In this little video, four students were struggling for their book report. They all had different style of writing. Lucy was a girl who counted every word she wrote. It might help her finish the homework really quick. However, counting words might make the whole process of writing meaningless. It is because she was only trying to fill her book report with words, and the quality of the book report would be low. Schroeder was a boy who put a lot of plots into his book report. It might give the report many details, but he did not add his own views. Moreover, he also tried to connect his writing with many classic sentence structures, which had the same reason with Lucy's style -- reaching one hundred words. Linus was the most hard working student among the four. He read many books, and made comprehensive analysis about the book and its characters. He used abundant hard words , which made his book report more mature. Nonetheless, I think he overstated some of his point. As for Charlie Brown, he was the laziest one. He started writing his homework while others were almost done. I think this is not a good way of doing homework, because if you push everything to the last minute, you might not have time to revise your work. This could lead to plentiful problems in writing. I like Linus's writing style the most, for not only his excellent report, but also his careful attitude. He analyzed every character, and made deep thinking. However, his sentences were too long. He could separated them to some short sentences in older to make his book report less lengthy.

How to produce good writings? —— A Fantastic Blog

In Ann Handley’s blog, I read two passages: “9 qualities of good writing”, and “13 writing rules”. Both of them shows many high quality of writing rules for different levels of writers.

The first passage uses many examples and famous person to show that a good writing should be simple, systematic, logical, and comprehensive. Ann quoted George Orwell’s words: “ What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he or she will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?” Those were questions that George Orwell would ask himself in every sentence. It shows that every word in a good writing should be considered carefully.

First of all, as Ann mentioned: “ Good writing is grounded in data”. When we have something in mind before computers or a piece of paper, we should asked ourselves: “ Do I have enough facts to support my content?” Taking myself as an example, I often wrote many big concepts in my writing. However, I did not have much facts as data or researches to make them reliable. This made my essays easy to be broken. Therefore, rigorous essays, especially in TOEFL and SAT tests, must be like some graceful music with beautiful lyrics. Otherwise, the melodies would be boring and hollow without juicy.

Second of all, Ann also suggested that : “Good writing is like math”. I totally agree with it, because the best writings are those whose structures are systematic, and sentences have both simpleness and profundity. Readers should be able to understand the writers’ meaning without spending fifteen minutes on a single point. At the same time, the writer also need to rewrite the writings until his/her sentences can really catches the readers’ appetites.

These two passages contain many meaningful rules for the writers. As a student, I also learned a lot from it. Ann Handley not only taught me how to improve the writings’ quality, but also inspired me to be a better writer in her excellent and educational blog.

I think my food essay's score might be about four. It is because my food essay has a good description of the taste, smell, and color of the food, however, the its structure is not very clear especially in the last part. Its sentences are better than my essay in assessment, but not every paragraph reflects the thesis.

Retrospect and Prospect

With the arrival of 2015, I have already been here in Cheshire America for about four months. In this first semester, I tried to become a person that I wanted to be at the beginning.  Some of my goals have been completed, but some still make me feel pity. At this every special time, I want to make a conclusion for my extraordinary 2014 in order to meet with the new life.

One of the most important things for a student is study. I remember how I told myself to keep the GPA at the very first beginning. Keeping the average score is not easy. I studied in china for ten years, and only the finals would be recorded into students’ files. Therefore, I was facing a difference between study patterns. In order to follow the every step in classes, I wrote down all the points that were important, or have been repeated by teachers. I needed to make sure I understand the whole chapter especially in Math and Chemistry, because all the knowledge in those subjects are on the same line. Problems would only get bigger and bigger like snowball if you don’t solve them. I think I did pretty well on this. Next semester, I need to work on History more, because History requires high ability of reading and critical thinking. As a student who use English as the second language, I have no advantage on those parts. It means I have to spend more time on reading and analyse now.

Reading was also one of the goals I have set from September. However, I feel sorry of keeping pushing it back on my to-do list those months. Reading might not be mandatory as the daily homework, but it’s influence is of extreme importance in other subjects in both high school and college. My reading speed needs to be improved by a large amount of articles and books. Sometimes when I read my history homework, I could easily be distracted by the noise or other people. It greatly slowed down my speed, and ruined the integrity of reading. Moreover, this situation usually cost me double time to find the main sentence and clear structure. Therefore, I decide to read for at least twenty minutes before sleeping , and focus more on the famous fictions and poetry.

Last, I am glad that I finally started moving on my enormous choice about future. I hesitated about my college major between economics and architecture. Now, I decided to make it easier, and focus on the road under my feet first. I plan to choose ib economics next year, and yesterday I just submitted my form of applying independent art class. I have always wanted to be a more decisively person. However, I gradually found out that if you can not decide on something important, just go straight on your old way, and wait for time to show what is the best for you.

Time passes as an arrow. I not only improved myself, but also became more independent and mature. Nonetheless, I would never be perfect; my world always has some mysterious places for me to find. In the next days, I wish I can keep fighting, and never give up.

The Revision Analysis

After the discussion of the first draft in class, I found somme places in my essay that need to be revised. My detailed description did not have much problem. On the contrary, the introduction, thesis, and conclusion need to be worked more.

