Hello all,
I was wondering if the following introduction to a college essay about my passion for languages was confusing or overly wordy. Do the first couple sentences leave you scratching your head? How can I make it flow better?
Thanks in advance,
Alex
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"That one is Comrade Hu!"
I had no idea who Comrade Hu was, but as I listened to the State Department language tapes, I pictured hundreds of 1950s diplomats landing in China ready to pick him out of a crowd. There was no doubt about it: these tapes were old -- Mr. Hu almost certainly did not go by "comrade" anymore. But at a school that offered only French, Spanish, and Latin, I had resorted to the Foreign Service Institute's free language tapes to satiate my hunger to learn new languages.
In the confines of my room I persisted, committing words like "to come" and "to go" to memory and leaving words like "section chief" to the side. Finally, I mustered the nerve to try out my Chinese on the native speaker who sat behind me in Freshman Latin. "Wo hui shuo yidianr putonghua!" I said proudly.
He furrowed his eyebrows. "Oh, I speak the other dialect." Bad luck, I guess.
"You speak Cantonese?" I asked, confirming.
"Wait-no. Mandarin. Say that again?"
My tones, he told me, were awful.
I don't scratch my head much when I'm confused, by I do furrow my eyebrows.
My eyebrows were furrowed all through reading this.
Thanks, Mustafa. Could you please tell me which parts confused you? I was trying to teach myself Chinese using an old course developed by the State Department in the fifties to teach diplomats before they assumed their duties. Which parts of the intro confused you?
I'm not a professional writer, but I can let you know what I think.
It doesn't seem like an intro. It's like I'm reading this but have missed the first page or first few paragraphs. It reads more like a passage from a book not an essay.
On another note, when you speak to a native Chinese speaker in mandarin, always say:
Wo hui shuo yidianr putonghua, ke shi wo shuo de bu hao. lol
To begin: the whole introduction.
Now: why would you use that introduction instead of saying what you just told me?
Ben, does the following sound more intro-like to you? It is a bit long but it could be shortened.
Mustafa, I wanted to use an introduction that was engaging. Had I started off "I was trying to teach myself Chinese..." it might have seemed boring. Is the following clearer?
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While my athletic friends ran laps, did pushups, and lifted weights, I spent my afternoons performing drills of a different kind.
"Which one is Comrade Hu?" I listened again to the rising and falling tones of the Mandarin Chinese sentence, before spitting out the reply with an automaticity that would make a drill sergeant proud: "That one is Comrade Hu!"
The tapes were a vestige of the 1950s, developed by the Foreign Service Institute to train diplomats in the language before their jobs took them abroad. The course had aged a bit, and it showed: as I listened I wondered how many times I'd be hearing the word comrade on the streets of present-day Beijing.
Nevertheless, it was thorough and the best resource I had at a school that offered only Spanish, French, and Latin. I persisted, committing words like "to come" and "to go" to memory and leaving words like "section chief" for later. Finally, I mustered the courage to try out my Chinese on the native speaker who sat behind me in Freshman Latin. "Wo hui shuo yidianr putonghua!" I said proudly.
He furrowed his eyebrows. "Oh, I speak the other dialect." Bad luck, I guess.
"You speak Cantonese?" I asked, confirming.
"Wait-no. Mandarin. Say that again?"
My tones, he told me, were awful.
I'm going to disagree with Mustafa. The intro is charming and engaging, and would not confuse an admissions officer, who would have reference to the cultural and historical associations necessary to make sense of the piece. I say: Keep it.
I do think it has a certain charm about it but it seems to end off rather abruptly. Perhaps some people feel that this makes a cute unorthodox little ending but to me it sounds like you are ending on a bad note. I immediately thought to myself, "Uh ok that was an interesting story but what's the point? What did you learn from this?" I do understand the point, I think, but it would be good to at least add one or two sentences at the end which explain how these experiences have confirmed, strengthened, and tested your passion for foreign languages. For instance: what is the moral of this story?
By the way you end the story it seems like you have failed to achieve what you want. Then you don't tell us what you learned or how you grew from the experience at all. It almost seems like you are trying to say that you discovered that language learning was the wrong path for you. Basically you say: 'I worked really hard to learn a language and then when I tried to practice it on one of my classmates he told me that I had gotten it all wrong.' Well geeze, that doesn't sound very encouraging!
You need to explain the relevance of the story more rather than just dumping a story on us with no reflection at all. How did this experience help you improve yourself?
Ah, thanks Gutama--yes, this is just the first paragraph or two of the essay which will go on for a good 500 words more or so. I plan to talk about how I've learned from those mistakes; my Chinese has improved quite a bit now.
Starting a narrative in the middle of the action is a time honored introductory technique for catching the reader's interest. It's called starting in media res. The conclusion should definitely show something positive about you, though. You are trying to sell yourself in this essay, and your inability to speak Chinese well is not a great selling point.
Don't mind me -- I find a lot of perfectly legitimate, effective if employed by the right person writing techniques, corny.
Anyway, is that your whole essay?
If it is, it won't do.
If I had to do an introduction that way, I'd start off from the very beginning, with a spate of words in another language. That would come off as fresh and permit me the option of proceeding in a lot of different ways.
It is a little unconventional you have to admit. But this could be a good thing or a bad thing. I have started papers similar to this. It's okay to be creative with your intro just make sure you don't come off as trying to hard. That can be a turn off, or turn on either way. I think its fine but you should definitely end on a more positive note.
I'll just say again that I really like this introduction. In addition to being fresh and engaging, the allusions ("comrade," 1950s state department activities, etc.) demonstrate a breadth of background knowledge that suggests this is an unusually well-read applicant with a wide range of interests. In admissions essays as in fiction, showing is always better than telling.
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