Recently, I always
hear my friends complaining about the Service Programme and I feel quite sorry
for them. They have gathered such a lot of money, but because of many reasons,
they could not go to those institutions to help the children, and they could only donate the money
to them.
As for me, I took
part in the Give Programme. As it has just ended last week, I’d like to talk
about some reflections of it. Unlike some classmates who have the opportunity
to teach the students something about Chinese or Chinese Culture, my teammates
and I were only expected to help the teachers in a Secondary School to correct
the Chinese compositions of the students. Although it may not seem to be as meaningful
as being a teacher, I still learned a lot from it.
When I was correcting
the students’ Chinese compositions, I found that it was not an easy job for me
at all! The students made some grammar mistakes and they could not write the Chinese
characters correctly, either. Sometimes it is obvious that they just composed
their works in English and then translated it into Chinese. Thus, it could be
difficult for me to understand their writings sometimes. This reminds me of our
own English essays. I am quite sure that when our tutors are correcting our
essays, they share the same feeling as well. In some occasions, the sentence
structures are wrong, while in other cases, it just doesn’t sound natural to a native
reader.
We have been told by
our tutors many times that we could not express ourselves in a native way and
we all know that this is because that we share different culture backgrounds
and different language backgrounds. However, from my experience of correcting
the Chinese compositions of some Singaporean students, I have better understandings
of this issue and I consider it a big barrier that we have to overcome as quickly
as possible.
As we are going to
study in NUS, we will have to write a lot of essays in our university studies. Therefore,
I sincerely suggest that we all look into this problem and try our best to
avoid making such mistakes from now on.
Unfortunately, I took part in the Service Program...
ReplyDeleteYou have a very good point that we are making exactly the same mistakes in English as the Singapore children did in Chinese.
I think I realized something.
Thank you.
I firmly agree with you! I have encountered such problems many times. As a foreign student, I think we need to make some changes in our way of thinking so that we could smoothly acclimatize this new environment. For me, from this bridging course, I find that I should learn to be more open-minded; besides, I should know more about western culture. Of course, I should go on improving my English. I really hope that one day my English could be as good as yours. (^-^)
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Jiangze. I agree with you on the idea that we need to learn to think in English. That may help us a lot. Besides, don't be too modest, you have an amazing vocabulary!!! (^O^)
DeleteFortunately, I took part in the service program. Until now, we did nothing, including raising money and doing some service for kids. I totally agree with you. I often cannot understand why this sentence is wrong and why I cannot express like this. The answer is my mother tongue is Chinese. In addition, correcting Chinese compositions must be a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteSo you mean you did go to the institutions to do something for the kids? (^O^) Sorry I didn't know that...Perhaps it was the girl's group that had this problem? Anyway, if you did manage to do this, it must be great fun!
DeleteBy the way, how comes you two one said "unfortunately"(Heyang) while the other one said "fortunately"(Zhang Kai)? I'm a bit confused now...(>_<)
ReplyDelete