First, hook is one of the most important part in an essay. However, my classmate pointed out that my introduction did not have a hook at all. That might because I used the story as start, and ignored to attract readers’ attention. Therefore, I will add a hook in my first paragraph, and keep the  integrity of my introduction.

Second of all, my thesis was not in the right place. I put the thesis in the middle of the essay at first as a kind of transition. Nonetheless, its position could not count much attention, so that the readers might not find it at all. Finally, I decided to change a part of it to the end of the essay as a sublimation, and keep the rest to transit the description the analysis.

At last, I found some of grammar and spelling mistakes, as while as problems in tense. After the my first revision, I realised that I should be working more on the construction of my essay, and making sure every important part appears. Sometimes, I did not want to keep my writings to be identical with others; I wanted to have my own style and story. However, things like thesis, introduction, and conclusion are of extremely importance for essays. I should not only think about creation, but also take care of those essential parts, and make sure their high quality.

Read more books, and watch less TV shows 

Practice more, and be healthier 

Try to find out my dream major and direction

Make more interesting friends 

Be happy

I think the most important resolution is to find out my dream major in college and my direction of future. In 2015, I am going to be a junior, which means I have to start to choose some courses that relate to college. It is a big problem, for I have no idea which major I will choose. I am hesitating because there are so many unknown factors. This resolution is about my future, and the rest of my life is going to be lived around it. Therefore it is important, and need a lot of time to be thought about.

The Beef Noodles

I always believed that some food means much more than itself. At the night of the last day of 2014, I finally got to eat my favourite beef noodles again. Noodles and beefs were combined together harmoniously. It looks plain, but the old noodles bowl hid thousands of my days and nights. It was a dream tale that started from my childhood.

If you want to check the outlook of the noodles, their colours and shapes are definitely not the first stuffs that appear into your eyes. Smell—as the main character of all of the food—also had a supreme position here. Spices mixing with plant oil made the smell fresh as well as harsh; the combination of pepper and chilli even increased the sensitivity of my nose. Now, I can easily distinguish if the beef noodles are in the kitchen before I knock the door.

Besides the smell, colour also shows the quality of the noodles. The best beef noodles’ soup should be clear, and oil does not float together on the top as many tiny lakes. In stead of sticking with each other in the corner, the reddish brown beef cubes hided within the gaps between noodles. For the most important, the chef must grab a hand of chopped scallion pieces before serving the food. Those little light green vegetables were like the best exquisite decorations in the bawl, and that made people could not stop staring at the art work lying in front of them.

If the smell and colour were the generals of this food, then the taste was definitely the king. Every time when I picked up the beef cubes into my mouth, all of my taste-buds could not help dancing, and celebrating their coming feast. They have never been too old or raw, because the appropriate temperature and time made them could just melt in my mouth. While I swallowed the soup, noodles were the most successful partners, for they balanced the scales between piquancy and the delicate scent from vegetables and the bamboo chopsticks.

All of those sensual pleasures made the beef noodles feels like an excellent food that produced by some famous chefs. However, they were not the reason why it was my favorite food. 

I have grown up with the beef noodles. When I was a kid, the most ordinary thing was sitting near the table, and holding a bawl that even bigger than my face. The noodles in that bawl was good, but common. Eating it once a week made me could even ignore its existence. Nothing could be plainer then food for a kid. Nonetheless, as time passed, I began to realise how much this bowl of noodles mean to me.

Noodles were made by my grandparents. I liked watching my grandma cooking every afternoon when I came back from the kindergarden. I remember the old sun spilled itself through the windows and lighted up the room. My grandma was working in the kitchen. She put all the ingredients into the pot, then just waited silently. Through the glass that were imbedded in the antiquated green door, I looked at her, and waited with her. Interestingly, my grandpa was usually who stared at me with smile at that time. He always sat on the sofa with his newspapers and short white hair. Nevertheless, grandpa was not just an outsider in this whole cooking thing, he was also the starter. The lunch before my grandma made the beef noodles, grandpa would always served the savoury beef on the table. Therefore, the last beefs got to be cooked for diner as a part of noodles.

When I looked at the kitchen or the noodles as a kid, I had nothing in mind except the the scenes themselves. However, all of those days just sinked into my head as thousands of printed pictures. Now, after sixteen years, I finally understand the treasures within the ordinary beef noodles. They were the connections between family, between my grandpa and grandma, as well as between them and me.

Grandpa is ten years older. He is a funny and kind old man. Through more than fifty years marriage, he has never changed. His company has given my grandma the great courage to get through the difficulties in her life. They live together, and love each other. It was their tacit understanding made the noodles delicious as always, and their love towards me kept all of those taste, smell, colours, and feelings deep in my heart.

This winter, after thirteen hours’ flight I went back to them. Sitting near the table, I looked at my grandma as I always did, then turned to my grandpa with a smile like his. I noticed how old they were after all of these years, and how the surroundings had changed. However, the beef noodles’ smell was still permeating from the kitchen. It reminded me that the most important thing would never change, just like the memory of my childhood, everything was dyed gold. 

It was the love between family made the beef noodles so attractive--- which would never change over time.