The essays in this collection were written by the fourteen junior English majors enrolled in Advanced English Composition this semester at Daejin University in response to the three major course assignments. The first assignment asked students to describe important people in their lives and explain the positive influences of those people. For the second assignment, students developed written speeches and later delivered them to the class. Four students actually went beyond the minimum requirements and successfully presented their speeches in a national English language speech contest. The third assignment gave students a chance to express their opinions on a number of current and controversial topics.
        In fact, each of the "final" essays that appears in this volume is the result of a rather long process that involved several weeks of such things as class and group discussions and brainstorming, prewriting exercises, peer reviews, revising, editing, and rewriting. I believe these essays will be of interest to anyone who takes the time to read them. I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed watching and helping them develop. More than anything else, perhaps, these short pieces of writing provide a rare opportunity for English-speaking readers to catch a glimpse of the thoughts and ideas of a group of young Koreans in 1998.
        On the last few pages of this collection, there is a paragraph about each of the students whose work is included here. You are also invited to find out much more about these students by visiting the Internet home pages they developed this semester. You can find the students' home pages at the following address: <http://english.daejin.ac.kr/~rtyson/fall98/students3/index.html>. [Sorry, these are no longer available.] We would welcome any comments or questions you might have about this volume or any of the individual essays. Finally, we would like to thank our department head, Professor Rha Byoung Mo, for arranging financial support for this publication.