sample--statement of purpose  2

        I grew up in a close-knit and harmonious family and both of my parents are teachers.  For the past 20 years, they have taught me about the passion and enthusiasm they felt toward their profession.  However, this is not the main reason why I am now putting myself on the same career track.  In fact, I fell in love with teaching because of my own mixed experiences with it.

        Since my senior year in high school, I have been teaching children English but that only came after a long struggle with English.  I learned the 26 alphabets at the age of 11 when my parents sent me to an English cram school.  It was a disaster in the beginning.  Everyone else in the English class was younger in age yet much more advanced in English than me.  I could barely guess what the teacher was saying, and my pompous classmates often mocked my poor English.  It was a year of frustration and humiliation.

        In order to improve my poor listening comprehension, I hired an American tutor who taught me one on one every week.  In addition, I devoted a lot of time talking to myself in English and repeating everything I heard or learned in English.  Now as I look back, I thank god for bestowing me these moments of frustration and discouragement that eventually helped me become a meticulous and scrupulous self-learner.  The setbacks that I went through have become the stem of my confidence in becoming a good teacher, for I have been there, suffered the hardships, and risen above others』 expectations.

        To prepare myself for a teaching career where I could help those who encounter the same difficulties that I had, I took courses in the field of linguistics, including phonology, semantics, phonetics and other related courses.  Among all the courses, I was especially attracted to the study of semantics, which provided me with a comprehensive understanding of English grammar.  Incidentally, the course also introduced me for the first time to the structure of the Chinese language.  The realization of the similarities and contrasts between English and my own native language, Chinese, has helped me immensely with my tutoring job and made English grammar surprisingly accessible to my students.  This in turn will be my area of concentration in graduate studies.

        I believe effective teaching comes from a knowledge and understanding of the living realities of the students as well as an outgoing and flexible personality on the teacher』s part that can turn any learning session into an exciting and stimulating one.  And in order to achieve that, I have always been active in extra curricular activities that may help with my career preparation.  For the past two years, I have been involved in international conferences working as receptionist for foreign scholars and have served on the steering committee in the school』s English PR team.  Being a key member of the PR team, my communicative skills and my ability to negotiate have improved dramatically.  In June I was offered a job to work as a simultaneous interpreter in the 2002 bio-ethic international conference.  I met many successful entrepreneurs, prestigious scholars, and respectful doctors at the conference.  Through working with these people closely, my vision has sharpened and their professionalism and composure have left a great influence on me.  I feel I have become more confident and aggressive since then.  In addition to my academic training, I have kept up my love for tennis, which takes up a large part of my leisure time.  Early this year, I led my school tennis team into the finals in the national university』s tournament, which was the best achievement for the girls』 team ever.  Participation in such activities has also provided me with a lot of opportunities to interact with people from different backgrounds, and to become a productive member within a team.  

        During the last five years, I have gotten a better understanding of the knowledge and concepts I learned in classes by teaching children of different age groups and on all levels of language competency.  Through my interaction with my students, I have come to see teaching as a rewarding and ever stimulating job as I witness the improvement of my students.  Most important of all, these five years』 teaching experiences have not only helped me prepare myself for my future career, but also led me to a field where I can make a worthy contribution through teaching English. 

As someone who has always been very goal-oriented, I am looking forward to taking the first step toward becoming a creative and responsible English teacher by exploring professional knowledge and acquiring advanced and intensive training in your distinguished program.