英语书信写作模板大学【通用20篇】

No classical work could pervade every cubic centimeter of air with such cultural fragrance but she.

No judicious sage could merge various elements as a magnificent poem but she.

No green tree could consist of vivid cells arousing every hearts anxiety for being young forever but she.

She is my university Fudan University.

The first time I entered the campus as a freshman, I was deeply attracted by her cultural atmosphere and historical connotation. Fudan is a graceful lady who is accustomed to serenity but meanwhile each action of hers outpours her innermost tern perament. Apparently it is worth every effort to probe into her world for the sake of both physical and mental enrichment. Her humanistic spirit inspires me to care for everything around, even the most trivial one.

On the other hand, catching up with the times, Fudan is modern and smart. You see, the many age-old buildings here are actually great libraries and labs. Scientific and technological developrnent is easily smelt in the air,because she never lags behind the world.

Fabulously, such a historical and scientific school is far more than an operational mechanism. Her everlasting youth and vigor beam through every corner of the campus and the young in school vivify every piece of concrete and wood here. What makes me happy and strong is that it perpetuates me with unfading energy. And it is definitely beneficial for me to be granted enthusi。

大学是我们每一个人梦想的殿堂，为了来到这个殿堂我们经历了风风雨雨。既然跨进了这道门槛，那么就让我们在这梦想的殿堂里尽情的挥洒个性吧。下面小编带来的是适应大学生活的英语作文，希望对你有帮助。

If life is a book, then the university life is the most beautiful color in the book; if life is a drama, then the university life is the most wonderful scene of the play, if life is a long journey from birth to death; then we have a college life, can see the most splendid scenery. Friends, at the best time of your life, have you set sail to the ideal shore? Have you stretched out your strong wings and are heading for the free sky? Are you excited by entering the University, and your heart is willing to make the next wish and fight for it?

In the long dream, we bided sword, those unforgettable days are still visible before the eyes. In the day of harvest in our understanding through their own efforts to accomplish one thing is how meaningful, and we walked together to the beautiful campus, stand together through storm and stress. Standing at the new starting point, I was so excited, and so was so...

However, in the university life picture spread, I found in search of searching the end are not past the heart of "the person is in the dim light of joy". The dream he found Baidu, was veiled. This time, I have been confused and wandering, but time will not stop it from footsteps, forward Zhu Ziqing wrote "when I wash my hands, in the past day from the basin; when you eat, the days from their jobs in the past; when silent, the double eyes ningran from the past. I am aware of his hurry... " Yes, time is like water, and there are still many things to do in our life. For dreams, lets cherish our time and accumulate bit by bit from now on, so that our university life will become richer, richer and more rhythmic.

In life I hope happy with success, I know the smile in every youth season, the call of the sea: we will not let the courage to fight back in the waves, blue sky call, cannot let fly wings degradation in dark clouds.

We all have the dreams and the pursuit of the people, do not give up the pace of progress because of the difficult road. The process of pursuing the dream is bitter, but only through the sharpened life will have more connotations. Do not let uneasy heart be impetuous occupy, but ride the soul of the wings to learn knowledge on campus, learn from different levels of people in a better way to behave. In four years, it is very difficult to persist, but giving up is very easy. We always believe that winter is coming, spring is not far away, not through the winter without warm nor Zhichun, not through the desert water sweet, without fail do not understand the joy of success. Because the young, we are likely to fail, but it is young gave us courage and never give up capital. As long as we walk all the way through our feet with passion, we will eventually win.

The university is full of talent, learning, and a small stage and small society full of competition and challenge. Every one of us in this stage plays a different role, why dont we try to play the role of their best! As a college student, we are eager to positive rather than blind impulse, bold and not wantonly recklessly, dare to think and not utopian, deep into thinking and not like a dead end...... Lets seize the youth and exercise ourselves here. Leave your hard figure in the organization activities, show your most beautiful appearance in the club activities, and offer your strength in volunteering. Here you get not only a kind of knowledge, but also the most valuable wealth of life. When we were young, in their prime, pointing Jiangshan jiyangwenzi. Let the flower of life give birth to the color of youth, and let the youth glow because of vitality. The university campus, not do not, only unexpected, let us give full play to our talents! People are less living, the university is the most cherished. Lets not let the youth idle away, and load a little gain in every days life, so that a confident smile will float on your face, and I believe firmly that there will be rewards for giving and passionate excitement.

