Spill the Beans!
Human relationship is one of the most stressful things in social life. Usually, the problem is caused by short of communication or misunderstanding. How can we do treat this problem? The answer is frank conversation. Frankness is difficult because everyone has own secret that nerver want to speak out in public. For harmonious relations, you don’t have to tell about all of your secrecy, but you have to try to make true conversation and never deceive both yourself and the other person who listen to your speaking. If you don’t agree companion’s opinion or don’t understand it, you speak whatever you want to know. Don’t be reticent. It’s only make other person think you as a narrow minded person. Therefore, spill the beans for open communication.
SunMyung,
I agree that “spilling the beans” is a crucial thing in some relationships. Which relationships you think it’s a good idea for, and for which do you think it’s a bad idea? By the way, your title is perfect!
However, there is something else that is not perfect, which I’d like to point out. It’s all about word choice. This paragraph is almost very natural as an English paragraph, but there are certain words you’ve chosen because either they’re commonly taught words in English courses in Korea, or because they fit well with Korean cultural concepts/vocabulary.
One example is “harmonious relations”. Now, I know what you mean right away — the problem isn’t understanding. The problem is what “harmonious relations” means to a native English speaking reader, and what it means is something different from what you mean. It sounds a little bit like either something the Chinese Communist party would write, or something out of the Analects of Confucius (in Korean, I think it’s called the 대학, right?). Nobody would say “harmonious relations” in English because it sounds so, well, so much like something translated from Chinese. What’s more natural in English is something like, “for the sake of others’ feelings” or “for the sake of peace” or “in order to avoid hurting others’ feelings” or something like this.
Other word choices that are not quite natural are: “frankness” – we tend to use the word “honesty” more often than “frankness” these days – and your use of the word “speak”, which sounds a bit Biblical – we’d say “talk about” or “discuss” or “bring up” or something, or even “speak about”, but never “speak” without an about after it.
But despite these small picky things, I think the paragraph is good. Try rewriting it with close attention to word choice!
mistergord on April 4th, 2006 at 12:53 am