英语投诉信写作（通用20篇）

1、参考历年真题，总结规律。一般来说，高考英语作文体裁相对稳定，考生可参考当地最近五年的高考作文题目，从中分析规律，得出大的命题方向。如陕西对高考英语作文这一板块的考察，从新课改后重点突出的是学生对日常文体的应用，从09年至11年分别以电子邮件或写回信的方式让学生表达出对老师的真挚友谊、与家长沟通学习压力、或解决一些基本的学习难点等。因此我们不难看出，高考对学生作文的考察，会从学生的生活、学习、交友、家庭、社会活动等高中生较熟悉的层面，结合应用文的常见考察点：申请类、投诉类、感谢类、祝贺类等进行综合考察。

2、把对语言基础的应用作为考前强化重点。近年来的高考作文都非常注重考查学生的语言综合运用能力，根据《普通高中英语课程标准》对写作技能目标的要求，英语作文写作须“能根据所读文章进行转述或写摘要;能根据用文字及图表提供的信息写短文或报告;能写出语意连贯且结构完整的短文，叙述事情或表达观点和态度;能在写作中做到问题规范、语句通顺。”2012年高考英语作文的命题趋势，仍将会把学生对语言基础的应用作为首要考察点。

3、关注热点话题。纵观近几年的高考作文，可以发现，题材始终贴近社会、贴近现代生活，是中学生所熟知的热点话题。

除了把握好命题原则，掌握高考英语作文写作技巧更不可少：

1、审题：审题是做到切题的第一步。所谓审题就是要看清题意，确定文章的中心思想、主题，并围绕中心思想组织材料。

2、进行构思，列出简单的提纲，打造文章之骨架：审好题、立好意后，就要写提纲，打造文章的骨架。文章布局要做好几件事：安排好层次段落，铺设好过渡，处理好开头和结尾。

3、扩展成文：根据字数多少扩展成篇。扩展的内容一定要紧扣主题，千万不要写那些与主题不相关的内容。展开的方式包括：顺序法、举例法、比较法、对比法、说明法、因果法、推导法、归纳法和下定义等。可以根据需要任选一种或几种方式。

教学课件是辅助教学的多媒体教具，是现代教育技术发展的产物，具有很强的时代特点，也是教育现代化的标志之一。下面是小编整理的英语写作基础教程课件，希望对你有帮助。

一、课程教学目标

本课程为高等学校英语专业课程体系中一门英语专业知识课程，属专业必修课性质。通过本课程的教学，使学生能正确理解和掌握英语写作的基础知识和技巧，例如词汇的恰当用法、英语成分与各类型结构的多样化运用等，并能按照不同要求正确书写便条、信函和通知等应用文，缩写课文内容，组织提纲并根据提纲书写短文（150单词左右），正确使用标点符号。

二、先修课的要求

本课程面向英语专业一年级学生，学生应具备基本英语写作能力，达到英语专业入学时的各项要求。

三、教学环节、内容及学时分配

Unit 1:正确用词

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

通过举例及练习提升学生对词汇的敏感度，学会如何正确运用词汇；写便条。

【本章重点及难点】

辨析词汇不同侧面的意义，如：denotative & connotative meanings; affective & collocative meanings.

【教学内容】

1. Denotation and connotation

2. Attitude and collocation

3. False friends

4. Subject-verb agreement

5. Note-writing

5. Follow-up exercises

Unit 2:恰当用词

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

学会鉴别不同文体，即正式、常用、口语和俚语，并根据不同文体使用恰当的词汇；写较为正式的便条。

【本章重点及难点】

避免中式英语

【教学内容】

1.Various styles in English

2. Chinglish

3. Writing notes to older people, strangers and business clients

5. Follow-up exercises

Unit 3:简洁精确用词

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

纠正学生习作中常见的冗余用词，帮助学生建立分类记忆词汇的习惯从而精确用词；写正式通知。

【本章重点及难点】

提高学生对词汇细微差别的敏感度，尤其是名、动、形容词，培养良好的词汇学习的习惯。

【教学内容】

1. Conciseness

2. Preciseness

3. Effectiveness

4. Modifiers and related problems

5. Informal notice

Unit 4：基本句型

【学时】 3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

通过例句比较，使学生理解并学会选择恰当的词汇作主语，避免动词的名词化倾向；明确主语通常的位置及主语后置时的影响；总结何种情况下使用主动语态或被动语态的原则；归纳一般现在时的较特殊用法及单句中时态的匹配；掌握虚拟语气的常见用法；学写正式通知。

【本章重点难点】

构建最基本句子框架；句中词序的变化对语意重心的影响。

【教学内容】

1. Subject and its position

2. Active voice & passive voice

3. Tense and sequence of tenses

5. Mood

6. Extended notice

7. Follow-up exercises

Unit 5:基本句型的扩展（一）

【学时】 3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

使学生掌握扩展基本句型的方式之一：增添修饰成分，并会正确使用七种类型的修饰语；正确使用定语从句达到强调作用；为段落缩写。

【本章重点难点】

使用修饰语扩展句子，以及修饰语的顺序。

【教学内容】

1. Attributes

2. Relative clauses

3. Incomplete sentences

4. Word order

5. Precis for short paragragh

6. Follow-up exercises

Unit 6基本句型的扩展（二）

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

学会使用分词和独立主格结构来扩展句子；为较长篇章写缩写。

【本章重点难点】

复杂分词结构的使用；学会在两个或以上的动词中正确选择用作分词结构的动词；避免悬垂修饰语、连写句、连串句。

【教学内容】

1. Participles

2. Absolutes

3. Comma-split sentences

4. Fused sentences

5. Precis for longer articles

6. Follow-up exercises

Unit 7连接句子的方法之一：并列

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

了解并列在单词、词组、从句和句子这四个层面的使用；学会不同类型连接词的用法；掌握并列句的具体用法和功能，以及更为复杂的并列句的使用，例如并列词的重复或缺失、用分号连接的并列句和有插入结构的并列句。

【本章重点难点】

如何正确应用并列句；错误的并列。

【教学内容】

1. Coordinate structures

2. Coordination at the sentence level

3. Functions of coordinate sentences

4. Advanced usages of coordinate sentences

5. Lack of unity & faulty parallelism

6. Follow-up exercises

Unit 8连接句子的方法之二：从属

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

辨析并列句与从属句在表达语意上的区别；正确使用名词性从句，定语从句和状语从句；理解从属句的两大功能；学写提纲。

【本章重点难点】

从属句的有效使用；从属句与并列句的选用原则。

【教学内容】

1.Subordination vs.coordination

2.Types of subordination

3.Functions of subordination

4.Effective use of subordination

5.Misplaced modifiers

6.Basic format of a short composition

7.Follow-up exercises

Unit 9句子多样化

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

使学生理解句子多样化的重要性，并从句子长度、句子结构、语意重心和句子开头这四个方面达到句子多样化的目的；正确使用倒装，避免逐字翻译；学写短文开头。

【本章重点难点】

达到句子多样化的方法；如何通过重新排序和特殊结构达到强调的目的。

【教学内容】

1. Ways to achieve sentence variety

2. Inversion & word-for-word translation

3. Introduction of a short paragraph

4. Follow-up exercises

Unit 10标点符号

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

理解常用标点符号的功能和用法；学写短文结尾。

【本章重点难点】

标点的用法；插入语的三种不同标点组合的区别。

【教学内容】

1.Functions of punctuation

2. How to end a sentence

3. How to join sentences of equal weight

4. How to punctuate within a sentence

5. The conclusion of a short composition

四、教学策略与方法建议

本课程采用课堂讲授和写作实践相结合的教学方式。课堂讲授使用多媒体教学，由教师讲解写作技巧引导学生发现使用规律，结合小组活动和个人训练等各种形式提高学生的写作学习热情。在课外布置适量的写作任务，及时操练和巩固所学的写作知识和写作技巧，加强对语言的实际运用能力。

五、教材与学习资源

本课程教材为邹申主编的《写作教程（第一册）》，上海：上海外语教育出版社，2005。

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

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。

学生写作时，如果仅局限在把内容交代清楚的水准上，只选用一些普通的、直截了当的词，或一律使用简单句平铺直叙，那么，这样写出来的文章就会像一碗白开水，呆板、单调，没有可读性。下面是小编整理的英语作文写作10大技巧，欢迎阅读。

1. 灵活改变句子开头

在通常情况下，英语句子的排列方式为“主语+谓语+宾语”，即主语位于句子开头。但若根据情况适当改变句子的开头方式，比如使用倒状语或以状语开头等，会使文章增强表现力。如：

(1) There stands an old temple at the top of the hill.