The university is not a fantasy, not a dream, not a delusion, but a great ideal. As long as we fight for it, fight for it. One day we will return! You will hear the maple leaf flow boat at that time, you will see the Chrysopsis laughing, you can smell the fruit fragrance, for you to the harvest season!

[ 适应大学生活的英语作文

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。

考试就要开始了，对还有什么不了解的呢？为考生们提供各种面试、学习、择校等技巧及经验，希望可以帮助大家考得好成绩。在这里先网预祝大家考出理想成绩。

1.表文章结构顺序：

Firstofall,Firstly/First,Secondly/Second…

Andthen,Finally,Intheend,Atlast

2.表并列补充关系的：

Whatismore,Besides,Moreover,

3.表转折对比关系的：

However,Onthecontrary,but

Ononehand…Ontheotherhand…Some…，whileothers…

4.表因果关系的：

Because,As、So,Therefore,Asaresult

5.表换一种方式表达：

Inotherwords

6.表进行举例说明：

Forexample,句子;Forinstance,句子;suchas+n/doing

7.表陈述事实：Infact

8.表达自己观点：

AsfarasIknow,Inmyopinion

9.表总结：

Inshort,Inaword.

文中正确使用两三个好的句型，如：感叹句、宾语从句、动名词做主语等。

宾语从句举例：

IbelieveTianjinwillbemorebeautifulandprosperous.

感叹句举例：

HowIwanttostudyinthebestmiddleschoolinGuangzhou!

动名词做主语举例：

Readingbooksandswimmingaremyhobbies.

常用状语从句句型：

1)时间：

when,not…until(直到…才…)，assoonas(一…就…)

2)目的：

sothat+clause;(为了)

3)结果：

so…that…(如此…以至于…)，too…todo(太……以至于……)

4)条件：

if,unless(除非)，aslongas(只要)

5)比较：

as…as…(与…一样)，notso…as…，than

以上即是网为大家整理的英语作文写作技巧，大家还满意吗?希望对大家有所帮助!

Today after dinner, I sat on the sofa, to my college life began in the imagination.

My fantasy to our campus: the east is where the game of many students aspire to, a few sunshine big boy is playing in the playground, with one; The west is business lush bamboo forest, in the school green, let a person feeling refreshed, cui lust flow; The south is the place where our school knowledge, lang langs top coming from the classroom. North school gate is open, the "long" many "spikes", in order not to let the thief to enter easily.

My fantasy to our school uniforms: corridor, strange graffiti greeted. "Also I diaoyu islands!" "Reading for the rise of the Chinese," ah, these are the original good patriotic youth! "Mat" miles incense "brand insoles, for shame to his feet." "Drink kidney treasure, forever." Hey, these young grew up dream turned out to be a salesman! "Accidentally drops of kidney!" "It is not a good day." Ah, the youth is in a sad state. "I is the yan Lao tze, I biggest!" "I live in a mental hospital, room 302." This - let me call them what is youth?

Oh dear! Dad told me to go shopping together, bye bye, see you next time!

今天吃完饭后，我坐在沙发上，对我的大学生活展开了无限的想象。

我，幻想到了我们的校园：东边是许多同学向往的游戏地方，几个阳光大男孩在操场是玩耍，你追我赶;西边是学校里生意葱茏的竹林，翠色欲流的绿色让人神清气爽，;南边是我们学校知识的地方，朗朗的读书声从教室里传来;北面是敞开的学校大门，上面“长”了许多“尖刺”，为的是不让小偷轻易进入。

我，幻想到了我们的校服：走廊上，千奇百怪的涂鸦映入眼帘。“还我钓鱼岛!”“为中华之崛起而读书”呀，原来这些都是爱国的好青年啊!“垫‘十里香’牌鞋垫，要脚不要脸。”“喝肾宝，长生不老。”哟，这些青年长大的梦想原来是做推销员哪!“偶滴肾哪!”“今天不是个好日子。”哎，这些青年正处在伤心的境界。“偶是阎王老子，偶最大!”“我住精神病院302室。”这这---让我叫他们是什么青年好呢?

