstrates my fresh feeling about The Grass-Eaters after the first read. At that time, I was simply impressed by the humorous tone of the story and the impact it put on me. I indicated the effect of the humor but didn’t go into details.

When my instructor asked us to choose one story for essay, I decided on The Grass-Eaters without hesitation. Then there came the suffering process of forming a thesis statement. I wanted to write about the impressive humor in the story, but it was really tough for me to construct a suitable thesis statement, which express my feeling most appropriately. From the very first statement of “Krishnan Varma tells the story in a humorous way, but it makes the readers feel sad” to the final one of “Through the humorous tone, Krishnan tells the story in a stronger way”, I went through a hard time. However, I was still not clear about what I really want to write about. My instructor gave me the advise that I should write the essay at first and find the right thesis through the process.

I tried to explain my thesis statement in the first essay draft but found it difficult. The theses is too broad that I found too many details in the story to support it but didn’t know where to start. In the draft one below, I had listed three points in order to put my details into categories but did't develop them.

In draft two, I focused on the contrast between Babu’s reaction to his life and how the readers predict Babu to react. I felt this contrast most important and effective in telling the hardship humorously. Then my instructor told me that the “stronger way” in my former thesis statement became vague.

I changed my thesis statement several times when working on my third draft. I first wrote down “Krishnan successfully conveys a more profoundly doleful feeling than the agony of suffering from life.” I used two scenes in the story to support it. During the peer reviewing, my fellows told me that I had put too much emphasis on the content rather than the words of the story. They thought that humorous tone deals more about the usages of words and phrases. However, my instructor later asked me the reason why Krishnan used black humor to tell the story. I realized that I still need the story content because the black humor is presented in the contrast of the content. The problem is why I think the contrast so important. I referred to The International Story and noticed “A reader's reaction”(135). That's what I mean by “make the readers feel sad” in my very first thesis statement. I need to concentrate the readers' reaction to the black humor! The readers' feeling is what Krishnan wanted to achieve and the reason for using black humor.

The draft three on the blog is my latest product. I emphasis that Krishnan use black humor to “help the readers experience a more profoundly doleful feeling than the agony of suffering from life.” The humor is used to force the readers seeking explanations for the absurd contrast. Thus they can experience the hardship exactly the same as Babu.

The final timed writing provided me with another way to display my understanding of The Grass-Eaters. The color and music I tend to used in the trailer all reveal my feeling of this story.

I had done my best to express myself clearly through the whole semester although I still detect vagueness in both my essay draft three and my cover latter. I will continue to reflect on The Grass-Eaters and my writing to make a further progress.

Now please read my essays and evident my progress so far and please leave any comments you want to help me express myself in a better way. Thank you！