24. English Improvement Plan

     How time flies, this semester seems coming to an end now. During this term, I really learn a lot from our ESL class. But there are a lot of thing that I still have to be paid attentions on. Like there is a long way for me to go in vocabulary. Though I have less obstacle communicating with others now than before, my poor vocabulary and bad pronunciation are still big problems. Sometimes people may be misunderstand my words because my pronunciation in words. So I should not only try to remember more words, but also correct my pronunciation of them.

     Secondly, though I took ESL course which is focusing on both reading and writing. I don’t think it is enough for me. From my perspective, I should read and write more in the future. When I go back to China to have summer vacation, I should read English novels and write a lot just like write a blog now.  I firmly believe that it will help me a lot if I continue using English in my mother country. Because it will be great helpful when I come back to the United States.

     Thirdly, I want to practice my oral English. For sometimes I may make a lot of grammar mistakes when I speak English. Maybe first it sounds funny, but times after times, it is horrible. So I don’t want this happen again.  To pretend this, I must speak a lot in everyday life and watch English shows.  Sometimes it is really important for me to go outside and talk with people. It provides me a chance to make more friends, maybe I will meet my future boyfriends! Just  kidding.

     Overall, I have a lot to do to improve my English. My goal is to be a native speaker in English. I will have no problems in communicating with others. We could share our opinions together. I could learn more about the world.

23. Response to Online Rdg #5.

The 2011 Time 100 Poll has just published out. This year, Rain has been selected the most influential man in the world. To tell the truth, when I first saw the result, I was so happy. Because, Rain is one of the star who I loved very much when I was in junior high school. And my English name Raineaf is just from his name.

Way back to days in junior high school, when I was in summer vacation, one day I watched a Korean TV drama online, and it was really so interesting. That’s one is called Full House which was very popular among east Asia in 2004 and 2005. Rain played the main character who was a very famous star in the drama. The leading lady was Song, Hye Kyo who was a orphan in the drama and became a writer at last. Because both Rain and Hye Kyo had played so well, they were known from many young people not only in Korea, but also in China. At that time, a lot of websites would select the yearly best popular couple characters in dramas, with so much love to Rain and Hye Kyo, every day, I spent most of my time voting them online. Of course they became the best popular couple at last.

When I thought of this, it seemed very interesting for I haven’t spent so much time on stars before. And I am also surprised how famous Rain has been till now!

22.

It is widely acknowledged by, at least, most of the parents that early education is of vital importance. Since this period from aged five to ten is a crucial time for the younger children to form the initial recognition of the world. In this case, some people strongly hold that it is necessary for the younger children to take classes such as art and music, apart from history, science and languages. I am one of the supporters of this idea.

To start with, classes like music and art to the younger children is like the fragrance to the flower, with which help to build up their charm and specialty .Young as the children are, they still can find where their interest lies through art and music, which would definitely benefit their future development. For example, there was a time in my primary school that I took part in Pipa classes. At that time, to be frank, I was not exactly enjoying it, for that I need to spend amount of time practicing it. However, gradually I could feel the beauty and pleasure that playing Pipa brought to me, it was a very shuttle feeling, but I was really surprised and happy. Playing Pipa made me more patient and calm than ever before, also, I was told that a girl with good playing skill is really attractive and fascinating. Afterwards, I quit playing Pipa due to time conflicts before I went to junior high, nevertheless, after so many years, I still have more special sense toward music than peer students. Meanwhile, this childhood experience not only taught me how to appreciate life, but also inspire me think in different ways.

In addition, learning art and music are excellent choices for the students to express and relieve themselves. It is obvious that more and more people are facing high stress life, including younger children. They have to balance heavy study load and the desire of getting rid of control from both parents and schools. Under the circumstances, art and music can help to shift the students attention, thus accompanying them go through depressing times. Still, for me, I was so lucky that I started listening to the world classic music when I was 6 years old. I have no idea who Beethoven is, but every time I am exposed to the masterpieces such as “For Elise”, I feel relaxed and peaceful. Whenever I run into unhappy things at school, music turned out to be the best medicine as it created a space for me to take a rest and get charged, after which I could get back on the trail again.

In conclusion, classes like art and music open a door to the younger children, encouraging and leading them to get to know the world, to find the fun of life, to look for a place where they belong to, to shape their personalities to become a better man. So, it is wise and helpful to require younger students to take these classes.

21.

We are living in a time when our life is filled with news and flooded with movies every day. It is easy for us to be influenced by masses of information from the media. In this case, some people argue that, it is essential for the movies from the media to present the good distinguish from the bad, to show that nice people will be praised and evil people will finally end up with punishment. Nevertheless, I am not that into this idea.

On the one hand, it is naive to judge people only by couple of things they’ve done or few words they’ve said, which is basically what the movies are all about. Under the circumstances, if people follow what have been shown in the movies, which in most cases are good people get rewarded and bad people get punishment, to form the idea of the world, they might turn out to be unrealistic people or tend to take things for granted. For example, in the real world, it is possible for a good person to hurt someone unintentionally, while it is also likely that a bad person will help people out of conscience. At that time, you cannot simply judge them with the good or bad, right or wrong, as people are not consist of only two sides like a coin. Anyhow, movie are stories made up from imagination and stories sometimes have little things to do with the real life, just to draw people’s attention thus earning profits. So, it is important for us to have the ability to make judgment, instead of believing in movie stories.

