英语书信格式及写作范文汇总8篇 作文怎么写(汇集20篇)

【论文摘要】在高考英语试题中，写作是有效提高学生整体成绩的重要手段，写作是目的也是为了测试学生直接运用英语表达的能力而设置的，因此通常都会放在试卷的最后面作为压轴题出现。在高考英语写作要求中，明确提出要让考生运用所学知识进行书写，能组词成句、组句成文，语句符合英语语法和习惯。在写出的书面材料中，要求达到：切中题意，文理通顺，语言准确，得当。那么，怎样才能在高考英语写作中出类拔萃呢？这正是本文要探讨的内容。

一、有的放矢，了解高考英语写作要点

要对高考英语写作的题型及内容有所了解，才能把握好高考英语写作的考点，在此基础上才能找到行之有效的对策及方法。纵观近几年各省高考英语试题中，写作测试的命题思路，有一种从指导性写作逐步向半开放式写作过渡的趋势。半开放式写作，具体地说，就是给考生们提供一定的材料(包括图、文或图文结合)然后要求学生根据材料来进行书面表达，这样的考题形式，既限制了考生随心所欲的思维，又给予考生适当的发挥空间。这种命题方式能较好地考查考生的语言组织能力、书面表达能力以及思维能力。而在文体方面，记叙文、议论文、应用文及书信为最常见的写作题材。因此，我们可以做一个形象的比喻，写文章就像工厂里制造一台机器那样，首先要确定机器由几部分组成，然后对这几部分分别细化，形成初步的设计图；再根据要求对初步的设计图进行完善、补充、修改，随之形成最终的设计图；然后我们再按照图纸的设计，使用我们所掌握的零件去制造出机器；同样的道理，学生写作时可参照以下模式：

1．理解话题：学生在动笔前必须对指定的话题进行反复细读，认真思考，理解其真正的含义，了解出题者的意图，这是进行写作的第一步；

2．明确文体，确定人称时态：这一阶段的判断中，主要强调近十年高考最常见的两种文体：(1)说明文：必须按照事物的原貌加以说明、介绍、解释，常采用一般现在时，被动语态也常使用；(2)记叙文：通常采用第一人称，描述本人的经历或耳闻目睹之事；或用第三人称讲述他人的事情，如果是过去的事情，要用过去时。

3．初拟提纲，再理解话题：明确文体的基础上，草拟写作提纲；提纲是文章的骨架，可以是一句活，也可以是一个词组，由于考试时间所限，提纲内容不必面面俱到，但必须体现文章的整体结构和思路；目前绝大部分高中学生在英语写作时，还习惯于使用母语进行构思，然后将构思好的中文内容翻译成英文，这种情况是正常的；关键在于翻译过程中的语言表达必须符合英语语言的表达习惯

4．开始写作：提纲完成后，应根据提纲充实内容，如果说提纲是骨架的话，那么这时你必须将骨架填充血肉；具体的说就是要扩展要点，连词成句，适当地变换句型，组句谋篇成文；注意应简明扼要，层次分明、用词准确、语法概念清楚，使文章更具说服力，然后在写作完成后，还要对文章进行快速的检查，减少单词的拼写错误和句子表达的错误。

二、高考英语写作指导的具体策略

根据以上对历年高考英语写作试题的分析，我们可以从以下三个方面去指导学生进行写作：

1．细读材料，认真审题

仔细阅读书面表达题所给材料的全部内容，准确理解题目要求。需要认真审查的内容有：(1)文章的开头和结尾是否已给出；(2)用第几人称写作，书面表达要求中会明确指出使用第一人称还是第三人称；(3)提供的情景是图画、图表，还是提纲，如果是连环画，要注意故事情节的连贯性，确定合理的情节发展；(4)是否提供参考词汇，如果提供有参考词汇，写作中最好要用到；(5)采用什么文体，如果是议论文，要有论点、论据和结论三部分。如果是应用文，要注意其格式。如果是记叙文，要抓住六个要素：时间、地点、人物、事件、事情起因、事情的发展与结果。

2．恰当选择词语和句式

认真审题后，就可以列提纲了，将重点单词、短语、句型写在提纲里，关于选词切忌使用生僻词语，要求做到用词准确、得体、达意。选择句式时，尽量使用多种句式，如强调句、倒装句、各种名词性从句、定语从句、状语从句和固定句型等，长句和短句视情况交错使用，这样可以提高文章的档次，使文章生辉。

选词大多是在一组同义词或近义词之间进行。例如，我们要表达“好”这个意思，一般来说，大家会马上想起“good”，因为口语中我们经常说agoodfriend、goodluck、agoodpicture等。但是，在不同的短语中，可以选择不同的英语单词使表达更加准确、生动、形象。

3．多背常识性语句，扩大知识面

语言是有规律的，不同体裁的书面表达都有其常识性语句。如果同学们平时有大量的语句积累，在写作时就能把积累的东西调动起来。这些常识性语句既可增加文章的连贯性、逻辑性和可读性，同时还能提供地道的表达方式。写人物介绍时，应着重写人物的姓名、性别、年龄、职业、身高、健康状况、业余爱好、工作态度、与人相处和社会评价等语句。例如：lipingisagoodteacher，whoisthirtyyearsold．heis175centimetrestallandheishealthy．等。

【参考文献】

[1]韩金龙，秦秀白.体裁分析与体裁教学法.[j].外语界2000(1)

[2]韩金龙.英语写作教学:过程体裁教学法.[j].外语界.2001(4)

[3]何星.“过程写作法”较之“结果写作法”在高中英语写作教学中的

有效性研究.[d]华东师大专业硕士学位论文.2007

卷面整洁 书写清楚

构思简单 少犯错误

中心突出 层次分明

借助经典 名句俗谚

重在变化 避免重复

卷面整洁，书写清楚

1、打好腹稿再动笔，减少涂改。

2、书写漂亮的当然更好，达不到的最起码也要工整。

3、使用黑色水笔作答，白纸黑字，这样能够有效提高整洁度。

构思简单 少犯错误

根据阅卷经验，四级作文的主要错误集中在思路、标点、时态、单复数、结构等五个方面。

英语四级错误十错十察

1.句子成分残缺

We always working till late at night before taking exams.(误)

We are always working till late at night before taking exams(正)

2.句子成分多余

This test is end, but there is another test is waiting forus. (误)

One test ends, but another is waiting for you. (正)

3.主谓不一致

Someone/Somebody think that reading should be selective. (误)

Someone/Somebody thinks that reading should be selective. (正)

4.动词时态误用

I was walking along the road, and there are not so many cars on the street. (误)

I was walking along the road and there were not so many vehicles on the street. (正)

5.动词语态误用

The driver of the red car was died in the accident. (误)

The driver of the red car died in the accident. (正)

6.词类混淆

It is my point that reading must be selectively. (误)

In my opinion, reading must be selective. (正)

Honest is so important for every person. (误)

Honesty is so important for everyone. (正)

7.名词可数与不可数的误用

In modern society, people are under various pressures(误)

In modern society, people are under various kinds of pressure. (正)

8.动词及物与不及物的误用

Because of his excellent performance, the boss rose his salary. (误)

Because of his excellent performance, the boss raised his salary. (正)

9.动宾搭配不当

We must make solutions to the problem. (误)

We must find a solution to the problem. (正)

It also may help you to make success. (误)

It may also help you succeed/obtain your goal. (正)

10.根据中文逐字硬译

Let us touch the outside world of campus.

