Write with Michelle

上個月，The Atlantici記者Derek Thomspon 研究美國政府公布的勞動數據後，發覺一個驚人現象：過去40年，大學畢業生的就業情況從沒像2025年那麼糟糕。 Thomspon的結論是，這跟AI有關。 “As law firms leaned on AI for more paralegal work, and consulting firms realized that five 22-year-olds with ChatGPT could do the work of 20 recent grads, and tech firms turned over their software programming to a handful of superstars working with AI co-pilots, the entry level of America’s white-collar economy would contract.” 創業家Daniel Priestley 有兩個孩子。作為家長的他，認為在AI年代

It’s college application season - students aiming to enter university in the fall of 2025 only have till mid January to finish writing their personal statements - so I thought I should share what I think is one of the most important tips of all. In “A Is for Admission: The Insider's Guide to Getting into the Ivy League, Michele A. Hernandez, a former admissions officer at an Ivy League college, remembers a personal statement she rates as the best she has ever come across. The

“You teach so differently from my teachers at school!” is a comment I often hear from my students. If they had said I was just like their teachers, I would actually have taken it as an insult, for the approach to teaching I’ve adopted as a private writing coach is the result of a concerted effort to depart from the kind of exam-oriented education that was foisted on me when I was a student. The difference between many school teachers and myself can be captured by an analogy.

過去一週，一個剛參加了Univeristy Fair 的學生, 跟我分享她跟眾多大學招生代表聊天後，注意到的一個現象。 “我發覺越有名氣的大學，越鼓勵學生要申請過程中展示自己的個性和所長。相反，那些沒名氣的大學代表，只說分數達標就可以成為他們的學生。“ 我聽到學生這麼說感到很欣慰，因我之前給她的意見得到了第三方的驗證。她參加Univeristy Fair前我就一直跟督促她，選擇補習班和課外活動，要着重quality and not quantity, 最好能完成一些與眾不同的項目，演示自己的獨特性，才能更引起大學錄取官的注意，學生年代的我就是用這種策略考入牛津。 遺憾的是，太多太多香港家長，給孩子的時間表排得滿滿，別人孩子補習彈鋼琴跳芭蕾練游泳，自己的孩子也要參加同樣活動。這些家長為什麼不停下來想想，報讀那麼多班無非是為了孩子能考入好的大學，但如果優秀的大學更看重學生獨特性，自己孩子參加的課外活動又跟別人差不多， 怎樣脫穎而出？哪怕家長有無限的錢，孩子的精力是有限的，錢要用在刀刃上，精力也要耗在刀刃上。 我推薦焦累的家長們讀讀 Cal Newpo

I think it's pretty safe to assume that anyone who has watched Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel's "Belle de Jour" (1967) – a film about a bored housewife moonlighting as a prostitute – will remember this scene from the movie. An Asian client with a special request pays the housewife character (played by the luminous Catherine Deneuve) a visit. He opens a small box in her face. The audience doesn't see what's inside; they can only hear the sound of an insect buzzing. She agrees t

"Rules are made to be broken." This phrase sprang to mind after I read Buckingham Palace's response to the interview Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had with Oprah. In our school days, all too often our teachers would exhort us to write in the active voice. While it is true that we should usually heed this rule, the Queen's note demonstrates the handiness of the passive voice when we're in a dicey situation. "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning" — in a

When I came across this piece on writer's block written by the New Yorker cultural critic Joan Acocella — I've long been in awe of her uncanny ability to narrate complex content in a deceptively simple manner — I finally received confirmation from good authority that it takes a lot of effort to produce effortless writing. It's no accident that "seasoned writers tend to write for only about three or four hours a day," Acocella opines. "Writing is a nerve-flaying job. Clichés c

"Didn't you know there's a difference between 'indicate' and 'point out'?" my tutor at Oxford University fired this question at me after noting I'd been using both words interchangeably. The class was supposed to be on philosophy, but back then, my sensitivity towards English was so wanting that my tutor would often opt to teach me the basics of writing instead. Each session was one-on-one, so he could attend to the problems he considered to be in most urgent need of correcti

