比较文学UCL申请PS

Personal Statement

By XXX

I am writing to apply into the program of Comparative Literature at your prestigious university, believing that the study at University College London (UCL) would not only furnish me with world class know-how and practical ability, but broad my vision by experiencing a wealth of different culture and history. Moreover, I am fully convinced that the profound literary deposits and resourceful cultural heritage in UK would well prepare me to be an excellent college professor or professional in cultural research and dissemination, which is also the career objective of my whole life.

Since I was young, I was obsessed with diverse vivid characters in Chinese masterpieces like Journey to the West, Romance of Three Kingdoms, and All Men are Brothers, etc. I spared most of my time in reading varied genres of fictions, novels, lyrics and history documentaries. The more books I read, the more fascinated I was by Chinese culture and literature. Sharing such cultural treasure with the outside world burgeoned in my mind since then. As time passed by, to be a cultural disseminator was haunting me again and again, which turned out to be more and more clear and tempting. In the last year of my high school, I chose teaching Chinese as foreign language (TCFL) as my college major and I succeeded in entering XX University, one of the top 10 universities in China. By virtue of my abundant previous extracurricular reading and diligent work, I achieved a GPA of 3.95 out of 4, ranking top in my class. Being cultivated by such a group of erudite professionals for four years, I was fostered to be proficient in both Chinese and foreign languages and literatures, learning fundamental cultural differences and the features of intercultural exchanges.

However, the more I learnt, the more pressing I felt to continue my study, for I realized that understanding only the literature and culture of my nation cannot necessarily make Chinese literature and culture well understood, and there are occasions when I read foreign works I could not grab the essence of some phrases and idioms. I realized that language and literature might only be the carrier of a culture. The exchange of two different languages is in fact the exchange of two different literatures and cultures. In order to broaden my thinkings, I took the course of comparative literature and got the score of 87. During the whole semester, I have completed two projects: the comparison of girl’s image in Border Town by Shen Ts'ung-wen and The Izu Dancer by Kawabata Yasunari, and comparison of tragedy in Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Harker and Rickshaw Boy by Shu Ch'ing-ch'un. I started each project with quantity reading of the author’s works, background, and even his cultural intendancy and religious beliefs. For instance, in the first project, the author Kawabata Yasunari was deeply influenced by Japan Buddhism, while Japan Buddhism was introduced from China and developed differently. By participating in these two projects, I realized that in comparative literature studies, the valuable part lies in exploring the underlying culture, regime, value, religion, etc from the works. At the same time, a strong inductive and analytical ability to perceive the essence is equally necessary for comparative literature.

Fortunately, the learning of this course gave me useful inspirations for my further study. I