Let’s keep in touch with the world outside of the campus.

Don’t forget to keep a good body health.(误)

Don’t forget to keep fit/healthy.(正)

写作是最灵活的一种测试形式。写自己提前准备的表达是提分最有效的利器。下面是语文迷为大家提供的高分英语写作方法，希望对你有帮助。

一、“功能段落”突破CET写作

“To be or not to be: that is a question。”莎士比亚如是说。冲刺阶段，背模板还是不背?我的答案：背，但绝不是盲目地背。

整篇背诵模板不是最有效的方法，因为模板的写作思路是固定的，然而很多时候试题的命题思路可能与所背模板思路不同。因此，可能导致“所背非所考”，甚至导致文不对题，生搬硬套。

但是，无论四六级写作话题如何变化，一般都对应三个或两个汉语提纲。只要按提纲要求去写相应的内容段落，就做到了紧扣主题。历年写作提纲可以总结为六种功能段落：现象描述、危害分析(弊)、原因分析、建议措施、观点阐述(观点的本质为利弊：支持方观点等于分析“利”，反方观点等于分析“弊”)、意义阐述(利)。

下面，结合近年真题展示功能段落内容：

2011-06：Online Shopping

1.现在网上购物已成为一种时尚

2.网上购物有很多好处，但也有不少问题

3.我的建议

解析：本次四级作文对应四个段落分别是：现象、观点(利、弊)和建议。该类作文可以被称之为：观点对比型作文，对比的内容重点在利弊分析上。

2010-12：How Should Parents Help Children to Be Independent?

1. 目前不少父母为孩子包办一切

2. 为了让孩子独立， 父母应该……

解析：该题目只有两个提纲：现象和建议，可以添加一个功能段落：原因。这样这篇作文就是“三段论”的形式：提出问题(负面现象描述)、分析问题(原因)、建议措施段。2010年6月CET也属于该种那类型。

2009-12：Creating a Green Campus

1. 建设绿色校园很重要

2. 绿色校园不仅指绿色的环境……

3. 为了建设绿色校园，我们应该……

解析：该段对应提纲如下：意义阐述(即分析：利或好处)、现象描述(解释绿色校园环境之外的因素)、建议措施段。

综合以上分析，六种功能段落已经涵盖住了以上考试的所有提纲。因此，如果能够掌握住六种功能段落的写作实际就掌握了四六级考试写作考题的最本质特征。那样的话，无论题目如何变化，我们准备都是有的放矢的。反观，死背模板容易导致生搬硬套，甚至文不对题。

二、写作短期提分方略

在了解了四六级考试在命题特点的基础上，考生在冲刺阶段最需要准备的是两个内容：思路和表达。思路解决怎么写的问题，表达解决写什么的问题。如果拿到一个作文题目，你知道应该按照什么思路去写，又知道应该写什么表达，这篇作文就已经成功了一半。

思路点拨：在本人所讲授的基础班、强化班、精品班等不同班型上都曾讲授到现象、原因、建议、利弊、观点分析时的逻辑：“一个中心，四个基本点”。具体内容：“以孩子(学生、事件)为中心，以家长[微博](老师、相关人员)、家庭(学校、管理机构)、社会、法规(道德意识)为基本点”。

试举例说明：以2010年12月真题为例，主题为子女教育话题。谈到子女，必然涉及到家长，孩子和家长组成家庭，千千万万的家庭组成社会，是什么在维护着社会稳定?法规和道德意识。这样我们就找到了可以入手去分析的五个方面：孩子、家长、家庭、社会、法规道德意识。如何使用这五个方面?比如分析家长溺爱孩子原因时至少可以从家长意识、家庭结构变化、社会背景角度去分析。

同理，2010年6月话题为学生英语学习，可从学生自身、教师教学、学校教学政策角度去分析。那么，如果主题不是孩子也不是学生，怎么分析?2011年6月主题为网络购物，分析时就以该事件为中心，可以想到相关人或物(买方：customers/clients/shoppers;卖方：online shops/stores;中间方：支付宝、淘宝等)，其管理机构(政府)、社会背景，相关法规是否健全等。

“一个中心，四个基本点”的分析逻辑形成一种立体化网状结构，考生运用该思维模式，只要能想到其中两到三点，思路问题即可迎刃而解。建议童鞋们首先将该思路背诵下来，以备将来可以在考场上灵活应用。

表达积累

表达分为四个层次：词句段篇。其中篇章层面只要按照提纲要求去组织文章即可，因此篇章方面不足为虑。段落方面按照“功能段落”的六种形式去识别，也小菜一碟。

词和句是表达的基本元素，也是语言质量的根本体现。在新东方教书的这几年中和参加四六级考试阅卷的经历中，看过无数学生的作文，深感学生词句方面能力的薄弱。同时结合过往教学中的成功案例，提出冲刺阶段表达积累的高效途径。

背写：思路+表达

很多同学考前也在背，背的滚瓜烂熟，脱口而出，觉得自己水平很牛!上了考场也顺利将文章写了出来，却得了一个很低的分数，为什么?因为单词都拼错了。冲刺阶段，请牢记：口头背诵得再好不等于能够写对。背写是提高写作和翻译唯一也是最有效的方法。

那么，背写什么内容哪?答案是思路和表达。思路上文中已有论述，遣词和造句的表达方面应该紧密结合功能段落来背诵有效句式和用词。考生不必刻意追求适用难词，但可以将常见词汇稍作替换：如，

exceedingly, extremely, intensely替换very;an army of/a great many/a host of 替换a lot of;advancement 替换 development; positive, favorable, promising(有希望的)， perfect, pleasurable, excellent, outstanding, superior替换good; give rise to, lead to, result in, trigger 替换cause; harbor the idea that, take the attitude that, hold the view that替换think; beneficial, rewarding替换helpful; bear in mind that替换remember; enjoy, possess替换have; shopper, client, consumer, purchaser替换customer……

表达精彩体现在三个方面：遣词、造句、连贯。大家可以结合以下例文感受这三个方面：

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minute to write a short essay on the topic of To Help or Not to Help. You should write at least 120 words following the outline given bellow:

1. 帮助别人是一种美德

2. 但是帮助陌生人容易使自己陷入麻烦

3. 我的看法

首段阐述意义：In contemporary society, it should be a virtue for individuals to offer help to those who are in need. Without this morality, it is impossible for the society to be named “Harmony”. Apparently enough, it is of great importance/ significance/ value/ benefits for people to help each other, especially in difficulties。

二段描述负面现象：However, a host of people find it hard or troublesome to offer helps to strangers. We have been frequently informed that(A typical example is that) a warmhearted man —who lends a hand to an old lady—gets himself in trouble. Since helping others may trigger trouble, a few people refuse to offer help timely. And if we let/allow this situation to continue as it is now, we would not know where civilized society will be in the forthcoming future。

尾段我的看法或建议：As college students, we should bear in mind this virtue. However, it is essential that regulations should be worked out to support this virtue. In addition, it is suggested that we should offer aid to strangers in a safe way, such as dialing 12o or 110 for help. If we try our utmost to do so, the future of our society/ civilization will be promising, hopeful and rosy. (以上范文字数为202词，请自己酌情删减即可)