→ At the top of the hill there stands an old temple.

在小山顶上有一座古庙。

(2) You can do it well only in this way.

→ Only in this way can you do it well.

只有这样你才能把它做好。

(3) A young woman sat by the window.

→ By the window sat a young woman.

窗户边坐着一个年轻妇女。

2. 避免重复使用同一词语

为了使表达更生动，更富表现力，同学们在写作时应尽量避免重复使用同一词语来表示同一意思，尤其是一些老生常谈的词语。如有的同学一看到“喜欢”二字，就会立刻想起like，事实上，英语中表示类似意思的词和短语很多，如 love, enjoy, prefer, appreciate, be fond of, care for等。如：

I like reading while my brother likes watching television.

→ I like reading while my brother enjoys watching television.

我喜欢看书，而我的兄弟却喜欢看电视。

3. 合理使用省略句

合理恰当地使用省略句，不仅可以使文章精练、简洁，而且会使文章更具文采和可读性。如：

(1) He may be busy. If he’s busy, I’ll call later. If he is not busy, can I see him now?

→ He may be busy. If so, I’ll call later. If not, can I see him now?

他可能很忙，要是这样，我以后再来拜访。要是不忙，我现在可以见他吗?

(2) If the weather is fine, we’ll go. If it is not fine, we’ll not go.

→ If the weather is fine, we’ll go. If not, not.

如果天气好，我们就去;如果天气不好，我们就不去了。

(3) She could have applied for that job, but she didn’t do so.

→ She could have applied for that job, but she didn’t.

她本可申请这份工作的，但她没有。

4. 适当运用非谓语结构

非谓语结构通常被认为是一种高级结构，适当运用非谓语结构，会给人一种熟练驾驭语言的印象。如：

(1) When he heard the news, they all jumped for joy.

→ Hearing the news, they all jumped for joy.

听了这消息他们都高兴得跳了起来。

(2) As I didn’t know her address, I wasn’t able to get in touch with her.

→ Not knowing her address, I wasn’t able to get in touch with her.

由于不知道她的地址，我没法和她联系。

(3) As he was born into a peasant family, he had only two years of schooling.

→ Born into a peasant family, he had only two years of schooling.

他出生农民家庭，只上过两年学。

5. 结合使用长句与短句

在英语写作中，过多地使用长句或过多地使用短句都不好。正确的做法是，根据实际情况在文章中交替使用长句与短语，使文章显得错落有致，这样不仅使文章在形式上增加美感，而且使文章读起来铿锵有力。如：

At noon we had a picnic lunch in the sunshine. Then we had a short rest. Then we began to play happily. We sang and danced. Some told stories. Some played chess.

→ At noon we had a picnic lunch in the sunshine. After a short rest, we had great fun singing and dancing, telling jokes and playing chess.

中午我们晒着太阳吃野餐。休息一会儿后，我们唱的唱歌，跳的跳舞，还有的讲笑话、下棋，大家玩得很开心。

6. 适当使用短语代替单词

(1) He has decided to be a teacher when he grows up.

→ He has made up his mind to be a teacher when he grows up.

他已决定长大了当老师。

(2) He doesnt like music.

→ He doesnt care much for music.

他不大喜欢音乐。

(3) He told me that the question was now under discussion.

→ He told me that the question was now being discussed.

他告诉我问题现正正在讨论中。

7. 恰当套用某些固定表达

(1) He was very tired. He couldn’t walk any farther.

→ He was too tired to walk any farther.

他太累了，不能再往前走了。

(2) The film was very interesting. Both the teachers and the students liked it.

→ The film was so interesting that both the teachers and the students liked it.

这电影很有趣，学生和老师都很喜欢。

(3) Your son is old. He can look after himself now.

→ Your son is old enough to look after himself now.

你的儿子已经长大，可以自己照顾自己了。

8. 尽量使句子带点“洋味”

(1) Dont worry. Be bold and try it, and youll learn it soon.

→Dont worry. Just go for it, and youll get it soon.

别担心，大胆试一试，你很快就会学会的。

(2) Thank you for playing with us.

→Thank you for sharing the time with us.

谢谢你陪我玩。

9. 综合使用各类所谓的“高级”结构

(1) Now everyone knows the news. I think Jim must have let it out.

→ Now everyone knows the news. I think it must have been Jim who has let it out.

现在人人都知道这消息了，我想一定是吉姆把它泄露出去的。

(2) We had to stand there to catch the offender.

→ What we had to do was (to) stand there, trying to catch the offender.

我们所能做的只是站在那儿，设法抓住违章者。

(3) If her pronunciation is not better than her teacher’s, it is at least as good as her teacher’s.

→ Her pronunciation is as good as, if not better than, her teacher’s.

如果她的语音不比她的老师好的话，至少也不会比她老师的差。

10. 适当使用名言警句点缀

在写作时根据实际情况恰当地用上一两句名言警句来点缀文章，不仅使文章显得有深度、有智慧，而且会让文章在评分中上一个“得分档次”。如：

(1) As the proverb says, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” Though you fail this time, you needn’t lose heart. As long as you work hard and stick to your dream, you will succeed one day.

(2) There is a proverb goes like this “Life isn’t a bed of roses.” It is ture that it is likely for everyone to meet problems and difficulties in life.

(3) In the modern world, more and more people live alone, which is not so good for our life. It is better for us to make more friends and enjoy friendship. Just as a proverb says, “A near friend is better than a far-dwelling kinsman.”

一. 心理

古人云，不战而屈人之兵，很大程度上取决于心理因素。随着四六级考试改革的深入，会有，更新，更难的题目，包括作文题目出现，这样就要求我们有处惊不变的能力。即使是出现某种没有预料到的题型，考生也应该及时调整心态、从容不迫地应答。事实上，历史经验证明：题目要求越是高，难度越是大，考生的发挥余地也就越大。挑战和机遇是成正相关的。

二. 评分

知己知彼，百战不怠。熟悉老师的评分习惯，对于考生正常、甚至是超常发挥自身水平也十分有益。正常情况下，阅卷老师要领会贯彻考试规定的评分原则，依照文章的结构和语言水平进行评分。然而，除此以外，有“两个基本点”我们也需要给予足够的重视——闪光点和语法点。在一篇出类拔萃的范文中，我们往往可以看到像提问法、谚语总结法、从句、并列句、理由段公式、理由词汇、路线句型、插入语、名词化、和被动语态等等闪光点;而在一篇低分例文中，基本的语言错误则多得数不胜数。

三. 休息

考试迫在眉睫时，同学们往往容易进入一种临考状态。这种状态比较突出的表现是夜不能寐。尤其是在专业课和全国四六级考试纷至沓来的时候，很多同学更是发扬连续作战的精神，通宵达旦，头悬梁、锥刺骨。其实这对于像四六级考试这样的高强度考试而言是有百害而无一益的。道理很简单，四六级考试对于一个学生来说，不仅是一次英语水平的综合测试，也是一种意志力、甚至是体力的考验。没有良好的休息作为后盾，考生很难笑到最后。所以，保证充足的睡眠是最基本也是首要的应试技巧。

四. 营养

无庸置疑，营养的摄入在最后关头也是异常重要的一环。在保证充分睡眠的同时，食物是另一个“工夫在诗外”的客观因素。尤其是参加四级考试的同学，早餐一定要定时定量，不可或缺。一般来说，类似奶酪苏这样的奶制品外加一杯热牛奶或者热巧克力已经足以提供整个半天考试所需的热量，当然，这也因人而异。有些体质虚弱的同学也可以考虑服用一些如西洋参、鸡精这样的营养品。不过，安眠药等有副作用的药物一定要慎用，否则过犹不及。

