a busy day

Although this week is recess week, there is still a lot of things for me to do. Revising math and GEK is the most important task for me. Besides revising, I have to attend the BBQ party of my host family, which will be an enjoyable experience.
Well, let me attach some my favorite pictures to relax!

Have fun~

Progress Report on Bella

Phase 1 has already finished with scholars’ talent show. Based on the performances of Bella, this report is made to review and evaluate her progress in phase 1.

Understanding of English

General comprehension is the basic ability of foreign students in learning English. Bella behaved averagely in this part, for instance, she could deal with the basic problems in English and did not have much problem in using English after 6-month learning. Meanwhile, for reading comprehension, she was skillful to answer the factual questions after the training of teachers and herself; she was also good in solving inference questions while in the part of understanding words in context, she was quite weak. Consequently, she must focus on vocabulary part and make consistent efforts in phase 2 and phase 3.

Use of English

The use of English is a broad gamut which contains several abilities. The first one is writing ability. Writing contained essay and summary this term. Using academic vocabulary is the basic require. She could use the words appropriately; however, she was poor in vocabulary. Then comes the sentence accuracy; some sentences of her were not so fluent. Nonetheless, paragraphs in her academic writing were well-organized and the transition words used between paragraphs were correct. She could summary the main points well but the synthesis skill was relatively weak. In addition, essay cohesion was good because she could make the structure excellent, but the flow of language needs to be improved by working hard in language and spoken English also needs development in pronunciation and fluency. Last but not the least, she must focus more on self confidence which is significant in delivering opinions and making speeches.

Work attitude towards English lessons and a predictor of future progress

She followed the schedule strictly and attended every class punctually. As for homework, she met the deadline strictly and treated homework seriously. Once found the mistakes, she will try her best to avoid such mistakes in the future. In project Singapore and project happiness, she cooperated with group members harmoniously and sometimes came up with some fresh ideas. On the contrary, she did not do well in references part because she seldom gave references in essays.

Class Participation

Being active in class is the best way to improve one’s English, so it is necessary to evaluate students in class participation part. Class has a good atmosphere of speaking English; however, she sometimes cannot help speaking Chinese to classmates, which was a bad habit. Likewise, this term they had Project Singapore and Project Happiness which trained several good abilities of them. Firstly, they learnt to cooperate with other group members. She did well in this part and came up with some creative ideas. Secondly, they learnt to think fast and answer questions to the point; she did well in project Singapore during the Q&A session but did not answer the question appropriately in Project Happiness. Furthermore, learning to listen patiently to others is also important to students; at this point, she did quite well. Not only did she listen attentively to classmates, but also asked a few questions about their presentations. She participated all the activities actively but did not make them an enriching learning experience to some degree.

To sum up, Bella performed normally but not excellently during phase 1. There is still a long way for her to go in the English world.

   

The disadvantages of money

As an old saying goes, money is not almighty, but without it you can do nothing. In fact, money does give us many advantages such as buying things what we want and form the base of the economy in the world. On the contrary, a lot of plunders are caused by money and tremendous people make every effort in order to gain more money. The disadvantages of money are varied in two kinds of people's lives.

Money to the poor people is just like the rain to the arid land.  Lacking money, they are struggling through the edge of death. Hungry, cold are all the things surrounding them, they live in the endless hardship, no money and no hope. Mothers burst into tears when facing the little child who is crying piteously for food, fathers who work hard outside feel miserable for the situation that the family is in. Children who are bony and short desire for food all day long. The hardships of life force people to abandon their homeland and go out to chase money. Some of them live by cheating, some of them plan to rob with others, and some of them work crazily but just earn little money. I have once read a story in the book of Youjin (a famous Singapore writer). During her sojourn in Saudi Arabia, she met a laborious worker in her husband's company. When she learnt more about him, she found that he is from Egypt. At first he planned to work in Saudi Arabia to earn more money to support his family, but when he arrived at this new country and found there is no work for him to do, his dream was totally shattered. What's more, he cannot contact with the staff of the agency in Egypt who charged him a large amount of money. The misery tortures him every day and at last he went back to Egypt and found out the staff who has cheated him before and then killed the staff. What an unbelievable tragedy! The essential murderer is money, it gives people a lot of desire which causes plenty of evil things in our society.

