高中英语作文写作的答题技巧（热门19篇）

如何写好高中作文，对于学生作文的写作基础也要好好的训练，话题作文的基本要求：话题作文还是要审题，所写内容必须在话题范围之内。“立意自 定”，关键要读懂话题关键词的意旨，若给出导语提示，还应划出导语中包含归结的关键语词。一般初学者，首先要注意让这些关键词贯穿在自己作文的始终，统帅 自己的文意。以下是为大家分享的高中语文话题作文的写作基础，供大家参考借鉴，欢迎浏览!

如何写好高中作文，对于学生作文的写作基础也要好好的训练,实际效果又发现学生完全没有一般思想认识的基础，真正可见现在所谓合格教育的成效，和高中教学要求的“架空作业”。

一、文章形式的革命——夹叙夹议

尽快脱离初中只重记叙，笼统归结的写法。高中的作文记叙只向最高水平开一条缝，你得复杂记叙，融情思与哲理于一炉，有最动人的细节和最精美的表达，巧妙蕴 含深刻的思辨和无穷的回味，这不是一般人能做到的，更不是学不会议论抒情的同学的避难所。所以，比自己多练议论，远比固守初中记叙的窠臼要有前途。高中的 记叙必须简约，只提炼能说明自己观点的内核，而尽量舍弃叙述的完整过程与细节。叙，惜墨如金；而起始学写议，应力求具体多点分析阐述。

二、文章立意的升华——深入浅出

叙完笼统归结是初中模式作文的又一通病，常常文章的结尾具有宽泛的普适性，而缺乏对文章应有之义作具体针对性的挖掘阐发，常常文章的“穿鞋戴帽”大到可以 套在无数篇文章上，却没什么真正的思考。高中作文倘使还用夹叙夹议，也要对叙的材料反复推敲，找出几例可以统一在一个观点里的材料，就材料的不同侧面来评 析议论，最后上升归结出恰当切题、言之有物的中心。

三、文章表达的提高——点睛生花

好的文笔追求更高效率、更多意蕴。描述中就渗透情思与评析，这是较高水平的表达。一般的叙议分段，也应注意所叙材料紧贴自己的议论，议论应采取逐层推进， 前后分界，避免相互缠绕。但又必须前后连贯，形成一个整体。在文章中一定写好精心组织的关键议论，努力使文章多处呈现运用一定修辞的文采。

话题作文训练举隅

话题作文的基本要求：话题作文还是要审题，所写内容必须在话题范围之内。“立意自定”，关键要读懂话题关键词的意旨，若给出导语提示，还应划出导语中包含归结的关键语词。一般初学者，首先要注意让这些关键词贯穿在自己作文的始终，统帅自己的文意。

规定“题目自拟”，一定不要用话题作标题。1、标题范围尽量要小，不要太大太泛；要合理出新，不落俗套。2、标题不能过长，可以采用副标题的方式对主标题加以限制。3、标题要含蓄，把思维蕴涵于形象的标题之中。

导语：相信每个人都会发现自己校园美丽的景色，快来跟小编说说吧。下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的优秀英语作文，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

When the East is reflecting fish-belly white, that piece covered up red is coming out. When teachers and administration staff dormitory this veil also cannot block from her glowing red face again time, she no longer covers up simply, no longer shy, entire development in ours front. Under the rosy-colored clouds at dawn classroom building, meets one, as soon as row after row, increased for the beautiful campus morning has wiped red Time the setting sun in the western sky campus, has the irresistible beauty. That is one kind detailed and peaceful, that is one kind of vigorous vitality. The crimson setting sun according to on the level of the lake, is static does not have the sound, the green water plant to embellish, is swinging, the partner has the breeze, has aroused the intermittent ripples. The fish have a good swim heartily in the water, whether also cheers for this campus? In the classroom building stands upright which from two transmits the intermittent ringing book sound, that is on the Beethoven piano the harmonious music, that is a day-long start. Occasionally transmits the intermittent delightful laughter along with the breeze, that is when earnestly studies assiduously all day section of interludes, that is the happy joyful testimony. When schoolmates are welcoming the rosy-colored clouds at dawn, the stride walks on campus beautiful trail time, that is He Zhong the vitality! When schoolmates tread the setting sun to pull mutually talks and laughs merrily, that also is He Zhong satisfaction!

【参考译文】

东方正反射着鱼肚皮的白，那片红色的那块就要冒出来了。当教师和管理人员宿舍这帷幕也无法阻挡她再次发光的红色脸的时候，她再也不掩饰了，不再害羞，整个发展在我们面前。在教学楼在黎明的玫瑰色的云彩，符合一，尽快鳞次栉比，增加美丽的校园今天上午有时间抹去红色在西方天空校园夕阳，具有不可抗拒的美丽。这是一种细致而安宁的，是一种轰轰烈烈。克林姆森夕阳照到水平的湖，是静态的没有声音，的绿色水植物点缀，是摆动，合作伙伴有微风，激起阵阵涟漪。鱼儿在水里有一个很好的游，是否也为这校园欢呼?在课堂上，从2个传来的声音中，有一个从两个传来的声音，那就是贝多芬钢琴上的和谐音乐，那是一天的开始。偶尔传输随着微风的间歇愉快的笑声，这是在认真研究，刻苦整天部分插曲，这是幸福快乐的证词。当同学们在晨光中迎接玫瑰色的云朵时，就在校园里走过了一步一步的时光，那就是他中的活力!当同学踏夕阳拉互相谈笑风生，这也是他钟满意!

在考研英语的小作文部分，历年考试大纲中都会列出多种应用文类型，投诉信、建议信、申请信、求职信、辞职信、求助信、感谢信、号召信、邀请信、道歉信等等，但是考生们回到具体的实践写作中，翻阅近几年考研英语真题试卷，常常发现这些归为一大类，终究是书信形式。既然书信写作如此重要，下面就为各位考生带来书信写作的攻克大招，让写作变得无比简单。

一、书信写作总体概述

1.首段

1)问候收信人

例：Dear Sir/Madam

2)解释来信原因

例：I’m writing for ……

2.中间段落

1)阅读题干要求，从中寻找名词或动词

例：Write a letter of application according to the following situation. You saw an advertisement in this morning’s newspaper .A company need’s a secretary and you are interested. Write an application letter to that company.

2)注意题目文字暗示，把名词具体化，把动词近义词化。

例：I am pleased to discover from Beijing Youth that your company is calling for a secretary……

3.结尾段落

例：I would appreciate your assistance in this matter. If you have any question , please don’t hesitate to contact me. I can be reached at...Look forward to your reply.

4.署名

在文章右下角署名，一般格式为：Yours sincerely……

二、书信写作分类讲解(写作脉络)

1.投诉信

投诉信通常包括：说明投诉原因并表示遗憾，实事求是阐述问题发生的经过，指出问题引起的后果，提出批评及处理意见，督促对方采取措施，提出所希望的赔偿及补救方式。

2.建议信

建议信即写给某个组织或机构，就改进其服务质量提出建议忠告;或写给个人，就某一重大事件提出自己的看法、建议及观点。

3.道歉信

投诉信通常包括：表示歉意、阐明表示歉意的具体原因，提出补救办法，再次表示致歉，并希望得到谅解，提供合适的补救办法。(要注意语言的诚挚)

4.感谢信

感谢信中通常带有浓厚的感情色彩，是所有书信中最带有“人情味”的，该书信内容通常包括：表达感谢之情并说明原因--提及自己曾受到对方的帮助--再次感谢并表达回报愿望。

在2018考研的战场上，一分意味着上线与下线，一分意味着录取与非录取，所以，拼尽全力才有可能取得最终的胜利。预祝大家金榜题名，取得理想佳绩!

