Personal Narrative Speech!!

            Does anyone know what this is(Showing the baton)? This is a baton used when conducting orchestras. Have you guys ever seen normal batons? They usually look much different from this. Typical ones have smaller and smoother handles, and they usually don’t have their own cases. Actually, there are only three of these around the world. Those are all hand-made, while other kinds of them are mostly made by machines.

A well-known Korean baton maker in Germany made this and gave it to my teacher, who is a professor of orchestra conducting in Korea National University of Arts. It was a great honor of me to meet her, learn conducting and be given this precious, priceless baton. This is very expensive and rare, but it means much more than that to me.

I met her in the school orchestra. It was 2 years ago when I was in the second grade. She was a mother of a freshman. That was 3 months after the latest concert. At that time, many of us and even the teachers have given up to improve the orchestra. We were literally hopeless.

However, her surprising expertise has changed everything. She exactly pointed out where we should work on to make better sounds and led us to play more beautiful music. Through these efforts, she made dramatic changes and achieved a breakthrough in about 8 months. As the leader of the orchestra, I relieved: I no longer needed to worry about the concert.

However, that was when my suffering actually started. One day, 2 months before the next concert, the professor said there should be a student conductor who will be conducting at least one piece in the concert. As there were no applicants, I had no choice but learn conducting form her as a leader.

How was it? It was ‘painful’. She made me slowly move my arms in the air for an hour, which made my muscles ache all the time. I wasn’t allowed to sit down during the lesson, and had to practice the body movements and memorize the musical scores every time.

Several weeks later, in the last minutes of a regular practice, she suddenly called me to stand at the podium and handed me her baton. I insisted I wasn’t ready yet, but she wanted me to practice conducting through actual experience. I got terribly nervous. There were one hundred and four eyes staring at me. My hands, arms and legs started to shake, and my face turned white. I felt my right hand sweating.

When the music finally ended, I was only expecting her scolding and another long, painful lesson. I knew that I messed up. The professor, however, didn’t say anything.

After everyone went away, she told me something that I can never forget until now. She said, “Do not forget this moment. The sweat in this handle is yours: it is something you made on your own, through your own hard work. Do not forget this feeling. Well done.”

That day, she gave me this staff with charging me nothing. I finally did a good job in the concert and got good comments from the professor. For me right now, this baton is more like a proof. This is a proof of my hard work and painful procedure, which I will look at and always be recharged to go on.

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Personal Narrative Essay : Few Things that I Pretended to Like

Few Things that I Pretended to Like

          Blue used to be my favorite color, even until few years ago. While most of the people decide to buy things by looking at the items’ quality and price, I straightly went to their colors. I didn’t even gave another glance unless they were blue. My room was full of blue things: blue desk, blue chairs, blue bed, blue closet, blue books, blue walls, and so on. My childhood life was filled with ‘blue’.
          Math was my favorite subject. I thought I was enjoying solving math problems and proving mathematical theorems. I often helped other students when they are having trouble with them, and most of them could not understand why I like this kind of useless expressions and numbers. I had reasons, though. I thought I like being logical and structured. I thought I do like math, and had no doubt in myself that I will be a mathematician when I grow up.
          After I graduated from the elementary school, I was accepted to be a student of a ‘special’ type of middle school where lucky students gathered who had unbelievably wealthy parents and could live in English-speaking countries for at least couple of years. Else, their parents were rich enough to live in Gangnam where ‘wonderful’ private tutors are everywhere. I wasn’t lucky in such ways. My parents had enough money to pay for the school and few academies and sustain an ordinary life, but only that much - no more, no less.
          In the first math class, the teacher gave us a diagnostic test of ten to fifteen math problems. She told us that it covers almost all concepts of elementary school math but only a little bit of middle school math concepts, so it must not be hard for all of us. Guess what? For me, many of the problems were almost impossible to interpret. I thought it wasn’t only me who had hard time solving them. I tried to calm myself down with positive thoughts. The teacher disclosed the scores in the next day. I got 6 problems right. Out of thirty people in my class, there were only 8~10 people below me. That was the worst score ever in my life.
          I became more frustrated to learn that half of the students were bilingual. They had no problem in speaking, reading and writing in English. While many teachers used English in their classes, I hardly could understand the whole lecture but only small details, most of them unnecessary. I felt none of them were worse than me. It was so clear that I will get bad grades on the tests, and I surely did. I started to talk with friends nosily in classes. I often didn’t finish my homework. There were much better people everywhere, and compared to them, I was almost nothing.
          Few days later, my homeroom teacher called me to his office. I was afraid to be scolded for my low scores and bad attitude. He didn’t do anything or say anything. Instead, he gave me a piece of paper. I opened it, sitting in front of ‘blue’ desk in my room. It was a modern Korean poem written by ‘Baeksok’. It was about a young tree standing on a mountain alone in the snowstorm. The poet was trying to encourage himself and the readers by comparing his own situations to the tree’s. The poem’s beautiful language and use of words grabbed my eyes. I felt my heart beating again. I started to feel excited once again. I don’t know why, but may be it was the white image of the poem and its perfect use of Korean. Then suddenly, everything around me turned shiny white.
           At that time, I realized: blue wasn’t my color. It wasn’t me who choose this color as my favorite one. It was my fellows in the kindergarten who loved blue, and without my own thoughts about colors, I had been only following their preference for about six years. Right after I realized this, every blue thing in my room started to yell at me - ‘You were only pretending!’ Yes, I answered, and this is time to end this – time to start to learn about myself.
          It did not take me long to remind that math was my mom’s favorite, not mine. I was only pretending to like it. That was why I could not do better. That was why I lost my interest in math, and that was why I was about to fail everything.
          My favorite color is ‘white’ now (I know it’s not exactly a ‘color’ technically). White is pure, bright but silent, just like how I think of myself. I like Korean these days, especially literature, rather than math. After I found my real preference, I began to become more enthusiastic in the classes and try my best in every field. My exam scores started to get better and better, and I could finally be accepted by KMLA with those grades.
          I still might be pretending – who knows? I might be looking for something I truly like once again soon. But for now, I can be very sure of one thing: things that I like and enjoy right now are much closer and truthful answers to the lifelong question, “who am I”.