哎呀!爸爸叫我一起上街，拜拜，下次见!

How to protect our environment

We all know it is becoming more and more important to protect our environment well.We should stop cutting down trees ,dropping litter everywhere and throwing waste before it is processed. It has caused lots of problems such as much rich land becomes desert;Rivers become dirty ;The air is becoming worse and worse ;The temperature is becoming hotter and hotter.So we must do something to change the situation.Wed better walk or ride bikes to work or go to school instead of driving a car,We mustnt use plastic bags.Our government must take some measures to prevent factories producing smoking etc.

[关于环境污染的大学英语作文

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。

在这一步骤中还需注意三方面问题：

1、确保提纲中段落结构的思路与各段主题句的一致性。只有这样，才能保证所写段落不偏题、不跑题。

2、要综合考虑各个段落的内容安排，避免段落内容的交叉。

3、用好连接词，注意段落间、句子间的连贯性。要做到所写文章层次分明，思路清晰，文字连贯，就需要在句与句之间、段与段之间架起一座座桥梁，而连接词起的正是桥梁作用。

在扩展的过程中也有些窍门，以下几点可供参考：

1、在整篇文章中，避免只是用一两个句式或重复用同一词语。英语中存在着极为丰富的同义词，准确地使用同义词可以给读者清新的感觉。同时要灵活运用各种句式，如倒装句、强调句、省略句、主从复合句、对比句、分词短语、介词短语等，从而增加文章的可读性。

2、使用不同长度的句子。如果一个意思用一句话写不清楚的话，通过分句和合句或用两句、三句来表达，增强句子的连贯性和表现力。

3、改变句子的开头方式，不要总是以主、谓、宾、状的次序。可以把状语至于句首，或用分词等。

4、学会使用过渡词。递进furthermore，moreover，besides，in addition，then，etc ;转折however，but，nevertheless，afterwards，etc ;总结finally，at last，in brief，to conclude，etc ;强调really，indeed，certainly，surely，above a11，etc ;对比in the same way，just as，on the other hand，etc。

5、确定文章用第几人称写，基本时态是什么。使用人称时人物不能张冠李戴或指代不明。时态要尽量保持一致。

检查修改：要检查复核，不要写完了事。

要留时间通读全文，修改可能出现的错误。检查上下文是否连贯，句子衔接是否自然流畅。检验的标准主要是句子是否通畅，该用连词的地方用了没有，所用的连词是否合适，是否有语法错误，主谓是否一致，动词的时态、语态、语气的使用是否正确，词组的搭配是否合乎习惯，是否有大小写、拼写、标点错误等，还有就是注意卷面整洁。

可归纳为：中心突出，主题明确;层次清楚，条理清晰;表达

下面是语文迷网小编为大家整理的中考英语作文万能句型，欢迎大家阅读参考。

一、开头句型选择

1. 关于……人们有不同的观点。一些人认为……

There are different opinions among people as to ____ 。Some people suggest that____。

2. 俗话说(常言道)……，它是我们前辈的经历，但是，即使在今天，它在许多场合仍然适用。

There is an old saying______。 Its the experience of our forefathers，however，it is correct in many cases even today.

3.现在，……，它们给我们的日常生活带来了许多危害。首先，……;其次，……。更为糟糕的是……。

Today， ____， which have brought a lot of harms in our daily life. First， ____ Second，____。 What makes things worse is that______。

4.现在，……很普遍，许多人喜欢……，因为……，另外(而且)……。

Nowadays，it is common to ______。 Many people like ______because ______。 Besides，______。

5.任何事物都是有两面性，……也不例外。它既有有利的一面，也有不利的一面。

Everything has two sides and ______is not an exception，it has both advantages and disadvantages.

6.关于……人们的观点各不相同，一些人认为(说)……，在他们看来，……

People’s opinions about ______ vary from person to person.Some people say that ______。To them，_____。

7.人类正面临着一个严重的问题……，这个问题变得越来越严重。

Man is now facing a big problem ______which is becoming more and more serious.

8.……已成为人的关注的热门话题，特别是在年青人当中，将引发激烈的辩论。

______ has become a hot topic among people，especially among the young and heated debates are right on their way.

9.……在我们的日常生活中起着越来越重要的作用，它给我们带来了许多好处，但同时也引发一些严重的问题。

______ has been playing an increasingly important role in our day-to-day life.it has brought us a lot of benefits but has created some serious problems as well.

