What do “friends” mean to you?

Friends……

In the poem,

“ friends”

means……

You dry the tears that fall from my eyes.

You bring me sunshine to brighten my sky.

You rescue me when I'm scared and alone

And take my hand to lead me home

You're the sun in my sky, the bed where I lie.

You're the home where I'm safe, the field where I play.

You're everything I am, everything I do.

So what I am saying is I LOVE YOU ------my friends!

In the essay, “friends” means……

Now let’s go into the essay……

College Friends

------Jennifer Crichton

The writer ---Jennifer Crichton

• Jennifer Crichton was born in 1957 in New York City. She attended Brown University and spent a brief time in the Pacific Northwest.

• She has written a novel, Delivery: A Nurse-Midwife’s Story, and has contributed to several publications including Ms., Made-moiselle, Outside, and Seventeen. Crichton is currently working on a book about family therapy.

The brief introduction For Jennifer Crichton, the first

semester away at college is possibly the worst time to make friends. Even so, she is trying to make friends in college. In this essay, “College Friends”, she explores how and why friendships are made in college.

The words and phrases• disdain— contempt 鄙视 , 轻蔑• cataclysmic — disastrous, destructive 洪水的• confidant — female person with whom one discus

ses problems or tells secrets 心腹朋友 , 知己• platonic — nonsexual, not romantic• superfluous — unneeded, unimportant• digressive — rambling, unorganized 离题的 , 枝节

的• poignant— intense, moving 强烈的深深打动人的• talking jag —spree, unrestrained conversation

What I have learned• The clear structure

• The meaningful theme

• The use of the topic sentence

• The writing style

The clear structure

First, the writer gives a vivid account of the somewhat desperate loneliness that most people experience when they have no friends to fall back on.

Then, she reveals the lessons she learned as her college friendships evolved and matured.

The meaningful theme

Academe is one of the most common settings where intimacies are developed. Friendship made in college set a standard for intimacy. So we should attach importance on making friends in college.

The use of the topic sentence

The topic sentence states the main idea of the paragraph. When we read a long essay, the use of the topic sentence helps us to read the passage quickly and understand the main idea exactly.

In this essay, the writer uses many topic sentences. For example, “ In college, there’s time to reach that degree of intimacy.” (Paragraph 15)

The writing style

“College Friends” is a prose about the subject of friendship. Jennifer Crichton puts argumentative writing and narrative writing together, which means she gives an example of herself to support the topic sentence. Thus, it’s easier to understand the main idea of the paragraph. And it’s a good writing style which we can use in our passage.

My thought about the essay Everyone needs friends because we need the

love, support, understanding and companionship of the people whom we trust. We make friends in different ways. And college provides us with one of the most common settings where intimacies are developed. In college, we have countless opportunities for learning, socializing and exchanging personal ideas together. In other words, the friendship between college students is pure without any profit. Once after college, we have to change, and in scheduling our free-form friendship we feel, at first, self-conscious and artificial. So learning how to make true friends is an important subject in college.

In our real college lives,

“ friends”

means……

Still remembering that day, we clean our dorm so clear that we are all proud of ourselves……

Still remembering that week, we work together to prepare for the “Dorm Culture Festival “……

the birthday we celebrate together

the diploma we win together

The picture we draw together

College life is full of happiness!

College friends are wealth in our lives!

I will remember all of you, my friends!

Thank you!

Bye-bye!

Have a good weekend !