English Writing Garden

Dear Kim and Laura, My friends tell me my English has improved since I started college last fall, but especially this semester. I feel I have learned a lot in this semester. In a flash, our semester ended, and I want it to continue. I reviewed this semester's learning experience. I am so glad to describe how I grew as a writer and reader by describing my strengths, my weaknesses, and some barriers I have experienced or that might challenge me in the future. First of all, I have some strengths as a reader and writer. I am so lucky I took the Culture Club for English 99/Read 94. Reading and writing, just like twins, always support each other. Culture club is great idea to help students improve their reading and writing since they are like two trains running on parallel tracks. These classes helped me take my good ideas and share them with others with my writing. I used to write in Mandarin and then translate into English. But now I write mostly in English. I was always a go...

Life can be very difficult, education gives hope my life will be better, education can help a person through the hard times. Sometimes the most worthwhile things in life can take a long time and can be very hard to find in the end. But, Education can make a difference in life. I was born in an education family where both my parents were teachers in China.   When my sisters and I were lazy about school, they always told us that we are lucky to enjoy a good education. My parents grew up in the early days of a new China. In the 1960s, there was a movement in China called "the Cultural Revolution," which is about the educated urban youth going to work in the countryside or mountain areas. They thought that labor was a greater honor than education, so during those hard years schools were closed. A ll the young students responded to the party's call to work in rural areas. The slogan, "the most glorious work," encouraged people in the cities to work in rural area...

The world knows that education is important in China, but some will be surprised that there are two education systems. There is one for the urban and one for the rural areas.  The countryside areas get the poor teachers and the least funding.  Their students tend to be poor later in life and end up doing the same poor jobs as their parents.  When rural children excel in countryside school, their lives and the lives of their families can change for the better. According to “Urban-Rural Extension: Urban-Rural Reproduction among Different Groups of Children” by Han, Jialing, et al.   published in Chinese Education & Society , “The binary urban-rural structure is a fundamental reality of China and constitutes an important structural force in societal development and stratification …” Zhang Ying’s experience moving to the US proves that good education and hard work can change her destiny. Zhang Ying is from a poor rural village. With the national economic chang...

When we see photos of American parents with different skin colors than their kids, we are often melted by their warm smiling images. We often do not focus on or care about the fact they lost their culture. We focus on the happiness of everyone in the photo.   I am Chinese. In photos of Chinese traditional festivals in America, I often see children dressed in traditional Chinese clothing and being cared for by two golden-haired American parents. In those photos, the happiness of the children is obvious, at least on the outside. Who is lucky in international adoption? The act of international adoption seems like an act of giving, but when the entire process is looked at closely, the wellbeing and happiness of the children is not often considered.   The largest number of international adoptions came from China and South Korea.   By examining these two countries closely, it will show that while initially there were good reasons for intercountry adoption, when the in-co...