10.根据图表/数字/统计数字/表格中的百分比/图表/条形图/成形图可以看出……。很显然……，但是为什么呢?

According to thefigure/number/statistics/percentages in the /chart/bar graph/line/graph，it can be seen that______while. Obviously，______，but why?

11、Recently， the problem of … has aroused people’s concern.

最近，…问题已引起人们的关注。

12、Internet has been playing an increasingly important role in our day-to-day life. It has brought a lot of benefits but has created some serious problems as well.

互联网已在我们的生活中扮演着越来越重要的角色。它给我们带来了许多好处，但也产生了一些严重的问题。

13、Nowadays，(overpopulation) has become a problem we have to face.

如今，(人口过剩)已成为我们不得不面对的问题了。

14、With the development of science and technology， more and more people believe that…

随着科技的发展，越来越多的人认为…

二、结尾句型

1、Taking all these factors into consideration， we naturally come to the conclusion that…

把所有这些因素加以考虑，我们自然会得出结论…

2、Taking into account all these factors， we may reasonably come to the conclusion that…

考虑所有这些因素，我们可能会得出合理的结论…

3、Hence/Therefore， we’d better come to the conclusion that…

因此，我们最好得出这样的结论…

4、There is no doubt that (job-hopping) has its drawbacks as well as merits.

毫无疑问，跳槽有优点也有缺点。

5、All in all， we cannot live without… But at the same time we must try to find out new ways to cope with the problems that would arise.

总之，我们没有…是无法生活的。但同时，我们必须寻求新的解决办法来对付可能出现的新问题。

6、It is high time that we put an end to the (trend)。

该是我们停止这一趋势的时候了。

7、It is time to take the advice of … and to put special emphasis on the improvement of …

该是采纳…的建议，并对…的进展给予特殊重视的时候了。

8、不用说…… It goes without saying 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.

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

是重要的 It is important(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。

According to many people, university is aspringboard towards better jobs or higher salaries, and their only goal ofuniversity education is to get a degree. Why do you go to university? I believedifferent people have different answers to this question. As far as I amconcerned, I do not agree with their opinion that university education is aspringboard. Let me name my reasons.

First of all, university education can helpstudent cultivate sentiments. People who are having university education mustlearn much more knowledge. This knowledge will help them cultivate their tastefrom their inside heart. What’s more, the atmosphere in college is also helpfulin developing students’ personal quality.

Secondly, university education is a goodplace for students to prepare for going to society. College doesn’t like highschool. Students have to learn many things besides study. This is the finalstage before they enter the society for most students. Having universityeducation helps them adapt the society easily.

Thirdly, university educationwill let students have a further knowledge in one field. Before going to university,students have to choose their major. This is because they have to learn specializedknowledge in that field. If they want to success, having knowledge about onething deeply is necessary.

To sum up, university education has manyfunctions. It is not only a springboard for better jobs or higher salaries. Theycan’t set their goal for university education is to get a degree. It deservesmore.

对于许多人来说，大学是一个走向更好的工作和更高的工资的跳板，他们在大学教育中唯一的目标就是获得学位。你为什么上大学呢？我认为这个答案是因人而异的。对我来说，我不同意他们认为大学教育只是一个跳板的看法。让我列举我的原因。

首先，大学教育可以帮助学生陶冶情操。接受过大学教育的人肯定能学到更多的知识。而这些知识可以帮助他们从里培养他们的情操。再者，大学的氛围也是有助于培养学生的个人素质。

其次，大学教育是让学生做好进入社会的地方。大学不像高中。除了学习之外学生还得做很多别的事情。对于大多数人来说这是他们进入社会前的最后阶段。拥有大学教育可以帮助他们更容易地适应社会容易。

