Reading and Writing Assignment for 5th class 1/8

    Sadako Sasaki is a girl of eleven. She is a good runner and she likes running very much, she is the star of the school's running team. She wants to be a PE teacher and everybody thinks she will be. But one day, she felt very tired and becomes weak. Her parents take her to a hospital. The doctor says she has leukemia. Her family and she feel nearly lost all hopes. One day of the days she lives in the hospital, a person called Chizuko visits her. Chizuko tells her if she fold a thousand paper cranes, the gods will help her come back to healthy. So she makes more and more paper cranes. But before she has done, she has dead. Her classmates make a memorial of her and the children died of the atomic bomb.

    Sadako's classmates make that memorial of her because young people like Sadako shouldn't pay for adult people's business and Sadako is brave to face the death. People should learn this from her. And people should learn the confidens from Sadako. Sadako failed in her battle, but if we really believe some good things, it may can be a miracle. Maybe Sadako can be a symbol of peace, because her story tells people wars is the worst thing in the world.

I'm posting this for Cindy who is having trouble getting on the forum. But it's too good to be limited to a private e-mail. 

The story Sadako with the thousand paper cranes is about: A girl, who name is Sadako Sasaki. When she was 2 years old, she was in Hiroshima and the USA dropped an atom bomb on that city. After ten years, she grew up into a good runner. She got sick from the atom bomb with radiation. She makes 644 paper cranes to wish her get well. But she died as a result of radiation from the bomb.

         I think the book Sadako with the thousand paper cranes is telling us: In the world, we should peace to each other. If we don’t have any war, there is no more innocent people died like Sadako. For example: On 1937.12.13 in China, There was a big war in Nanjing, it call Nanjing Massacre. In that time, almost 300000 Chinese people died . Those Japanese killed people like playing games. I couldn’t believe it’s happened in China! So don’t have war any more, keep peace to each other!

Mark, This is the best writing you have done so far; although given how rapidly you improve, who knows what you will be doing in a month??? The ideas expressed here are clear and powerful.

And the clarity of the sentences is amazing given that English is your second language, and you haven't been studying it all that long. I will send you some comments about style via e-mail. But I have to say, you did a beautiful job on this assignment.  I am thrilled to see you writing like this. Laraine

Cindy, What a wonderful piece of writing! You have raised your writing to a whole new level.  Although the second paragraph differs slightly from the assignment, I very much like your bringing in an outside example to make your point.  The events you talk about are widely known here too. In the States, the horrific events you describe are known as the rape of Nanking (I have to look up why the Americans  generally use the k instead of the j.) And indeed, those events illustrate the horror of war as much or more than does Sadako's pointless death.)

I will send you some comments via e-mail. But I am very pleased to see that you have--as we say in the States--kicked your writing up a notch. That is an idiom--an expression specific to a language, which makes no literal sense to non-native speakers. That means your writing shows a very big improvement. I am so pleased. I hope you are too. See you soon. Laraine