Reading response #2

Shunyou Huang

Text
Ferris,Dana Multilingual Students and College writing.student writing handbook, Dan Melzer,
2009 pp. 23-27.

Summary
In Professor Dana Ferris essay of Multilingual Students and College writing, she
defines a multilingual student as one who speaks, reads and writes another language as their
first language other than English. Even though there are positive aspect of a multilingual, Ferris
addresses the challenges that multiling students will face. For example, the writing in another
language might have different sentence structure and have unclear purpose. Multilingual
students will make more grammar mistakes because of their limited experience of English
language and have fewer vocabulary bank which might lead to plagiarism. To resolve these
problem, Ferris suggests Multilingual students to understand and adopt American style of
writing and build stronger vocabulary storage by reading.

Claim
The most important idea I can transfer to another course is to use the American writing
style.
This will help me write effectively.

Data
They [audiences] expect the writers purpose for the paper to be clearly communicated.
(Ferris 24)
They [audiences] expect that writers will support their ideas and opinions with
evidence. (Ferris 24)

Connections
Ferris includes the difficulties of a multilingual student and ways of solving English
language barriers. The most important idea I can transfer to another course is to understand
and use American writing style accurately.
The American writing style will help me write effectively.Ferris, as an English professor
states that They [audiences] expect the writers purpose for the paper to be clearly
communicated (24).The purpose of writing is for the audiences to read. As a writer in an
English world, it is important to directly claim a purpose of the paper as clear as possible. This
helps to answer the readers question of why am I reading this paper. Every writing needs a
purpose to start and expands to details. Therefore, a purpose conveys the most important idea
of a writing.
In addition, making claims with supports in the essay is essential for the readers. They
[audiences] expect that writers will support their ideas and opinions with evidence (Ferris 24).
In order to make a strong statement, its important to back up with fact to answer why the claim
is crtical to be known. Supporting with evideence is omparable to a courtcase where the
prosecuting attorney is trying to send someone to jail, that is to provide evidence. Providing
evidence is an explanation of why the claim is true. This will help to convinve readers to stand in
writers position. Without any supports, claims are just opinions.

Vocabulary
1. Contrastive; studying the similarities and differences of two languages;ML students who
have learned to read and write in another language may be affected by contrastive or
intercultural rhetoric.
2. Rhetoric; literary use of a language; ML students who have learned to read and write in
another language may be affected by contrastive or intercultural rhetoric.
3. apostrophe ; the sign to show the omission of letters (it is=its); in addition, they may
make the errors the NES also make, such as problems with spelling, the the punctuation
(commas, apostrophes;etc)