第三，大学教育可以让学生在一个领域中学到深刻的知识。在上大学前，学生们要选择自己的专业。这是因为他们要在某一领域学习专业的知识。如果想成功，深入学习是很重要的。

总之，大学教育的作用多多。它不仅仅只是获得更好工作或者薪水的跳板。人们不应该把大学教育的目标设定为拿到学位。它有更多的价值。

[大学教育的目标英语作文

它既是探讨问题进行学术研究的一种手段，又是描述学术研究成果进行学术交流的一种工具。小编收集了大学论文的写作基础要求，欢迎阅读。

一、坚持理论联系实际的原则

撰写毕业论文必须坚持理论联系实际的原则。理论研究，特别是社会科学的研究必须为现实服务，为社会主义现代化建设服务，为两个文明建设服务。理论来源于实践，又反作用于实践。科学的理论对实践有指导作用，能通过人们的实践活动转化为巨大的物质力量。科学研究的任务就在于揭示事物运动的规律性，并用这种规律性的认识指导人们的实践，推动社会的进步和发展。因此，毕业论文在选题和观点上都必须注重联系社会主义现代化建设的实际，密切注视社会生活中出现的新情况、新问题。

坚持理论研究的现实性，做到理论联系实际，就必须迈开双脚，深入实际，进行社会调查研究。这也是我们正确认识社会的基本途径。人们只有深入到实际中去，同客观事物广泛接触，获得大量的感性材料，然后运用科学的逻辑思维方法，对这些材料进行去粗取精，去伪存真，由此及彼，由表及里的加工制作，才能从中发现有现实意义而又适合自己研究的新课题。在我国改革开放的实践中，新情况、新问题、新经验层出不穷，需要研究的问题遍布社会的方方面面，只要我们对现实问题有浓厚的兴趣和高度的敏感性，善于捕捉那些生动而具有典型性的现实材料，通过深入的思考和研究，就能从中引出有利于社会主义现代化建设的规律性认识，提高毕业论文的价值。当然撰写毕业论文可选择的课题十分广泛，并不只限于现实生活中的问题，也可以研究专业基本理论，中西方比较研究等。但无论选择什么研究课题，都必须贯彻理论联系实际的原则，做到古为今用，洋为中用，从历史的研究中吸取有益于现实社会发展的经验教训，从对外国的研究中，借鉴其成功经验和失败的教训，或为我国的对外政策提供某些依据。

贯彻理论联系实际的原则和方法，必须认真读书，掌握理论武器。李瑞环同志指出：“强调联系实际，绝不意味着否定读书的重要，恰恰相反，更要认真地读，反复地读，深钻苦研，做到真正读懂弄通。否则，没有掌握理论，怎么谈得上理论联系实际?”(《求是》杂志1989年第24期)认真读书包括两个方面的内容，

一是学好专业课，具备专业基础知识。这是写好毕业论文的前提和必要条件。经验告诉我们，只有具备了相应水平的知识积累，才能理解一定深度的学术问题;同时，也只有具备了某一特定的知识结构，才能对某学科中的问题进行研究。正如黑格尔所说，在讨论学术问题之前，必须“先有具备某种程度的知识”，否则，“没有凭借作为讨论出发的根据，于是他们只能徘徊于模糊空疏以及毫无意义的情况中”。(小逻辑》第三版序言)

二是要认真学习马克思主义的基本原理，学会运用马克思主义的立场、观点和方法分析问题、解决问题。马克思主义正确地揭示了自然界、人类社会和思维发展的最一般规律，成为无产阶级和革命人民认识世界和改造世界的强大思想武器。马克思主义作为伟大的认识工具，虽然并不直接提供解决各种具体问题的答案，但它对我们如何正确地发现问题，分析和解决问题提供了正确的立场、观点和方法，因此，大学毕业生在撰写毕业论文时，应当努力学习和掌握马克思主义基本理论，自觉地用马克思主义的立场、观点和方法来指导毕业论文的写作。

二、立论要科学，观点要创新

(一)立论要科学

毕业论文的科学性是指文章的基本观点和内容能够反映事物发展的客观规律。文章的基本观点必须是从对具体材料的分析研究中产生出来，而不是主观臆想出来的。科学研究作用就在于揭示规律，探索真理，为人们认识世界和改造世界开拓前进的道路。判断一篇论文有无价值或价值之大小，首先是看文章观点和内容的科学性如何。

