Could You Please Help Me with My Composition?

An extremely special present that I once received was a trench coat, and it was given to me as a New Year's gift when I was sixteen. It is a Chinese tradition for parents to give their children a new piece of clothing before the Spring Festival since it is believed that doing so will give them a good start to the New Year, and allow them to leave all the evil spirits of the past year behind. My gift was a red trench coat which, wrapped in a brown paper bag, not only looked so exquisite, but also very distinct. To me, it was the kind of coat that made you feel really stylish, one that you wanted to wear it all the time, unlike the ordinary, but functional ones that I had been given before. Its material was soft and luxurious to the touch, but still stiff enough to hold its shape. I knew it was expensive since I'd been secretly longing for it for quite some time. However, my parents had never bought me anything of value like this before. Seeing the puzzled look on my face, my mother said, “Adrian, you are a big girl now. You deserve something more elegant. Your father and I know that you studied really hard last year. We are very proud of you." I was so surprised and overjoyed! I wouldn't say it was a life-changing gift, but it was of great significance to me as I never imagined that my parents had noticed my desire for this particular coat. So, it just shows how much they truly cared and knew about me. Now, sadly, I have outgrown that coat, but it still remains in my wardrobe as a reminder of that wonderful occasion.

Hi Emily. Good job! Whatever changes that I’ve made were merely done to allow your sentences to sound more natural to my native ears, for clarity, and to eliminate redundancy. Apologies if I misinterpreted! I hope that this helps you. J.

Could you please help me with my composition？

You write very well! I changed some minor punctuation and word choices to make those sentences flow better.

- I added the first "because" due to the original two sentences being so short, while they were correct sentences, the period there was abrupt and the new sentence flows.

-The c in trench was just a typo.

- I changed "not like" to "unlike" because unlike creates a more concise statement, and makes for a better simile. 

- I added a comma after "That material was soft to touch the touch" because you should use a comma if you are connecting two independent clauses with a "but." Meaning, "The material was soft to the touch," and "It was stiff enough to maintain its shape" can stand alone as sentences, but (just like this comma but here) you are connecting them into one.

- The space between the quotation and Adrian I assume was a typo.

- I added the ", and we are proud of you" because those two sentences flow better if connected since they are short clauses. 

- Added the ", but" for flow.

- I changed just shown to showed because the former doesn't make sense, and showed maintains the same tense since you are using "cared" past tense later. Something to note is you might want to say "It shows how much they care about me" because that would suggest that they still do care about you, whereas showed and cared suggest that they no longer care about you and leaves the reader to infer (guess/imagine) why it is they no longer care about you. Did you fall out? Did they pass?

Overall very well done!