三、冲刺复习安排建议

总体原则：先背再写、阶段总结、适当模拟。

先背再写：基础较差同学一定要先背一些功能句式和教材相关范文，然后模仿该作文的思路和表达去写。背写的目的是积累语言表达实力，同时练习书写的公正和优美。建议书写较差的考生买本英语字帖练一下书写，也许你会有意外的惊喜。

阶段总结：每过一周就要问自己几个问题：所背诵的表达可以用来写什么类型的文章?该类文章的相关词汇或表达有什么?关键词如何避免重复?请记住：没有复习，没有巩固。

适当模拟：在熟练掌握背写了六种功能段落的思路和表达之后，可以结合适当题目在写作中运用所讲所背所总结提分词汇、句式。建议大家能够灵活运用，做到一例多用。比如我在多个班上讲过的关于英语学习的话题作文，可以写13次四级考试的作文。

题目：On English Learning

提纲：1. 英语学习很重要;2. 英语者所面临的困难;3. 如何学好英语

In contemporary world, English learning has gained great popularity and it is of great significance. (主题句) Firstly, based on a survey, a majority of tourists acknowledge that they prefer to speak English when traveling around the world. (调查法表述)Secondly, compared with the poor English speakers, good English-speakers are superior in many ways. (比较模板句式)

However, English learners may have a variety of difficulties or troubles in their learning. (主题句) For example, it can be noticed that a large number of students have difficulty memorizing words. Sometimes, it is difficult for them to understand the rules of grammar. In addition, though some are good at reading or writing, they can not express themselves freely in English。

Then, how to get a good command of (学好) this language? I am convinced that practice makes perfect. Only practice can enable one to speak and write fluently. And it is also through practice that one can master the rules of grammar and remember words, and there is no other way. (强调句式)

【提要】高考英语作文 : 2017年高考英语作文写作模板：图画类写作模板

图画类写作模板

1.开头

Look at this picture./The picture shows that.../From this picture, we can see.../As is shown in the picture.../As is seen in the picture...

2.衔接句

As we all know, .../As is known to all,.../It is well known that.../In my opinion,.../As far as I am concerned,.../This sight reminds me of something in my daily life.

3.结尾句

In conclusion.../In brief.../On the whole.../In short.../In a word.../Generally speaking.../As has been stated...

一：用介词短语替代从句，例：

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.

二：删除诸如"who is"或"that is"之类的关系代词，变从句为短语，例：

句：The novel， which is written in three parts， told a story that took place in the Middle Ages.

修改后：The three-part novel told a story set in the Middle Ages.

注：把句中的"three parts"改用形容词来表达，节省了四个不必要的单词"which is written in"。我们经常可以将关系代词如"that"去掉，这只会引起最少的变动。

三：剔除你不需要的单词，例：

Two joint partners will present their views over a long-distance telephone call. 写完这样的句子后，你自己再读一遍，挑出单词"joint"和"telephone"，注意删去不必要的词。

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。

2005年英语考纲有重大变化，其中之一就是作文考查的变化，如何在短期内提高考研英语作文。新增加一篇小作文，使作文考查由一篇变为两篇，而原来的大作文的字数也由“不少于200字”调整为“150至200字”，满分20分。新增的作文是一篇100字左右的应用性短文，文体包括有信件、便笺、备忘录等，满分10分。既然是新增题型，就不会太难，但不好预测文体，这就要求考生复习时力求面面俱到，掌握写作规律及注意事项，尤其是对常见的应用文体如书信等

大作文的写作一般会给考生写作提纲，或图表，图画，或图文并茂。命题方式虽然多样，但题目涉及面往往是考生比较熟悉的内容，目的是测定考生语言的实际应用能力。要求表达清楚，文字连贯，中心突出，内容丰富，句式多变，句子结构和用词正确。

语言的应用能力不可能一蹴而就，必须厚积薄发，必须经过长期的实践锻炼。在提高英语写作能力方面，我觉得：一是要背大量的优秀范文，整段整篇地背，并转换为自己的语言，写作时自己能随心所欲支配。考试时避免套用以前死记硬背的几个范文，把一些不达意的词堆积在一起，没有统一性，无法很好地表现主题；二是要多动手。包括对背过的文章进行词语替换，句式转换，句子重组等，以及对某一主题展开写作。多动手才能提高笔下功夫，才能保证在考场上顺利写作。可以说背诵范文是培养语感，积累素材，掌握写作方法，动手写作是实践，是最终目的，这两者结合起来，就是“理论联系了实际”。另外，背诵范文应有针对性，写作训练也是一样，在训练中要掌握每一类型作文的写作规律，根据其每一类作文的写作特点——如提纲式作文就要求考生根据提纲提示的思路和规定的要点展开段落——全面训练，但不要带有押题的心理，靠背几篇范文就能应付考试的心态是不可取的。

下面说一下英语写作过程中的注意事项

一、认真审题

作文第一步是仔细审题，考生要仔细阅读试题要求及相关信息，如图表，图画，数字等，准确把握出题者意图。考研作文忌信手掂来，提笔就写，根本不审题，想到哪儿就写到哪儿，或完全凭自己想象编故事，置考试要求于不顾， “下笔千言，离题万里”。比如1998是一幅卡通画，老母鸡申明外加一首打油诗，讽刺一些企业把该尽职之事作为推销产品的承诺。如果考生说老母鸡很可爱，但爱自夸，然后说自己某个同学也爱自夸，这就偏离主题。2000年的作文“A Brief Histiry of World Commercial Fishing ”.它给出了两张图，从1900年的渔船和鱼量之比到1995年的渔船和鱼量之比的变化谈如何保护渔业资源，应从商业性滥捕鱼这一主题展开话题，有的考生却大谈环境污染，其它英语写作《如何在短期内提高考研英语作文》。这就偏离了主题，因为题中自始自终都没有谈到环境污染问题。

有的同学没有审题习惯，或担心时间不够草草审题，最后发现文不对题，草草收场，这就影响了英语成绩，同时也会影响后两门考试的考试心情。

二、列出提纲

考试规定的时间是很有限的，所以不能花太多时间准备一个详细的提纲，但关键词提纲或粗略提纲还是非常有必要的。对原始材料分析归纳后要形成一个基本的框架。文章打算分几段写，每段大概怎样写，自数控制在多少，开头段落是道破主题，点名要旨，引人入胜还是先给出主题一般的背景情况和对主题进行浓缩的陈述呢，中间段落和结尾有怎样写呢。这些都要心中有数。有的考生习惯用汉语构思文章，逐句翻译提纲，当碰到某个词卡住时就翻译不下去，僵在那里。要注意列提纲是为了更好更全面的表达主题。主题的表达可有多种形式，不一定非要寻找一个特定的词或句子。考试时考生要充分调动大脑，灵活运用以前所学知识。

三、开始写作

一篇文章往往由四部分组成，标题(title)，首段(opening paragraph),主体(body paragraph),结尾段( concluding paragraph)。标题要新颖，能引起读者兴趣，首段的内容根据文章的体裁而变化，比如议论文可以从一种现象，一种观点出发引出作者的观点。记叙文往往交代人物和故事背景。主体是文章的主要部分，通过合适的语篇模式表达一定的观点，考生要围绕中心按一定顺序分层次有重点的展开叙述，描写，议论。结尾段是对全文的总结，论点上要与前面的叙述一致和统一。写作时要注意以下几点。