[考研英语书信写作方法

谈及写作训练,学生认为就是勤练笔,其实不然。英语的听、说、读、写四种能力是密切相关、相互渗透的。听和读是领会理解别人表达的思想,说和写是用言语表达思想。写的能力要在听、说、读的基础上进行培养和提高,而写的训练又能进一步提高听、说、读的能力。因此,写作训练应该贯穿于英语教学的全过程,才能真正提高学生的写作能力。

一、多读

“读是写的前提,写是读的升华”。一般而言,听和读的量必须数十倍地多于说和写的量,才能较自如地在口头上或书面上表达自己的思想。一方面,大量阅读可以提高阅读能力,扩大词汇量,另一方面,它还可以增强英语语感,对英语写作起着潜移默化的作用。只有当阅读量达到一定程度时,才能找到写好文章的语感。我们可以选择适合学生的读物,如英文报纸(《英语周报》、《21世纪报》)、杂志(《中学生英语园地》)、科普文章、书虫等(水平较高的学生可读小说原著)。大量阅读是学生接触英语语言材料、接受信息、活跃思维、增强记忆力的一种有效途径,同时也是培养学生英语思维能力、提高理解力、增强语感、巩固和扩大词汇量的一种有效方法,非常有利于写作。实践证明,学生平时课外阅读面越广,阅读量越大,运用英语表达的能力就越强。

二、多背

英语和汉语存在很大差异,语法规则和句子结构是不同的,很多学生在写作过程中难免会受到母语的影响,出现一些Chinglish(中式英语),而且有些语法规则也把握不准,谓语动词常出现“be+do”的错误形式或缺少谓语的现象。所以,背诵模仿是行之有效的手段之一。

(一)背课文

在多年的教学实践中,我坚持让学生背诵部分课文,较长的文章选背一两段,下节课抽查背诵,或进行默写。《新概念英语2》中很多英语短文通俗有趣,我给学生挑选其中一部分让他们背诵、默写,对培养学生的语感很有效。

(二)背范文

英语写作一般包括记叙文、说明文、议论文、应用文及开放性作文写作。我经过筛选,找出每种文体各五篇文章,同时,我也注重搜集一些好的范文和习作要求学生背诵。通过熟背精彩段落,使学生逐步掌握英语基本的表达方法,有助于模仿。而且,通过这些范文,学生可熟练掌握各种体裁的写作技巧,这是学生写好作文的一条捷径。经过一段时间的训练,学生就会有内容可写、写得出来。

三、多写

除了以上对学生进行读、背训练,还要对学生进行动手训练。学生只有通过写才能知道自己的不足与缺陷,毕竟说和写是两回事。

(一)改写课文

教师可要求学生把Reading缩写成一篇一百字左右的短文,也可让学生把对话改写成记叙文(如项链),这也是进一步理解课文的手段。一般在学完一个单元,学生熟练掌握课文之后,再做这一步,让学生尽量使用本单元的短语句型,同时,也要学着套用背诵的句子。

(二)写英语周记

让学生写英语周记,这是很多老师训练学生写作的方法。有些英语写作不好的学生,往往不坚持写或应付了事。对这样的学生,教师要严格要求,督促检查。对学生的每篇周记,教师都要认真批改。周记不必拘泥于形式,学生可以自由发挥。开始可以写简单的几句话,要求学生多用学过的词组、句型,多套用和模仿。逐渐地,学生会写多些,也会越写越流利,错误也会越来越少。

(三)每周练习写一篇作文

教师挑选一至两篇习作打在投影仪上,师生共同修改,然后让学生将改写过的文章抄写在作文积累本上。这样日积月累,学生考前只要翻翻自己的“作文本”,即可胸有成竹,这个习惯一定要养成,对学生会有很大帮助。

(四)限时写作训练

近年高考试题包容量大,知识覆盖面广,这就要求学生在做题时必须注意速度和节奏,而高考书面表达从时间分配上看,最多也只能是30分钟左右的时间,学生必须在有限时间内完成作文,并且要意思连贯,无严重语法错误。为达到这一要求,每届学生从高一开始,就应定期做限时写作训练。

四、多积累

(一)积累词汇

词汇是说话写作的必需材料,掌握词汇量的多少,是衡量一个学生英语水平高低的“标尺”。《教学大纲》规定的词汇是最基本的词汇,必须熟记。我在多年的教学中,每堂课都坚持让学生默写或听写单词,要求学生根据中文意思,写出单词的拼写形式、词类和词形变化。这就使学生积累了大量的词汇,为高考书面表达打下坚实的拼写基础,避免了因单词拼写错误而丢分。

(二)积累句型

我在平时授课过程中,让学生把重点句型记录在作文积累本上,随时翻看和背诵。如写观点类文章常用的Some share the view that...,Others hold the opposite opinion that...,The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages,As far as I’m concerned,以及常用到的定语从句、倒装句、非限、非谓、同位语、强调句型等。

(三)积累文章

学生背过的篇章、写过的作文,尤其是各种体裁的范文习作,要分类整理粘贴在作文积累本上,经常拿出来朗读背诵。我教过的学生,都积累了大量的范文习作,考试时可做到有备无患。

通过长期的写作训练,我狠抓学生基本功,学生的写作水平明显提高。我所教班级在每次考试中书面表达平均分都在同类班级之上。总之,英语写作训练是综合能力训练之一,写作能力的提高需要通过循序渐进的训练才能达到。听、说、读、写几方面的训练是相辅相成的,它们互相促进、互相制约,在平时教学中教师要合理安排,有机穿插,这样才能让学生“下笔如有神”。

China has the history of more than 5,000 years. Many foreign people are

attracted by this big old country. They come here and want to know about the

traditional culture. However, Chinese young people dont show much interest in

the old culture, instead they chase the fashion and some even abandon the

precious culture. For example, paper cutting, one of the excellent arts that is

inherited by our ancestors. Many foreign media speak highly of this great

handicraft and they are astonished by the wisdom of Chinese people. I have seen

this art when I stay in my hometown. Only few old people can do it. They just

take it for killing time. Paper cutting is like the old fashion and is forgotten

by the young generation. The media should report more positive information about

the traditional culture to inspire the young people to learn.

1. To cherish the enviroment is to love ourselves.

爱护环境就是爱护我们自己。

2.Water is the source of ourlives

水是生命之源。

3.I make an urgent appeal that measures should be taken to cope with the situation

我急切呼吁应该采取措施改变现状。

4.Our government is doing its best to take measures to fight against pollution.

我们政府正努力制定措施与污染作斗争。

5.We are sure that well win the battle.

我们坚信我们能赢得战斗。

6.Its high time that we should protect our enviroment from being polluted.

是时候我们应该防止环境污染了。

7. Keep our mountains green，the wate clean，and the sky blue.

使我们山更绿，水更清，天更蓝。

8.However，natural resources are not inexhaustible.some reserves are already on the brink of exhaustion.

然而自然资源并不是无穷无尽的，一些储量已经到了穷尽的边缘。

9.If we do something with no thought for the furture . The later generation would be in danger.

如果我们不为将来考虑，后代就会受到威胁。

10.Our earths days are numbered without urgent help.

没有及时的帮助我们的地球就屈指可数了。

11(Sth.)are bound to generate severe consequences if we keep turning a blink eye to them.

如果我们继续睁一只眼闭一只眼的话，……一定会有恶劣的后果。

When holiday comes, thousands of people pour into the tourist sites, they want to relax themselves and enjoy the beautiful scenery. But Chinese people have a bad habit, they like to leave some notes on the site, proving them have been here before.

Such a behavior has been criticized by the public, because the leaving note will damage the preservation of the tourist site.

Most of the tourist sites are part of our country’s historical relics, these sites are priceless, it is everyone’s duty to protect the sites.

When we go to travel, we should behave ourselves. First, we need to have the idea that no rubbish being leaved behind when we leave the site. We should take away what we bring, keep the environment clean. Second, no any notes being written in the sites. Though in the old days, Chinese workers like to leave their names on the sites, but now it is a new world, we need to behave ourselves.