At the height of her fame in the 1960s, Pauline de Rothschild (1908-1976) was frequently photographed by Vogue and admired by the public as an interior designer of singular taste. She was, however, in possession of another talent that didn't come across in those glossy pictures: she was a very fine writer too. So awed was longtime New Yorker author Janet Flanner by Rothschild's travel diaries that she mused, "we writers work all our lives for style and special faculties of ex

"Why do my Hong Kong employees have such a fondness for words like 'moreover' and 'furthermore'?" I once heard a British executive who oversaw one of the largest conglomerates in the city complain. As a survivor of Hong Kong's education system, I have a ready answer for him: the overriding preoccupation of Hong Kong teachers is to prepare students for the trauma of test-taking. Teachers do need to teach English Composition, since it's a fixture at exams. But the general sylla

In the days of her youth, when Zhang Chonghe (张充和) honed her art at the feet of the master calligrapher Shen Yinmo (沈尹默), she was captivated by his unconventional teaching method. “To curb my habit of leaving character construction to chance, Master Shen prescribed Sui and Tang Dynasty fonts—known for their precise structure—for me to mimic. He would never tell me, 'This character is ill-drawn,' or 'That one has an irremediable defect.' Instead, he knew which font would strai

Even though I sat through my compulsory physics and chemistry classes in secondary school not understanding a word, oddly enough, it was a book I read at university on how scientists make discoveries—The Art of Scientific Investigation by William Beveridge—that played a part in developing in me an eye for detail that later proved so handy when I became a writer. To drive home how easy it is to fail to see the obvious when conducting experiments, Beveridge describes how even C

幾年前一看到這個故事，心靈就有種莫名的觸動。文革時期，在北大教授哲學的宗白華，自然成為整頓對象。他被掃地出門，被命令去掃樹葉。那當時宗白華心里是怎麽想？跟他同樣遭難的北大教授馮友蘭文革後談到宗白華，說“那年夏天我和白華同在南閣‘學習’，有一次看見他身穿白褲褂，一手打傘，一手搖著紙扇，從北閣後面的山坡上走來，悠哉悠哉。我突然覺得這不就是一種‘晉人風度’嗎？豁達是晉人風度的要點，達到那種境界，自然就是晉人風度.” 另外，宗白華文革期間也會經常到一個親戚家里，觀看家里的小孩睡覺，小孩睡醒，總會見到宗白華用慈祥的目光注視著自己。 當文革風不單在大陸卷土重來，還吹到香港，我又想起宗白華的舊事，並且對他當年的心理活動有新的見解。作為英文寫作老師的我，尤其明白為什麽宗白華會特意去親戚家看小孩。我在Zoom上教學，雖然屏幕上的學生跟我沒血緣關系，但在”亂世”中還堅持着講真話的我，隔着屏幕講解我最擅長，對他們來說應該是一道風景，對我來說就是一種緣分。 我經常告訴學生，“I’ll never ask of you what I have not first aske

A student who sat for her International Baccalaureate English exam wrote the following essay for its writing segment. For ease of reference, I’ve numbered the paragraphs in her piece. The writing topic she was given: “The best way to understand the true nature of society is to study its dominant trends in art, music and fashion.'' To what extent do you agree with this statement?” Her response and my comments on it: 1. Society, as composed of thousands of living units, const

”今天一堆涉外同事全用上ChatGPT寫郵件了,過於方便，英語白學了。“ AI寫作機械人ChatGPT面世後，有中國人在 Twitter這樣說 . 的確，因ChatGPT可以理解中文指示，使用者哪怕一句英語也不會，也能靠ChatGPT, 幾秒鐘内寫出絕對流暢和幾乎沒grammatical mistakes的文字。 但AI 寫作機械人的到來，不一定代表英語白學了。肯定的是，當誰都能產出沒文法錯誤的書寫英語，perfect grammar不再是衡量英文是否優秀的主要標準。AI的强項是邏輯推理，在post-Chatgpt 年代，想寫出衆的school essays or business English, 就要打破純推理的框框，運用橫向思維（lateral thinking）和跨領域知識，自己的書寫英語才能在多如牛毛的pefectly grammatcial的英文文章中脫穎而出。 去年底我寵物成功移民到加拿大後，我給我的 pet travel agent寫了一封感謝信。適逢ChatGPT也差不多同時被推出，出於好奇，我也請ChatGPT寫感謝信。Th