1、要统一，连贯。

选择那些最能体现中心思想最具代表性的材料，这些材料要共同表达一致的信息。选材时切忌胡子眉毛一把抓。词语堆积，不伦不类。前后及段落之间在逻辑关系上要紧密衔接，不能把没有任何逻辑关系的词放在一起。可以用恰当的关联词把思想连贯的表达出来。

2、用词准确，语法正确

考试时要特别注意语法，此语，语气，标点符号等，为了避免太多单词拼写错误，语法错误，不要为了追求词语的华丽而堆积一些自己也没把握的单词，不要刻意追求长句而写一些自己不知对错的有多个从句组成的长句。考试时最好选择自己最有把握的词汇，短语，句式。

3、足够字数，卷面整洁

绝对不能字数不够，即使一句话颠来倒去说也要凑够字数。字数不够，即使写的非常精彩，也不能拿高分。

四、修改

英语写作时考生由于仓促，紧张等原因，很容易犯一些简单的，一眼就能发现的错误。所以考生一定要留出几分钟时间用于修改。不要大幅度进行修改，更不要因为修改破坏卷面整洁，影响阅卷老师心情。修改时可以从以下几点进行

1、语法

包括时态是否一致，主谓是否一致，名词单复数是否对应，被动主动语态是否错用等

2、词汇

包括连接上下句或段落的关联词，习惯用语，固定搭配，词类混淆，误用及物不及物动词等。

3、拼写和标点符号

小学阶段不同年级的作文有不同要求和写作技巧小学英语写作指导小学英语写作指导。

对于小学3年级的学生，在他们已经掌握好了如颜色(colour)、衣服(clothes)、数字(number)、星期(day of the week)、月份(month)、宠物(pet)、情感(feeling)、身体部位(body)、文具(school things)的基础上进行文章的填空，如果学生能够按照文章的要求写进相关的信息，那就已经很不错了。下面是一个自我介绍的简单例子：

Myself

Hello，my name is_____. I am_____years old.My favourite colour is_____，_____， and_____.My favourite pet is______，_____ and______. My favourite food is_____，______and______.My favourite day is______. My favourite school thing is______and______.My favourite number is and______.I am______today.

上面的这个例子，如果学生能够依次能吧自己的姓名、年龄、喜欢的颜色、喜欢的宠物、喜欢的食物、喜欢的日子、喜欢的文具、喜欢的数字和今天的心情准确无误地写出来，那么就已经能够完成了3年级阶段的作文要求。

对于4年级的学生，可以写一篇介绍自己课室或者自己卧室的文章。下面是一篇4年级学生的介绍课室范文。

My classroom

I am studying at Tongji primary school.I am in Class Two, Grade Four. (介绍自己所在的学校和所在的年级) There is a blackboard in front of the classroom. There are twenty-five desks in our classroom, they are brown. There are many books on the desk. There are fifty students, thirty boys and twenty girls. There is a picture on the wall. There are two fans on the wall. (用there+be句型把班里和摆设和班上的人数都表达出来了) It is tidy and clean.I like my classroom very much.(最后是作者的总结)

对于5年级的学生，作文的要求也提高了很多，很多学生在介绍别人或者是写自己喜欢的小动物的时候很容易忘了第三人称单数动词要加ses，如：He get up at 7 o’clock(get忘了加s)，在用到现在进行的时候动词很容易忘了加ing(如I am play the piano，play就忘记了加ing)，介词和介词短语也占了很重要的位置如介词in，on，at，of。介词短语如dream of(区分dream that)和be afraid of都是很重要的介词短语，很多学生忘记了介词后面要加动词小学英语写作指导少儿基础英语。

对于6年级的学生，作文考查的是英语的综合应用能力，而且出的题目大部分都是看图作文，这就在一定程度上增加了写作的难度，它也是综合了3年级的分类词汇，4年级的句型，方位介词，5年级的重点介词短语和时态，不过我相信只要平时多点积累单词和句型、多点动笔、多注意语法上的问题、多看作文书，那么就能写出流畅、有深度的文章。

中考英语作文中经常会出现跟天气有关的题材，下面是语文迷网为大家提供的关于天气的英语作文素材，一起来看看吧。

1. It rained cats and dogs last night. 昨晚雨下得很大。

Rain cats and dogs是一句非常受欢迎的俚语，几乎每个学英语的学生都懂得用 rain cats and dogs 来形容雨下得很大。

当然如果你不想用俚语的讲法，你可以说："Its raining really hard.(雨下得很大)"或是"Were having a heavy rain."同样也是“雨下得很大”。

那“雨下得很大，我被淋成了落汤鸡”这整句话要怎么讲?“落汤鸡”在英文里常用"I am soaked."(我湿透了)来形容。因此，我们可以说：Its raining cats and dogs out there so Im soaked.

2. We had a downpour. 我们刚遇到了一场倾盆大雨。

中文里常形容下雨像是用“倒”的一样，这在英文里也有同样对等的字眼喔!英文里用的是 downpour 这个词。所以“下雨像是用倒的”我们可以说："We had a downpour."

另外有一个十分口语的讲法就是"Its really coming down out there."，也是形容雨下得很大，像是用“倒”的一样。

3. Its just sprinkling. 只是在下毛毛雨而已。

在英文里不管下“毛毛雨”或是“毛毛雪”我们都可以用 drizzle 和 sprinkle 这两个动词来表示。

Drizzle 这个词就是气象术语“下毛毛雨”的意思，而sprinkle 则是一个动词表示“撒”，但也常被用来形容毛毛雨。

常听到的用法就是："Its drizzling." 或是 "Its sprinkling."另外还有一个词叫 scattered rain，指的则是“零零星星地降雨”。

例如：We have to cancel the track and field contest because of the scattered rain.因为零星的降雨所以我们必须取消田径赛。

