Activity One

I believe I did my first writing in primary school when I was taught how to write simple sentences then paragraphs and then compositions and finally essays when I was in high school. We were usually given some new words that we learned during the lesson of the day to construct some simple sentences as homework. I can say that most of the writing I did in my primary and high school careers were done for academic purposes rather than personal communication or any other purposes except for when I was doing my final year in high school, I was inspired to write a number of essays and send them to be published on newspaper, of course not all of them were selected. In general I do not find writing easy and a pleasant task to do because I have always found it difficult to start putting my pen down to paper and convert my ideas into appealing words. Sure enough, there are times that I find writing enjoyable, and that is when I write e-mails or letters to my friends and family, mainly because of the fact that I never have to worry about mistakes or organizations whatsoever, so it is like free writing.

Speaking of reading, I have always enjoyed reading news articles and novels and books on self-improvement. I used to keep a diary, and I managed to do that for more than a year; I have to say that it is fun to write diary every single night before you go to bed, it is a very good summary of your day, the good things and bad deeds that took place, it is always so much fun reading those I wrote down that year now. Although I do not write any more diary these days, I write e-mails and text my friends on a daily basis; these two mediums have become two essential parts of my daily communications. When it comes to formal writing, quite frankly I do not have much chance to write formally but I used to write a daily report and minutes of the daily meeting to my supervisor when I was working at a local cable TV company in Cambodia, ocassionly, I was asked to reply clients' inquiries too.

I was lucky to have had the chance to grow up in three different language environment when I was a child. I went to three different schools, namely, Khmer school (Cambodian language), English school and last but not least, Chinese Mandarin. As a result, I now speak three languages; however, what you find easy in one language might not be as easy to express in another language, this is what I learned.

To me, the biggest difference between an essay and an assignment is that the former has a wider range of audience whereas the latter is usually confined to certain instructors and peers. The biggest similarity would be that we use both types of writing to express our ideas.