What’s more, movie itself is created, most of the time, for entertainment. So it might not be a perfect idea for people to regard movie as an educational tool or a standard of dealing with real life. Meanwhile, people can select their preference based on their personal taste. For example, if you want to learn something, you can try documentary or educational video. If you are hopeless or unhappy, you can pick up inspirational movies. Or, you want something totally new and fresh, science fiction and fantasy films are good ideas. Different movies are like different windows, behind which presented exactly various stories. We would like to see the diversities of movies to gain new experience and inspiration, not merely the stories with which the ending we can figure out immediately the moment we start the movie. Still remember the old saying? Butter to butter is no relish.

To conclude, movies are small parts of our lives. Admittedly, movies can reveal some aspects of the reality; however, the life we are leading is still far from movies. We might be impressed with some of the points from the movies, but we should never truly count on them as reference. Our insight of the world, understanding of life, feeling of existence, everything together need us to experience and draw our own conclusion.

20. Superpower

     Do you know Doraemon, who is a very famous Japanese anime character. In the story, he helps Nobita accomplish a lot with his amazing pocket. Doraemon could get whatever Nobita or he wanted from his pocket. His pocket is like Disneyland, which could make your dreams come true. Maybe, his pocket is just his special superpower!

     Everyone wants to own superhero power, including me. I still remember that when I was a little child, what I wanted badly is to have a superhero power that could help me grasp and memorize whatever new pieces of piano songs quickly and correctly. For at that time, in order to do well in piano, I had to spend at least 4 fours playing it everyday. So I lost many chances to play with my friends. But now, what I want most is to have one power that could help me to read books quickly and remember all the knowledge that I have study in a short time. I know it sounds funny and impossible, but I really want to have this power.

     Reasons why I want to have it are: before I came to the United States, though my grades were not so bad, but I couldn’t be the best students at my class. Though I tried hard to do my best, the results didn’t come out like what I hoped. Now, I just wanna get highest score in every class. I know it’s hard. So that’s why I wanna own a superhero power, which could help me remember not only whatever I have learned in class, but also all books I have read. Thus it could help me keep on studying and learning more knowledge.

     I know that it is not an good idea to want to own some superpower to help you do well easily on things. But I still believe that we could make efforts to get what we want. It is hard to do everything perfectly, but if you really want to achieve something in the life, no matter if you have you superpower or not, it’s worth making great efforts to get it. Your life will be more colorful when you realize your dreams through your own efforts!

19.A Time for Renewal in Japan

   March 11, an catastrophe happened in Japan, countless people died and missing from the terrible earthquake and tsunami. At first, I did not pay too much attention on the disaster, because there are countless earthquakes happen in Japan, and the Japanese have treat them as part of daily lives. But after I watched the breaking news and some videos on CNN, I realized that 2012 maybe come now. Waves caused by tsunami were more than 10 meters high which was really horrible scenes that could just happened in a movie. The worst thing is that people are still working hard on protecting the radiation from leaking into the air, sea and land from the broken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Though Japanese people may be seemed calm towards these disasters, but measurements must be taken to rebuild this country now.

     As is known to all, after the bubble economy, the Japanese economy is still stagnant, millions of workers still cannot find suitable jobs to afford the expensive life expenses. People there under much pressure, and the MPC of the economy is still too small. Because of the big pressures that everyone undertakes, small gambling houses are very popular in Japan. People just throw their money there to release the big pressures. How strange this country has been because of the recession.

     Now, I firmly think it is the time that to change the Japanese people’s life styles, to make them more optimistic about their future, to turn the recession in economy into prosperous.

18. Music

Last night, when I wanted to go to sleep, one of my friends shared a video of Piano Concerto No. 2 which was a masterpiece of worldwide famous composer Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff. This video is performed by my favorite French pianist Hélène Grimaud which is also very famous around the world. It reminds me days when I took piano classes in China.

When I was a little child, my grandfather played a lot of master pieces of music at home. Because he loves music very much and he is good at playing various kinds of instruments such as piano, violin, clarinet, saxophone and so on. He often played different knids of classical music at home. As time passed, I began loving classical music. Under my grandpa’s encouragement, I took piano classes since 5 years old. Though I was young at that time, I really love spending time with my piano. But sometimes when my teacher gave too much homework on playing the piano, I felt terrible. For all of my friends played games outside every day. What I could do was just sitting in front of the big piano and listening to the happy noisies which were come from my window. However playing the piano took me a lot of time of enjoying my beautiful childhood, I still treasure times when I could have plenty of time practice it. Cause when I attended senior high school, I must live in dormitory at school. And there were not enough pianos at school, so it is limited for students to play it. Only students who are major in piano could have access to it. As I did not choose piano as my major, it was hard for me to play it even touched it. At that time I found I love piano so much!!!

Now I study here, in UM. The chances to play the piano is still hard to find. But listening to some great pieces of classical music could somehow smooth the pain. No matter what, music is the only thing that I will pursue all my life time.