五. 审题

磨刀不误砍柴工。在落笔前花两三分钟时间进行构思，既有利于理清行文思路、也避免了差之毫厘、失之千里的遗憾。尤其是在应对图表类作文时，我们更是要看清图表，牢牢把握各个数据的变化和相互关系，才能够下笔。否则张冠李戴，即使文章本身再不同凡响、语惊四座，也只会竹篮打水、甚至起到适得其反的效果。

六. 卷面

对于像作文这样的主观题而言，考生与阅卷老师从来就犹如搏弈，无形中彼此互动、相互影响。一个考生可以做的，首先是通过卷面给阅卷老师下意识地传达个人信息。用笔的颜色(深蓝色使人心情放松愉快)、粗细(粗线条给人以安全感)，整齐划一的格式(段首或一律顶格或一律空两格)，明了的段落感(每段空一行)，清晰的字数感(一行以十字为宜)，工整的字迹都会给任何阅读者留下深刻的正面印象，从而使考生先发制人、取得先机。

七. 结构

有始有终、首尾照应，是任何一篇好文章的基本标准之一，也是两大评分原则之一。如果说广大考生已经给第一段以足够重视的话，那么是不是大多数考生都意识到了理由段的条理和最后一段的呼应在全文中所具有的不可忽视的地位了呢?其实，要写好理由段，我们只需要注意表示启承转合的衔接词即可。而要写好结尾，最好的方法莫过于温故而知新，回顾第一段的大致内容了。

八. 表达

言之无文，行而不远。语言作为评分原则中的基本要素之一，在四六级作文评分的整个过程中具有决定性作用。有评分老师甚至断言：“It is not what you say, it is the way that you say it.”(重要的并不在于考生写了些什么，而在于考生是怎么表达的。)虽然这种说法本身似乎有失偏颇，可是参加过国际标准化英语考试的同学应该也听说过那么一句话，叫做：“Give the monkey exactly what he wants.”(给阅卷老师最想要的。)，不是吗?譬如同样是描述数据，一些同学拘泥于图表本身，动辄按部就班地引用图表上现成的数字和年代，其实这都是图表作文的忌讳。聪明的同学引而不用，他们常喜欢用倍数、分数、小数、百分比、或者一些动词(double / triple / quadruple)来表现极端数据，动态数据以及他们的相异之处。

九. 检查

行百里者半九十。一篇成功的作文少不了反复推敲、一再修改。然而，由于考试时间和条件等诸多因素的限制，考生绝对需要慎重对待作文的检查和修改。这里，我不得不提考生检查作文时的三大“通病”，即，数字数、孤芳自赏、和做结构与内容上的修改。我们必须明确：考试作文的润色和修改只需要达到三个目的即可：1. 拼写正确，看文章中是否有汉字、多余符号、糊乱涂改、划线、和错别字;2. 搭配正确;和3. 语法正确，特别是人称、时态、和单复数的三一致。

鲁迅先生说过，世界上本没有路，走的人多了也就成了路。我们要善于在学习实践中发现、总结和运用规律，这样才能够在复习迎考的过程中事半功倍，百尺竿头、更进一步。路漫漫其修远兮，愿以此文抛砖引玉。

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

最近几年的中考英语当中，很多省市已经摆脱了单一作文模式，采用一大一小两个作文相结合的模式。例如，去年辽宁沈阳中考英语作文就是一个小作文，应用文-写假条，加上一个大作文，汉语提示作文构成。今年，北京中考英语作文也将是两个，一个看图作文在加上一个提示作文构成。这一讲，我们先来学习一下看图作文的写法。

看图作文要求考生按照所给图画，通过合理的联想将一组画面的内容正确地表达出来。看图作文与其他类型作文的不同之处在于，它除了要求考生有英语语言表达能力，还要求考生有观察能力、分析能力和想象能力。

写好看图作文应注意的事项1、结合文字提示，正确理解图意。一般情况下，看图作文在提供图画的同时也附带有简要的文字提示，我们可以利用文字提示去正确地理解图意，得到要点。切忌孤立地看图而忽视文字提示。

写作从图画的细节出发。所谓细节，就是指图画中的人物、事件、地点、环境、时间、动作等。依据图画细节，就可以把图画的内容用英语具体而生动地表达出来了。

(三)例题分析(例题)

同学们，看到下面的四幅图片及相应的报道后，你感到最担忧的是哪两种情形?请简述你担忧的理由并提出建议或希望。

要求：

⒈ 从所给素材中任选两种情形进行阐述，不可多选或少选。

⒉ 条理清楚，意思连贯，语句通顺，标点正确;

⒊ 词数 80 ～ 100。

参考词汇： 建议 suggest v. suggestion n.

气体 gas n. 污染 pollution n.

THE POLLUTIONS

① One third of the worlds people dont have enough clean water.

② More and more diseases are caused by polluted air.

③ People are disturbed quite often by kinds of noises.

④ Every person in our city makes about 1.8 kilos of rubbish every day.

这道看图作文题，主题和图片连接得不是很紧密。从考查的形式上来说，虽是看图，实质上却属于提示性的作文。这个作文应该结合个人的观点，选择的余地还是很大的。做这个题应该注意几个方面：

1、认真读题。注意，题目虽然给了四幅图，但是却只要求写其中的两个就行。

2、题意要求的是阐述个人的观点-最担忧的两种情形。而不是对图片进行描述。

3、结合所给的提示。提示中，对每种污染都进行了阐述，考生可以这些描述进行写作。

4、注意字数，语法，拼写等，避免错误。

下面是两个例文，大家可以参考一下。

One possible version:

The environment is becoming worse and worse. There are many kinds of pollution I worry about. The most serious two are water pollution and air pollution, because people cant live healthily with dirty water and polluted air, nor can animals. More and more diseases are caused by polluted air.

I think factories should not pour dirty water into the river directly or produce more waste gas. Wed better go on foot or by like instead of by car, because more cars mean more waste gas. We should make our world more and more beautiful.

Another possible version:

The first fact I worry about is noise pollution. People cant sleep well if there is too much noise. Thats why so many people prefer to live in the countryside rather than live in the noisy city. I suggest all the factories and cars shouldnt make terrible noises. If they make terrible noise that isnt allowed, they will be fined, and we can also produce the cars which cant make terrible noise.

The other pollution is rubbish pollution. If everyone makes so much rubbish, one day we may live in a world filled with rubbish. Some people throw the waste paper about. I suggest rubbish should be put into different kinds of dustbins or paper bags.

下面，我们来看看这道题的评分标准。一般来说，各地的评分标准都和下面的这个标准差不多。这个最高的标准，实际上也就是我们写作的目标。

评分标准：

1. 内容完整，语句流畅，无语法错误，书写规范，给9-10分;

2. 内容较完整，语句较流畅，基本无语法错误，书写较规范，给6-8分;

3. 内容不完整，语句欠流畅，语法错误较多，书写较规范，给3-5分;

4. 只写出个别要点，语法错误较多，书写欠规范，只有个别句子可读或不知所云，给0-2分。

看图作文不可小视。希望大家掌握答好这种题型的要点，并积累词汇。

1)We have (take) pleasure in informing you that......

兹欣告你方......

2)We have the pleasure of informing you that......

兹欣告你方.....

3)We are pleased (glad) to inform you that......

兹欣告你方......

4)Further to our letter of yesterday, we now have (the) pleasure in informing you that......

续谈我方昨日函, 现告你方......

5)We confirm telegrams/fax messages recently exchanged between us and are pleased to say that......

我方确认近来双方往来电报/传真,并欣告......

6)We confirm cables exchanged as per copies (cable confirmation) herewith attached.

我方确认往来电报,参见所附文本.

7)We learn from Messrs......that you are interested and well experienced in ......business, and would like to establish business relationship with us.

我方从...公司获悉,你方对...业务感兴趣且颇有经验,意欲与我方建立业务关系.

8)Although no communication has been exchanged between us for a long time, we trust that you are doing well in business.