天气的英语单词

downpour, shower 暴雨

storm, tempest 暴风雨

lightning 闪电

land wind 陆风

hurricane 飓风

cyclone 旋风

typhoon 台风

whirlwind 龙卷风

gale 季节风

gust of wind 阵风

breeze 微风

fog 浓雾

dew 露水

humidity 潮湿

freeze 冰冻

snowflake 雪花

snowfall 降雪

waterspout 水龙卷

dead calm 风平浪静

Indian summer 小阳春

drought 干旱

AM Clouds / PM Sun=上午有云/下午后晴

AM Showers=上午阵雨

AM Snow Showers=上午阵雪

AM T-Storms=上午雷暴雨

Clear=晴朗

Cloudy=多云

Cloudy / Wind=阴时有风

Clouds Early / Clearing Late=早多云/晚转晴

Drifting Snow=飘雪

Drizzle=毛毛雨

Dust=灰尘

Fair=晴

Few Showers=短暂阵雨

Few Snow Showers=短暂阵雪

Few Snow Showers / Wind=短暂阵雪时有风

Fog=雾

Haze=薄雾

Hail=冰雹

Heavy Rain=大雨

Heavy Rain Icy=大冰雨

Heavy Snow=大雪

Heavy T-Storm=强烈雷雨

Isolated T-Storms=局部雷雨

Light Drizzle=微雨

Light Rain=小雨

Light Rain Shower=小阵雨

Light Rain Shower and Windy=小阵雨带风

Light Rain with Thunder=小雨有雷声

Light Snow=小雪

Light Snow Fall=小降雪

Light Snow Grains=小粒雪

Light Snow Shower=小阵雪

Lightening=雷电

Mist=薄雾

Mostly Clear=大部晴朗

Mostly Cloudy=大部多云

Mostly Cloudy/ Windy=多云时阴有风

Mostly Sunny=晴时多云

Partly Cloudy=局部多云

Partly Cloudy/ Windy=多云时有风

PM Rain / Wind=下午小雨时有风

PM Light Rain=下午小雨

PM Showers=下午阵雨

PM Snow Showers=下午阵雪

PM T-Storms=下午雷雨

Rain=雨

Rain Shower=阵雨

Rain Shower/ Windy=阵雨/有风

Rain / Snow Showers=雨或阵雪

Rain / Snow Showers Early=下雨/早间阵雪

Rain / Wind=雨时有风

Rain and Snow=雨夹雪

Scattered Showers=零星阵雨

Scattered Showers / Wind=零星阵雨时有风

Scattered Snow Showers=零星阵雪

Scattered Snow Showers / Wind=零星阵雪时有风

Scattered Strong Storms=零星强烈暴风雨

Scattered T-Storms=零星雷雨

Showers=阵雨

Showers Early=早有阵雨

Showers Late=晚有阵雨

Showers / Wind=阵雨时有风

Showers in the Vicinity=周围有阵雨

Smoke=烟雾

Snow=雪

英语作文如何才能得高分呢?以下几种手段是增加句子复杂性的常见方法,也是得高分的“亮点”。

1. 改变句子的开头方式,不是一味地都是主语开头,接着是谓语、宾语,最后再加一个状语。可以把状语置于句首,或用分词作状语等。试比较:

(原文) My brother and I went to the cinema by bicycle the other day.

(修正) The other day my brother and I went to the cinema by bicycle.

(原文) The young man couldn’t help crying when he heard the bad news.

(修正) Hearing the bad news, the young man couldn’t help crying.

2. 在整篇文章中,避免只使用一两个句式,要灵活运用诸如强调句、主从复合句、分词短语、倒装句、省略句等。例如:

(1)强调句

(原文) The dog has saved my little sister bravely.

(修正) It is the dog that has saved my little sister bravely.

(2)主从复合句

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

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

(3)分词短语、由with或without引导的短语

(原文) The driver escaped and didn’t stop, he left the old man lying on the road.

(修正) The driver escaped without stopping, leaving the old man lying on the road.

(4)倒装句

(原文) I went to bed at 11:30.

(修正) Not until 11:30 did I go to bed.

(5)省略句

(原文) While you are crossing the street, you should be careful.

(修正) While crossing the street, you should be careful.

3. 通过分句和合句,增强句子的连贯性和表现力。例如:

(原文) He stopped us an hour ago. He made us catch the next offender.

(修正) He stopped us half an hour ago and made us catch the next offender.

(原文) We had a short rest. Then we began to play happily. We sang and danced.

(修正) After a short rest, we had great fun singing and dancing.

4. 注意连接词与句子的运用。

以2001年高考作文为例,在信的开头,可加上“You want to know something about what is going on in schools in China?”这句话起承上启下的作用,使文章过渡自然;再如,用“What was worse?”引出减负前,晚上还要做作业,就寝时间11:30等要点。又如,“Now I have more free time...” 可引出减负后的情况。另外,在信的结尾,可用“How about you? I’m looking forward to hearing from you.”来自然地结束这封信。

5. 使用过渡词语。

写好了每个句子,并不一定就是一篇好文章,因为作为一篇文章,还必须行文连贯。那么,如何使文章行文连贯呢?这就要求我们在组成篇章时,要用好过渡性词语,过渡性词语就像是我们组装机械时使用的润滑剂一样,起着润滑的作用。常用的过渡词语主要有:

并列递进:and, also, as well as, besides, what’s more, furthermore, moreover, etc.

转折:but, yet, however, although, nevertheless, in spite of, after all, etc.

因果:because, as, for, since, for this reason, because of, so, therefore, thus, as a result, etc.

对比:or, otherwise, like, unlike, on the contrary, while, on the other hand, instead of, etc.

总结:in all, in brief, on the whole, in short, in general, in one word, etc.

总之,要使文章的层次高,可读性强,考生应增加些较高级的词汇与复杂的结构,并运用恰当的连接词和复合句,只有这样,才能在考试中取得理想的成绩。

Dear parents:

You are good! Thank you for you when I was growing up, to my care and meticulous care, what I have to ask you can satisfy me. Its always hot in summer, I kick a quilt, every time you gently help me cover the quilt, winter will give me a cup of hot milk before you go to sleep at night.

But your weight to all have no standing in my point of  view, only think about how I. Now I have grown up, is not a two year old the child, I want your decision and judgment. Please dont pressure me again, had a lot of pressure on learning, you can put the gas pressure can reduce the?

Although you do not perfect, but what are the parents in the world perfect? Youll always be my favorite people. Is you give me life, let me come to this beautiful world and everywhere is full of love. I must study hard, to repay you.

亲爱的父母：

您们好！谢谢你们在我成长过程中，对我的关心和无微不至的照顾，我有什么要求你们都能满足我。夏天的时候，我总是热的踢被子，你们每次都轻轻的帮我盖好被子，冬天晚上睡觉前都会给我冲一杯热牛奶。

但是你们重来都没有站在我的角度看，只觉得我怎么怎么样。我现在已经长大了，已经不是一两岁的孩子了，我要自己的决定和判断。求求你么不要再压我了，在学习上本来就有很大的压力，你们能把气态的压力减轻吗？

你们虽然不十全十美，可是世界上有哪位父母十全十美的呢？你们永远是我最爱的人。是你们给予我生命，让我来到这个美丽而处处充满爱的世界。我一定要好好努力学习，来回报你们。

一、开头句型

1.As far as ...is concerned

2.It goes without saying that...

3.It can be said with certainty that...

4.As the proverb says，

5.It has to be noticed that...

6.It`s generally recognized that...

7.It`s likely that ...

8.It`s hardly that...

9.It’s hardly too much to say that...

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

11.There’s no denying the fact that...毫无疑问，无可否认

12.Nothing is more important than the fact that...

13.what’s far more important is that...

二、衔接句型

A case in point is ...

As is often the case...

As stated in the previous paragraph 如前段所述

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

But it’s a pity that...

For all that...In spite of the fact that...

Further, we hold opinion that...

However , the difficulty lies in...

Similarly, we should pay attention to...

not(that)...but(that)...不是，而是

In view of the present station.鉴于目前形势

As has been mentioned above...

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

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

I will conclude by saying...

Therefore, we have the reason to believe that...

All things considered,总而言之

It may be safely said that...

Therefore, in my opinion, it’s more advisable...

From what has been discussed above, we may safely draw the conclusion that….

The data/statistics/figures lead us to the conclusion that….

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

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

四、举例句型

Let’s take...to illustrate this.试举例以兹证明

let’s take the above chart as an example to illustrate this.

Here is one more example.

Take … for example.

The same is true of….

This offers a typical instance of….

We may quote a common example of….

Just think of….