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TOEFL Response #1 : Gosurei(고수레), Funny but Glittering

     Gosurei is a Korean traditional custom practiced by almost all people in korea actively even until several decades ago. Old men and women sometimes practice this, but is almost forgotten by the young generations these days. This custom is practiced by scooping up some of their meals and throwing it into the air before they start eating, saying ‘Gosurei.’ From my point of view, Gosurei is a valuable custom of Korea that must spread to the world since through practicing it, we can enhance humbleness, sympathy towards the poor, and feeling of unity.

     Through practicing Gosurei, people tried to thank the gods of the nature and the earth for giving them something to eat and letting them harvest. This was combined with many folk beliefs (saying there will be punishments from the nature if you don't practice Gosurei) and was done without exceptions. This made them feel that it is not themselves who grew the products but the gods, making them to be humble and kind. The farmers will not boast for good production but will give credits to the nature itself. Thus, Gosurei can control people's mind to be good and smooth as well.

     Let us take a look at the story which this custom was derived from. Gosurei started with a story of an old lady with her last name ‘Go.’ She survived until her last moments by getting help from farmers and workers. After she died of hunger, the farmers tried to comfort the poor spirit of the lady by giving up some of their meals for her. From this story, we can see that people who did this activity had pity and kind minds towards poor people and tried to help them through any means. By doing Gosurei these days, we are reminded of people who had no choice but to starve to death, and think about showing pity and fulfilling responsibility to share profit and help them.

     There is another story which Gosurei might have been started from. There was a burial of a lady with the last name ‘Go’. A farmer found it, and managed it nicely without purpose. Then, suddenly his farm's production increased massively. Other farmers who heard his news visited her burial, and each of them had their production improved. Farmers who lived so far away from the burial could not actually visit there, but only could throw some of their meal for the lady. This story tells us that the people, who were mostly farmers, wished for a good harvest very much. They would have sympathized with each other about the feeling and the desire towards a good harvest. This would have increased farmers' feeling of unity by practicing an unordinary custom together. This might have created a strong bond in farmers' society, and eased them to talk to each other and help each others' work.

     'Gosurei' may look hilarious and extraordinary to foreigners, and may seem that there is no specific or deep meaning. However, even nowadays, its value is shining. It can still benefit our lives by improving kind mind, pity and responsibility to the poor, and feeling of membership.

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My Goals

Reading and writing are always closely related to each other. That's why I believe to be a good writer, one should be a good reader first. To become a good reader, I should learn more complex, high-level vocabulary and get used to reading long, complecated passages in order to understand them quickly and correctly. For the same reason, my grammar skills have to be improved as well.

After this, through various kinds of writing in Mr. Menard's English class, I will be able to write effective essays, which impresses readers and delivers my points clearly. Also, I will be writing essays within relatively short amount of time. Essay writing takes me a lot of time since I lack skills to organize my thoughts.

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Self Introduction

Hello! My name is Jin Uk Ha, and you can call me Tony as well. But, I prefer neither of them actually. That's because Jin Uk Ha is hard to pronounce for foreigners and too complicated for koreans to remember quickly. Plus, 'Tony' sounds... somewhat dull and stupid(I can see you nodding). I remember someone told me that there is a terrible pizza place called 'Tony Cheese Pizza' in the US(that was 8 years ago and still I remember it).

 

Fortunately, I love poetry. I don't prefer English ones, though. For me, English poetry is somewhat difficult, relatively. I believe there are cultural things that block me from understanding and getting impressed by poems from other countries. I'll try my best to get over them. I don't like korean ancient poems either. I can understand the language and the culture, but they are not as good as modern poems are.

 

Found any grammatical errors? Fantastic! My English grammar is terrible. I never learned it properly. And this is a huge problem since it frequently keeps me from writing exactly what I want to deliver. I guess I should study it before the end of the year. My vocabulary needs to be improved also. I know, both are essential in writing good essays.

 

I think that's all I can think of right now! (We have 3 years left to get to know each other :D) I'll see you in class!

 

 

 

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