An extracurricular activity that I greatly enjoyed was acting as an interpreter and groomsman in the wedding of my British friend, who married a beautiful Chinese girl. I was glad to have the opportunity to help a foreigner in an alien land, and learn the characteristics of Chinese and Western wedding. For the preparation, I read backgrounds of wedding in China and the United Kingdom. During the wedding ceremony, the bridegroom's parents gave blessing from telephone in their hometown, when I translated fluently their conversation in three languages (English, Mandarin and Cantonese) for guests.
By the end of the activity, I realized that my role as a groomsman and interpreter wasn't just to assist my friend, but also to understand different culture with self-confidence and diligence. This is the dual mission of my future work: to deepen the world's understanding of China and China's understanding of the world.
I am applying to selective schools, so please be harsh on my writing if needed. I want to improve. Thank you for comments!
Best regards.
David Xie
My first thought is to change your title to something about translating - that to me is really more of the extracurricular.
I would also re-work the first sentence to have interpreter come before groomsman.
Good luck!
Thank you for your advice. I will try to fix this one up.
I think it's better. Here are a few suggestions for word choice changes.
"whenwhich I translated fluently their conversation "
"By the end of the activityevent
Good Luck!
Try to include why you want to go to that school. Why is this school unique to others?
I am amazed... how can a multilingual person be so good at English? I would expect that ordinarily a jack of all trades is a master of none, and a jack of all languages is a master of none. But you probed me wrong. You write in English in a way that is rhythmic and eloquent.
Now that I notice the corrections by glaserjf, I agree with them. Those two corrections are a good idea... "event" and "which." (Which refers to the conversation.) Nevertheless, your English is at a very high level of mastery; I think you have a real talent, and we would be lucky to have you join the EF contributors.
