Learning a language

Even though Chinese children take mandatory English classes starting in elementary schools, it really only teaches us to read and listen. Writing and especially speaking are big problems for us, maybe because we don't have many opportunities to speak English in real life. So sometimes we make fun of ourselves, saying that we only learned "mute" English.

That is the case for a typical Chinese person like me. I have been in America for nearly half a year, and everything seems to be going well. I can see myself making progress. However, learning a language is like a long journey, and I can see that I haven't reached fluency when I see native speakers' writings. It's just like, when I read foreigners' writing in Chinese, I can understand what they want to convey, but it just looks like a piece of work that was written by a Chinese elementary school student. So, I assume that when native speakers read my writings, they have the same feelings. Nevertheless, I did not mean to tell a sad story: I am proud of my progress, and really grateful for a lot of people's kind help. At last, I believe I​ can speak and write in a very natural way (or a natural manner?)!

(natural way/manner: both work equally well)

I went to Costco today

My friends and I co-own a Costco membership, and we always go there together by car. It's lucky that one of my friends can drive us there.

Costco is a members-only wholesale supermarket. Although I have seen this kind of supermarket on one of my favorite TV shows, Modern Family, Costco still impressed me when I first went inside. It virtually resembles a huge warehouse within which tons of stuff is packed together, and where basically, you can buy everything you need. Furthermore, offering stuff at a low price attracts a great number of people. I guess that's why every time we go there, there are always long queues for checkout. Of course, the situation was the same today.

We don't have such kind of supermarket in China.  That's why I really want to take my parents to Costco and show them around when they come to America. It must surprise and delight them because they can spend a whole day there shopping!

(I cut a few of your sentences in half.  English teachers call these run-on sentences. If two sentences can stand alone, it's usually better to separate them rather than joining them with "and" or a comma)

10 things you didn’t know about China until you came here. ---1

Hi, this is Owen, a Chinese guy who is learning English. Today I want to talk about 10 things about China you won’t understand unless you visit. I hope it’s useful for someone who is learning Chinese and wants to come here for a visit someday. OK. Here it is.

1. Before you come here, you could never realize that how hard working Chinese students are. Chinese students are like machines (tried to match the slang tone here).
When you come here, you’ll be amazed that a child can be so hard working. That’s the foundation of the last 40 years of China's economic magical.


2. Before you come here, you may not know that there are  (no contraction there're) 55 minority nationalities in China. You probably thought that all Chinese people are Han and all people look the same.
When you come here, you may meet a man who looks like a Russian but he speaks Chinese, or you may meet a girl who looks like a Kazakhs but she still speaks Chinese.


3. Before you come here, you wouldn’t think that China is one of the most convenient countries to live in. You can just sit there and order whatever you need by your phone. When your order comes soon after, you just need to pay for it with your phone without any cash. Actually, you just can take your phone to anywhere to pay almost anything (idiomatic to pair anywhere+anything) without any cash or credit card. Just a smart phone.


4. When you come here, you may realize that the squat toilets in most public places are much cleaner than the toilets you're used to. Because no one Chinese want to touch his or her ass where someone else's ass has been when you use bathroom/ public restroom (a restroom is a bathroom in a public place). We only use seated toilets at home.

5. When you come here, you'd better not brag that you can drink a lot of alcohol. Any Chinese man or woman, even my grandma, could drink you under the table.

to be continued (looking forward to it)

Do not like my job now Feb. 24,2019

I do not like my job as in the finance industry any more. It is very boring, and people around me are backstabbing. But this job pays well, which can support me  and pay off my student loans.
Now I am conflicted about whether I should keep this job.

(cunning is not necessarily negative.  It is often used to mean something close to "clever".  Unfortunately almost all of the one-word synonyms I can think of are not specifically pejorative.  Backstabbing is kind of awkward in this context, but the meaning is very clear.  People would also understand if you said political (which would refer to office politics), but that might be confusing to non-native speakers).

Please Revise It: another version of self-introduction for the coming MBA interview

Dear teachers:

My name is WYX.  I am 32 years old, and live in Chuzhou City, Anhui Province. I graduated from Shanghai Normal University with a major in Western Economics in YEAR.

Since graduating, I have been working in finance for more than 13 years. In the past 10 years, I worked primarily at real estate companies as an accounting manager. Before leaving the postgraduate examination (<- can't edit that because I don't know what it means), I left work to concentrate full time on preparing for the CPA exam and this exam.

I am a motivated and self-disciplined person who is eager to realize my own life value. I have achieved steady growth in my professional field. By the end of 2018, I had already obtained the “Medium Level Accountant Title” , the “Primary Level Accountant Title” and passed four professional CPA courses . I expect the remaining two courses are expected to be accepted in October 2019, and then I will receive my CPA certificate.

At the same time, I have always had a dream of obtaining a Masters Degree. Due to work and personal issues, I decided to take the postgraduate examination in 2018, and then went to Nanjing to develop. Therefore, I applied for the MPAcc of Nanjing University Of Finance & Economics University (NUFE). Because of Not being familiar with the Nanjing’s colleges before, I only knew that NUFE might suit my major, so I chose to apply for that college. However, due to many years of working, the test ability was not as good as before, so the test results was not satisfied (this part is hard to edit because I can't tell if you were not personally satisfied or if the result did not satisfy the requirement), I only got 187 points but it’s beyond the National cutoff line which is about 165 points. That’s why (I don't understand why the score is the reason for the application) I apply for transfer from NUFE’s MPAcc to HHU’s MBA.

However, I have since learned that many MBA majors also have research directions in finance and accounting. For a professional accountant, this offers better development opportunities than a MPAcc certificate alone. In addition, after many years of hard working, I know that it is not only about the family background, or the University name that determine a person's potential. The most important thing is individual's commitment and hard work.

Studying and living in Nanjing is my first choice and dream. I humbly request that you give me a chance to study MBA here. I am ready to be a proud of being a student of NC/HH/NL’s MBA, and maybe in the future, NC/HH/NL University will be proud to have a student like me.

Okay, that’s all. Thanks again for giving me the opportunity to speak about myself. Thank you.

Please help review and correct my writing "A great Sci-Fi movie - The Wandering Earth"

A great Sci-Fi movie - The Wandering Earth

This Monday I saw a Sci-Fi movie, The Wandering Earth, which is a blockbuster in the New Year movie season. It has been attracting attention since the team announced its production because the original novel is written by Liu Cixin - the most successful and popular Chinese Sci-Fi writer in recent years.


The movie tells a story about the Earth being pushed out of the solar system so as to save human civilization from being swallowed by the dying Sun. It happens in the future when the Sun enters the end of its life and is expanding to eat up all its planets. People have had to build thousands of enormous engines powered by nuclear energy on the Earth‘s surface to drive the planet out of its orbit. Considering the massive size of the Earth, it's impossible to gain speed faster enough to escape with those engines. But fortunately, it was found out that Jupiter can be used as an accelerator to speed up the Earth. The rest of the plot is about how the process of acceleration is hard and dangerous and how the characters solve the difficult issues.

The movie has an amazing story and gorgeous special effects. It's a great Sci-Fi movie.

(我自己的目标之一是读三体！)