五、常用于引言段的句型

1. Some people think that …. To be frank, I can not agree with their opinion for the reasons below.

2. For years, … has been seen as …, but things are quite different now.

3. I believe the title statement is valid because….

4. I cannot entirely agree with the idea that …. I believe….

5. My argument for this view goes as follows.

6. Along with the development of…, more and more….

7. There is a long-running debate as to whether….

8. It is commonly/generally/widely/ believed /held/accepted/recognized that….

9. As far as I am concerned, I completely agree with the former/ the latter.

10. Before giving my opinion, I think it is essential to look at the argument of both sides.

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.

2. There are many factors that may account for…, but the following are the most typical ones.

3. Many ways can contribute to solving this problem, but the following ones may be most effective.

4. Generally, the advantages can be listed as follows.

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, we’ve learned a lot.

4. As a result of /Because of/Due to/Owing to reading the book, we’ve learned a lot.

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.

财富，指具有价值的东西就称之为财富，包括自然财富、物质财富、精神财富等。下面是语文迷为大家整理的关于财富的英语名言，希望对你写作文有帮助。

Betrand Russell, British philosopher 乞丐并不羡慕百万富翁，尽管他们一定会羡慕比他们乞讨得多的乞丐。

英国哲学家罗素.B.

He that has a full purse never lacks a friend. Even in a busy market, nobody cares to know a poor person.

Anonymors 富在深山有远亲;贫在闹市无人识。

无名氏

All good things are cheap, all bad things are very dear.

Henry David Thoreau, Ameican writer 一切好的东西都是便宜的，所有坏的东西都是非常贵的。

美国作家梭罗。H.D.

Apply yourself to true riches; it is shameful to depend upon silver and gold for a happy life.

Lrcius Annaeus Seneca, Ancient Roman Philosopher 要争取真正的财富，靠金银谋取幸福是不光彩的。

古罗马哲学家西尼加.L.A.

I would rather have my people laugh at my economies than weep for my extravagance.

Oscar ll, Swedish king 我宁愿让我的人民嘲笑我的的小气也不愿让他们为我的挥霍而哭泣。

瑞典国王奥斯卡二世

A penny saved is a penny gained.

Richard Brckminster Fuller.American srchitect 省下一分钱等于得到一分钱。

美国建筑师富勒.R.B.

Beggars cannot be choosers.

Du Bose Heywood, American writer 乞丐不能挑肥拣瘦。

美国作家海伍德.D.B.

Creditors have better memories than debtors.

Benjamin Franklin. American president 放债的比借债记性好。

美国总统富兰克林。B.

Economy is in itself a source of great revenue.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Ancient Roman Philosopher 节约本身就是最大的收入 .

罗马哲学家 西尼加，L.A.

Economy is the poor man s mint; and extravagance the rich man s pitfall. 节约是穷人的造币厂，浪费是富翁的陷阱。

英国作家 塔泊.M

Few rich men own their property.The property owns them.

Robert Green Ingersoll. American Iawyer 极少富人拥有他们的财产，是财产拥有他们。

美国律师英格索尔.R.G.

If you would know the value of money, go and try to borrow some.

Benjamin Franklin, American presudent 要想知道钱的价值，就想办法去借钱试试。

美国总统富兰克林.B.

I finally know what distinguishes man from the other beasts:financial worries.

Jules Renard, French playwright 我终于明白人与野兽的区别在于：人为钱而担忧。

法国剧作家勒纳尔.J.

If rich, it is easy enough to conceal our wealth, but, if poor, it is not so easy to conceal our poverty. We shall find it less difficult to hide a thousand guineas, than one hole in our coat.

Charles C. Colton, British clergyman 如果富有，藏富很容易;如果贫穷，掩饰贫穷却很难。我们不难发现隐藏1000个金币比遮盖衣服上的一个破洞来得容易。

英国画妆师科尔顿.C.C

An ounce of prudence is worth a pound of gold.

Tobias Smollett, British writer 一盎司谨慎抵得上一磅黄金。

英国作家 .斯摩莱特 .T.

All the splendor in the world is not worth a good friend.

Voltaire, French thinker 人世间所有的荣华富贵不如一个好朋友。

法国思想家伏尔泰

关于财富的英语谚语

A bashful dog never fattens.害羞的狗养不胖。(bashful:害羞的)

A beggar can never be bankrupt,乞丐永远不会破产。

A beggar s purse is a I ways empty.乞弓存不住钱。

A borrowed loan should come laughing home.向人借贷应微笑返还。(借钱乐还，再借不难)。 读书笔记

A clear fast is better than a dirty breakfast.宁为清贫，不为法富。 内容来自

A covetous man does nothing that he should till he dies,贪娶之人，死后方尽其义务。

A covetous man is good to none, but worst to himself,贪娶之人，对人无益，对己更损。 读后感

A covetous woman deserves a swindling gallant,贪娶女郎的绝配就是负心汉。

A fool and his money are soon parted,傻子存不了钱。 内容来自

A heavy purse makes a light heart,钱袋沉甸甸，人就轻飘。

A lamb is as dear to a poor man as an ox to the rich,的黑羊比富人的牛更珍贵。

A light purse makes a heavy heart.?中无钱心事重。

A man does not wander far from where his corn is roast i ng.人不会远离财富的来源。 内容来自

A man has no more goods then he has good of.只有享用财富，才算真正拥有财舍田。 读后感

A man may love his house we I I without riding on the ridge.有宝何必人前夸。

A man without money is a bow without an arrow.人无钱，犹如弓无箭。 读后感

A man without money is no man at all. 一分钱难倒英雄汉。

A man’ s wealth is his enemy,财富是人之患也。

一、四级作文概述

四级作文是提纲作文，一般按提纲写出相应段落即可。在文章内容上无需追求高深新颖，切题合理便可落笔；在思路逻辑上则要求句意通顺，文字流畅；在文字表现上要求无语法错误，个别小错可忽略(如动介搭配，单词拼写等不涉及语法类小错)。另外，值得一提的是，在篇章结构上建议写三段，所以即便题目只给出两个提纲，最好在完成两个提纲后，再多补充一段，所补内容不限，但须跟话题相关。

二、四级作文例题分析

(1) The Shortage of Fresh Water

1. 目前淡水资源非常紧缺

2. 为什么会出现这种情况

3. 该如何解决

96年6月份曾考过此题，今天来看，似乎更有现实意义。这是一道负面社会现象题，那么挖掘其背后根源，并找出解决方案，就成为探讨的主要方面，而提纲也正是如此。三个提纲各属其类，界限清晰，直接按提纲写三段即可。段1为提出现象，确立研究对象。提纲1翻译后仅一句话，作为一段话则显内容单薄，字数匮乏，所以需进一步发挥。不妨从例证角度扩充，举例时即可基于国内现状，也可纵观全球，显然前者更易行。可从我国西南地区的生活缺水，水价上升，以及河流干涸等细节方面铺陈。段2是原因分析，建议分析主观原因和客观原因两方面。所谓主观原因即是基于人的思想意念，心理意识，行为动机以及行为举措，比如人们节约意识的淡漠或者人们误认为淡水取之不尽等不当想法。而客观原因则是从非人角度出发，如社会发展，人口激增，甚至污染的加剧等方面出发，这些因素均使得淡水消耗的增加。当然，考场上由于时间紧迫，无法细想，可能会写出的两个全是主观类或客观类的原因，其实也无妨，只要二者不同即可，谨防虽言明两原因，但实则彼此混淆，出现逻辑不清的窘况。段3是措施分析，措施可从官方措施和民众措施两方面写起，也可加入作为现代年轻人，我该如何约束自己，从生活中小事做起节约水资源等内容。总之，在内容上考生尽可发挥想象力，纵马驰骋，原则依旧：切题者皆可。