“將來我如何才不被 AI 淘汰？”一個只有12嵗的學生最近問我。 我就跟她說了一個AI專家Maurice Conti 招人的故事： “A few weeks ago we contacted this crazy musician/artist /hacker type and asked him to build a prototype — a VR thing. We were almost too corporate for him. But we talked him into it by showing him we’re not just corporate types, we have plenty of eccentric brilliant weirdos doing really groundbreaking stuff. So he came in and after four, five days he built this truly awesome prototype that incorporated some of

最近有個在香港就讀名校的中一學生跟我說：”我突然發覺我同學的英文寫作水平突飛猛進，原來他們都在用ChatGPT!” 我聽到後責怪自己，這個學生我也教了一年多，我居然還沒好好培養他的品味！我完全不認為ChatGPT寫的英文厲害。雖然ChatGPT文法無誤，一些基本的literary techniques (such as alliteration)也會，但style 和 originality 方面非常欠缺。不信比較一下下面兩個dentist reviews。 第一個是我寫的, it was based on recent experience; 第二個是ChatGPT 寫的。 My version The last time I got a tooth extracted, the experience was especially harrowing because as I sat in the dentist's chair wondering why it was taking so long for him to remove the

我經常推薦已經在外國讀書的香港學生看名為“EO” (Entrepreneurship Opportunities) 的 Youtube channel 。該頻道經常採訪一些在tech sector成功創業的擁有亞洲面孔人士，他們不單有視野有智謀有技術，他們的English communication skills也非常棒。我希望學生通過他們體會到，在外國，好的 communication skills 對career 有錦上添花的作用。 我這裡指的 communication skills, 超越了不少香港人對 communication skills 的理解（英文沒口音，說話流暢等）。在西方職場，communication skills 更包括 express complicated things in a simple way。例如，EO 的受訪者會用各種比喻來解釋他們的行業和業務: Carnegie Mellon professor Po-Shen Loh 把他的網上教學平台比喻為 classes that look “as good as

前陣子一個學生給了我這個題目：“Pretend you live in a castle. Where is it, what does it look like, and who lives there?” 我知道大部分學生都會寫castle如何宏偉皇室生活如何愜意之類的文章。的確，我把題目給ChatGPT，它也採取同樣的approach。下面是是ChatGPT和我的文章的對比，如果你是考官，哪個版本更能讓你眼前一亮？ Pretend you live in a castle. Where is it, what does it look like, and who lives there? ChatGPT’s version Nestled in the heart of the Carpathian Mountains, Silverwind Keep stands majestically on a mist-shrouded peak. Its towering spires reach towards the sky, while a

有個移民到英國的香港學生，說他老師看完他的作文後，以為他是用ChatGPT寫的。在我看來，原因之一可能是他在香港讀書時，被教的那一套是根據固定公式寫文章，而這種寫作風格，正是ChatGPT最善於的，所以他去外國後，被老師誤解。 那該如何跑贏ChatGPT？方法其實很多，以下面這段關於 Tudor Dynasty 文字為例，原文平鋪直敘地把這段歷史總結一遍，我的rewrite選擇先把焦點放在Tudor朝代的其中一位最聞名人物Anne Bolelyn，然後用“藤㨢瓜瓜㨢藤”的方法，把跟她相關的人物和事件逐一敘述，這樣就能避免 sound like ChatGPT。 原文 The Tudor Era (1485–1603) is one of the most interesting chapters in English history. Though relatively brief, this period was packed with dramatic change, defined by the reigns of five monarch