Money to the majority of rich people is just like an implement to gain more power and higher position. They do not have to worry about the food and the dress, the only thing they consider about is money. Money changes their perception of the world and may cause them become the slave of it. I have saw many rich people flaunted their wealth and want to gain more money through a lot of ways. For instance, in ancient China, there were some rich people who use money to buy the position in the government and finally lead to the corruption of the government. Nowadays, many people are also addicted to the life surrounded with money. Money makes them lose their dream for future and their aspiration when they were young and also causes greediness and addiction.

Money is like a double blade sword, it brings human beings happiness and misery at the same time.

life course

The name of my favourite song is "life is like a boat". In fact, life is going on a long journey, only by controlling it well, can we arrive at the destination; or we will lose ourselves along the way.

In February, I signed up to take part in a life course held by a church and the course was  about “the seven habits of highly effective people”. The course is held every Saturday and each lesson is about one habit. Till now, we have learnt about four habits- being proactive, beginning to end, put first things first and win-win thinking. I will write something about my experience and opinions towards two of these habits next.

Being proactive

Being proactive is what I have heard about many times during my school life, however, every time I heard it, I just treated it like a conversant saying and never thought about it deeply. In February, when I took the life course in church, I heard about this again but this time, I decided to change. The teacher told us some theories hidden in this saying and gave us examples. After that, we gathered together to have group discussion, every one of us exchanged our difficulties in forming this habit. For me, I really regretted for what I have done before coming to Singapore and I sometimes cannot control myself in doing things. After one discussion, I finally realized that if I want to change, I must have strong belief in my heart and have something to encourage me to insist.

Feeling encouraged, I began to make a timetable for the sake of regularizing my daily life. It made me happy the first day I did it and I accepted a sense of fulfillment during the process of accomplishing the tasks. Till now, I have made 4 weekly timetables; although some of them were not finished in time, I am still delighted with what I have improved in time arrangement.

I am happy and I will persist.

Put first things first

This habit is also a classic common saying in China. The most significant things are like tremendous rocks, the rest are like small ones. If you finish an important task first, you will feel comfortable in doing the rest. Although I know this fact just like my palm of my hands, I can't help doing the easy things first and delay the time of the things which are urgent. Listing things in order is my first step to try it; surprisingly, I fulfilled the things effectively and felt the benefits of this habit. From now on I will always put the first things to the top of my list and do it immediately. This habit benefit me a lot and I will keep it until it becomes part of my life.

Good habits are lighthouses which guide you to the destination.

JC Immersion

It has been one week since we finished our JC Immersion program. For me, I really cherish the memory of the week I spent with my buddy in Hwa Chong Institution school. This experience gives me much understanding of the local students and education system   in Singapore.

At first, we had a small meeting with our buddies. We watched a video about Hwa Chong and then played many games with our buddies. We had a lot of fun during that time. I met my buddy Amanda, a quiet and cute girl who accompanied me in the following days. After the first meeting, we followed our buddies to take classes. The realistic classes are slightly different from what I had imagined before. It actually surprised me that they had a fixed class bench instead of a classroom. They have to walk to different classrooms or lecture room to take lessons. Lecture class always combines many students from different classes together, just like college life. Lecture classes are serious than tutorial classes. Sometimes the lecture room was extremely quiet and students fixed themselves to what teachers have taught. The tutorial classes are totally different. When I first stepped into Amanda's chemistry tutorial class, I was shocked by the active atmosphere. Everyone was talking something about the questions and I nearly can't hear what they have said clearly. The teacher wrote the equations and answered students' questions patiently. This circumstance reminded me of the classes in China. We usually keep quiet and listen to what the teachers said carefully and record the questions that we feel uncertain about. After the class we will consult our teachers and get teachers' opinion about the questions. The way we did in China is really different from that of Singapore, we can't judge the two ways into good or bad because each way has its own advantages and disadvantages. Aside from the classes, they have CCAs after school. There are many kinds of CCAs for students to choose, some students learn Chinese kung fu, some learn dancing and some learn instruments. These CCAs makes students' life colorful and meaningful. The most interesting part is communicating with local students in Chinese. Their Chinese is really good that they can communicate with me smoothly. Furthermore I taught them the accent of my hometown and they were interested in it.

