I like going cycling to whittle away my free time, enjoying the mild wind and the beauty of nature while cycling. I founded (*be careful to distinguish between find/found and found/founded. My English-speaking friends sometimes make this mistake!) a cycling club in my school when I was in seventh grade. Our club have got some financial aids from some local shops, though the money is limited. Many of my classmates joined the club, and we often organize cycling activities. (*This is a comma splice) We have our own flag. Our cycling club is famous in my community and some of the activities have been reported in the local newspaper.
It was a sunny day on May 1st this year. So we decided to cycle have a cycling activity to a nearby town and watch a China Rose exhibition there. It is about 39 miles away. We planed to reach there at noon and come back home in the afternoon. It was pretty pleasant and we chatted happily to each other on our way to the exhibition. We arrived at 11 o’clock and watched many pretty flowers there. However, one of my friends got a cramp in his leg while we were cycling back. So I decided to stop and have a rest. I massaged that boy’s leg and gave him enough time for recovering to recover. It really took us a very long time. Worse still, the sky got darker faster than we expected, but all things can the only thing that could be used to light the road by us was merely a weak flashlight that emitted weak light. For the sake of safety, we choose a relative flat road with fewer cars driving on it. We began to feel nervous and overwhelmed as it was utterly dark all around. However, we continued going for that we knew it would be too dangerous for us to stay in darkness. Hence, I lead the whole team to progress at the forefront and could only see a small area of road that lit by the flashlight; the overall scene was completely shrouded in darkness. (*Another comma splice) I really feel like I was riding on the edge of an abyss at that time, would be falling down right into the abyss at any time. Home is was so far away that we did not know when we would arrive. (Be careful about tenses! You temporarily switch to present tense here with "is" when the rest of your story is in past tense.) But I told myself that I must overcome the fear so that we can arrive safely. Then I started to tell my friends some interesting jokes to make them easy put them at ease, and warned them to be careful of small rocks on the road from time to time. In order to care for a girl, we arranged for her to ride in the middle of the team. All of us felt relaxed gradually, and did not fear but deemed this cycling as something pretty cool and exciting! Then we heard some frogs croaking on one side of the road and saw a very beautiful view of the dark sky entirely packed with bright stars when we raised our heads. We just did not know how far we had ridden and when we would arrive at our homes. However, I believed that we will definitely get home at last if we were on the right way. All of my friends uttered screams of approval when I told them about my thoughts.
We finally got to our snug homes at the midnight. All of us shrieked in great happiness when we saw the familiar light of home!
Though it is already a few months later when I write down this experience, I am still feeling inspired now! When we have to face difficulties and challenges, we have no choice except for being brave.

//Again, very impressive! Good job. Your biggest errors tend to be comma splices: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_splice

I would also recommend being careful not to switch tenses in the middle of a story. A story told in the past should stay in the past. Also, it would be a good idea to review the usage of will and can vs. would and could.

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!