Celebrating New Year's Day is one of the oldest and most-exciting customs around the world. In Korea, to celebrate upcoming New Year's Day, we have a special holiday called Seollal on January 1st on the lunar calendar. We make a wish that all the family members and relatives to be safe and healthy for a year. During this holiday, people get together and perform a special rite.
A couple of days before Seollal, as a preliminary step we need to buy some foods, which are going to be put on an altar. The foods are mostly what the dead liked to have during their lifetime. They usually consist of fruit, rice cake, roast fish, beef and rice. This means that all the ingredients make a normal single meal for the dead and they come and eat.
On the day of Seollal, people gather and prepare to perform the rite. First, they cook all foods early morning. During cooking, they have a conversation with each other about their daily lives. After that, they put foods on an altar and start to perform the rite. They bow respectfully to the dead and do some traditional steps. Next, People go to the cemeteries. They usually bring some foods that used in the morning and bow again in front of the cemeteries. This whole process means that people pray for all the relative's safety in a new year before the dead relatives.
After the whole rite ended, People start to play with their relatives. Some have a joyful conversation and give words of blessing to each other. Meanwhile, the others play traditional games. For example, they play yut kind of board game and do Korean shuttlecock. Especially, people enjoy playing "Go-stop". That is a kind of card game, which people usually do on National holidays. Like this way, people enjoy and celebrate Seollal in their own way.
Korean people celebrate New Year's Day in way of preparing various foods, performing the ancestral rite and playing games. Moreover, They pray that everything will be okay for each other. Of all national holidays in Korea, people think of Seollal as the most important one because it is on the first day of New Year and they reunite and remember their ancestors.
From Soyun Jeong to Chaemin Lim
ReplyDelete1. What I liked about your work is that it has very well organized structure. Each paragraph has nice topic sentences that cover all the contents in the paragraph, and they all express your ideas clearly. I also liked that you used good time phrases such as first, next, after. In the introduction part, you included background information and explained well about Seollal.
2. Your main idea seems to be the Koreans get together and perform special lite on the New Years Day.
3. The words or phrases that I liked are:
pray
I personally liked the way you used this word. Maybe this is my personal impression, but when I hear the words 'pray' and 'wish', pray sounds more earnest. Therefore I thought the word 'pray' fits better to the situation on Seollal than 'wish'.
4. The parts that could have been better are:
cemetery
I think cemetery is a term used when there are lots of graves in the same place. In Korea, this may not be the case very often. Therefore I think graves or tombs might be more suited word.
Korean Shuttlecock
Does this refer to je-gi in Korean? If it is so, I think it is a great word to interpret je-gi into English. However, you should have explained more about it because readers who don't know about Korean culture might think that the Koreans play badminton on Seollal.
5. I think your work is very great in general. One thing you might consider improving is to explain things in more detail. For example, you talked about "doing some traditional steps" on paragraph 3, and this might sound unclear to foreign readers.
Revised version.
ReplyDelete1) added more information about Korean Suttlecock.
2)corrected a few grammar mistakes.
3)changed words into more proper ones.
Celebrating New Year's Day is one of the oldest and most-exciting customs around the world. In Korea, to celebrate upcoming New Year's Day, we have a special holiday called Seollal on January 1st on the lunar calendar. We make a wish that all the family members and relatives to be safe and healthy for a year. During this holiday, people get together and perform a special rite.
A couple of days before Seollal, as a preliminary step we need to buy some foods, which are going to be put on an altar. The foods are mostly what the dead liked to have during their lifetime. They usually consist of fruit, rice cake, roast fish, beef and rice. This means that all the ingredients make a normal single meal for the dead and they come and eat.
On the day of Seollal, people gather and prepare to perform the rite. First, they cook all foods early morning. During cooking, they have a conversation with each other about their daily lives. After that, they put foods on an altar and start to perform the rite. They bow respectfully to the dead and do some traditional steps. Next, People visit their family graves. They usually bring some foods that used in the morning and bow again in front of the graves. This whole process means that people pray for all the relative's safety in a new year.
After the whole rite ended, People start to play with their relatives. Some have a joyful conversation and give words of blessing to each other. Meanwhile, the others play traditional games. For example, they play yut kind of board game and kick around a jegi. Jegichagi is a competition to see who can kick the shuttlecock into the air the greatest number of times without letting it fall to the ground. Especially, people enjoy playing "Go-stop", which is a kind of card game people usually do on National holidays. Like this way, people enjoy and celebrate Seollal in their own way.
Korean people celebrate New Year's Day in way of preparing various foods, performing the ancestral rite and playing games. Moreover, They pray that everything will be okay for each other. Of all national holidays in Korea, people think of Seollal as the most important one because it is on the first day of New Year and they reunite and remember their ancestors.