当节假日到来的时候，成千上百的人聚集在旅游景点，他们想要放松，享受美丽的风景。但是中国人有一个坏习惯，他们喜欢在景点留下一些记号，证明曾经在此旅游。这样的行为遭到了大众的批评，因为留下的记号会破坏景点的保存。

大部分景点是国内的历史文物，是无价的，保护文物是每一个人的责任。

当文明旅游时候，应该要规范自己的行为。第一，文明需要有这样的观念，当我们离开景点时，不能留下垃圾，拿走带来的一切。第二，不在景点留下记号。虽然在古代，中国的文人喜欢留下他们的名字，但是现在是新时代，我们要规范自己的行为。

[高中英语作文：文明旅游

一、文章形式的革命夹叙夹议

尽快脱离初中只重记叙，笼统归结的写法。高中的作文记叙只向最高水平开一条缝，你得复杂记叙，融情思与哲理于一炉，有最动人的细节和最精美的表达，巧妙蕴含深刻的思辨和无穷的回味，这不是一般人能做到的，更不是学不会议论抒情的同学的避难所。所以，比自己多练议论，远比固守初中记叙的窠臼要有前途。高中的记叙必须简约，只提炼能说明自己观点的内核，而尽量舍弃叙述的完整过程与细节。叙，惜墨如金；而起始学写议，应力求具体多点分析阐述。

二、文章立意的升华深入浅出

叙完笼统归结是初中模式作文的又一通病，常常文章的结尾具有宽泛的普适性，而缺乏对文章应有之义作具体针对性的挖掘阐发，常常文章的穿鞋戴帽大到可以套在无数篇文章上，却没什么真正的思考。高中作文倘使还用夹叙夹议，也要对叙的材料反复推敲，找出几例可以统一在一个观点里的材料，就材料的不同侧面来评析议论，最后上升归结出恰当切题、言之有物的中心。

三、文章表达的提高点睛生花

好的文笔追求更高效率、更多意蕴。描述中就渗透情思与评析，这是较高水平的表达。一般的叙议分段，也应注意所叙材料紧贴自己的议论，议论应采取逐层推进，前后分界，避免相互缠绕。但又必须前后连贯，形成一个整体。在文章中一定写好精心组织的关键议论，努力使文章多处呈现运用一定修辞的文采。

[高中话题作文写作基础介绍

高中自我介绍英语作文1

i am linjiang. i was born in jilin changchun. i graduate from henan university of urban construction. i started learning english since i was 15 years old.my father is a farmer . and my mother is a housewife. i am the youngest one in my family. my brother have a lot of american friends. that’s why i have no problem communicating with americans or others by speaking english.

in my spare time, i like to do anything relating to english such as listening to english songs, watching english movies or tv programs, or even attending the activities held by some english clubs or institutes. i used to go university for a short- term english study. during that time, i learned a lot of daily life english and saw a lot of different things.

i think language is very interesting. i could express one substanceby using different sounds. so i wish i could study and read more english enlarge my knowledge.

我是。我出生英寸我毕业的高中和英语专业。我开始学习英语，因为我是12岁。我的父母有很多美国朋友。这就是为什么我没有问题，与美国或其他国家的英语沟通。

我在业余时间，我喜欢做的任何与英语的听英文歌曲，看英文电影或电视节目，甚至参加一些英超俱乐部或学院所举行的活动。我曾经去作短期英语留学。在此期间，我学到了很多日常生活的英语，看到了很多不同的事情。

我觉得语言很有意思。我可以表达一种substanceby使用不同的声音。所以，我希望我能学习更多英语文学和扩大我的知识

高中自我介绍英语作文2

my name is . there are 4 people in my family. my father is a chemistryteacher. he teaches chemistry in senior high school. my mother is an english teacher. she teaches english in the university. i have a younger brother, he is a junior high school student and is preparing for the entrance exam.

i like to read english story books in my free time. sometimes i surf the internet and download the e- books to read. reading e- books is fun. in addition, it also enlarges my vocabulary words because of the advanced technology and the vivid animations.

i hope to study both english and computer technology because i am interested in both of the subjects. maybe one day i could combine both of them and apply to my research in the future.

我的名字是。有4人在我的家人。我的父亲是一个chemistryteacher。他教高中化学。我的母亲是一名英文教师。她教英语的大学。我有一个弟弟，他是一个初中学生，是联考的准备。

我喜欢阅读，在我空闲时，英文故事书。有时我上网冲浪和下载电子书籍阅读。阅读电子书籍的乐趣。此外，还扩大了，因为我的先进技术词汇和生动的动画。

我希望学习英语和计算机技术，因为我感兴趣的是两个科目。也许有一天，我可以把他们和今后适用于我的研究。

下面的材料旨在丰富学生在是非问题写作方面的思想和语言，考生在复习时可以先分类阅读这些篇章，然后尝试写相关方面的作文题。

对于素材中用黑体字的部分，特别建议你熟读，背诵，因为它们在语言和观点上都值得吸收。学习语言的人应该明白，表达能力和思想深度都靠日积月累，潜移默化。从某种意义上说，提高英语写作能力无捷径可走，你必须大段背诵英语文章才能逐渐形成语感和用英语进行表达的能力。这一关，没有任何人能代替你过。

因此，建议你下点苦功夫，把背单词的精神拿出来背诵文章。何况，并不是要求你背了之后永远牢记在心：你可以这个星期背，下个星期忘。这没有关系，相信你的大脑具有神奇的能力。背了工具箱里的文章后，你会惊讶的发现：I can think in English now！

1.?????? Proverbs

1. A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that individuality is the key to success.

2. The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s time.

3. Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.

4. The classroom--not the trench--is the frontier of freedom now and forevermore.

5. Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

6. It is the purpose of education to help us become autonomous, creative, inquiring people who have the will and intelligence to create our own destiny.

7. You see, real ongoing, lifelong education doesn’t answer questions; it provokes them.

8. People will pay more to be entertained than educated.

9.the most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure.

10. The essence of our efforts to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each as equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different-to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind, and spirit he or she possesses.

11. A great teacher never strives to explain his vision-he simply invites you to stand beside him and see for yourself.

12. If you can read and don’, you are an illiterate by choice.

2. Damaging Research

A study by National Parent-Teacher Organization revealed that in the average American school, eighteen negatives are identified for every positive that is pointed out. The Wisconsin study revealed that when children enter the first grade, 80 percent of them feel pretty good themselves, but by the time they get to the sixth grade, only 10 percent of them have good self-images.

3. Education and Citizenship

An important aspect of education in the United States is the relationship between education and citizenship. Throughout its history this nation has emphasized public education as a means of transmitting democratic values, creating equality of opportunity, and preparing new generations of citizens to function in society. In addition, the schools have been expected to help shape society itself. During the 1950s, for example, efforts to combat racial segregation focused on the schools. Later, when the Soviet Union launched the first orbiting satellite, American schools and colleges came under intense pressure and were offered many incentives to improve their science and mathematics programs so that the nations would not fall behind the Soviet Union in scientific and technological capabilities.

Education is often viewed as a tool for solving social problems, especially social inequality. The schools, t is thought, can transform young people from vastly different backgrounds into competent, upwardly mobile adults. Yet these goals seem almost impossible to attain. In recent years, in fact, public education has been at the center of numerous controversies arising from the gap between the ideal and the reality. Part of the problem is that different groups in society have different have different expectations. Some feel that children should be taught basic job-related skills; still others believe education should not only prepare children to compete in society but also help them maintain their cultural identity (and, in the case of Hispanic children, their language). On the other hand, policymakers concerned with education emphasize the need to increase the level of student achievement and to improve parents in their children’s education.

Some reformers and critics have called attention to the need to link formal schooling with programs designed to address social problems. Sociologist Charles Moscos, for example, is a leader in the movement to expand programs like the Peace Corps, Vista, and Outward Bound into a system of voluntary national service. National service, as Moscos defines it, would entail “the full-time undertaking of public duties by young people whether as citizen soldiers or civilian servers-who are paid subsistence wages” and serve for at least one year. In return for this period of service, the volunteers would receive assistance in paying for college or other educational expenses.

Advocates of national service and school-to-work programs believe that education does not have to be confined to formal schooling. In devising strategies to provide opportunities for young people to serve their society, they emphasize the educational value of citizenship experiences gained outside the classroom. At this writing there is little indication that national service will become a new educational institution in the United States, although the concept is steadily gaining support among educators and social critics.

4. The Teacher’s Role

Given the undeniable importance of classroom experience, sociologists have done a considerable amount of research on what goes on in the classroom. Often they start from the premise that, along with the influence of peers, students’ experiences in the classroom are of central importance to their later development. One study examined the impact of a single first-grade teacher on her students’ subsequent adult status. The surprising results of this study have important implications. It is evident that good teachers can make a big difference in children’s lives, a fact that gives increased urgency to the need to improve the quality of primary-school teaching. The reforms carried out by educational leaders like James Comer suggest that when good teaching is combined with high levels of parental involvement the results can be even more dramatic.