After the immersion, our buddies arranged an activity for us on Saturday. The beautiful park and forest byways really surprised us and the fresh air let our walk become more comfortable. After the walk, we have a knowledge competition which is really funny. On the one hand we answered many questions about Singapore. On the other hand, they also answered some questions about China. Our connection ended up with a well known song that moved me a lot. With this song going on, I said goodbye to my buddy and hugged her tightly. The plenty of scenes with my buddy in these six days welled into my mind and I finally found this immersion a precious wealth to me.

The one-week immersion passes quickly, but it did give me much precious memory.

My language learning experience in Singapore

How time flies. It has been three months since I came to Singapore in December. Everything is completely different from China, the climate, people, culture and the most importantly the language. It is unbelievable that so many different languages can exist harmoniously in this amazing island. During these three months, I gained a lot in this environment, and I will share my experience with you.

In China, we have English classes every day, and we focus on reading rather than speaking. Before going to Singapore, I considered many different forms of English study here and some of them have already come true in the three months. First of all, we have classes in NUS, there are four tutors teaching us English. Different tutors have distinct characters, some are serious and some are funny. We have four textbooks in total, RATJ is the largest one which is quite interesting and meaningful. My first way of learning English is reading the articles in RATJ and doing the exercises. Silent reading is another way that is so attractive to me because I can choose what I like to read. From my perspective, reading is better than reciting words from day to day. Well, the most important and exciting part is doing the project. It is what I have thought about before and project Singapore gives me a chance to know Singapore. During "Project Singapore" preparation, I searched the information from the Internet and wrote essays about the aspect our group chose. Giving group oral presentation and painting our own poster was also exciting. I improved my speaking and writing a lot and enjoyed them at the same time. By the way, we have another project named happiness. We are currently working on it.

After classes, a few activities such as "JC Immersion" and "Give Program" decorate our life. February 27^th is the first day I went to JC. I met my buddy, who I will always remember. We communicated with each other about the school, hobbies and classmates. I had five classes every day which is difficult for me to catch up with the JC teachers because I didn't know many terms in science subjects. Today is the last day of JC Immersion. I am really disappointed to leave my buddy who brings me much great memory. It’s an unforgettable experience in my life where I gained both friendship and language skills. The Give program is another activity arranged for us. We will work as teachers to teach local students in secondary or primary schools. I am selected to teach Chinese composition and comprehension. Frankly speaking, this is really a challenge for me, but I will try my best to do it successfully. These after school activities really give me many chances to experience a comfortable school life of local students and construct a comfortable language environment for me.

By the way, I had some interesting experiences during three months. As you know, we are from different provinces of China, every province has distinctive accents, so learning accents of other provinces is really an interesting thing. I learned a little Hainan, Guangdong and Dongbei accent. It's so funny!

In conclusion, these interesting experiences in Singapore let me feel the charm of language. I strongly believe that I will learn English and other accents deeply in the future.

Celebrating Chinese New Year in Singapore

     Over the last few days I have been celebrating the 2012 Chinese new year,the year of the dragon. It is my first time to celebrate new year far away from home which is an unforgettable memory during my bridging course period. As is known to all that Lunar new year is a traditional and ceremonious festival in China. This festival is significant to every Chinese,so no matter how far away you are from home,the most important thing is to hurry home before new year's eve. It is such a pity not being able to go home to have a warm festival with my dear parents, but till now I don't regret spending a meaningful festival with some of my friends in Singapore .
     On the first day of new year, some of our friends gathered together to have an adventure in Pulau Ubin. At first,we took a long time to find the way to go there. When the ship moored alongside the island,the breathtaking scenery suddenly kept my eyes open. The beautiful beach side and the peaceful atmosphere made me yearn for another one-day trip striaght away. After leaving the ship we walked a long way and found a suitable place for picnic. With the fascinating sea, the warm sunshine and the delicious food,I felt that I was in a dream. After the meal,we rented bicycles to circle the whole island which made me feel fresh and alive, particularly the virgin forest.  Along the long cycle path,I had a miserable accident because of the high speed with which I lost my control of the bicycle and then fell into a big hole. Fortunately,there wasn't anything wrong with my body,but it did gave me a lesson in safety. When the two hour ride was over,it came to the most exciting part of our adventure. That is---camp. We found a ground to set up five tents and then arranged some food for dinner,after the dinner we played many games , the whole ground was lit up by our laughter. In this trip,I tried something new and had a good time.
     In the next three days,we went shopping,ate hot-pot and also went to chinatown to view the beautiful new year performance. Although far away from home,I still felt happy and warm during the Chinese new year.