虽然久未通讯,谅你方生意兴隆.

9)Although we have not heard from you for quite some time, we hope your business is progressing satisfactorily.

虽然好久没接到你方来信,谅业务进展顺利.

10)We have pleasure in sending you our catalog, which gives full information about our various products.

欣寄我方目录,提供我方各类产品的详细情况。

11)We are pleased to send you by parcel post a package containing...

很高兴寄你一邮包内装...

12)We have the pleasure in acknowledging the receipt of your letter dated...

欣获你方...月...日来信.

13)We acknowledge with thanks the receipt of your letter of...

谢谢你方...月...日来信.

14)We have duly received your letter of ...

刚刚收悉你方...月...日来信.

15)We thank you for your letter of ...contents of which have been noted.

谢谢你方...月...日来信,内容已悉.

16) Refering to your letter of ......we are pleased to ....

关于你方...月...日来信,我们很高兴...

17) Reverting to your letter of ...we wish to say that...

再洽你方...月...日来信,令通知...

18)In reply to your letter of ...,we...

兹复你方...月...日来函,我方...

19) We wish to refer to your letter of ...concerning

现复你方...月...日关于...的来信

20) In compliance with the request in your letter of ... we...

按你方...月...日来函要求,我方...

一.开头句型

1.As far as ...is concerned 就……而言

2.It goes without saying that... 不言而喻，...

3.It can be said with certainty that... 可以肯定地说......

4.As the proverb says， 正如谚语所说的，

5.It has to be noticed that... 它必须注意到，...

6.Its generally recognized that... 它普遍认为...

7.Its likely that ... 这可能是因为...

8.Its hardly that... 这是很难的......

9.Its hardly too much to say that... 它几乎没有太多的说…

10.What calls for special attention is that...需要特别注意的是

11.Theres no denying the fact that...毫无疑问，无可否认

12.Nothing is more important than the fact that... 没有什么比这更重要的是…

13.whats far more important is that... 更重要的是…

二.衔接句型

1.A case in point is ... 一个典型的例子是...

2.As is often the case...由于通常情况下...

3.As stated in the previous paragraph 如前段所述

4.But the problem is not so simple. Therefore 然而问题并非如此简单，所以……

5.But its a pity that... 但遗憾的是…

6.For all that...对于这一切...... In spite of the fact that...尽管事实......

7.Further, we hold opinion that... 此外，我们坚持认为，...

8.However , the difficulty lies in...然而，困难在于…

9.Similarly, we should pay attention to... 同样，我们要注意...

10.not(that)...but(that)...不是，而是

11.In view of the present station.鉴于目前形势

12.As has been mentioned above...正如上面所提到的…

13.In this respect, we may as well (say) 从这个角度上我们可以说

14.However, we have to look at the other side of the coin, that is... 然而我们还得看到事物的另一方面，即 …

三.结尾句型

1.I will conclude by saying... 最后我要说…

2.Therefore, we have the reason to believe that...因此，我们有理由相信…

3.All things considered,总而言之 It may be safely said that...它可以有把握地说......

4.Therefore, in my opinion, its more advisable...因此，在我看来，更可取的是…

5.From what has been discussed above, we may safely draw the conclusion that….通过以上讨论，我们可以得出结论…

6.The data/statistics/figures lead us to the conclusion that….通过数据我们得到的结论是，....

7.It can be concluded from the discussion that...从中我们可以得出这样的结论

8.From my point of view, it would be better if...在我看来……也许更好

四.举例句型

1.Lets take...to illustrate this.2.lets take the above chart as an example to illustrate this.3. Here is one more example. 4.Take … for example. 5.The same is true of….6.This offers a typical instance of….7.We may quote a common example of….8.Just think of….

五.常用于引言段的句型

1. Some people think that …. 有些人认为…To be frank, I can not agree with their opinion for the reasons below. 坦率地说，我不能同意他们的意见，理由如下。

2. For years, … has been seen as …, but things are quite different now.多年来，……一直被视为……，但今天的情况有很大的不同。

3. I believe the title statement is valid because…. 我认为这个论点是正确的，因为…

4. I cannot entirely agree with the idea that ….我无法完全同意这一观点的… I believe….

5. My argument for this view goes as follows.我对这个问题的看法如下。

6. Along with the development of…, more and more….随着……的发展，越来越多…

7. There is a long-running debate as to whether….有一个长期运行的辩论，是否…

8. It is commonly/generally/widely/ believed /held/accepted/recognized that….它通常是认为…

9. As far as I am concerned, I completely agree with the former/ the latter.就我而言，我完全同意前者/后者。

10. Before giving my opinion, I think it is essential to look at the argument of both sides.在给出我的观点之前，我想有必要看看双方的论据。

六 表示比较和对比的常用句型和表达法

1. A is completely / totally / entirely different from B.2. A and B are different in some/every way / respect / aspect.3. A and B differ in…. 4. A differs from B in….5. The difference between A and B is/lies in/exists in….6. Compared with/In contrast to/Unlike A, B….7. A…, on the other hand,/in contrast,/while/whereas B….8. While it is generally believed that A …, I believe B….9. Despite their similarities, A and B are also different.10. Both A and B …. However, A…; on the other hand, B….11. The most striking difference is that A…, while B….

七 演绎法常用的句型

1. There are several reasons for…, but in general, they come down to three major ones.有几个原因……，但一般，他们可以归结为三个主要的。

2. There are many factors that may account for…, but the following are the most typical ones.有许多因素可能占...，但以下是最典型的。

3. Many ways can contribute to solving this problem, but the following ones may be most effective.有很多方法可以解决这个问题，但下面的可能是最有效的。

4. Generally, the advantages can be listed as follows.一般来说，这些优势可以列举如下。

5. The reasons are as follows.

八 因果推理法常用句型

1.Because/Since we read the book, we have learned a lot. 2. If we read the book, we would learn a lot. 3. We read the book; as a result / therefore / thus / hence / consequently / for this reason / because of this, weve learned a lot. 4. As a result of /Because of/Due to/Owing to reading the book, weve learned a lot. 由于阅读这本书，我们已经学到了很多。

5. The cause of/reason for/overweight is eating too much.6.Overweight is caused by/due to/because of eating too much.7. The effect/consequence/result of eating too much is overweight. 8. Eating too much causes/results in/leads to overweight. 吃太多导致超重。

修辞手段一般主要用于文学性写作中。但在大学英语的英文写作中有时也需要运用一定的具有英文特征的修辞手段，而且运用得好，会使语句生动从而增添语句亮点。因此，掌握一些一般常用修辞手段对于实现语句亮点也是非常必要的。对于大学英语写作来说，主要应该掌握以下修辞手段，又称语句辞格，包括结构辞格与语义辞格。对比、排比、重复、倒装等为结构辞格，转义、双关、矛盾等则为语义辞格。

1.对比正反对比就是要巧妙地运用对称的英文句式来表达互为补充的意思，因此恰当地运用反义词语往往是必不可少的。如果一旦所要表达的内容具有这种情况，就应尽力选用这种对称的句式并选用适当的反义词语来加强语句，实现语句的亮点。

1)如“很多人很快就会发现，他们在物质上是富裕了，精神上却很贫乏”，可以这样达：

Many people will soon find themselves rich in goods，but ragged in spirit.(注：句中rich in与ragged in，goods与spirit具有正反对比的关系和效果。)

2)如“利远远大于弊”，可以这样表达：

The advantages for outweigh the disadvantages.(注：句中the advantages与the disadvantages具有正反对比的关系和效果。)

3)如“他们注意到了这些说法中的一些道理，但他们却忽视了一个重要的事实”，可以这样表达：

They have noticed a grain of truth in the statements，but have ignored a more important fact.(注：句中have noticed与have ignored，a grain of truth in the statements与a more important fact具有正反对比的关系和效果。)

4)如“这样做既有积极效果也有消极效果”，可以这样表达：

It will have both negative and positive effects by so doing.(注：句中negative与positive具有正反对比的关系和效果)

5)如“我们既有与我们很为相似的朋友，又有与我们很为不同的朋友”，可以这样表达：

We have friends similar to us and friends different from us.(注：句中similar to与different from具有正反对比的关系和效果)

2.排比英文中有时也使用排比句式，这种句式整齐而有气势，又不会使人感到单调。例如，如“读书使我们聪明，锻炼使我们强健”，可以这样表达：

Reading makes us wise while exercises make us strong. 3.重复英文一般讲求简洁，因此为表达强调偶尔使用重复可以使语句的强调内容得到突出。英文的重复又根据被重复词语在语句中的位置分为句首重复、句尾重复、首尾重复、尾首重复等。

1)如“现在是忘掉过去一切的时候了。现在是言归正传的时候了。现在是为未来而奋斗的时候了”，可以这样表达：

Now is the time to forget everything in the past. Now is the time to get down to the business. Now is the time to work hard for the future.(注：此句为句首重复，重复部分为句首的now it the time to)

2)如“我们渴望成功，而且正在为成功而努力工作”，可以这样表达：

We long for success and we are working hard for success.(注：此句为句尾重复，重复的部分为句尾的for success.)