文章的科学性首先来自对客观事物的周密而详尽的调查研究。掌握大量丰富而切合实际的材料，使之成为“谋事之基，成事之道”。

其次，文章的科学性通常取决于作者在观察、分析问题时能否坚持实事求是的科学态度。在科学研究中，既不容许夹杂个人的偏见，又不能人云亦云，更不能不着边际地凭空臆想，而必须从分析出发，力争做到如实反映事物的本来面目。

再次，文章是否具有科学性，还取决于作者的理论基础和专业知识。写作毕业论文是在前人成就的基础上，运用前人提出的科学理论去探索新的问题。因此，必须准确地理解和掌握前人的理论，具有广博而坚实的知识基础。如果对毕业论文所涉及领域中的科学成果一无所知，那就根本不可能写出有价值的论文。

(二)观点要创新

毕业论文的创新是其价值所在。文章的创新性，一般来说，就是要求不能简单地重复前人的观点，而必须有自己的独立见解。学术论文之所以要有创新性，这是由科学研究的目的决定的。从根本上说，人们进行科学研究就是为了认识那些尚未被人们认识的领域，学术论文的写作则是研究成果的文字表述。因此，研究和写作过程本身就是一种创造性活动。从这个意义上说，学术论文如果毫无创造性，就不成其为科学研究，因而也不能称之为学术论文。毕业论文虽然着眼于对学生科学研究能力的基本训练，但创造性仍是其着力强调的一项基本要求。

当然，对学术论文特别是毕业论文创造性的具体要求应作正确的理解。它可以表现为在前人没有探索过的新领域，前人没有做过的新题目上做出了成果;可以表现为在前人成果的基础上作进一步的研究，有新的发现或提出了新的看法，形成一家之言3也可以表现为从一个新的角度，把已有的材料或观点重新加以概括和表述。文章能对现实生活中的新问题作出科学的说明，提出解决的方案，这自然是一种创造性;即使只是提出某种新现象、新问题，能引起人们的注意和思考，这也不失为一种创造性。国家科委成果局在1983年3月发布的《发明奖励条例》中指出：“在科学技术成就中只有改造客观世界的才是发明，……至于认识客观世界的科学成就，则是发现。”条例中对“新”作了明确规定：“新”是指前人所没有的。凡是公知和公用的，都不是“新”。这些规定，可作为我们衡量毕业论文创造性的重要依据。

根据《条例》所规定的原则，结合写作实践，衡量毕业论文的创造性，可以从以下几个具体方面来考虑：

(1)所提出的问题在本专业学科领域内有一定的理论意义或实际意义，并通过独立研究，提出了自己一定的认识和看法。

(2)虽是别人已研究过的问题，但作者采取了新的论证角度或新的实验方法，所提出的结论在一定程度上能够给人以启发。

(3)能够以自已有力而周密的分析，澄清在某一问题上的混乱看法。虽然没有更新的见解，但能够为别人再研究这一问题提供一些必要的条件和方法。

(4)用较新的理论、较新的方法提出并在一定程度上解决了实际生产、生活中的问题，取得一定的效果。或为实际问题的解决提供新的思路和数据等。

(5)用相关学科的理论较好地提出并在一定程度上解决本学科中的问题。

(6)用新发现的材料(数据、事实、史实、观察所得等)来证明已证明过的观点。

科学研究中的创造性要求对前人已有的结论不盲从，而要善于独立思考，敢于提出自己的独立见解，敢于否定那些陈旧过时的结论，这不仅要有勤奋的学习态度，还必须具有追求真理、勇于创新的精神。要正确处理继承与创新的关系，任何创新都不是凭空而来的，总是以前人的成果为基础。因此，我们要认真地学习、研究和吸收前人的成果。但是这种学习不是不加分析地生吞活剥，而是既要继承，又要批判和发展。

三、论据要翔实，论证要严密

(一)论据要翔实

一篇优秀的毕业论文仅有一个好的主题和观点是不够的，它还必须要有充分、翔实的论据材料作为支持。旁征博引、多方佐证，是毕业论文有别于一般性议论文的明显特点。一般性议论文，作者要证明一个观点，有时只需对一两个论据进行分析就可以了，而毕业论文则必须以大量的论据材料作为自己观点形成的基础和确立的支柱。作者每确立一个观点，必须考虑：用什么材料做主证，什么材料做旁证;对自己的观点是否会有不同的意见或反面意见，对他人持有的异议应如何进行阐释或反驳。毕业论文要求作者所提出的观点、见解切切实实是属于自己的，而要使自己的观点能够得到别人的承认，就必须有大量的、充分的、有说服力的理由来证实自己观点的正确。