Because the role of the teacher is to change the learner in some way, the teacher-student relationship is an important part of education. Sociologists have pointed out that this relationship is asymmetrical or unbalanced, with the teacher being in a position of authority and the student having little choice but to passively absorb the information provided by the teacher. In other words, in conventional classrooms there is little opportunity for the students to become actively involved in the learning process. On the other hand, students often develop strategies for undercutting the teacher’s authority: mentally withdrawing, interrupting, and the like. Hence, much current research assumes that students and teachers influence each other instead of assuming that the influence is always in a single direction.

5. Education Philosophy

For the past fifty years our schools have operated on the theories of John Dewey (1859-1953), an American educator and writer. Dewey believed hat the school’s job was to enhance the natural development of the growing child, rather than to pour information, for which the child had no context, into him or her. In the Dewey system, the child becomes the active agent in his own education, rather than a passive receptacle for facts.

Consequently, American schools are very enthusiastic about teaching “life skills” –logical thinking, analysis, creative problem--solving. The actual content of the lessons is secondary to the process, which is supposed to train the child to be able to handle whatever life may present, including all the unknowns of the future. Students and teachers both regard pure memorization as an uncreative and somewhat vulgar.

In addition to “life skills”, schools are assigned to solve the ever growing stoke of social problems. Racism, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, drug use, reckless driving, and are just a few of the modern problems that have appeared on the school curriculum.

This all contributes to a high degree of social awareness in American youngsters.

6. Student Life

To the students, the most notable difference between elementary school and the higher levels is that in junior high they start “changing classes”. This means that rather than spending the day in one classroom, they switch classrooms to meet their different teachers. This gives them three or four minutes between classes in the hallways, where a great deal of the important social action of high school traditionally takes place. Students have lockers in these hallways, around which thy congregate.

Society in general does not take the business of studying very seriously. Schoolchildren have a great deal of free time, which they are encouraged to fill with extracurricular activities—sports, clubs, cheerleading, scouts—supposed to inculcate such qualities as leadership, sportsmanship, ability to organize, etc. those who don’t become engaged in such activities or have afterschool jobs have plenty of opportunity to “hang out”, listen to teenager music, and watch television.

Compared to other nations, American students do not have much homework. Studies also show that American parents have lower expectations for their children’s success in school than other nationalities do. (Historically, there has not been much correlation between American school success and success in later life.) “He’s just not a scholar”, the American parents might say, content that their son is on the swim team and doesn’t take drugs. (Some of the young do choose to study hard, for reason of their own, such as determining that the road to riches lies through Harvard Business School.)

What American schools do effectively teach is the competitive method. In innumerable ways children are pitted against each other—whether in classroom discussion, spelling bees, reading groups, or tests. Every classroom is expected to produce a scattering of A’s and F’s (teachers often grade A=excellent; B=good; C=average; D=poor; and F=failed). A teacher who gives all A’s looks too soft—so students are aware that they are competing for the limited number of top marks.

Foreign students sometimes don’t understand that copying from other people’s papers or from books is considered wrong and taken seriously. Here, it is important to show that you have done your own work and are displaying your own knowledge. It is more important than helping your friends to pass, whom we think do not deserve to pass unless they can provide their own answers. Group effort goes against the competitive grain, and American students do not study together as many Asians do. Many Asians in this country consider their group study habits a large contributor to their school success.

7. Adult Education

After complaining about many aspects of American life, a 40-year-old woman from Hong Kong concluded, “But where else could someone my age go back to school and get a degree in social work? Here you can change your whole life, start a new business, do what you really want to do.”

So at least to this person, school requirements weren’t inhibiting. And to millions of others, adult education is the path to a new career, or if not to a new career, to a new outlook. Schools generally encourage the older person who wants to start anew, and besides regular classes, schedule evening classes in special programs. Today there are so many people of retirement age in college that it is no longer remarkable.

8. Moral Relativism in American

Improving American education requires not doing new things but doing (and remembering) some good old things. At the time of our nation’s founding, Thomas Jefferson listed the requirements for a sound education in the Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia. In this landmark statement on American education, Jefferson wrote of the importance of education and writing, and of reading history, and geography. But he also emphasized the need “to instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests, and duties, as men and citizens.” Jefferson believed education should aim at the improvement of both one’s “morals” and “faculties”. That has been the dominant view of the aims of American education for over two centuries. But a number of changes, most of them unsound, have diverted schools from these great pursuits. And the story of the loss of the school’s original moral mission explains a great deal.

Starting in the early seventies, “values clarification” programs started turning up in schools all over America. According to this philosophy, the schools were not to take part in their time-honored task of transmitting sound moral values; rather, they were to allow the child to “clarify” his own values (which adults, including parents, had no “rights” to criticize). The “values clarification” movement didn’t clarify values; it clarified wants and desires. This form of moral relativism said, in effect, that no set of values was right or wrong; everybody had an equal right to his own values; and all values were subjective, relative, and personal. This destructive view took hold with a vengeance.

In 1985 The York Times published an article quoting New York area educators, in slavish devotion to this new view, proclaiming, “They deliberately avoid trying to tell students what is ethically right and wrong.” The article told of one counseling session involving fifteen high school juniors and seniors. In the course of that session a student concluded that a fellow student had been foolish to return one thousand dollars she found in a purse at school. According to the article, when the youngsters asked the counselor’s opinion, “He told them he believed the girl had done the right thing, but that, of course, he would not try to force his values on them. ‘If I come from the position of what is wrong,’ he explained, ‘then I’m not their counselor.’”

Once upon a time, a counselor offered counselor, and he knew that an adult does not form character in the young by taking a stance of neutrality toward questions of right and wrong or by merely offering “choices” or “options”.

In response to the belief that adults and educators should teach children sound morals, one can expect from some quarters indignant objections (I’ve heard one version of it expressed countless times over the years): “Who are you to say what’s important?” or “Whose standards and judgments do we use?”

The correct response, it seems to me, is, is we ready to do away with standards and judgments? Is anyone going to argue seriously that a life of cheating and swindling is as worthy as a life of honest, hard work? Is anyone (with the exception of some literature professors at our elite universities) going to argue seriously the intellectual corollary, that a Marvel comic book is as good as Macbeth? Unless we are willing to embrace some pretty silly position, we’ve got to admit the need for moral and intellectual standards. The problem is that some people tend to regard anyone who would pronounce a definitive judgment as an unsophisticated Philistine or a closed-minded “elitist” trying to impose his view on everybody else.

The truth of the real world is that without standards and judgments, there can be no progress. Unless we are prepared to say irrational things—that nothing can be proven more valuable than anything else or that everything is equally worthless—we must ask the normative question. It may come, as a surprise to those who fell that to be “progressive” is to be value-neutral. But as Matthew Amold said, “the world is forwarded by having its attention fixed on the best things” and if the world can’t decide what the best things are, at least to some degree, then it follows that progress, and character, is in trouble. We shouldn’t be reluctant to declare that some things, some lives, books, ideas, and values are better than others. It is the responsibility of the schools to teach these better things.

At one time, we weren’t so reluctant to teach them. In the mid-nineteenth century, a diverse, widespread group of crusaders began to work for the public support of what was then called the “common school”, the forerunner of the public school. They were to be charged with the mission of school felt that the nation could fulfill its destiny only if every new generation was taught these values together in a common institution.

The leaders of the common school movement were mainly citizens who were prominent in their communities—businessmen, ministers, local civic and government officials. These people saw the schools as upholders of standards of individual morality and small incubators of civic and personal virtue; the founders of the public schools had faith that public education could teach good moral and civic character from a common ground of American values.

But in the past quarter century or so, some of the so-called experts became experts of value neutrality, and moral education was increasingly left in their hands. The commonsense view of parents and the publicthat schools should reinforce rather than undermine the values of home, family, and country, was increasingly rejected.

There are those today still that claim we are now too diverse a nation, that we consist of too many competing convictions and interests to instill common values. They are wrong. Of course we are a diverse people. We have always been a diverse people. And as Madison wrote in FederalistNo.10, the competing, balancing interests of a diverse people can help ensure the survival of liberty. But there are values that all American citizens share and that we should want all American students to know and to make their own: honesty, fairness, self-discipline, fidelity to task, friends, and family, personal responsibility, love of country, and belief in the principles of liberty, equality, and the freedom to practice one’s faith. The explicit teaching of these values is the legacy of the common schools, and it is a legacy to which we must return.