3)如“我相信我们能够成功，我相信我们也一定会成功”，可以这样表达：

I am convinced that we can succeed，and Iam convinced that we must succeed.(注：and所连接的两个语句的句首与句尾部分同时重复，重复的部分为句首的I am convinced that与句尾的succeed)

4)如“我们现在生活在一个新的时代，而一个改革充满着风险与机遇”，可以这样表达：

We are now living in a new era，and a new era of reform is always full of ventures and chances.(注：and之前的句尾与and之后的句首重复，重复部分为a new era.)

4.倒装这里说的倒装不同于前述非修辞性的语法结构倒装。非修辞性的语法结构倒装是语句的语法结构所限定的，没有自由选择的余地，只要运用需要倒装结构的句型就要采用倒装结构。这里所说的倒装是指修辞性语义结构倒装，是进行强调的一种手段，它利用了语句句首(或句尾)的特殊位置。例如，如“充满着风险与机遇的改革的新时代正向我们走来”，可以这样表达：

Now on coming to us is the new era of reform full of ventures and chances. 5.转义转义是一种对词语灵活运用的修辞手段，主要有比喻、拟人、夸张、反语、婉转等，比喻又包括明喻、暗喻、换喻、提喻等。

1)如要表达“过去的经历就像图片一样总是在脑海中萦绕”，英文可为：

What had been experienced in the past was always looming in memory like a picture.(注：此句采用明喻，明喻的特点是使用了like一词)

2)如要表达“我们的英语老师就是我们最好的英语辞典”，英文可为：

Our English teacher is our best English dictionary.(注：此句采用暗喻，暗喻的特点是利用事物之间的相似之处进行比喻，与明喻不同之处在于不使用like一词)

3)如要表达“我正在读莎土比亚的书呢”，英文可为：

I am reading Shakespeare.(注：此句采用换喻，换喻的特点是直接借用一事物的名称宋代替另一事物的名称，使用通过联想理解其含义，但不是所有的事物都是可以用换喻来表达的)

4)如要表达“这里需要一个帮手”，英文可为：

A hand is needed here.(注：此句采用提喻，提喻的特点是用一个事物的部分来代表事物的整体或用一个事物的整体来代表事物的部分。这里用hand一词代表整个人)

5)如要表达“巨大的不幸笼罩着整个城市”，英文可为：

A great misfortune crept over the whole city.(注：此句采用拟人。拟人的特点是将事物人格化)

6)如要表达“这种想法可真是伟大的愚蠢”，英文可为：

This is really a great stupid idea.(注：此句采用反语。反语的特点是故意将话反说，具有讽刺意味)

7)如要表达“我太渴望成功了。听到成功的消息我欣喜若狂”，英文可为：

I was mad for success and on the news of success I went mad with joy.(注：此句采用夸张。夸张的特点是为表现事物的特征故意夸大其词)

Lets prevent H1N1 from happening to usDuring the last few months,H1N1 ful has set off across the whole world.If we have the right way to prevent it ,it wont scare.Here are some suggestions for you:First of all,you should cover your mouth with a napkin whtn you cough re sneeze,Next youd better stay away from the public place if possible, if you have to,please wear a mask.Wash your hands carefully before meals and always keep your windows open so that the air will be fresh.At last,try to do more excisice to make your body strong so that you can stay in health.I think this is the most important.

最近这几个月里，H1N1病毒在全世界引发起来。如果我们用正确的方法预防它，免费学英语网站，它就不会那么可怕。这里有一些为你的建议：首先，当你在咳嗽或者打喷嚏的时候，你应该用手捂着嘴。然后你最好尽可能的离公共场所远一点，如果你必须去，免费英语学习网站，请戴上口罩。饭前仔细洗手，经常打开窗后这样使空气保持清新。最后你应该做更多的运动去使你身体更强壮，这样你就可以保持健康了。我认为这才是最重要的。

英语写作：Freedom in my Dream

英语写作是一种创作性的学习过程。启动知识信息储存，构思立意，谋篇布局，遣词造句，对语言表达的正确性和准确性、思维的逻辑性和文章的条理性都比口语要求更高。通常英语写作有以下几个特点：紧扣教学大纲对考生书面表达的要求;以有指导的写作为主(guidedwriting)，便于考生在短时间内构思成文;突出试题的交际性，考查考生在特定的情景中运用语言的能力;增强试题的实用性，所选话题贴近学生学习生活，为学生所熟悉;看图作文主要考查考生运用所学知识解决实际问题的能力。

一、给写作留有充分的时间

在小升初英语题中， “书面表达”往往是最后一项，有的学生把最后几分钟用在写作上，匆匆了事，这是很不明智的。学生用在写作上的时间应不少于10分钟，力争不丢分，少丢分。

二、认真审题，先打草稿

写之前一定要认真阅读写作要求，切忌见题就写。小升初英语作文主要有两种类型： “提示作文”和 “看图作文”。 “提示作文”一般已经给出要点，而 “看图作文”则需根据图画及提示在很短的时间内将要点列出。把要点列出后，在草稿纸上写提纲，打草稿，就可以看出大概有多少字。在正式往试卷上写之前，根据题目要求适当增减内容，保持卷面整洁。

三、写好简单句，慎用长句

考生要根据所列要点，运用相应的提示词及正确的动词形式在稿纸上写出简单句。考生应熟悉简单句的五种基本句型，尽量使用简单句。在简单句的基础上，根据各句之间的关系适当加上一些连词，使得整篇文章结构紧凑，行文流畅。套用句型，能显示考生的英语基础扎实，提高作文档次。慎用长句是因为其成分多，结构复杂，所以出错的机会也多。考生在没有十足的把握时最好少用或不用长句，以免给自己的作文带来不必要的损失。

四、熟悉各种时态，灵活运用

时态是学习英语语言的难点。考生务必系统地学习初中出现的各种时态，做到灵活运用。在同一篇作文当中，时态要保持一致。

五、切忌中式英语，避免生搬硬套

一些学生因缺乏写作技巧，往往在写英语作文时，根据中文意思堆积英文单词，编造出许多中式英语，结果错误百出，意思表达不清楚，直接影响考试成绩。

六、认真检查和修改，减少错误

做完写作题后要从头至尾读一遍，检查一下文章是否通顺，有无逻辑错误，标点符号、单词拼写和时态运用是否正确，避免笔误。

中考马上就要到来了，语文迷小编为大家整理提供中考英语写作万能句子，赶紧来看看吧。

1. 不用说…… It goes without saying that … = (It is) needless to say (that) …

= It is obvious that …

例：不用说早睡早起是值得的。

It goes without saying that it pays to keep early hours.

2. 在各种……之中，…… Among various kinds of …， … /= Of all the …， …

例︰在各种运动中我尤其喜欢慢跑。

Among various kinds of sports, I like jogging in particular.

3. 就我的看法……;我认为……

In my opinion, …

= To my mind, …

= As far as I am concerned, …

= I am of the opinion that …

例：In my opinion, playing video games not only takes much time but is also harmful to health.

