Helping talented students write.

I am working with two fourth year English majors, Bonnie (Zhou Qi) and Ming on their essays for a writing competition that will take place next month in Beijing.  Both of them have passed the initial phase of the competition and I am helping them with the subsequent essays.  Thus far, we have worked on two sets of essays. The first was an argumentation essay and today's was a narrative essay.

It is fascinating to see how they deal with the prompts they get for these essays.  

Today’s prompt:  It is the year 2039 and Lin, a brilliant, but a bit emotional computer programmer is vying for a position at a top tech company.  In this dystopian world, humanoids (computers) have become so advanced they have taken many high-tech jobs away from human beings.  In the students' essays, they imagine a coding competition between Lin and the humanoid competitors. Both students offered a pessimistic outlook, imagining that the human loses to the computers. 

In their writing, they often use amazing, brilliantly imaginative metaphors that to me seem both fresh and, at times, a bit bizarre.  For example, in Bonnie’s essay, she writes:  “Lin’s thoughts poured from his mind the way a housewife pours salad dressing.”   

I really had to think about that one.  I decided that it added to the narrative and did not suggest changing a word.

Both women tend to write very long sentences with complex subordinating conjunction constructions and lots of semi-colons.  In addition, they often use 3 or 4 words in a row where one or two would do. For example, “Lin was nervous, anxious and uptight.”  This could be simply, “Lin was nervous.”  I told them they could trust English to tell their story.   

In addition, I reassured them, saying that their writing is making the English language richer.  Their unique perspectives adds new colors and images to an already vibrant language. 

They looked happy.  I am happy. 

  

--David Bittleman