I Don't Want to Travel Alone

江苏苏州立达中学 肖炜

Well, travelling is fun to everyone, but I don't like to travel alone. Maybe someone here won't agree with me, but after my speech, you might change your mind.

About six years ago, once my parents sent me to an Ameri-can international camp in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. That was my first year in America. I didn't know why my parents sent me there. Maybe it was because my English skills didn't improve very fast that year. Maybe they wanted me to learn English in a better condition. I remember that day they put me on a camping bus and hugged me a quick good-bye and left. During the whole trip, I did nothing but look out of the window. There was no one talking to me. I saw other children laughing and playing happily, but I had no one to talk to because I didn't speak much English. On the half way ?I threw up. And I had to clean up all by myself. Oh, how I wish I had a friend with me!

After I got to camp, I felt little better because of the beauti-ful scenery there, the lake, the hills, and the forests'"all made me very happy. Our cabin was on one of the hills facing the lake. When I got to cabin there were already 5 people waiting for me there. Our counselor Jermmy was an American College student. The other four came from different places such as Spain, China, France and Japan. We all said "Hi .'"to each other. That was al-most the only word we said to each other that day, for most of us couldn't speak much English. As it was an international camp, our counselor and we five campers were living in the same cabin, named No. 2 Cabin.

My starting experience there was homesick. I was only a 9-year-old boy that time and was not used to the life without my parents. So I had sleepless nights. What made me feel worse was the tale told in the camp that there was a bandit named 3-finger Willy who had an ax and came out in the night killing campers who didn't follow the camp rules. I was even more scared. How-ever , I felt much better a week later when I got used to the life in the camp and when I knew everyone. Our counselor was a very nice guy and other campers were all friendly too. I began to enjoy my life in the camp. Every day we had many games there. We went swimming and played many ball games. After supper, we played hide-and-seek in the forest along the hills. We had a lot of fun.

Anyway, what I want to say here is "East and west, home is best. "Traveling is fun, but if you have a companion with you, then you'll have help and much more fun.

评语:

A writer is supposed to make it clear to his readers what he intends to appeal to them, to make them agree with him. And this requires the writer's ability in reasoning in addition to that in choosing and arranging the facts. In this passage we can see the writer is employing his personal experience which really supports his opinion in traveling alone. The writer is to some extent per-suasive and this passage can be taken as a good piece of work in considering the writer's ability in classifying facts and persuad-ing.

指导教师：袁振江