Write About Yourself: First Composition

Write About Yourself

 

Special note for Chinese students:

 

When they introduce themselves, English-speaking people normally don't talk a lot about their families, so please DO NOT start by saying things like this:

"I live with my mother, my father, my brother and my sister. My father is a teacher. My mother is a housewife. My brother is a high school student ..."

This sounds very boring: introducing your family is NOT a self-introduction.

Some subtopics to inspire you (but don't feel you have to only write about these subtopics):

Personality (shy, outgoing ...)

Achievements (cooking, computers ...)

Likes/Dislikes

Hopes/Plans

Appearance

Where you live

What you speak (Hakka, Japanese etc.)

Use your imagination (imagine you are describing yourself online to a beautiful girl/handsome guy: you want them to be interested in you). Try to be humorous, if possible.

Step 1: Free writing

Write as fast as you can for ten minutes without stopping: double-spaced in pen

Don't criticize yourself, don't erase anything and don't try to fix any mistakes

Don't worry about correct grammar, spelling or word choice
When you finish, your page will look like a mess

That's OK!

tóngshì (tonal spelling = torngshyh) 同事 = coworker, NOT colleague

英漢字典不可靠，請不要害自己。中文同義詞不是定義！

學英文要查英英學習字典才有效！

Here is how a well-known online English-Chinese so-called "dictionary" ("glossary" would be more accurate) explains "colleague" by using synonyms instead of real definitions:

tóngshì (tonal spelling = torngshyh) 同事 

其實，Colleague 不是一般人說的“同事”！

同事 = coworker, NOT colleague, 上面連英式音標（DJ）都不對

The above explanations are misleading because they give Chinese learners the mistaken impression that anybody you work with can be called a torngshyh. This is not the case.

Doctors/lawyers/professors and other people with specialized training and advanced skills (the typically also earn high salaries) usually call each other “my colleague.” In an ordinary work environment, you might occasionally call somebody a "colleague" to show special respect, but a person who works with you in the same office/school/factory etc. is more commonly called a "coworker.”

English-Chinese or other bilingual dictionaries often do not give you complete or correct explanations of word meaning. Learner's dictionaries (designed for people who grew up speaking a different language) are much more reliable. These dictionaries define words much more clearly and completely because they explain grammar and pragmatics (what to say or not say in social situations), point out connotations, collocations and related words, and provide you with real native speaker sentences. Here are definitions of COLLEAGUE provided by two learner's dictionaries:

Cursive Letter Family "r, z, e, s, x"

"r, z, e, s, x" is a mixed group.

The video below shows you how to join "s" and "e":

Cursive Letter Family: "n, m; v, w, y"

The "n, m; v, w, y" family has round tops:

The video below shows you how to connect "w" and "n":

Cursive Letter Family: "l, b, f, h, k"

The "l, b, f, h, k" letter family uses big loops. Every letter starts like an "l":

The video below shows you how to join "a" and "l". Notice that this writer's "l" looks malnourished (營養不良!): it doesn't have enough "meat" on its bones!

Cursive Letter Family: "i, j, p, t, u"

Cursive Letter Family: "i, j, p, t, u"

Here is how to write t+i, American style:

Cursive Letter Family: "c, a, d, g, q, o"

There are five basic families of cursive letters. The letters in each family usually start the same way.

This is the "c, a, d, g, q, o" Family. The elegant letters that appear below (but not the video) were made using Cursif Lignes, a French cursive font created by Christophe Beaumale (a ZIP file). You can download and install this font on your own computer to make your own exercises.

The "c" family

The video below shows you how to connect "o" and "u":