Magic Book

[Yao Z.]

    When I was a little kid, I didn't know what is writing. I didn't know where the book I read came from. My parents also didn't explain to me what is writing, because they are all farmers. Before I got in school, I hadn't read or wrote anything. I just knew some stories from my family's black and white TV.
    Until I went to primary school, I met a nice teacher. She is Mrs. Yang, my primary Chinese teacher. When she asked us to keep a dairy, I was full of confusion and I asked, "Mrs. Yang, what is a dairy? What can we do?" She smiled to me and said, " It is a good question. Dairy is a magic thing to record your life. If you do it every day, you will become magician!" I screamed with joyed, I imaged that I become a magician and used my magic stick to come up with a lot of candies. At this time, my classmates also were excited for the "Diary" and they began to talk what they would do after they had magic. Our teacher clapped her hands and there was also a mysterious smile on her face, "All right, I will tell you how to become a magician." After heard this, we all were quite quickly. Mrs. Yang said, "Firstly, you need a book and a pen. Secondly, you need record your life in the way what you like, whether you write it or draw it. Finally, you should meet it every day. Do you know how to do that now?" We scrambled to answer, "We known it now!" "We know it now!"
    The first thing I did after school was to buy a notebook. The second thing I did was to "drew a dairy". I drew a magician and wrote "It is me!" At the beginning, I just drew something. Gradually, I begun to try to use writing. Day after day, I found that I was not learning magic but creating magic, because my dairy is my magic book, a magic book about my life.
    When I saw my old dairy, I would laugh because a funny thing in my diary. I would feel sad because a reproach frome my mother in my diary. I would clench my fist when  a fight with a bad guy in my diary. It's like a cartoon I watched when I was a kid,. Don't you think it's my magic diary?
    The tool of accessing a magic diary is writing, so I think that everyone in our class must have a magic dairy at that time.
 

[Marisa K.]

Overall Response

I really enjoyed the story of your school introducing you and your classmates to the magic of writing. The beginning of your essay sets up the idea of discovery and your dialogue gets to the actual finding or climax being your journal. I think the action throughout essay is dynamic and well done.

Focus

The focus of this essay is clear in that being introduced to the diary introduced you to the magic of writing. I believe all sections of the essay fit the focus of the essay.

Development for Readers

The introduction paragraph can be developed more which I will touch on coherence, but after reading the first paragraph I almost thought the essay would be about television. Your last sentence in the paragraph should be leading into what the next paragraph will be.

Organization and Coherence

While dialogue is important and can be good at emphasizing your point, it should be broken up within the paragraph in order for easier readability for the audience.

Language, Grammar, Conventions

“Diary” and “Dairy” are used interchangeably in this essay. “Diary” is the term that you would want to use so it is important that the proper is term is used to express the correct meaning.

Another focus or pattern within the essay would be past versus present tense. It has changed multiple times throughout the essay and of all the event have happened in the past that should be made clearer.

Major Emphasis for Revision

Working on the dialogue and formatting the paper for more coherence the paper will carry further development in your writing.