(2)Part-time Jobs for College Students

1.目前大学校园里很多学生业余时间做兼职

2.对于大学生是否该做兼职工作，人们看法不一

3.我的看法

这是一道校园话题，在内容上即涉及现象，又涉及观点，能很好地考察到学生的综合分析能力。提纲1依旧是现象提出，看到提纲1，大家脑海里会浮现很多熟悉的场景，如校园布告栏里张贴着的兼职广告，校园论坛上也经常发布的一些兼职信息等等，这些都可反映在段1中。所以当我们第一眼看到话题或提纲时，脑海中常常会浮现出相关场景，把这些画面定格，进行详细描绘即可，即自然又切题。当然，段1也可从学生的兼职渠道以及兼职类型等方面加以发挥。总之，提纲是总领，而符合总领的任何附属内容都可写。段2是人们对此学生兼职的不同看法，一正一反。切记在表达上述两类观点时，提出其相关论据。段3是提出作者本人看法。本人看法既可选择上述任一方(只要不极端)，也可提出与上述均异的第三类观点，对于极度偏激的正反方观点则需做一番调和与勾兑(这个一般很少见)。需要提醒的是，继提出己方观点后，还应补充其他内容，如论据；也可写我的下一步做法，甚至可写我所认为的大家对此问题所应采取的对策云云。

(3)Private Cars of Today

1.目前私家车越来多了

2.私家车为人们带来的益处和问题

这道题只有两个提纲，所以建议在完成提纲要求内容之后再补充一段相关内容，可以在提纲2之后续补段3(如举措类：如何合理地限制私家车的出行以减少废气排放等等)，也可在1，2之间插入一段(如原因分析，即为何私家车越来越多)。先来看提纲1，依然是事实陈述，看到提纲1，会很容易联想到马路上川流不息的过往车辆，以及高峰期令人沮丧的堵车，那么即可将这些内容付诸笔端。再看提纲2，是私家车给人们生活带来的影响，该事实是一中性事实，则需辩证地分析其影响的两面性，一方面它带来好处，如让人们的出行变得更自由更方便，另一方面它带来坏处，如排放废气，污染环境，或造成交通堵塞等等。

1.用形容词"very"，"single"等表示强调

eg.You are the very person Im looking for.

你就是我要找的那个人。

Red Army fought a battle on this very spot.

红军就在此地打过一仗。

Not a single person has been in the office this afternoon.

今天下午竟然没有一个人来过办公室。

2.用反身代词表示强调

e.g.I myself will see her off at the station.

我将亲自到车站为她送行。

You can do it well yourself.

你自己能做好这件事情。

3.用助词"do/does/did+动词原形"表示强调

e.g.The baby is generally healthy，but every now and then she does catch a cold.

那孩子的健康状况尚好，但就是偶尔患感冒。

Do be quiet.I told you I had a headache.

务必安静，我告诉过你，我头疼。

4.用"...and that"，"...and those"，等结构表示强调

e.g.They fulfilled the task，and that in a few days.

他们在几天内完成的就是那项任务。

I gave her some presents，and those the day before yesterday.

前天我送给她的就是那些礼物。

5.用双重否定结构表示强调

e.g.There is no reason why this new immigrant should not have the same success.

完全有理由相信这些新移民应该拥有相同的成功。

A man can never have too many ties.

一个男人有再多的领带也不为过。

I cant thank you too much.

我无论怎样感谢你都不过份。

A mother can never be patient enough with her child.

I am not unfaithful to you.我对你无比忠诚。

6.用短语"in every way"，"in no way"，"by all means"，"by no means"，"only too"，"all too"，"but too"，"in heaven"，"in the world"，"in hell"，"on earth"，"under the sun"等表示强调

e.g.His behaviour was in every way perfect.

他的举止确实无可挑剔。

The news was only too true.

这消息确实是事实。

Where in heaven were you then?

当时你到底在哪里?

7.用倒装句表示强调

8.用强调句型表示强调

It is that或 It is who

e.g.It was the headmaster who opened the door for me.

正是校长为我开的门。

It was yesterday that we carried out that experiment.

就是在昨天我们做了那个实验。

在学习英语写作之前先来看下练习写作对你的英文有什么样的帮助：

好处1、辅助提升口语语言组织力

好处2、提升语法

好处3、帮助背单词和句型。

了解到联系英语写作带来的好处后让我们来看看学习英语写作有哪些方法：

零基础英语写作入门方法一：背单词

单词是英语写作的基本构成之一，拥有大量的词汇才能写出你想要的文章，背单词有很多方法用mp3在零碎的时间边听边背边写，还有单词前后缀记忆法等众多方法，只要掌握其中一种适合你的方法，就开始大量的充实你的词汇吧。

零基础英语写作入门方法二：语法

语法是将单词串联在一起变成文章的那根线，学习好语法是整个英语阅读的重中之重。推荐熟读语法俱乐部，同时搭配大量的阅读自己感兴趣的文章，在大量的语境中去领受感悟本书的妙处。

零基础英语写作入门方法三：长时间的练习

写日记，这是最简单最长久的写作练习你不需要有任何的准备，这是你会接触到最基础的写作练习，你可以写任何你感兴趣的事情，你要做的就是拿起笔和本子把自已生活上的点点滴滴用英文记录下来。下面就是我的第一篇英文日记！

"today i rest,i stayed at home.sister call me go to the mother.i want not go there,because i must go to the company .去领 clothes.刚刚上完课come back.at home i find my 皮 shoes.now 要穿皮shoes了,write 日记好搞笑，还可以写点english了,i believe 以后 i sure i会更好。”

大家可能会看不懂这篇文章。你可能会觉得很好，说老实话当我现回过头去看我以前的日记我看了也觉得很好笑。但这就是我的第一篇英文日记，我的英文写作就是从这里开始的。你会发现写得非常直白，简直就是中文翻译毫无语法可言。但没有关系每个人开始都是这样的。

在写日记的开始阶段，你可能会像我这样不知道怎么去写或跟本无法组织语言，你可以像我这样按自已大脑里中文的想法去写，把会的单词都写上去不会的就用中文代替。在这个阶段你更多的是在使用你所学的词汇，有时候你会觉得这样很好玩。每天坚持写一篇，慢慢的你会发现你用的中文越来越少了有时候整篇文章都可以用英文写出来，随着你英语学习的进度不断推进，你在写句子的时候你不会直译了，你开始吧语法考虑到你的语言组织里面去。

当你要表边一个句子又找不到这个单词的时候，这种映像会深深的印在你的脑海里，当你在收集单词时候你就会注意收集那些非常实用的单词了。你会背更多的单词因为你想终有一天我的整篇文章是用英文写的。对于初期的写作，我认为就是这样写吧，请注意兴趣的培养。