9. Schools Should Teach Values

People often said, “Yes, we should teach these values, but how do we teach them?” this question deserves a candid response, one that isn’t given often enough. It is by exposing our children to good character and inviting its imitation that we will transmit to them a moral foundation. This happens when teachers and principals, by their words and actions, embody sound convictions. As Oxford’s Mary Warnock has written, “You cannot teach morality without being committed to morality yourself; and you cannot be committed to morality yourself without holding that some things are right and others wrong.” The theologian Martin Buber wrote that the educator is distinguished from all other influences “by his will to take part in the stamping of character and by his consciousness that he represents in the eyes of the growing person a certain selection of what is, the selection of what is ‘right’, of what should be.” It is in this will, Buber says, in this clear standing for something, that the “vocation as an educator finds its fundamental expression.”

There is no escaping the fact that young people need as example principals and teachers who know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, and who themselves exemplify high moral purpose.

As Education Secretary, I visited a class at Waterbury Elementary School in Waterbury, Vermont, and asked the students, “Is this a good school?” They answered, “Yes, this is a good school.” I asked them, “Why?” Among other things, one eight-year-old said, “The principal Mr. Riegel, makes good rules and everybody obeys them.” So I said, “Give me an example.” And another answered, “You can’t climb on the pipes in the bathroom. We don’t climb on the pipes and the principal doesn’t either.”

This example is probably too simple to please a lot of people who want to make the topic of moral education difficult, but there is something profound in the answer of those children, something education should pay more attention to. You can’t expect children to take messages about rules or morality seriously unless they see adults taking those rules seriously in their day-to-day affairs. Certain must be said, certain limits lay down, and certain examples set. There is no other way.

We should also do a better job at curriculum selection. The research shows that most “values education” exercises and separate courses in “moral reasoning” tend not to affect children’s behavior; if anything, they may leave children morally adrift. Where to turn? I believe our literature and our history are a rich quarry of moral literacy. We should mine that quarry. Children should have at their disposal a stock of examples illustrating what we believe to be right and wrong, good and bad—examples illustrating what are morally right and wrong can indeed be known and that there is a difference.

What kind of stories, historical events, and famous lives am I talking about? If we want our children to know about honesty, we should teach them about Abe Lincoln walking three miles to return six cents and conversely, about Aesop’s shepherd boy who cried wolf if we want them to know about courage, we should teach them about Joan of Arc, Horatius at the bridge, and Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. If we want them to know about persistence in the face of adversity, they should know about the voyages of Columbus and the character of Washington during the Civil War. And our youngest should be told about the Little Engine That Could. If we want them to know about respect for the law, they should understand why Socrates told Crito: “No, I must submit to the decree of Athens.” If we want our children to respect the rights of others, they should read the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’ “Letter from Birmingham jail.” From the Bible they should know about Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi, Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers, Jonathan’s friendship with David, the Good Samaritan’s kindness toward a stranger, and David’s cleverness and courage in facing Goliath.

These are only a few of the hundreds of examples we can call on. And we need not get into issues like nuclear war, abortion, creationism, or euthanasia. This may come as a disappointment to some people, but the fact is that the formation of character in young people is educationally a task different from, and prior to, the discussion of the great, difficult controversies of the day. First things come first. We should teach values the same way we teach other things: one step at a time. We should not use the fact that there are many difficult and controversial moral questions as an argument against basic instruction in the subject.

After all, we do not argue against teaching physics because laser physics is difficult, against teaching American history because there are heated disputes about the Founders’ intent. Every field has its complexities and its controversies. And every field has its basics, its fundamentals. So they are too with forming character and achieving moral literacy. As any parent knows, teaching character is a difficult task. But it is a crucial task, because we want our children to be healthy, happy, and successful but decent, strong, and good. None of this happens automatically; there is no genetic transmission of virtue. It takes the conscious, committed efforts of adults. It takes careful attention.

10. College Pressures

Mainly I try to remind that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more unexpected turns than they think. There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don not want to hear such liberating news. They want a map—right now – that they can follow unswervingly to career security, financial security, Social Security and, presumably, a prepaid grave.

What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy grip of the future. I wish them a chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive as victory and is not the end of the world.

My wish, of course, is na?ve. One of the national gods venerated in our media—the million-dollar athlete, the wealthy executive—and glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old.

I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It is easy to look around for villains—to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, and the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no villains: only victims.

“In the late 1960s.” one dean told me. “The typical question that I got from students was ‘Why is there so much suffering in the world’ or ‘how I can make a contribution?’ Today it’s ‘Do you think it would look better for getting into law school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just majored in one of them?’” many other deans confirmed this pattern. One said: “They are trying to find an edge—the intangible something that will look better on paper if two students are about equal.”

Note the emphasis on looking better. The transcript has become a sacred document, the passport to security. How one appears on paper is more important than how one appears in person. A is for Admirable and B is for Borderline, even though, in Yale’s official system of grading, A means “excellent” and B means “very good.” Today, looking very good is no longer good enough, especially for students who hope to go on to law school or medical school. They know that entrance into the better schools will be an entrance into the better law firms and better medical practices where they will make a lot of money. They also know that the odds are harsh. Yale Law School, for instance, matriculates 170students from an applicant pool of 3,700; Harvard enrolls 550 from a pool of 7,000.

It’s all very well for those of us who write letters of recommendation for our students to stress the qualities of humanity that will make them good lawyers or doctors. And it’s nice to think that admission officers are ready reading our letters and looking for the extra dimension of commitment or concern. Still, it would be hard for a student not to visualize these officers shuffling so many transcripts studded with As that they regard a B as positively shameful.

The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and get a job. Long gone are the days of the “gentleman’s C.” when students journeyed through college with a certain relaxation, sampling a wide variety of courses-music, art, philosophy, classics, anthropology, poetry, religion—that would send them out as liberally educated men and women. If I were an employer I would rather employ graduates who have this range and curiosity than those who narrowly pursued safe subjects and high grades. I know countless students whose inquiring minds exhilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I do not know if they are getting As or Cs, and I do not care. I also like them as people. The country needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to relax. They cannot.

Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room, and board at most private colleges now come to at least $7,000, not counting books and fees. This might seem to suggest that the colleges are getting rich. But they are equally battered by inflation. Tuition covers only 60 percent of what it costs to educate a student, and ordinarily the remainder comes from what college receives in endowments, grants, and gifts. Now, the remainder keeps being swallowed by the cruel costs—higher every year—of just opening the doors. Heating oil is up. Insurance is up. Postage is up. Health-premium costs are up. Everything is up. Deficits are up. We are witnessing in American the creation of a brotherhood of paupers—colleges, parents, and students, joined by the common bond of debt.

Today it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part time at college and full time during the summer, to accrue $5,000 in loans after four years—loans that he must start to repay within one year after graduation. Exhorted at commencement to go forth into the world, he is already behind as he goes forth. How could he not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? I have used “he,” incidentally, only for brevity. Women at Yale are under no less pressure to justify their expensive education to themselves, their parents, and society. In fact, they are probably under more pressure. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society has not yet caught up with this fact.

Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined.

I see many students taking pre-medical courses with joyless tenacity. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know tem in other corners of their life as cheerful people.

“Do you want to medical school?” I asked them.

“I guess so,” they say, without conviction, or “Not really.”

“Then why are you going?”

“Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They are paying all this money and …”

Poor students, poor parents, they are caught in one of the oldest webs of love and duty and guilt. The parents mean will; they are trying to steer their sons and draughts toward a secure future. But the sons and daughter want to major in history or classics or philosophy—subjects with no “practical” value. Where’s the payoff on the humanities? It’s not easy to persuade such loving parents that the humanities do indeed pay off. The intellectual faculties developed by studying subjects like history and classics—an ability to synthesize and relate, to weigh cause and effect, to see events in perspective—are just the faculties that make creative leaders in business or almost any general field. Still, many fathers would rather put their money on courses that point toward specific profession—courses that are pre-law, pre-medical, pre-business, or, as I sometimes heard it put, “pre-rich.”

But the pressure on students is severe. They are truly torn. One part of them feels obliged to fulfill their parents’ expectations; after all, their parents are older and presumably wiser. Another part tells them that the expectations that are right for their parents are not right for them.