就我的看法打电动玩具既花费时间也有害健康。

4. 随着人口的增加…… With the increase/growth of the population, …

随着科技的进步…… With the advance of science and technology, …

例：With the rapid development of Taiwans economy, a lot of social problems have come to pass.

随着台湾经济的快速发展许多社会问题产生了。

5. ……是必要的 It is necessary (for sb.) to do / that …

…… 是重要的 It is important/essential (for sb.) to do / that …

…… 是适当的 It is proper (for sb.) to do / that …

……是紧急的 It is urgent (for sb.) to do / that …

例：It is proper for us to keep the public places clean.

It is proper that we (should) keep the public places clean.

我们应当保持公共场所清洁。

6. 花费 spend … on sth. / doing sth. …

例：我们不应该在我们不感兴趣的事情上花太多的时间。

We shouldnt spend too much time on something we arent interested in.

7. how 引导的感叹句

例：那至少可以证明你很诚实。

At least it will prove how honest you are.

8. 状语从句

A)如果你不……，你就会…… If you dont …， youll …

例︰If you dont keep working hard, youll lose the chance.

如果你不坚持努力工作，你就会失去这次机会。

B) 如此 ……，以至于…… so … that …

例：At that moment, I was so upset that I wanted to give up.

当时，我非常伤心，最后都想放弃了。

9. 宾语从句

我认为，…… / 我认为……不 I think / I dont think that …

我想知道是否…… I wonder whether …

例：He doesnt think I should stop him joining the club.

他认为我不应该阻止他参加这个俱乐部。

10. Since + S + 过去式， S + 现在完成式。

例：Since he went to senior high school, he has worked very hard.

自从他上高中，他就一直很用功。

原句：While they were playing tennis, she started an argument that lasted all morning.

修改后：During tennis she started an argument that lasted all morning.

原句：When you come to the second traffic light, turn right.

修改后：At the second traffic light turn left.

The Spring Festival, the most important festival to Chinese. Is China the biggest, the most lively, one of the most important ancient traditional festivals, is also unique to Chinese festival.

Festival, is the beginning of the lunar calendar, another name is called New Years day, Spring Festival is the biggest, the most lively, China one of the most important ancient traditional festivals, is also unique to Chinese festival. Is the most concentrated expression of Chinese civilization. Since the western han dynasty, the custom of Spring Festival continues today. The Spring Festival, generally refers to New Years eve and the first day. But in private, in the traditional sense of the Spring Festival is from the Greek festival of the day or month, 23 or 24 people, until the fifteenth, among them with New Years eve and the first day of the first lunar month. How to celebrate this holiday, in one thousand years of history development, formed some relatively fixed customs and habits, there are a lot of handed down also. During the traditional festival, the Spring Festival of the han nationality in our country and most of ethnic minorities have to hold various celebration activities, these activities are to worship deities, worshiping ancestors, blow away the cobwebs, meet jubilee blessing, pray for good harvest as the main content. Form rich and colorful, activities with strong ethnic characteristics. On May 20, 2006, "Spring Festival" folk have been approved by the state council listed in the first batch of state-level non-material cultural heritage list.

The origin of the Spring Festival has a legend, the Chinese ancient times have a kind of call "year" monster, head long feelers, fierce abnormalities. "Year" the elder deep in the bottom of the sea, every New Years eve just climbed out, swallowed cattle damage lives. Therefore, every New Years eve that day, the people of CunCunZhaiZhai could flee to the mountains, to escape the "year" animal damage. One NianChuXi, from the village outside a begging the old man. Folks a hurried panic scene, only the east village, an old woman gave the old man some food, and urged him quickly up the hill avoid "year" beast, the old man stroked his beard say with smile: "mother-in-law if let me stay overnight in the home, I must have" years "beast." Old woman continue to persuasion, begging the old man smiling without a word. At midnight, "nian" beast into the village. It found the village atmosphere unlike previous years, village east wifes husbands family, the door stick red paper, candle lit the room. "Year" beast was a shake, long a sound. Nearly the door, hospital suddenly spread "banging spluttered" Fried sound, "nian" shuddered, again dare not go up. Originally, "year" the most afraid of red, fire and exploding. At this time, her mother-in-laws door open and saw hospital a red-robed man laughed. "Year" frightened to disgrace, mess up. The next day is the first day, the people of refuge back very surprised to see the village safe. At this point, the old woman was suddenly enlighted, quickly spoke to the fellow villagers begging the old mans promise. This matter quickly spread around the village, people know driven "years" beast approach. (the legend of hakka) from then on, every year New Years eve, families paste red couplets, firecrackers; Household candle lit, keeping stay by age. Beginning in the early morning, still walk close bunch of congratulate friends say hello. This custom spread more widely, Chinese the most solemn of the folk traditional festival.

春节，中国人最重要的节日。是中国最盛大、最热闹、最重要的一个古老传统节日，也是中国人所独有的节日。

节，是农历的岁首，春节的另一名称叫过年，是中国最盛大、最热闹、最重要的一个古老传统节日，也是中国人所独有的节日。是中华文明最集中的表现。自西汉以来，春节的习俗一直延续到今天。春节一般指除夕和正月初一。但在民间，传统意义上的春节是指从腊月初八的腊祭或腊月二十三或二十四的祭灶，一直到正月十五，其中以除夕和正月初一为高潮。如何过庆贺这个节日，在千百年的历史发展中，形成了一些较为固定的风俗习惯，有许多还相传至今。在春节这一传统节日期间，我国的汉族和大多数少数民族都有要举行各种庆祝活动，这些活动大多以祭祀神佛、祭奠祖先、除旧布新、迎禧接福、祈求丰年为主要内容。活动形式丰富多彩，带有浓郁的民族特色。2006年5月20日，“春节”民俗经国务院批准列入第一批国家级非物质文化遗产名录。

春节的来历有一种传说，中国古时候有一种叫“年”的怪兽，头长触角，凶猛异常。“年”长年深居海底，每到除夕才爬上岸，吞食牲畜伤害人命。因此，每到除夕这天，村村寨寨的人们扶老携幼逃往深山，以躲避“年”兽的伤害。有一年除夕，从村外来了个乞讨的老人。乡亲们一片匆忙恐慌景象，只有村东头一位老婆婆给了老人些食物，并劝他快上山躲避“年”兽，那老人捋髯笑道：“婆婆若让我在家呆一夜，我一定把‘年’兽撵走。”老婆婆仍然继续劝说，乞讨老人笑而不语。 半夜时分，“年”兽闯进村。它发现村里气氛与往年不同：村东头老婆婆家，门贴大红纸，屋内烛火通明。“年”兽浑身一抖，怪叫了一声。将近门口时，院内突然传来“砰砰啪啪”的炸响声，“年”浑身战栗，再不敢往前凑了。原来，“年”最怕红色、火光和炸响。这时，婆婆的家门大开，只见院内一位身披红袍的老人在哈哈大笑。“年”大惊失色，狼狈逃蹿了。第二天是正月初一，避难回来的人们见村里安然无恙十分惊奇。这时，老婆婆才恍然大悟，赶忙向乡亲们述说了乞讨老人的许诺。这件事很快在周围村里传开了，人们都知道了驱赶“年”兽的办法。(客家人的传说)从此每年除夕，家家贴红对联、燃放爆竹;户户烛火通明、守更待岁。初一一大早，还要走亲串友道喜问好。这风俗越传越广，成了中国民间最隆重的传统节日。

在外语四项技能中，写作对学生的要求是最高的，它要求学生具有以外语思维方式谴词造句，熟练掌握拼写、标点等写作的基本知识的能力。小编收集了提高英语写作水平的方法，欢迎阅读。

英语教学的目的在于发展学生的英语语言技能，培养学生良好的英语交际能力。《英语新课程标准》中语言技能包括听、说、读、写四项基本技能及这四种技能的综合运用能力，四者之间密切联系，相互渗透，互为基础。听、读是领会和理解别人表达的意思;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。