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。

英文写作是一种综合能力训练，临阵磨枪是不能取得好成绩的，也是不可取的，应该重视平时的英语作文训练。下面是小编帮大家整理的英语写作教学方法，希望大家喜欢。

高考英语作文占25分，有着不可忽视的比重，它足可以说明写作教学在高中英语教学中占有相当重要的位置。然而高考现状却不乐观，部分学生由于平时缺乏足够的训练，所以对英语写作要么感到无从下手，充满畏难情绪，胡乱写些英语单词或不着边际的句子充当字数，权作心理慰藉；要么用词不当，构句无章，错误频出，行文不流畅，表达不地道，无写作质量可言。如何提高学生的写作水平和促进写作教学呢？笔者认为应注意下列几个问题：

一、注重写作教学的基本训练阶段

语言教学最高层次是应用。英语属于结构语言，它有自己的基本句型、固定搭配、固定短语等，这些都是不可变的，要想在写作中用上它们，用好它们，必须加强这方面的基本训练。首先，加强五种基本句型结构教学。几乎所有的英语句型都是五种句型的扩大、延伸或变化，因此训练学生“写”就要抓住五种基本句型的训练，让他们把这五种基本句型记牢，不断运用。五种基本句型是：

(1)S＋V；

(2)S＋V＋O；

(3)S＋V＋O＋O；

(4)S＋V＋P；

(5)S＋V＋O＋C。

五种基本句型虽然能表达一定的意思，但无法比较自由地表达思想，因此还必须对学生进一步进行扩句训练，在课堂上充分发挥学生的想像力，进行扩句练习。其次，加强句型教学，要对一些句子进行分析，增强他们利用各种句子进行一意多种表达的训练。再次，充分利用新教材中“巩固语言的练习，”对学生进行基本语感的训练。

二、注重写作训练的多样化

听、说、读、写四种技能是相互依赖的，说的能力有赖于听的能力，进而有助于写作。听是理解和吸收口头信息的手段。听和读是输入，只有达到足够的输入量，才能保证学生具有较好的说和写的输出能力。因此，在日常的教学中要注重写作训练的多样化。

首先，在Dialogue的教学中，除了听录音、对话、表演和编写相似的对话外，还要求学生把对话改写成一段短文，这样就要求学生在变成短文的过程中，注意时态、语态、人称和前后的逻辑关系，从而为写作打下基础。

其次，在Reading教学中，回答问题时要求学生必须用自己的语言，且人称、时态要做相应的变化，这样既能搞懂本意，又能用同义句表达，提高了表达能力。还要让学生用课文中的词组进行复述，学生复述课文不是件容易的事，既要把握课文中的重点，逻辑关系，又要用自己的语言把主要内容表达出来。这样既锻炼了他们组织篇章结构、句子与句子之间逻辑关系的能力，又提高了语言的精炼度，使自己的写作能力有了很快地提高。

再次，在“Listening”教学中，除了让学生听懂做完听力练习之外，还让他们把练习作为guide进行复述听力材料，有时还让他们写在作文本上。

三、注重写作训练的规范化

高中起始阶段的写作训练，培养学生的写作模式是非常重要的。我按教师用书上说明的写作步骤，即：①构思(讨论题目)；②写提纲(理顺思想的逻辑关系)；③起草(打草稿)；④校订(检查错误，重新安排内容)；⑤修改(定稿)。对学生进行写作模式的训练。这样看起来比较麻烦，但避免了反复，养成了好的写作习惯。再就是书写和文体格式要规范。严格要求学生正确、端正、熟练地书写字母、单词和句子，注意大小写和标点符号，养成良好的书写习惯。。同时对各种文体特点、格式要讲清楚，使学生熟悉规范的书面表达形式，用正确的标准评析和规范自己的书面表达。

四、注重教师的指导作用

教师批改是写作教学的有机组成部分，批改过程中，教师的指导作用就在于肯定学生的成绩，指出错误，给学生以恰当的评价。但在批改过程中，如果抓住学生的错误不放，有错必纠，改到最后，就变成了教师自己的作品；如果对错误视而不见，写得再多也收效甚微。我根据教学实践，对于新教材中的“有指导的写”的写作训练，规定学生限时写完，同桌、前后桌互相批改，重新行文，再上交。这样批改起来就非常轻松，而且典型错误，很容易找出，有利于讲评。对于新教材中的“自由写作”训练，我指导学生弄清主题，抓住要点，组词造句，安排好顺序，过渡到段落形成短文，多用熟悉的单词和句型，多用五种基本句型表达。然后让学生共同研究，互相评论写好的草稿，以便最后写出修改的稿子来，这就有助于减轻教师修改作业的负担，也有利于学生写作水平的提高。

总之，英文写作是一个学生综合能力的书面体现，是一个长期复杂的训练过程。因此，培养学生的写作能力不能一蹴而就，而要在平时从学生的实际水平出发，有目的、有计划、有要求、有检查、有反馈地进行，由易到难，循序渐进。只有这样，到高考时才能做到厚积薄发、思如泉涌、下笔如有神。

一、基础写作训练的方法

1.利用课文的词、句复习，训练学生的组句能力。从词和句入手，将每个单元课文的词和句与基础写作结合起来，是培养和提高学生的英语能力的有效途径。这不仅能帮助提高学生记忆和灵活应用词汇的能力，而且还有助于训练学生语句表达的正确性。

(1)归纳词汇和句型，帮助学生建立对词、句使用的感性认识。写作是一种语言的输出形式，只有大量的语言输入，语言输出才有可能;只有积累了一定的感受和大量的语言素材，写作才有可能进行。为了帮助学生记忆课文中的单词和短语，达到积累语言素材，掌握基本语法知识与语句结构的目的，教师可以从训练学生归纳每个单元课文中出现的重要词汇、短语和常用句型入手，使学生对句型结构的认识更加清楚，并对词、句的使用语境形成感性的认识。

(2)操练词汇和句型，训练学生的记忆和使用词、句的能力。为了使学生掌握和应用课文中所学词汇和句型，教师应为学生创设多层次的练习活动，拓宽写作的训练途径。教师可采用将学生从课文中归纳的词汇、句型进行词类转换、习惯用法、句型转换、完型填空、写短文等形式的训练，帮助提高学生的记忆和使用词、句的能力。

二、借鉴课文词、句进行仿写。

通过提供情景让学生模仿造句，不仅可以降低写作难度，而且可以增加学生写作的兴趣、自信和成就感，使学生的遣词造句的能力在实践中得到提升。

三、借鉴课文句型，训练写作多种表达与技巧，拓展学生思维。

教师在教学实践中会发现，学生在基础写作中往往出现句式雷同、语句呆板、行文单一等现象，缺乏用5个句子有效表达和传输信息的能力。因此，教师就有必要继续进一步加强句子多样化表达、句子转换替代、句子合并等训练，教会学生使用不同的短语、句型结构表达同一的意义;同时，还让学生明白写作的逻辑原则:一个句子表达的信息量越多，而且使用的句子越精练、清楚，那么句意表达和传输信息就越有效。

四、利用课文体裁，训练学生谋篇布局的能力。

教师会发现高三学生在写作中存在的另一个问题是层次不清、结构散乱以及逻辑性不强，这是因为学生缺乏谋篇布局的能力。针对这方面问题，教师可以在教学中利用课文的体裁进行文章结构方面的训练以及进行句子、段落间的连接训练。

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

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。