Be Proud of Yourself!(personal anecdote essay1)

10b1

ID:121132
조형우

 I was invited to Camp named CTY which was held in Luthern College, U.S., when I was 3^rd grade in Elementary school. Therefore I had to fly to L.A. alone in young age. Even though flight to L.A. might seem easy, flying 12hours alone in that age was very stressful to me. After 12hours of stressful flight I have finally arrived to Luthern college. I did not recognize that numerous hardships will be waiting in this moment. During the second day of camp, I had influenza by mistakenly eating noxious plants. I had three roommates, and all three of them were Jewish. They woke me up frequently in midnight since they were not allowed to turn on the lights in certain period of time for religious region. This made me more difficult to adapt to the twelve hours time difference, which made my disease aggravate. Moreover, I did not have friend to console me at that time. Thus, I was sick, could not adapt to the time difference and did not have friend. Not to mention that there was sports program, parties and numerous extracurricular activities, what I could only do was to study in the lecture since I was extremely sick and didn’t have friend.

 My Room Assistant has advised me to try to get along with my roommates when he recognized my situation. He told me that I was not capable of getting along with friends since I was feeling inferior compared to friends. Actually, I was feeling inferior since my friends were not only taller than me but also was good at sports. By following advice of my Room assistant I first started to get along with my roommates first. When I started conversation with them, they listened to me carefully and also asked me about Korean culture. Sharing culture allowed us to understand each other well which led me to become best friend with my roommate Ari. Since Ari really liked basketball, he asked me to play it together. I played basketball with Ari, and I naturally built relationship with other friends who played basketball. Thanks to Ari, I had a lot of friends which made camp enjoyable.

 The time passed so fast, so that the last day of the camp came so early. When I was saying farewell to friends, I thought that camp would have been more exciting if I made friends earlier. On the other hand, I could experience diverse cultures and I recognized the importance of self esteem. The camp’s purpose was to teach diverse subjects to students, but the camp presented me more valuable experience.

Monthly TOEFL Essay #1: Different way of saying

10b1

조형우

121132

     As George Santayana said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”, introspection of past events is a crucial aspect of progression. Therefore people maintain some past rules that are helpful to society, and modify several laws which they regard unnecessary or harmful. Some systems which are proved to be utile, as a result, are succeeded until today. Remaining rules or life patterns are called tradition when they are indigenous. There are numerous traditions in my county Korea, and using honorific is one of it. An honorific is an expression with connotations conveying esteem. I would like other countries to adopt tradition of using honorific for three reasons: horrific enables citizens to maintain good social relationship, effective conversation and maintain the order of the society.

     To begin with, using honorific promotes social harmony. Using honorific shows respect to elderly and people in higher social status. Since most of the conflicts occur when people believe that their opinions are not respected, using honorific lowers the chance of conflict occurring. There are numerous situations when people’s opinions differ. When a person’s opinion is contradicted by other, one might feel uncomfortable. Sometimes this uncomfortable feeling is connected to conflict. However honorific mitigates this uncomfortable feeling since it ensures that a person is not looking down on others. As a result, using honorific stimulates amicable relationship.        

     Furthermore, using honorific allows one to effectively convey opinion. This is because using honorific shows respect and not using honorific shows friendliness. For instance, politicians use honorific in public announcement to show that they not only respect the audience but that they are serious. On the other hand, people sometimes intentionally does not use honorific. Close friends usually does not use honorific to show sense of closeness. This is because honorific is conventionally used in public place or to a person in higher social status. This also means that conversation without honorific is private and intimate. As the example shows, honorific allows one to effectively convey opinion by using it in different situations.

      Last but not least, honorific contributes to orderly society. When majority ignores the rank of the society, chaos occurs in the society. This is because the society requires leader and follower to effectively finish the major project. If project does not have a leader, it will consume a long time to allocate parts. Using honorific, however, stimulates people to maintain the rule of the society. When a person uses honorific to boss, it clearly shows that one not only respects boss but also one is on the lower rank. As a result, honorific prevents chaos of the society.

     In conclusion, I would like to introduce the custom of using honorific to foreigners because it helps to establish methodical, harmonic society and enables diverse expressions. Some people say that Korea should stop using honorific since it deters creativity and leads to excessively perfunctory society. As a matter of fact, honorific is Korea’s proud tradition which made people to call Korea, the country of courteous people in the East.