[General] Alice's self introduction (78 words)

Hi.

The following paragraph is the self introduction of my student Alice. The original version was corrected by me and now you see my version.

Hello everyone. Glad to see you. My name is Alice. I'm eight years old and I go to Hua Xin elementary school. I like dancing in my spare time. I enjoy winter sports like skiing and skating. Both my parents work in a factory; they work very hard. I have an older sister but I don't have any brothers. My favorite movie is "Take The Crown". I like it very much because it has inspired me a lot.

Please help me to make it natural and grammatical.

Your version is grammatical. It would be really helpful if we could see the original so that we can see what you changed. That way, we can tell you if you really have improved it.

Silverobama said:

Hi.

The following paragraph is the self-introduction of my student Alice. The original version was corrected by me and now you see my version.

Hello everyone. Glad to see you. My name is Alice. I'm eight years old and I go to Hua Xin elementary school. I like dancing in my spare time. I enjoy winter sports like skiing and skating. Both my parents work in a factory; they work very hard. I have an older sister but I don't have any brothers. My favorite movie is "Take The Crown". I like it very much because it has inspired me a lot.

Please help me to make it natural and grammatical.

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It's fine.

emsr2d2 said:

Your version is grammatical. It would be really helpful if we could see the original so that we can see what you changed. That way, we can tell you if you really have improved it.

Click to expand...

I'd love to. Please take a look at it. Here's Alice's version.

Hello everyone. Glad to see you. My name is Alice. I'm eight years old. I'm from China. (I think this one is not uncessary). I go to Huaxin elementary school. I like dancing in my spare time. I enjoy winter sports like skiing and skating. Both my parents work in a factory. (They work very hard. I added the underlined sentence.) I've got a sister. (Which is her elder sister) but I don't have any brothers. My favorite movie is Take The Crown. (I like it very much because it inspires me a lot. I added this underlined sentence to give a reason to the previous sentence.)

Silverobama said:

I'd love to. Please take a look at it. Here's Alice's version.

Hello everyone. Glad to see you. My name is Alice. I'm eight years old. I'm from China. I go to Huaxin elementary school. I like dancing in my spare time. I enjoy winter sports like skiing and skating. Both my parents work in a factory. I've got a sister. but I don't have any brothers. My favorite movie is Take The Crown.

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Let me just check something. In the quote box, I have edited your previous post to show what I think Alice's original was. Is that what she wrote?

emsr2d2 said:

Let me just check something. In the quote box, I have edited your previous post to show what I think Alice's original was. Is that what she wrote?

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Yes. :-D

Your edits make sense, but I don't know that you really had to add or change anything. It looks like Alice did a good job — without a semicolon!

I don't think Alice's version is wrong or not idiomatic. I added those sentences to complete the whole paragraph. I also wanted to know why she likes that movie.

It's amazing to me that an eight-year-old Chinese girl is that good at English.

She does not, of course, have to bother mentioning that she's from China. Also, I would say:

I have one sister and no brothers.

Hello everyone. [STRIKE]Glad[/STRIKE] It's nice to [STRIKE]see[/STRIKE] meet you. My name is Alice. I'm eight years old. I'm from China. I go to Huaxin elementary school. I like dancing in my spare time. I enjoy winter sports like skiing and skating. Both my parents work in a factory. I've got a sister no full stop here but I don't have any brothers. My favorite movie is Take The Crown.

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Alice's original contained just two real errors:

1. The full stop before "but".
2. "Glad to see you" is not a complete sentence.

The film title should have been italicised but I don't think we can hold that against an eight-year-old.

I changed "Glad to see you" to "It's nice to meet you" on the assumption that Alice is going to read this aloud to a group of people she doesn't know. If it's just a piece of writing, the sentence is completely unnecessary. I don't think it's irrelevant to say "I'm from China" - the reader/listener might not know that.

I think she did really well. I would not call any of your amendments "corrections". As you said yourself, you believed you were improving her piece and adding extra information, but I hope you told her that you were very impressed and that she should be extremely proud of her writing.

I assumed more or less that she would be saying that to an audience of her peers (kids more or less the same age). Of course, it's always possible for assumptions to be wrong.

When I was eight years old I was in third grade. (I knew how to read before I started school. That kind of made first grade a waste of time. Second grade too.)