My Essay 39

I come from Nanyang, an economically underdeveloped area in China. I love watching movies very much. There are two movies that have impressed me the most: The Blind Side and The Pursuit of Happiness. (*You use "have" here because it implies that the movies are continuing to impress you. If you say "the movies impressed me", then they may not impress you any longer) The Blind Side tells us a story about a poor boy, Michael, who finally got an offer from the University of Mississippi with the help of Ms. Leigh Anne and her family. This movie is really exciting! Meanwhile, I am very attracted to the high school life in America by watching this movie. Hence, I started to think of enrolling in an American school, and Exeter is my dream school.

However, it is very difficult to me. Since I must get a high score on the SSAT and TOFEL, but the teaching level in my town is really not that great, there is no training center for the SSAT or TOFEL. Hence, I decided to learn study for them on my own. (*You learn facts or ideas; you study for a test.)

First, I learned some information about these two exams on the internet. The information showed me that I need to memorize at least 12000 words in order to get a high score. It is really a big challenge! However, I love this challenge, and I am courageous to face it. Because courage is being afraid but going on anyhow! (*Nice!)

The distance between your dreams and reality is called action. I made (*be careful not to switch tenses in the middle of a story!) a detailed schedule. I learned much more assiduously (*this should be an adverb here because it modifies the way in which you learned) in school so that more time could be spent preparing for the exams, and asked my father to order many reference books on the internet. Since then, my time is always filled with many things. Not only I need to do a lot of activities, but also study very late in the evening. (This beginning of this sentece could be restated in one of either two ways. The first: "Not only did I need to..." This way is very sophisticated and mature, as shown by its use of inversion of the verb and subject. The second: "I needed to not only..." The first one sounds nicer. The rules for using inversion in English are hard to pin down, however, so the second, more straightforward way is acceptable too.)  However, I am still feeling happy.

After a few months, I found my English level had progressed a lot. I knew more and more words and can read many English articles and novels. (*Bravo!) All of these convinced me that I can learn English well on my own! Of course, I have faced many difficulties: the more words I recognized, the more words I forgot. (*Be careful of comma splices, like in the last sentence. A comma splice is when a comma joins two independent clauses without a coordinating conjunction [such as "and", "or", "for", "yet", "so", "nor", "but"]. To fix this, either use a semicolon, colon, or coordinating conjunction.) All I did is to review these words again and again.

Finally, I got a full perfect mark in on the vocal section of my first SSAT test on 7th, Dec. I felt so happy when I received my test report! All this experience remind me of a saying: Pursue excellence and success will follow.

// Congratulations on your wonderful scores! I'm glad you were able to achieve your goals. I was drawn to your notebook in particular because it reminded me of one of my best friends, who is from Zhengzhou. He is a student with the XJTU Youth Class. We are both applying to American colleges this year, so he often asks me to correct his essays. Just today I corrected two. (I don't mind that it's Christmas; my family is Jewish.) Good luck. I am very impressed by your writing!