I have
been a student when I was seven years old, and I have spent my life through
elementary school, middle school and high school, all in China where I
received Chinese style of education. When I was nineteen years old, I took the
National College Entrance Examination in China which is called one of the
hardest exams on earth. Soon after that, my life suddenly changed because I
immigrated to the United States
with my family. I then entered LaGuardia
Community College , which is located in
Queens , New
York . Till now, I have spent more than two years in
this college, and I love the days as a college student.
The reason why I like LaGuardia is that it attracts students from different
countries. They have different life styles and speak different mother
languages. They study here for many reasons, and it is amazing for me to
understand their cultures and to know their stories. I have changed a little bit
than the one I was two years ago. When I was in the campus for the first day,
everything looked new to me and the biggest barrier for me is language. English
is so much different from Chinese, and I felt very nervous at the beginning
when I started studying at LaGuardia
College . I’m afraid to
speak in public and I had a hard time to understand the course. I took ESL
class first because only I passed the exam, I could take my major request
classes. At that time,I met a
very nice professor. She is an amazing lady with white curly hair. I really
enjoyed her teaching style because she spoke very clearly, and encouraged us to
ask questions in the class. I was embarrassed and nervous at first since I
couldn’t even speak a whole complete sentence in English. Usually, I sat in the
back of the classroom. My ESL professor noticed that so she put me in a small
group in which all the group mates were from different countries. We were all
new students and couldn’t speak fluent English. Every group mate worked and
tried their best to explain their ideas, and so did I. For example, one day the
professor let us discuss one of our favorite movies which was made by our mother country. We
have four students in our group, from
Korea , India , Mexico
and China
respectively. The Korean student’s favorite movie is about
the family relationship in Korea ,
which is much more different than the most American family. The Indian student
shared his loved movie which talks about the Education system in today’s India society.
The Mexican student said that his favorite Mexican movie was all about singing
and dancing, because most Mexican people like singing and dancing. As for me, I
shared a movie which helps foreign
people understand the Chinese history.
It was a great experience that all of us shared our favorite movies and
I learned my group mates’ cultures from the movie that they
described. As time went by, I knew
more and more countries’ culture; moreover, my spoken English was getting
better and better.
At the end of the semester, we stood in the front of the class and began our
final presentation with confidence. I couldn’t believe my English improved so
fast in that class.
I
feel much more confident now since I got a lot of “A”s in my classes,
and I made a lot of friends in the college. Through course studies and daily
communicating with teachers and classmates, I have improved my English skills a
lot. This semester is my last semester to study in LaGuardia, because I will
graduate and transfer to a four-year-college. Queens College
is my dream college because it has a great campus and their education major is
the best in the whole CUNY schools. I wish I will earn more knowledge in Queens College .
Now I have confidence about my future and I’m sure I will have a better life in
the four-year-college.
Ok, it's good that you gave us more detail in this revision but then you must consider other parts of the writing process: Perl's concepts of retrospective and projective structuring. Your current middle paragraph is a HUGE chunk of unbroken text. That is a bad thing. It should be broken up into at least two paragraphs. You'd have to figure out how/where to do it. Essays are visual as much as anything. The reader needs some space. So where to break it?
ReplyDeleteA good rule of thumb: whenever you have a major shift in topic or perspective, it's time for a paragraph break. Try to develop a deep internal sense--a felt sense--of when you are shifting, or, when you have a huge chunk of text, re-read it with your heart/gut looking for something that feels like a good emotional or intuitive place to create a break. And learn to hit that "enter" or "return" key when the feeling comes over you. A shift is a paragraph. It's a little bit lie the line break in poetry.