在外语四项技能中，写作对学生的要求是最高的，它要求学生具有以外语思维方式谴词造句，熟练掌握拼写、标点等写作的基本知识的能力。还需要学生有创造性、有合乎逻辑的表达思想的能力。目前的小学英语教学中，极其重视“听、说、读”的能力训练， “写”的教学基本一直停留在“抄写”阶段，没有开始真正意义上的写作教学。

一.写作准备阶段

(一)消除恐惧心理

自英语普及后，根据社会要求，杜绝“哑巴英语”，大多数的学校都从一年级就开设英语课程，到了四年级，学生的口头表达能力都很好，笔头方面就相对弱了。进行英语写作，他们就会觉得不自信，觉得自己水平达不到，能力也够不上。针对这点，就得需要教师在教学中，根据学生的实际能力安排教学。学生是教学的主体，要想教学有效果，就必须发挥学生的主动性。学生怕写作，一方面是觉得自己的所积累的词汇量和句子不够多，教师在教学中注重适量的拓展和培养积累单词，词组的好习惯，对句子进行举一反三的说。另一方面学生怕在写作中犯错，怕会因为一些小错误就受到老师的批评，就这方面，教师在指导时应多给予鼓励，只有让他们认识到了错误，改正了，才会减少错误，在鼓励中增强学生的自信心，从而消除他们对写作的恐惧感。

(二)创设写作环境

环境是非常重要的因素，人的成长需要好的环境，写作当然也要求有个好的环境。况且，写作是个复杂的思维过程，环境在此更显其重要性。在教学中，教师可以精心为学生创设一个积极、合作和富有鼓励性的环境，使他们乐于写作，充分发挥自己的思维能力。比如，在中年级的英语教学中可以安排学生对练习册上的短小语段摘抄下来，读读背背，培养语感;在高年级的英语教学中，可以安排写英语日记，一组的学生的共用一本日记本，每天由一位同学带回家写英语日记，内容及多少都不限制。老师每次都得对日记进行认真批改和给予鼓励性的评价。学生可以传阅，在其中他们能分享成功的喜悦，也扩大阅读量。

(三)传授基本知识

写作就像盖房子一样，有了材料，要把这材料以一定的形式堆放在一起才能形成房屋，这都需要老师的指导。英语写作技能的难度较大，学生也不能很快接受，提高英语写作质量也不容易，教师在进行英语写作教学时，要特别注意教学目标与学生特点，采用适当的教学方法，传授基本的写作知识。

1.科学指导学生对单词的识记，提高单词拼写的正确率，减少不必要的拼写错误。教师可以引导学生在阅读过程中和其他课内外学习中养成记单词的好习惯，同时也要鼓励学生注重词组及常用句型的积累，同时也要给与适合的场合让他们输出。

2.语法是英语学习中非常烦琐，枯燥的一项，小学生很难接受，但在教学中适当得进行句法结构操练还是必要的。让学生自然地接受语言结构，以便他们在写作时能正确地表情达意。

3.汉英表达存在着差异，如Ilikeit,too.中文的正确表达是：我也喜欢它。不会说成：我喜欢他，也。这就是中文和英文在词序上的不同，也是一种习惯表达的不同。没有特定的规律，这就需要学生多阅读，培养好的语感。

4.标点符号虽是小问题但不可忽视，教师应对此进行讲解，把两种语言中的标点符号的用法不同进行比较，阐明正确使用标点符号对正确表达思想十分重要。如，在表示一个人说话，汉语中用冒号和双引号，在英语中是没有冒号的，要表示一个人说话，得用逗号和双引号。

二.写作训练阶段

写作包括能用所学词汇、语法和句型造简单的句子、回答问题、改写课文、看图写话、依照学过的题材写小短文。这些需要循序渐进，要从最简单的语言和言语练习开始，从基本要求做起，由易到难，逐步提高要求，每一步都要有具体要求，切实可行。

(一)句的训练

词连成句，造句是英语写作教学的主要练习形式之一。可以先由教师提供词素，让学生学会连句，熟悉句子结构，为以后造句打下基础。教师也可以在教授一种句型结构时让学生改句子。而后，让学生自己造句，教师常常可以为学生造句提供一个结合实际生活的情景，这样可以避免注重语言形式，忽视内容，脱离一定的情景与主题。

句型转换也是训练形式之一，让学生在不改变语言意义的前提下进行句型转换练习，理解表达同一个意思可以采用不同的句型，这样可以避免写作时句型的单调与重复。

(二)段的训练

句连成段，可以进行看图写作，教师出示一幅图，让学生对其进行描述写成小段。看图写作有其长处，可以在写作过程中可以增加图片与英语思维、表达的直接联系、培养想象力、减少对中文的依赖。为了使学生更多地参与写作教学，激发他们对写作的兴趣，看图写作的图画老师可以让学生自己根据喜好，选择适合他们水平的图画或照片，带到课堂上使用。图画生动多样，大大激发了他们的写作兴趣，可以选一部分优秀的进行展示，评价，相互学习，这样能提高学生的整体水平。

(三)短文的训练

提供学生一些生活化的话题，选择的话题材料要接近学生的现实生活和学习。比如学生可以写自我介绍，写最喜欢的动物，学生会很活跃地思考，用最简单的句子表达他们的意思，表达他们的感情。

同时，也可以是对书本内容进行的扩充，如《牛津小学英语5B》，Unit4中出现了writeane-mail，在这里可以补充教授书信的格式，通过网络让学生学会用电子邮件发信，教师可以让学生结合自己的实际，与自己的朋友写e-mail,但要做到有信必回，这样才是有效的训练。如6B讲到seasons时可以给他们一个topic：Whichseasondoyoulikebest?Why?这样的话题是他们自己切身感受，学生们可以畅所欲言。

(四)阅读的训练

俗话说：读书破万卷，下笔如有神。阅读是写作的基础，大量的，广泛的阅读，能加强学生理解和吸收书面信息的能力，有助于巩固和扩大词汇量，增强语感丰富学生的语言知识。教师可以指导学生读一些相同水平的文章、故事，记忆背诵一些典型的范文也是可以的。让学生在大量的阅读中积累词汇、句子，形成良好的语感，为学生更好的写作打下坚实的基础。

三.如何评价写作内容

学生的作文要及时地批改，对学生在写作中出现的错误，可以用一些柔和的方式指出，并给予他们指导，告诉他们怎么错了，订正在边上(订正在原位会使他们忽略他们的错误)，知道正确答案，再加以鼓励。这样，他们会慢慢积累知识。即使有学生的错误很多，也不要说“写得不行，不好”之类的话，打击他们的积极性，可以给予他们一些建议，给予他们多些指导这样会更好。

对于写的好的，可以当场给予表扬和鼓励，把好的文章读给大家听或者展贴出来，其余学生可以一起分享。俗话说“乐此不疲”，要学好一种东西，兴趣是至关重要的。它是获得知识进行创造性创作的一种自觉动机，是鼓舞和推动学生创作的内在动力，也是提高写作水平的重要途径。因此，在写作教学中要鼓励学生创作，培养他们创作的兴趣，好的作品可以将它们推荐到小学生学习报刊、杂志。这样，学生的积极性就调动了，他们也觉得有成就感，也更乐于写作了。

写作在英语教学中是不可忽略的一项，也是学生最难接受的。“宝剑锋从磨砺出，梅花香自苦寒来。”“滴水穿石非一日之功，冰冻三尺非一日之寒。”教师合理教学，学生长期持之以恒，做生活的有心人，做勤劳的小蜜蜂，多思考，多练笔，一定能对写作产生浓厚兴趣，提高英语写作能力。为今后的英语学习打下结实的基矗

