Blog as a Writing Drill

I have to admit that I'm not good at composition --- not only in English, but even in Japanese. I don't want to blame some one for my lack of writing ability, but I think some potion of the ineptness comes from Japanese education system. In Japan, they teach composition by making students writing down about daily events or about books they read. The bad thing is, the teachers don't let students organize a well written composition. Rather, they just make students to jot down what comes up in mind. So in Japan, the writing is regarded as a form of art; composition classes are held to make students more sensitive by writing spontaneously, for them to be open-minded. The teachers think the composition cannot be taught, reflecting how famous novelists write in freestyle. Students have to learn their own style by themselves, usually by trials and errors. Because of this experience, I gave up halfway on practicing writing.

Surprisingly, the English composition is not just an art, but rather it is a skill of communication. It should be written clearly so that readers can easily understand the content. People are encourage to follow a certain writing style using simple expressions and format. To avoid ambiguity, English expressions make the sentence direct and clear. Whereas in Japanese this doesn't apply. Ambiguity and unclearness are used because they have some rhetorical effects. Actually this ambiguity is deeply encoded into Japanese language, subjects and verbs are frequently omitted from Japanese sentences.

Anyway, as an Ph.D student. I need to write correct academic English and I need a LOT of practice to do so. The only way to learn writing is write something frequently and got it checked by someone. This blog should be a nice way to do it.