Tuesday, June 9, 2020
Can I Write About Taiwan Versus Chinese
Can I Write About Taiwan Versus Chinese?If you are doing your college education in the United States, you may be wondering if you should write about Taiwanese versus Chinese identities in a college essay. Most people don't have the first clue about what to say and how to say it. But as the old saying goes, 'no one ever said that life was going to be easy.'The trick is to know what to say, how to say it, and when to say it, because if you do not do it properly, it will not come out the way you intended. Another important thing to remember is that what you say on your college paper does not only go into the paper, but it should go into your memory as well. So if you are writing a paper for college, try to think back on what you have said in the past.A true story about what I learned from a graduate student who studied international relations. She had the opportunity to teach a class in politics in which students were able to write on their own behalf. While this might seem obvious, she was not sure about the point of the assignment.She came to know that the students who wrote by themselves, and wrote about themselves, went on to write with their feelings and their emotions. While this is nice and healthy, the problem was that it lacked the personal feeling that the written document always needed. The students actually felt more personal to the point that it made the thesis statement sounds more like a confession. That is when she started thinking about how much she wanted to write about Taiwan in her college essay.This graduate student was trying to be fair and balanced, but ultimately she lost, because she could not have said anything else except Taiwan. It was like a self-imposed rule that she would not use the word Taiwan in her written work, even though the syllabus said the word Taiwan was allowed. She realized the damage that this was doing, and therefore had to be fair and objective about the whole assignment.One of the things she told me, after having giv en this a thought, was that she thought that all of the students in the class would have just loved to be the subjects of the students who wrote about themselves in the international relations class. But she did not think it was fair to these students that the topic of her essay was primarily about Taiwan. Instead, she came up with an interesting strategy, and used it for her thesis topic.The strategy for her writing that she came up with is that she created a section where she wrote about herself and the Taiwan article came from that section. Since the rest of the class came up with opinions on the Taiwan article, they could throw in a few paragraphs about their own countries. So then, her students could throw in their own ideas, making a meaningful argument and then have something to remember for their papers as well.Now that's what she meant by 'no one ever said that life was going to be easy.' So for the next semester, if your paper is going to be about Taiwan, make sure that yo u make it about Taiwan first, and then add in your own writing as well.
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