最近，我一個9歲的學生寫了這篇題目為《My Best Friend》的文章：

（為了保護學生私隱，identifying details been changed）

My Best Friend

Sally is a ball of energy. She is so good at gymnastics, capable of doing multiple cartwheels at lightning speed. However, she also has a soft side. She cries at movies well before I do and is too chicken to go kayaking.

I feel sad that I can no longer see Sally’s workout because I’ve left Hong Kong for the UK.

文章有兩個缺點：（1）既然題目是”My Best Friend”，作者應花多點筆墨形容她和Sally的關係；（2）建議作者可以不等到文章的結尾才告訴讀者她和Sally已分隔兩地，早點提供這個信息，讀者可以早點體會作者跟摯友別離的心酸。

我再跟該學生上課時，我問她，你可否分享你過往跟Sally相處的點滴？結果她告訴了我一些讓我捧腹大笑的事，which I incorporated into my rewrite of her piece：

My rewrite

Since emigrating to the UK, whenever I see children here doing cartwheels in the playground, I can’t help but feel a pang of sadness.

Sally, the best friend I left in my native city of Hong Kong, had such a love of gymnastics that not only could she execute 12 cartwheels in a row with the effortless grace of a prancing deer. She could tumble and do splits. I miss seeing her in action.

I miss more our days swimming together on Saturdays and our nights of sleeping together. Our sleepovers usually took place at her home. There, her helper served us restaurant-quality mozzarella sticks and banana splits. There, we pored over the sort of book I didn’t have at home, such as the one that had in its pages pictures of naked men and women. They appeared in poses that looked somewhat similar to the positions Sally could contort her body into. We loved laughing at them.

Now that I’m in the UK, I have lost not only Sally but also my access to that book!

Comment:
Notice how by starting my rewrite with a description of Sally’s cartwheels, and then refer to her agility again when I described the men and women in that book, I managed to create a 首尾呼應 effect.

Michelle Ng