嘉文博译留学文书写作范例 个人陈述/推荐信 

Personal Statement

Every time when the sun rises in the east, it brings us a new day, with renewed hopes for a better life. No matter how hard it is, we can continue to move forward in life's battles, as long as hope is with us. It is like a compass that tells us where to go to reach our destination. To me, the great hope I have always cherished is to study and live in the culture I have read so much about ever since I was a child.

I graduated from the Second Institute of Foreign Languages of Beijing as a major in Spanish. Ever since I was little, I became fascinated in the history and culture of Spain and Latin America. The ebullient Latin music, and the flamboyant Flamenco Dancing, captivated me completely. Language, on the other hand, has been my favorite subject of learning. In high school, I always had top-ranking performance with English. This was why I enjoyed my college study so much, when I was able to immerse myself in the study of the language, and also the literature and culture behind. To some, language learning is a tedious process of drill and memorizing. But to me, it is a challenge I was happy to meet-an experience from which an enormous sense of satisfaction could be derived. I still remember that when just entering the college, I had great difficulty pronouncing the Spanish trill "R," which at that time seemed to have crippled me in learning the language. But I did not give up, and after a period of intense effort and concentrated practice, was eventually able to do it right. From this experience I learned a great deal about human potential. As the Chinese saying goes, "Hard work pays, sooner or later."

Encouraged by this initial "success," I threw myself wholeheartedly into the course work, which encompassed listening, reading, writing, and oral and written translation. Every time when I came across a word I had tried to memorize before, or understood an idiomatic expression, or finished reading a book in Spanish, it filled my heart with an ineffable feeling of joy and fulfillment. Later, I was even more pleasantly surprised, as I found that I could actually carry a conversation rather easily with native speakers of Spanish, and introduce them to traditional Chinese history, architecture, and culture.

During the four years of my college study, I was also active in social and cultural events held in and outside campus. The colorful cultures of Spain and Latin American countries, with their fascinating blending of Christian, Moorish, Jewish, and Roman ingredients, give birth to towering authors and artists, such as Cervantes, Dali, and Picasso. To enhance my reading ability, I read many books in their original Spanish versions, which I was fortunately able to borrow from the Spanish Embassy in Beijing. I had the opportunity to participate in various cultural events sponsored by the embassies of Spain and Latin American countries, such as the Festival of the Dead by the Embassy of Mexico, the Film Reception of Mexico, and the Latin American Cultural Festival. This experience further strengthened my desire to pursue systematic and in-depth learning of matters Hispanic. With assiduous effort, I was able to pull out remarkable academic records consistently during my college years. I won scholarships for four consecutive years, and was awarded the Certificate for Excellent Graduate, with the highest GPA among all the students of the same grade. In addition, I also received the Excellent Thesis Award for my graduation thesis, which was about a period of Ming Dynasty history, written in Spanish.

After graduating from college, I worked for a travel agency, and later for a foreign company. These work experiences further enriched my knowledge of Hispanic countries and cultures. Meanwhile, I have continued my learning of Spanish with a sustained effort, hoping that one day I will have the opportunity to pursue an advanced degree in the study of Spanish language and culture abroad. To this end, I have decided to give up my present job, which offers good pay, if admitted into your graduate program. I am most interested in Spanish language, Spanish Literature, Literary Criticism, and Culture Studies. I will, of course, be interested in comparative and cross-cultural research on cultural relations between China and Spanish speaking countries. I am also keenly interested in literary translation.

Columbia University is a world famous university. There are, as I have heard, more than 60 Nobel Prize winners who are, or have been, affiliated to the university. And its graduate program in Spanish is especially strong. In addition, Columbia University also has one of the oldest programs in Sinology in the United States, and has hosted renowned Chinese scholars, such as Hu Shi and Xu Zhimo, who played key roles in the cultural transformation in China in the early part of the 20th Century. I am now attempting to follow their footprints, to make myself an accomplished literary and cultural critic, as they were. Your careful consideration of my application to your graduate program in Spanish will be sincerely appreciated.

I always feel that like music and painting, literature is also a form of lingua franca that connects peoples of diverse racial and cultural identities (How did I love Don Quixote when I was a child, even though I could read it only in Chinese translation). And I will be proud of playing such a role of connecting peoples, for the rest of my life.

Recommendation Letter

Dear Sir or Madam,

I consider it a great pleasure to recommend to you Miss Catherine Feng as a worthy candidate for your consideration of her application for an advanced degree program in Spanish learning in your Graduate School. I am the dean of the Spanish Teaching and Research Section in the Department of Foreign Languages at Beijing Second Foreign Languages University. A linguist with twenty years' teaching experience, I have been delivering the specialized course of Translation to the junior and senior college students in my department. I have a close understanding of Miss Catherine Feng because I was her teacher in this course at the last two years of her undergraduate studies and the supervisor of her bachelor degree program.

Miss Feng was admitted to this well-known University in the Department of Foreign Languages as a student majored in Spanish with excellent academic scores in 1995. She has always been a diligent student with a good habit of learning and an intense craving for knowledge acquisition through her four-year college studies. At he result of her dedicated efforts, she has achieved outstanding academic performance and received scholarship every semester. In the overall evaluation conducted upon graduation, Miss Feng came out at the very top of her class. Her classroom activity impressed me deeply, actively answering questions and frequently proposing perceptive comments. Her bilingual translation assignments could always meet my requirements. Miss Feng has chosen a very novel research subject as the orientation of her bachelor thesis, entitled the Ding Tomb and the Tomb of Wanli Emperor in the Ming Tombs. She has selected the historical and cultural affair in ancient China as the target for her research. All the materials concerning this field are all recorded in Chinese without any related source material in Spanish, thus making her thesis an excellent piece of translation works. As compared with most of her classmates' theses which focus on contemporary social problems, her thesis strongly struck me. Miss Catherine Feng shows a lively interest in language and western cultures. While in college, apart from her excellence in Spanish, she has selected French as her second language, whereas most of the non-English major students have chosen English. What amazed me is that she finally became one of the very few students who succeeded in passing the national English examinations of CET-4 and CET-6 with marvelous performance. Her French learning was also highly appraised by the teachers. Miss Feng is a person who is keen on social activities but at the same time can be bent on her studies. She is able to be fully absorbed in her coursework studies with extreme industriousness, and has remained the same all along through her four-year undergraduate studies. She is always the first one to arrive at the library and the last one to leave.

All her diligence and consistence in her specialized studies do not necessarily mean that she is merely a bookworm. On the contrary, she is the most active student who is ready to offer her loving care and is enthusiastically engaged in social activities. Whenever there is an opportunity for field practice in the last two academic years, Miss Feng often took the initiative to enter for it and was always designated with certain tasks by virtue of her remarkable academic performance. The golden opportunity thus has enabled her to apply what she has learned to practice. She is the one who can always be relied on, fro each time she could acquit herself splendidly in the assigned tasks of foreign affairs with high appreciation and appraisal from those working units. As a professor, I feel very proud of her for her outstanding assets, her intelligent talents, her industry, her persevering spirit and the dedication in her academic pursuit. I am fully convinced that her resourceful potentials and the professional knowledge she has already acquired in her undergraduate studies in China can sufficiently serve as a solid groundwork ensuring her remarkable success in learning Spanish language and literature in the near future.

Yours Faithfully,