Please help me polish this paragraph.

Question

I'm learning English as a foreign language. In one of my writings, one paragraph goes:

But it's not saying we just indulge ourselves and turn into wild beasts. We train our brain hard so that we are able to control the burst of our emotions. We go to schools, take courses and repeatedly remind ourselves to be rational, noting that impulsive acts often causes troubles, and constant emotion explosions are childish behavior deviating us away from the road to success. After about two decades, maybe, we finish our process of “growing up” and finally think we have the ability to control our emotions. We know we can not leave without apology when feeling the call of nature in conducting conferences, or we know even if the person you hate the most is standing right in front of you, you are not supposed to pull a dagger and just start to stab him/her. But thats all trivial in compare to the skills we learned to analyze a problem and reach the answer using an intellectual process, and limit the participating of raw emotions.

I smell uncomfortable in this one, do you guys have any suggestions to polish it a little? I feel that my vocabulary is not so accurate and my rhythm for sentence is not good enough too.

You can find the complete writing here: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_60d9f9bc0100pq3y.html

Answer 1

1. In English "brain" typically refers to the organ itself. The gray and white matter; the neurons. You probably want to say that we train our minds. In English, the mind is what controls our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. The brain is merely the vehicle for our cognitive processes. I don't know if other languages account for the difference between the brain and the mind in this way.
2. Emotional explosions are generally referred to as "outbursts".
3. "Deviating us" doesn't really make sense. It might be correct, but it doesn't "feel" right.
4. "Cannot" is one word.
5. Don't be afraid to use contractions. A lot of English teachers tell folks not to use them when they're writing, but they're wrong. Not using contractions leads to stiff writing.
6. You're missing an apostrophe in "that's all trivial".
7. "Schools" should probably be singular.: We're not talking about a specific school or schools we attended, but rather the idea of school.
8. Same for "troubles". Trouble is an idea; we're not interested in the specifics unless we're telling a funny story.
9. You do some weird hashing with your subjects by alternating between "we" and "you". You need to be consistent; "we" probably works better in this case, because you're talking about the human condition, and you are, after all, one of us. :)
10. Specific problems can be "trivial", but concepts are usually "easy". I don't know why this distinction, and I suppose both are technically right, but when writing, probably stick with this rule of thumb.

Here's how I would re-write your paragraph:

It's not saying that we should just indulge ourselves and turn into wild beasts. We train our minds so that we're able to control our emotional outbursts: we go to school, take classes, learn, and remind ourselves to be rational, noting that impulsive acts often lead to trouble, and that letting our emotions control us is childish, and distracts us from our goals. After two decades or so, we're done "growing up", and we think we finally have the ability to control ourselves. We know we can't interrupt a meeting without apologizing, and we know that even if the person we hate the most is standing right in front of us, we can't give in to our baser instincts.* But this is easy compared to the skills we learn to analyze a problem and come to a solution.

*Alternatively, you could stick with what you've written, modified a little bit: ...even if the person we hate the most is standing right in front of us, we can't pull a dagger to stab him or her.

Answer 2

I think the actual content and overall style is fine, but you're having some trouble with consistent grammar.

For example: "We train our brain hard so that we are able to control the burst of our emotions." - we don't share a common brain. So it should be 'brains'. Or: "impulsive acts often causes troubles" should be 'cause', since acts is plural. And you switch to second person late in the paragraph, talking about the person "you" hate the most, when the rest of the selection has been in first person ('we').

Answer 3

What Kate said, plus the word participating in the last sentence seems awkward. You might consider "the impact of raw emotions," or "the influence of raw emotions," or "the role of raw emotions." Better yet, I would rephrase and say something like: ". . . and curb raw emotions" or ". . . and hold raw emotions in check."