I know a student who wants to be an artist. She is very obviously an artist and will be a good one—she has already had several modest local exhibits. Meanwhile she is growing as a well-round person and taking humanistic subjects that will enrich the inner resources out of which her art will grow. But her father is strongly opposed. He thinks that an artist is a “dumb” thing to be. The student vacillates and tries to please everybody. She keeps up with her art somewhat furtively and takes some of the “dumb” courses her father wants her to take—at least they are dumb courses for her. She is a free spirit on a campus of tense students—no small achievement in it—and she deserves to follow her muse.

Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they begin almost at the beginning of freshman year.

“I had a freshman student I’ll call Linda,” one dean told me, “who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I could not tell her that Barbara had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda.”

The story is almost funny—except that it is not. It is symptomatic of all the pressure put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight. I wish they would sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the clacking of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due: “Will I get everything done?”

Probably they won’t. They will get blocked. They will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out.

Part of the problem is that they are expected to do. A professor will assign five page papers. Several students will start writing ten page papers to impress him. Then more students will write ten page papers, and a few will raise the ante to fifteen. Pity the poor student who is still just doing the assignment.

“Once you have twenty or thirty percent of the student population deliberately overexerting,” one dean points out, “It’s bad for everybody. When a teacher gets more and more effort from his class, the student who is doing normal work can be perceived as not doing well. The tactic work, psychologically.”

Why cannot the professor just cut back and not accept longer papers? He can, and he probably will. But by then the term will be half over and the damage done. Grade fever is highly contagious and not easily reversed. Besides, the professor’s main concern is with his course. He knows his students only in relation to the course and does not know that they are also overexerting in their other courses. Nor is it really his business. He did not sign up for dealing with the student as a whole person and with all the emotional baggage the student brought along from home. That’s what deans, masters, chaplains, and psychiatrists are for.

To some extent this is nothing new: a certain number of professors have always been self-contained islands of scholarship and shyness, more comfortable with books than with people. But the new pauperism has widened the gap still further, for professors who actually like to spend time with students do not have as much time to spend. They are also overexerting. If they are young, they are busy trying to publish in order not to perish, hanging by their figure nails onto a shrinking profession.

If they are old and tenured, they are buried under the duties of administering departments—as departmental chairmen or members of committees—that have been thinned out by the budgetary axe.

Ultimately it will be the students’ own business to break the circles in which they are trapped. They are too young to be prisoners of their parents’ dreams and their classmates’ fears. They must be jolted into believing into themselves as unique men and women who have the power to shape their own future.

“Violence is being done to the undergraduate experience,” says Carlos Hortas. “College should be open-ended: at the end it should open many, many roads. Instead, students are choosing their goal in advance, and their choices narrow as they go along. It’s almost as if they think that the country has been codified in the type of jobs that exist-that they’ve got to fit into certain slots. Therefore, fit into the best paying slot.”

“They ought to take chances. Not taking chances will lead to life of colorless mediocrity. They’ll be comfortable. But something in the spirit will be missing.”

I have painted too drab a portrait of today’s students, making them seem a solemn lot. That is only half of their story; if they were so dreary I wouldn’t so thoroughly enjoy their company. The other half is that they are easy to like. They are quick to laugh and to offer friendship. They are not introverts. They are usually kind and are more considerate of one another than any student generation I have known.

Nor are they so obsessed with their studies that they avoid sports and extracurricular activities. On the contrary, they juggle their crowded hours to play on a variety of teams, perform with musical and dramatic groups, and write for campus publications. But this in turn is one more cause of anxiety. There are too many choices. Academically, they have 1,300 courses to select from; outside class they have to decide how much spare time they can spare and how to spend it.

This means that they engage in fewer extracurricular pursuits than their predecessors did. If they want to row on the crew and play in the symphony they will eliminate one; in the ‘60s they would have done both. They also tend to choose activities that are self-limiting. Drama, for instance, is flourishing in all twelve of Yale’s residential colleges, as it never has before. Students hurl themselves into these productions—as actors, directors, carpenters, and technicians—with a dedication to create the best possible play, knowing that the day will come when the run will end and they can get back to their studies.

They also cannot afford to be the willing slave of organizations like the Yale Daily News. Last spring at the one-hundredth anniversary banquet of that paper—who’s past chairmen include such once and future kings as Potter Stewart, Kingman Brewster, and William F. Buckley, Jr.—much was made of the fact that the editorial staff used to be small and totally committed and that “newsies” routinely worked fifty hours a week. In effect they belonged to a club; Newsies is how they defined themselves at Yale. Today’s students will one or two articles a week, when he can, and he defines himself as a student. I’ve never heard the word Newsie except at the banquet.

If I have described the modern undergraduate primarily as a driven creature who is largely ignoring the blithe spirit inside who keeps trying to come out and play, it’s because that’s where the crunch is, not only at Yale but throughout American education. It’s why I think we should all be worried about the values that are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age.

I tell students that there is no one “right” way to get ahead—that each of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination. I tell neither them that change is a tonic and that all the slots are not codified nor the frontiers closed. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk informally with my students during the year. They are heads of companies or ad agencies, editors of magazines, politicians, public officials, television magnates, labor leaders, business executives, Broadway products, artists, writers, economists, photographers, scientists, historians—a mixed bag of achievers.

I asked them to say a few words about how they got started. The students assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was what they wanted to do. Luckily for me, most of them got into their field by a circuitous route, to their surprise, after many detours. The students are startled. They can hardly conceive of a career that was not pre-planned. They can hardly imagine allowing the hand of God or chance to nudge them down some unforeseen trail.

11. To Err Is Wrong

In the summer of 1979, Boston Red Sox first baseman Carl Yastrzemski became the fifteenth player in baseball history to reach the three thousand hit plateaus. This event drew a lot of media attention, and for about a week prior to the attainment of this goal, hundreds of reports covered Yaz’s every more. Finally, one reporter asked, “Hey Yaz, aren’t you afraid all of this attention will go to your head?” Yastrzemski replied, “I look at this way: in my career I’ve been up to bat over ten thousand times. That means I’ve been unsuccessful at the plate over seven thousand times. That fact alone keeps me from getting a swollen head.”?

Most people consider success and failure as opposites, but they are actually both products of the same process. As Yaz suggest, an activity that produces a hit may also produce a miss. It is the same with creative thinking; the same energy that generates good creative ideas also produces errors.

Many people, however, are not comfortable with errors. Our educational system, based on “the right answer” belief, cultivates our thinking in another, more conservative way. From an early age, we are taught that right answers are good and incorrect answers are bad. This value is deeply embedded in the incentive system used in most schools:

Right over 90% of the time = “A”

Right over 80% of the time = “B~”

Right over 70% of the time = “C~” Right over 60% of the time = “D~” Less than 60% correct, you fail.

From this we learn to be right as often as possible and to keep our mistakes to a minimum. We learn, in other words, that “to err is wrong.

Playing It Safe

With this kind of attitude, you aren’t going to be taking too many chances. If you learn that failing even a litter penalizes you (e.g., being wrong only 15% of the time garners you only a “B” performance), you learn not to make mistakes. And more important, you learn not to put yourself to situation where you might fall. This leads to conservative thought pattern designed to avoid the stigma our society puts on “failure”.

I have a friend who recently graduated from college with a Master’s degree in Journalism. For the last six month, she has been trying to find a job, but to no avail. I talked with her about situation, and realized that her problem is that she doesn’t know how to fail. She went through eighteen years of schooling to try any approaches where she might fail. She has been conditioned to believe that failure is bad in and of itself, rather than a potential stepping-stone to new ideas.

Look around. How many middle managers, housewives, administrators, teachers, and other people do you see who are to try anything new because of this failure? Most of us have learned not to make mistakes in public. As a result, we remove ourselves from many learning experience except for those occurring in the most private of circumstances.

Different Logic

From a practical point of view, “to err is wrong” makes sense. Our survival in the everyday world requires us to perform thousand of small tasks without failure. Think about it: you wouldn’t last very long if you were to step out in front of traffic or stick your hand a pot of boiling water. In addition, engineers whose bridges collapse, stock brokers who lose money for their clients, and copywriters whose ad campaigns decrease sales won’t keep their jobs very long.

