Week 2: The letter

Dear All,

I’m writing to all of you students, who have done a great job of the assignment. I’m sorry that it seems impossible for me to reply to over 200 emails one by one. So now I’m writing a letter to all of you.

First of all, thank you for the effort you have put into the homework. Many of you have written more than 300 words, with fascinating stories, experiences, dreams, and ambitions, which really impressed me.

In our class, two important parts are about the format of the formal email or letter, and how to find reliable sources online. I’m glad too see some of you found useful sources published by the writing centers of universities. Following this email, there are some good sources online I strongly recommend you to read and learn. The Internet literacy is one of the most important lessons we should learn at college.

As some of you have suggested, learning English has been a long journey for us, with ups and downs, happiness and sadness. And it is quite true. There must be times when we ask why on earth we are learning this foreign language, which we may never use except exams. And now we can continue this journey together.

And many of you think of the lack of confidence as one of the weaknesses. And I can tell you I had the same concern while in college. But here is my thought. There is need to fear the lack of confidence, because confidence is an interesting characteristic. If we have some doubt about ourselves, it is perfectly a normal thing. And the more you are worried about being not confident, the less confident you would look.

So maybe we can think this way. We should focus more on how to do a excellent job, instead of thinking about appearing to be confident. Because ultimately, how well we do things, are much more important than whether we do them confidently.

I’m more than happy to hear you plans for the future. One student tells me that her dream is to open a bakery of her own. I very much understand that this goal is not easy to achieve. We as a new young generation are faced with too much pressure from our parents and society.

The definition of a good career in our culture is too limited. Maybe many of us have the same bias. A “good” job usually means a high-salary, low-risk, and lifelong job, in a governmental department, a large corporation, or a government-funded institutions. It is true that people like Jack Ma, Pony Ma, and Wang Jianlin are admired by a lot of people, even our parents, but when it comes to us, starting a small business or doing some different jobs is discouraged and regarded as a naive idea.

But we can do better. We can show our potentials and abilities to prove that maybe our ideas are not naive, but feasible. One trap when we set future plans and goals is that they seem to be done in the future and we wait so long, and in the end we don’t even begin to seek our dreams. So we can do something at college for our plans.

There are many opportunities we can take in our college. There are so many things we can do to achieve our dreams. Our future plans are strongly dependent on what we learn and we do at college. So I’d like to end with a quote that I like a lot: Even though the future seems far away, it is actually beginning right now.

Sincerely,
Wang Zihan

与第二周课相关的一些链接：

• 多名英国政要写给Professor Higgs的祝贺信，是一些很好的正式信件格式的参考。
  http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/higgs/letters-congratulation

• 学校邮件注意事项
  [http://writingcenter.unc.edu/esl/resources/writing-e-mail/]

• 商业信件讲解
  [http://writingcenter.tamu.edu/Students/Guides/Alphabetical/Business-Writing/Letters]

• 标点符号使用规则的详细讲解
  http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/punctuation