A person who has influenced you

　　Please describe a person who has greatly influenced you

　　You should say:

　　Who the person is (was)

　　How you came into contact with this person

　　How he/she has influenced you and why

　　And you have you say whether this person has influenced others

　　To talk about a person who has influenced me the most, I think there is none other but my father. Working as a government official, he doesn’t appear to be extraordinary in any way, but just working faithfully and peacefully raising his family, never putting his family or children aside. Yet however regular he may look, he is never ordinary to me, because I’ve learned many of the most basic and important life lessons from him: family, responsibility, accountability, faithfulness, vision and fulfilling goals, etc.—he is the first and best teacher in my life. As to influence, people all influence one another in one way or another during their contact. But as to whether my father has influenced other people as much as he does to me, I am not sure. Nevertheless I always hear people in the neighborhood talking about him as a model husband and family head. He must have touched some lives.

　　本题要求考生突出一个对自己影响巨大的人，尽管身边所有的人都总是无时无刻或多或少地在互相影响着自己。通常考生应该选择和自己接触和交流很多的人物，这样才最有可能对自己产生巨大的影响，例如：父母，老师和朋友。当然，此人也有可能是一位伟大的历史人物，自己的偶像。但是无论如何，考生要把回答的重点集中在对方对自己的影响上，而绝非次人物的长相或性格等。

　　How do you like people to view you?

　　I’d like people to view me as a determined and strong leader. I need these qualities to be affirmed by people that they can look up to me for leadership.

　　Do you think that people are often influenced by material things (eg. money, car)?

　　As I am purposefully trying to avoid the danger of generalization, I can only tell you that there are definitely some people who are very easily influenced by materials things, while it is also certain that there are people who are not so easily influenced by material things; they often tend to have strong personal values.

　　Do people’s characters change as they get older?

　　People’s characters depend on many things, including their experiences, relationships, health and financial situations. As these things change over time, so we also see people’s character’s change.