Nevertheless, too great an adherence to the belief “to err is wrong” can greatly undermine your attempts to generate new ideas. If you are more concerned with producing right answers than generating original ideas, you’ll probably make uncritical use of the rules, formulae, and procedures used to obtain these right answers. By doing this, you’ll by-pass the germinal phase of the creative process, and thus spend litter time testing assumptions, challenging the rules, asking what-if questions, or just playing around with the problem. All of these techniques will produce some incorrect answers, but in the germinal phase errors are viewed as a necessary by-product of creative thinking. As Yaz would put it, “if you want the hits, be prepared for the misses.” That’s the way the game of life goes.

Errors as Stepping Stones

Whenever an error pops up, the usual response is “Jeez, another screw up, what went wrong this time?” the creative thinker, on the other hand, will realize the potential value of errors, and perhaps say something like, “Would you look at that! Where can it lead our thinking?” and then he or she will go on to use the error as a stepping stone to a new idea. As a matter of fact, the whole history of discovery is filed with people who used erroneous assumptions and failed ideas as stepping-stones to new ideas. Columbus thought he was finding a shorter route to India. Johannes Kepler stumbled on to the idea of interplanetary gravity because of assumptions that were right for the wrong reasons. And, Thomas Edison knew 1800 ways not to build a light bulb.

The following story about the automotive genius Charles Kettering exemplifies the spirit of working through erroneous assumptions to good ideas. In 1912, when the automobile industry was just beginning to grow, Kettering was interested in improving gasoline engine efficiency. The problem he faced was“knockthe phenomenon in which gasoline takes too long to burn in the cylinder-thereby reducing efficiency.

Kettering began searching for ways to eliminate the “knock.” He thought to him, “How can I get the gasoline to combust in the cylinder at an earlier time?” the key concept here is “early”. Searching for analogous situations, he looked around for models of “things that happen early.” He thought of historical models, physical models, and biological models. Finally, he remembered a particular plant, the trailing arbutus, which “happens early,” i.e., it blooms in the snow (“earlier” than other plants). One of this plant’s chief characteristics is its’ red leaves, which help the plant retain light at certain wavelengths. Kettering figured that it must be the red color, which made the trailing arbutus bloom earlier.

Now came the critical step in Kettering’s chain of thought. He asked himself, “How can I make the gasoline red?” perhaps I’ll put red dye in the gasoline—maybe that’ll make it combust earlier.” He looked around his workshop, and found that he didn’t have any red dye. But he did happen to have some iodine—perhaps that would do. He added the iodine to the gasoline and, lo and behold, the engine didn’t “knock”.

[英语作文写作的需要背诵的部分

everyone has a dream. now ill talk about my dream i what is my dream? i

often ask myself. when i was a little boy, i wanted to be a soldier with a gun

so that i could defend our motherland.

now i am a young boy with a new dream——to be a doc-tor. i want to be a

famous doctor, helping the sick and saving their lives. why has my dream

changed? well, at the age of 11 i was ill, badly ill. i was told that i had

cancer. i had to leave both my school and my friends and go to the hospital.

every day i suf-fered the troubles caused by this illness.

i also saw some people who were suffering and dying of ill-nesses. i made

up my mind to become a doctor, so that i can help the sick people and cure them

of their diseases. china is a develop-ing country. she needs good medicine and

good doctors, especially in the countryside and lonely villages.

i want to try my best to help the poor sick people of our country. i want

to let them have an opportunity to receive excel-lent treatments for their

illnesses without having to pay much or any money.

ill do every bit to cure the incurable. i hope to see a world where there

is no cancer, no aids, no fatal diseases. im confident that through the joint

efforts of you and me, man will put an end to his bodily sufferings and this

dream of mine will one day be brought into reality.

Barack Obama who is the first black president in America will finish his last term of office soon. He is going to move away the White House and relieve his job as president. I still remember the time when Obama won the election and gave his inspiring speech, he said he wanted to make some changes to America.

Now 8 years have passed, his words have been tested.

Some people think he is a good president even though they don’t think what Obama brought to the country did not make a big difference.

But no one will deny that Obama is very humorous, it is known to all that he likes to watch the TV series. He keeps his eyes on them and sometimes he will play jokes in his personal Facebook. During his last term, he joined the talk show and showed his humor.

美国历史上第一位黑人总统巴拉克奥巴马很快就会完成他的最后任期。

他将离开白宫和卸下他作为总统的工作。我还记得当年奥巴马赢得大选, 发表了鼓舞人心的演讲,他说他想给给美国带来一些改变。

现在8年过去了,他的话会得到检验。有些人认为他是一个好总统,即使他们并不认为奥巴马给国家带来很大的影响。

但没有人会否认,奥巴马很幽默,众所周知,他喜欢看电视连续剧。他一直关注着美剧,有时他会在他的个人脸谱账号上玩笑。在他最后的任期里,他还参加了谈话节目,展示了他的幽默。

[高中英语作文：奥巴马的最后任职期限

With the development of technology, today we live in the world with high technology. People seem to cant live without computer and smart phone, once they dont have smart phone at hand for a while, the seem to be lost and feel something miss in their life. When I talk to my friends at table, I find them always play smart phones or check on the text all the time. Though we sit face to face, the distance between us is so far. The high technology brings isolation between people. Some people dont often visit their parents and friends, for they believe that a call can solve all the things. Communication in face to face is far more important than a call. It is time for some people to put down their smart phones for a while when they are communicating to others.

High school life is so wonderful for me, and I have made many good friends.

We fight for our future together. As there are so many subjects for me to learn,

I spend most of the time studying knowledge. But deep in my heart, I like sports

so much, especially tennis. When I knew our school had tennis club. I felt so

excited and wanted to be part of it. But the problem was that what if I lagged

behind other students in study as I spent the time on this hobby. At last, I

still decided to join tennis club, because I wanted to do something special and

enriched my high school life. I tried hard to make plans for my study. At the

same time, I spared some time to play tennis. I found the balance and enjoyed

the thing l liked.

summer can be very hot in southern tai wan where the temperature usually goes up to 32"c or more. because of the heat it is a trying experience to go to school or do anything else in a place that is not air-conditioned. also because of this i stay at home most of the time during the summer vacation and occasionally go to the beach to plunge myself into the cool water as a way to keep my body less sticky. actually i like swimming think nothing is more refreshing than a swim. in the summer vacation that has ended i went swimming many times with my classmates we all had a good time. this summer vacation, however, was not spent entirely in seeking fun. as a second-year senior student i had to prepare myself for the college entrance examinations that were a year away. in other words, i must find time to study, too. so i divided my time between work play during the summer vacation derived benefit from this arrangement.

i spent this summer vacation in quite a different way. i used to run about every day in previous summer vacations,this summer vacation i simply could not afford to do so. i would soon be in the last year of my high-school education would after graduation be up against the college entrance examinations. though those examinations were still a year away, i had to start early to make myself well prepared by reviewing all those things i had learned at school this summer vacation was the ideal time for me to do this. at first i was rather dismayed at the thought of this,later i thought it was better this way because by working hard this summer i could count on endless happy summers to come. with this in mind i then set to work like anything and occasionally went out for a change or did some physical. i was not at all bored by this kind of life, for i was sustained by a hope.

the summer vacation had come round again. i was happy that i could forget about school at least for a while. lest i fool around all through this summer vacation, i made a plan as to how to spend it. first, i thought i should go over all those things my teachers taught in the previous term so that i could have a better understanding of them. then i thought i should take up some forms of exercise, such as walking, running rowing, to keep me physically strong. it stood to reason that with such a good plan i should make the best of my vacation time. i did, because i lived up to what i had planned.

