Statement of Purpose for Application for Combined Ph.D. Program - Free Paper

Language and films inform and mediate our lives. Language is paramount in making sense of what is around and within us; hence is a very invaluable skill to possess. I learned English growing up in mainland China to achieve my genuine admiration for English and its culture. I was driven by my ambition to fully immerse myself in studying interactive media studies as an undergraduate student in the United States. Because of my love for languages, I am self-studying French and Japanese as part of the preparation for a Ph.D. experience. After graduating with honors in interactive media studies and a master’s degree in teaching English as a second language, I have gained invaluable experience as a Chinese instructor. I have worked with extreme professionalism and exhibited desirable output while teaching using film, which has built my ambition and motivation to learn new things. This kind of success has boosted my morale and given me a reason to want to achieve more in film, language, and literature studies. Furthermore, I believe that my participation in different events in my academic journey such as filming, recording, and production of short documentaries and videos of the lives of refugees in the United States have instilled a theoretical understanding of the necessary skills that prepared me well to meet the requirements of the program at Yale University.

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My research interest includes the simplification reform of Chinese script and its influence on social structures, behavior modification, and relationships with Chinese culture. Also, I am seeking admission to a Combined Ph.D. Degree Program in Film Studies and East Asian Languages and Literature at Yale University to investigate how the script reform in the early 20th century has changed, influenced, and its reflection in Chinese cinema as well as how Japanese films have been influenced by writing reforms in modern-day Japan. Besides, I seek to hone my research skills in the existence of Chinese characters in Japanese literature despite the script reform which sought to abolish these characters. I got interested in these areas through my Chinese teaching experience and my love for film and media. I have pursued research opportunities throughout my career in teaching while refining research interests and developing extensive skills in film studies. My time at Miami University and the School for International Training (SIT) Graduate Institute prepared me to pursue the combined program by providing me with mentoring, teaching, and research opportunities, which will allow me to solve complex and technical problems in film, language, and literature studies. I believe the program can help me achieve my goal because Yale University offers crucial support in cooperative research, information exchange, events like film series and conferences, and the acquisition of resources such as magazines, books, and films. I believe that my research will enrich the program because I will be part of an intellectually diverse environment that creates better groups that are productive and have various tools for looking at a problem with a great chance of solving it. Also, I will enrich the program with research and publications as well as be an ambassador of the program outside the university.

What prepares me for a Combined Ph.D. Degree Program in Film Studies and East Asian Languages and Literature is my love for teaching and my experience in using film to teach language and culture. This has offered me an abundance of remarkable perspectives on my learners. Also, film studies have instilled in me insightful experience in teaching Chinese literature and culture through film analysis and screening. I have enjoyed using Chinese films, moving pictures, comics, and cartoons to distinctly teach the Chinese language and its culture to impart critical thinking through interpretation, assessment, and potent message delivery among the students. The highlight of my academic journey is the innovation of lesson plans that promoted self-discovery, introspection, interactive learning, and ownership among the learners, which form the foundation of my studies in the program. Moreover, my love for reading and studying classic Chinese literature and my experience in teaching Chinese to diverse students in elementary, intermediate, and advanced levels prepared me fully for any teaching assignments. My long years of practice in Taichi have turned around my passion for studying Chinese classic texts. I fell in love with the history of characters and Chinese classics such as Dao De Jing and I Jing, which have inspired me. Furthermore, at 19, I learned the best practices for running social media accounts and I became an administrator for my WeChat blog, which gained over 260,000 followers with published cartoons and comics from Chinese illustrators.

My goal is to advance my competency in French and Japanese languages and be a university professor and combine my experience in teaching the Chinese language with my deep understanding of East Asian Languages and Literature and film studies. This ambition will allow me to introduce the changing identity of East Asia to the students while emphasizing language proficiency as well as language, film, and literature. I seek to become a professor at a university with intensive research in film studies and East Asian literature and languages. Earning a Ph.D. from Yale University is the perfect preparation for the advanced research I hope to realize and am enthusiastic about the prospect of joining a program with a unique sense of culture cultivated through diversity, values, and positive relationships. Also, my goal is to publish widely in film studies and East Asian Languages and Literature fields such as Japanese and Chinese modern literature, early cinema, and East Asian film and media.