My first semester at university as a postgraduate opens a new chapter in my life. I was entitled to choose my favorite English course based on my interest due to my good grades in the Postgraduate entrance English examination, the reasons why I selected the “Insights into Chinese Culture” are as follows.
First of all, China is a great country with a long history of over 5000 years and fifty-six ethnic nationalities, therefore, the Chinese culture is rich, extensive and profound, and it’s quite interesting to explore the origin and development of it. Besides, with the significant improvement of China’s economic status on the international arena and the colorful and diversified components in the culture itself, the world is paying greater and greater attention to the traditional Chinese culture. As a Chinese, it’s our responsibility to popularize the Chinese culture to the world, not only to fulfill our mood of nation pride, but also provide a great platform for people to create friendships across countries.
I have gained a lot from this semester , which can be mainly divided into three parts.
First and foremost, the course enriches my knowledge about Chinese culture largely, such as the thoughts and philosophies of sages of ancient China, like Confucian thought on ‘ren’ and ‘li’, and the philosophy of Non-contention of Laozi, which still hold true on the character development and personal growth for youth today. I also appreciate the huge fascination of the sophisticated porcelain, vivid and graceful calligraphy art, eight regional cuisines, and a variety of splendid folk arts, and so on of our country. There are plentiful cultural connotations behind them, for example, I don’t know the origin of the name of the famous regional speciality of Tianjin, goubuli buns until the first class of this course, and it’s also the first time I know of concrete layouts of the glorious and awe-inspiring ‘The Forbidden City’, and understand the magical functions of tea and how to savor it in the best way. And now, deep in my heart, there is a strong determination to push me to acquire knowledge outside the book and accumulate some real experiences, for example , to enjoy the splendor scenery, to taste the authentic regional snacks, and to experience the unique manners and customs of different places in our country, all of which will help to enlarge scope of my knowledge immensely.In addition, the graceful language and elegant wording of text book is always appreciated and enjoyed like a refined art itself. Every morning, I spend half an hour on reading some good sentences of this book in order to acquire the precise and fluent writing skills.
Beyond that, our English teacher is a charming lady, she is adept at specializing knowledge and skills, and teaching methods as well. She is so humorous and erudite, thus our class is always full of joy and laughter. She shared so many heart-warming stories about her family life, various pictures of delicacies she made, and fined tea sets she arranged, etc. As a girl, I got a better understanding of how to be a graceful, romantic, mature lady from her to some extent. Besides, she lays much emphasis on teamwork spirit, and creates many opportunities for us to do group oral English shows rather than solo presentation. During the process of preparing, we know the importance of maintaining good co-ordination deeply and learn a lot from each other. And every time we made performance on stage, it was a valuable chance for us to improve our verbal skills and to enhance our creativity and confidence. Under her careful guidance and selfless help, our speaking skills have made huge progress.
Last but not the least, I have made so many good friends during the semester, the application of small class and fixed seat promotes the communication and contacts between classmates, especially group members, it was quite rare and unforgettable experience for postgraduates ourselves.
To conclude, I think the most momentous attainment during the first semester on this “Insights into Chinese Culture” course is that I discovered a new world of English and developed a strong interest and passion for English learning, rather than the superficial knowledge gained from textbook. I have formed up a long-standing habit of reading English newspapers since high school, like However, apart from the benefits mentioned above, I’d like to put forward my personal suggestions and hope that our lenient teacher could take into consideration. First, as we know, the world today has undergone a unprecedented process of cultural integration, I have a strong will to know more about western cultures, and our English teacher has been to many countries and know a lot of histories and folk customs of them, therefore, I earnestly request our English teacher could tell us more interesting stories about their great men, unique customs and so on, and thus we can discover the differences and similarities between our Chinese culture and western cultures, which can foster our dialectical view. Secondly, I hope that next term, there could have some exiting activities between group and group, rather than just one group, because after a whole semester, there are still many classmates’ names in other groups I don’t know. How time flies, we have only one semester left on this course. I would cherish the limited time to learn more knowledge and establish a more stable, friendly relationship with the teacher and classmates. However, I will never stop learning English even though the whole English lessons during postgraduate life are over, In the end, please allow me to express my heart-felt thanks and gratitude to you all, my dear teachers and classmates.