[暑假有意义的事高中英语作文200词

第一步：“装”。我这里所说的“装”，也可以理解为“装傻”，指的是我们明明知道某一样事物的存在，但在写作时却要表现出完成不知道或者是没有发现的样子。以《美，就在身边》或者《原来，这也是一种美》为例，我们身边的一处美景、一件好事、一个心灵美的人物等凡是可以挖掘出“美”的特点的都可以成为我们写作的对象。但在确定好写作对象之后，我们先不要急着去阐述这一种“美”，而是有意地采用对比或者欲扬先抑的表现手法，反映出我们认为它不美或者根本就没有觉察到这一种美的存在，甚至还可以表现出自己对身边的美视而不见，反而苦苦地去追寻所谓的“美”。

第二步：“转”。我这里所说的“转”，包含两个方面：一是在行文结构上的过渡，也就是承上启下;二是因为某一件事情的发生促使我在认识或是思想上有了根本性的转变。也就是要告诉读者：前面所写的是我对某一样事物最初的认识或是它给我留下的坏印象，而这些都因为接下来发生的这件事情使我在认识或是思想上发生了重要的转变。这一步是文章的重点，除了要处理好过渡句或是过渡段之外，重中之重还是要写好这一件令我发生转变的非比寻常的事情，因此最好能够在这一件事情上交待清楚记叙文的六要素。

第三步：“醒”。我这里所说的“醒”，指的是在经历了第二步所写的某件事情之后，在认识上的颠覆或者是思想上的醒悟，或者说是由此开始“卖乖”。具体说来，就是要交待清楚自己对第一步所提到事物(写作对象)有了什么不一样的看法或是新的认识?获得了什么样的启示?明白了什么样的道理或是思想上有了什么样的转变?从“卖乖”的角度来说，就是要告诉读者你从此变得懂事了、变好了、积极向上了，目光不会再像以前一样短浅、人也不会再像以前一样不懂事了。

一、认真审题，切中题意

《中考考试说明》指出，书面表达要切中题意。看到考题后，先不要急于动笔，要仔细看清题目要求的内容，在自己的头脑中构思出一个框架或画面，确定短文的中心思想，不要匆匆下笔，看懂题意，审清格式、体裁、人物关系、故事情节、主体时态、活动时间、地点等。

二、围绕中心，拟定提纲

书面表达评分原则有四条：(1)内容要点;

(2)运用词汇和结构的数量;

(3)运用语法结构和词汇的准确性;(4)上下文的连贯性。

由此可见，要点是给分的一个重要因素。为了防止写作过程中遗漏要点，同学们要充分发挥自己的观察力，把情景中给出的各个要点逐条列出。注意短文字数不要低于或超过规定的字数太多。

三、语言通顺，表达准确

(1)避免使用汉语式英语，尽量使用

自己熟悉的句型。几种句型可交替使用，以避免重复和呆板。

(2)多用简单句型，记事、写人一般都不需要复杂的句型。可适当地使用陈述句、一般疑问句、祈使句和感叹句。不用或少用非谓语或情态动词等较复杂的句型。

(3)注意语法、句法知识的灵活运用。(4)描写人物时，要生动具体，例如：①外表特征：tall，short，fat，thin，strong，weak，ordinary-looking等;②内心境界：

glad，happy，sad，excited，anxious，interested等;③感情描写：love，like，hate，feel，laugh，cry，smile，shout等;④动作描写：come，go，get，have，take，bring，fetch等。

(5)上下文要连贯。上下文的连贯性也是评分的一条原则，同学们应注意下面过渡的用法：①表示并列关系的过渡词：and，aswellas，or等;②表示转折关系的过渡词：but，yet，however等;③表示时间关系的过渡词：first，andthen，

finally，after，before，atlast，atthattime，later，inthepast，immediately，inthe

meanwhile等;④表示空间关系的过渡词：near(to)，far(from)，inthefrontof，beside等;⑤表示比较关系的过渡词：inthesameway，justlike，justas等;⑥表示对照关系的过渡词：but，still，yet，however，ontheotherhand等;⑦表示递进关系的过渡词：also，and，then，too，inaddition，moreover，again等;⑧表示因果关系的过渡词：because，since，then，thus，otherwise，so，therefore，asaresult等;⑨表示解释说明的过渡词：forexample，infact，inthiscase，for，actually等。

四、不会表达，另辟蹊径

中考作文给分是以要点和语言准确度而定，不以文采打分。造句越简单准确越好，造复合句容易出错，容易被扣分，阅卷场上有句话：“错误面前人人平等，文采好不加分。”如遇到个别要点表达不出来或难以表达，可采用变通的办法，化难为易，化繁为简。总之，所造句子要正确、得体、符合英语表达习惯。

五、锦上添花，量力而行

如果你还有时间和精力，想把书面表达写得更好，那么，请注意以下几点：(1)句型多样化，不要i(we)……到底，使人觉得乏味;(2)适当使用一些并列句或主从复合句;(3)进一步描绘人或事物时，适当使用定语从句;(4)适当使用分词或分词短语，烘托谓语动词;(5)偶尔使用一下倒装句，增加新鲜感;(6)适当调换一下状语在句子中的位置，使句子不雷同;(7)上下句子紧接时，其中完全相同的成分可以省略，以节省篇幅。

六、书写工整，卷面整洁

字迹要清晰，让阅卷人看得清楚，不可字迹潦草，难以辨认，要保持卷面的整洁。

七、检查错误

检查错误应从以下几个方面入手：(1)格式是否有错;(2)拼写有无错误;(3)语言是否用错;(4)时态、语态错误;(5)标点错误;(6)人称是否用错。

总之，只要平时同学们多练习写作并有意运用上述方法和技巧，合理分配时间，在中考时一定能写出高质量的作文，得到令人满意的考分。

as our contemporary society develops dramatically， a worrying problem has sprung up that the degree of trust among individuals has decreased。 for example， when we meet a man begging for money due to his handicapped leg in the street， we are considering whether he is cheating us。 plus， in the business circle， we consumers couldn’t easily believe what the merchant has guaranteed。

all these problems mentioned above are reduced to adverse consequences。 especially， in the corporate world exists the prevalence of dishonesty。 influenced by these phenomena， we， invariably， become increasing cautious about other’s guarantee， even a piece of word。 thus， this trend does much harm to the commodity economy。

the underlying reason for these phenomena is the distorted mentality of money worship。 there are an army of figures expect getting by with cheating customers by selling fake products。 but， they would inevitably suffer penalty。 so， honesty counts most。 to sum up， we， average citizens， can eliminate the feeling of distrust via treating others honestly and paying confidence to others。

[信任危机高中英语作文

Today is the National Day, but also our 30th anniversary of the founding of China. I am bored after a morning, in the afternoon, I went to my sisters house to play.

I am happy to the sister, but to her home I was disappointed, the original sister did not think what to play, we racked our brains, and finally thought of a game: grab the bench.

We found ten children to play, the rules of the game is this: Please the five children (including me and my sister) with the music around four bench circle. Music stop, we must immediately grab a bench to sit down. Who did not grab, who would be eliminated. The second round is four and three bench. The last round only two people and a bench, and who grabbed the last bench who would win. By aunt when the referee.

Big aunt first invited Wang Yue, Lai Yun, Yu Jing and my sister to play. The rest of the children on the side when the cheerleaders. I saw the two of them relatively standing, Yu Jing children did not show weakness, raised his head, Tingzhuo, not afraid of the way; look at Lai cloud students, half open eyes, hands into the trousers, are not See Yu Jing this skinny monkey. With the big aunt whistle, the game began.

When the music sounded, they turned around the bench. When they are spinning, we are seeing the gods. Music and suddenly stopped. Lai Yun seems to have no response over, standing on that look at my sister and grab the bench. But I do not know ye engage in, her eyes light up, found an empty bench. Lai Yun immediately ran to sit. Later, my sister was eliminated. The second round, three rounds of Lai and my two children were eliminated in turn.

The last round only two female students. As soon as the music sounded, they turned slowly around the bench. Their eyes staring at the only Zhang bench, and my heart is also very nervous. Our cheerleaders shouted: "Wang Yue Come on! Wang Yue will win! Wang Yue Come on!" Yu Jing did not hear the students to their own voice, it seems more tense. Tension is useless. Music stop, Wang first grabbed the bench more than half, Yu Jing grabbed only a small half.

Wangs victory, so that we are happy and jump again and again.

Through this game, our actions are more agile. I am so happy today

Generation gap refers to the misunderstanding between the old and young.

The term came into fashion after the 1980s. However, in recent years, the

phenomenon is getting more and more fierce.

How does generation gap come into being? The first reason is that the two

generations have grown up in different ages, thus they have different attitudes

toward life. Secondly, due to having little in common with each other, they are

unwilling to sit down and talk face to face. Besides, as modern life is so

stressful, both of them are so busy with their study or work that they have not

enough time to exchange their ideas.

To bridge the generation gap is not easy at all, but we can do something to

shorten it. For one thing, children should respect their parents as well as

accept their good advice. For another, parents should not only show their love

and care to the kids, but also support their good life view. As long as the old

and young can understand each other, it would be more harmonious in family and

world.