在我们的英语写作过程中，如果能够很好的运用英语谚语，能给我们的作文带来亮点。下面是语文迷整理的高频谚语，一起来看看吧。

(一) Where there is a will，there is a way. 有志者事竟成。

(二) One false step will make a great difference. 失之毫厘，谬之千里。

(三) Slow and steady wins the race. 稳扎稳打无往而不胜。

(四) A fall into the pit，a gain in your wit. 吃一堑，长一智。

(五) Experience is the mother of wisdom. 实践出真知。

(六) All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. 只工作不玩耍，聪明孩子也变傻。

(七) Beauty without virtue is a rose without fragrance.无德之美犹如没有香味的玫瑰，徒有其表。

(八) More hasty，less speed. 欲速则不达。

(九) Its never too old to learn. 活到老，学到老。

(十) All that glitters is not gold. 闪光的未必都是金子。

(十一) Practice makes perfect. 熟能生巧。

(十二) God helps those who help themselves. 天助自助者。

(十三) Easier said than done. 说起来容易做起来难。

(十四) A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.千里之行始于足下。

(十五) Look before you leap. 三思而后行。

(十六) Rome was not built in a day. 伟业非一日之功。

(十七) Great minds think alike. 英雄所见略同。

(十八) well begun，half done. 好的开始等于成功的一半。

(十九) It is hard to please all. 众口难调。

(二十) Out of sight，out of mind. 眼不见，心不念。

(二十一) Do as Romans do in Rome. 入乡随俗。

(二十二) An idle youth，a needy age. 少壮不努力，老大徒伤悲。

(二十三) As the tree，so the fruit. 种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆。

(二十四) To live is to learn，to learnistobetterlive.活着为了学习，学习为了更好的活着。

(二十五) Facts speak plainer than words. 事实胜于雄辩。

(二十六) Call back white and white back. 颠倒黑白。

(二十七) First things first. 凡事有轻重缓急。

(二十八) Ill news travels fast. 坏事传千里。

(二十九) A friend in need is a friend indeed. 患难见真情。

(三十) live not to eat，but eat to live. 活着不是为了吃饭，吃饭为了活着。

(三十一) Action speaks louder than words. 行动胜过语言。

(三十二) East or west，home is the best. 金窝银窝不如自家草窝。

(三十三) Its not the gay coat that makes the gentleman. 君子在德不在衣。

(三十四) Beauty will buy no beef. 漂亮不能当饭吃。

(三十五) Like and like make good friends. 趣味相投。

(三十六) The older， the wiser. 姜是老的辣。

五一劳动节，始于美国工人在19世纪90年代为争取8小时工作日而进行的斗争。自那以后，世界人民便开始庆祝这一天 - 国际劳动节。这个日子在全球所扮演的角色体现了它的力量：正是在这一天，全世界所有的工人们宣布为了共同的目标而一起奋斗。

Labor Day, began in USA workers for the 8 hour day struggle in nineteenth Century 90s.. Since then, the people of the world began to celebrate this day, international labor day. It plays role in the world embodies its strength: it is in this day, the whole world all workers announced strive together for a common goal.

在许多个五一劳动节里，工人们都受到镇压，他们的活动被禁止，流血事件还时常发生。五一节逐渐失去它原来的意义，成为了独裁者和集权统治的政权对抗工人运动的一种标志性装饰;又或者就是一个平平安安的法定假日。尽管事实如此，工人们仍然满怀信心地庆祝劳动节，因为大家都知道这个社会是靠着我们的力量、眼睛、双手和智慧而不断地发展和强壮，还需要我们不断地支持。

In many Labor Day, workers are suppressed, their activities were banned, the bloodshed has often happened. Five one Jie gradually lost its original meaning, become a kind of decoration workers movement against dictator and symbol of power centralization rule; or is a peaceful holiday. Despite the fact that, workers are still full of confidence to celebrate the labor day, because we all know that this society is relying on our strength, eyes, hands and wisdom and constantly development and strong, we also need to continue to support.

正是在这一天，我们坚持体面的工作、工人健康、饮食和住房、教育和文化表达，都是我们应得的权利，而不是特权。我们志在获得这些权利。然而在这一天，我们从未胆怯卑微地去找法官和狱卒，从未守在财长们进行会议的地方，从未说服他们工会是有益于做生意，也从未要求进行更多的对话。正是在这一天，我们大声地说出：你们的银行，你们的买断、买回，给我们带来了痛苦和大量的失业工人;你们的贸易协定和专利制让工人们无法谋生，更破坏了所有人类获得食物、水和药物的权利。正是在这一天，我们大声地说出：我们不仅要建设一个更加美好的世界，而且，我们也坚决不会让世界越变越差。

It is in this day, we adhere to the expression of decent work, health, diet and housing, education and culture, we are right, not a privilege. Were aiming to acquire these rights. However, on this day, we never fear to the judge and the humble, never keep in the finance ministers meeting place, never persuade their union is beneficial to do business, never asked for more dialogue. It is in this day, we say: your bank, you buy, buy back, causing pain and a large number of unemployed workers to our trade agreements and patent system; you let the workers were unable to make a living, even destroy all humans for food, water and medicine to the right. It is in this day, we say out loud: we not only need to build a better world, moreover, we also determined not to let the world become worse.

五一劳动节是大家庆祝过去、庆祝现在和庆祝未来的日子。我们庆祝的方式就是争取应有权利和向全世界表达我们争取权利的决心。让我们一起大声又自豪地庆祝五一国际劳动节吧。

Labor Day we celebrate the past, now and future day celebration to celebrate. We celebrate the way is to fight for their rights and express our determination to fight for the rights of the whole world. Let us loud and proud to celebrate International WorkersDay.

应用文是人们日常生活中广泛使用的文体。它最突出的特点是它的实际应用性，应用文包括很广，如书信、通知、日记、海报、便条、启事、请柬、电报、合同等。应用文的语言应使用规范语言，重在实用，力求朴实、准确、简洁。

一、书信

书信我们分为两部分：信封和内容。

1、信封的写法。

英语信封正面的左上角，写发信人的姓名和地址。在信封的正面中央偏左一点，写收信人的地址和姓名。

英语信封上的地点名称由小到大，视其长短可占二至五行不等。

寄信人只写姓名，不写头衔。但是，收信人一般都在名字前加上头衔，以示礼貌和尊敬。对于没有官衔和学衔的人士，通常在姓名前写上Mr., Mrs.,或Ms.。

信封的写法，一般来说，很少出现在中考英语的作文中。

2、内容。

英文信一般可以分为下列几个部分。

1)信端(Heading)即写信人的地址和发信日期。

2)收信人姓名地址

3)称呼

4)信的正文

5)结束语

6)签名

有的时候，出题者会让考生写e-mail。e-mail的写法和书信的写法基本一致。只不过少了书信在信封上的繁琐。

二、发言稿

发言稿要注意以下三点：

1、发言的地点

2、发言的对象

3、发言的内容。

三、通知

通知的正文一般都是写在"Notice"以词之下，一般来说不必写称呼语和结束语。出同时的单位名称可以写在notice之上，也可以写在正文的右下角。

正文一般采用文章式，有时为了醒目，也可采用广告式。广告式要力求简明扼要，一个句子可分几行。每行第一个字母一般要大写。

四、启事

启事是一种公告式的应用文。团体或个人如有什么事情要向大家公开说明或对公众有什么要求，可将要说的话写成启事，张贴在布告栏上或登在报刊上。启事一般无固定格式，要求简明扼要即可。

五、海报

海报是一种带有装饰性的宣传广告。有时配以绘画图案。内容以影讯、展览、演出信息、友谊赛等为主。为了尽可能使更多的人知道，海报往往贴在醒目之处。

if a man deceives me once, shame on him, if he deceives me twice, shame on me.

上当一回头，再多就可耻。

if you make yourself an ass, don‘t complain if people ride you.

人善被人欺，马善被人骑。

if your ears glow, someone is talking of you.

耳朵发烧，有人念叨。

if you run after two hares, you will catch neither.

脚踏两条船，必定落空。

if you sell the cow, you sell her milk too.

杀鸡取卵。

if you venture nothing, you will have nothing.

不入虎穴，焉得虎子。

a cat may look at a king.

人人平等。

adversity makes a man wise, not rich.

逆境出人才。

a fair death honors the whole life.

死得其所，流芳百世。

a faithful friend is hard to find.

知音难觅。

a fall into a pit, a gain in your wit.

吃一堑，长一智。

a fox may grow gray, but never good.

江山易改，本性难移。

a friend in need is a friend indeed.

患难见真情。

a friend is easier lost than found.

得朋友难，失朋友易。