毕业论文的论据要充分，还须运用得当。一篇论文中不可能也没有必要把全部研究工作所得，古今中外的事实事例、精辟的论述、所有的实践数据、观察结果、调查成果等全部引用进来，而是要取其必要者，舍弃可有可无者。论据为论点服务，材料的简单堆积不仅不能证明论点，强有力地阐述论点，反而给人以一种文章拖咨、杂乱无章、不得要领的感觉。因而在已收集的大量材料中如何选择必要的论据显得十分重要。一般来说，要注意论据的新颖性、典型性、代表性，更重要的是考虑其能否有力地阐述观点。

毕业论文中引用的材料和数据，必须正确可靠，经得起推敲和验证，即论据的正确性。具体要求是，所引用的材料必须经过反复证实。第一手材料要公正，要反复核实，要去掉个人的好恶和想当然的推想，保留其客观的真实。第二手材料要究根问底，查明原始出处，并深领其意，而不得断章取义。引用别人的材料是为自己的论证服务，而不得作为篇章的点缀。在引用他人材料时，需要下一番筛选、鉴别的功夫，做到准确无误。写作毕业论文，应尽量多引用自己的实践数据、调查结果等作为佐证。如果文章论证的内容，是作者自己亲身实践所得出的结果，那么文章的价值就会增加许多倍。当然，对于掌握知识有限、实践机会较少的大学生来讲，在初次进行科学研究中难免重复别人的劳动，在毕业论文中较多地引用别人的实践结果、数据等，在所难免。但如果全篇文章的内容均是间接得来的东西的组合，很少有自己亲自动手得到的东西，那也就完全失去了写作毕业论文的意义。

(二)论证要严密

论证是用论据证明论点的方法和过程。论证要严密、富有逻辑性，这样才能使文章具有说服力。从文章全局来说，作者提出问题、分析问题和解决问题，要符合客观事物的规律，符合人们对客观事物认识的程序，使人们的逻辑程序和认识程序统一起来，全篇形成一个逻辑整体。从局部来说，对于某一问题的分析，某一现象的解释，要体现出较为完整的概念、判断、推理的过程。

毕业论文是以逻辑思维为主的文章样式，它诉诸理解大量运用科学的语体，通过概念、判断、推理来反映事物的本质或规律，从已知推测未知，各种毕业论文都是采用这种思维形式。社会科学论文往往是用已知的事实，采取归纳推理的形式，求得对未知的认识。要使论证严密，富有逻辑性，必须做到：(1)概念判断准确，这是逻辑推理的前提;(2)要有层次、有条理的阐明对客观事物的认识过程;(3)要以论为纲，虚实结合，反映出从“实”到“虚”，从“事”到“理”，即由感性认识上升到理性认识的飞跃过程。

此外，撰写毕业论文还应注意文体式样的明确性、规范性。学术论文、调查报告、科普读物、可行性报告、宣传提纲等都各有自己的特点，在写作方法上不能互相混同。

University, where many senior students yearn for. College life, every high school student is dreaming of something to experience. At least I was at that time. But, to tell you the truth, University is just a beautiful imagination for me at that time, but how on earth is it? I think I have a certain understanding of him now.

In the University, on no teacher, education and anti-corrosion tireless; not every day do not finish the exercises and test papers; not every day to score, ranking and anxious, upset...... During this month of experiencing college life, I had a deep impression on this matter: in the first class of the University, there were two girls who were late for a few minutes. But later, the teacher said, "in college, if you are late for class or want to leave early, you dont need to report, you just go in and out of the back door, and dont affect everyone." After that, I have encountered other things that I didnt even think about in high school. For example, you can get in and out of the dormitory and the school gate at any time, because you need to do something to skip classes.

So, I conclude that the university is a completely self-conscious process. If we are a nestling in high school, we can say that the university has grown up, away from the patronage of the parents, away from the teachers supervision, and the rest is only his own master.

So now we have to manage ourselves well, plan our beautiful university life, and make sure that we can laugh at our university life in the future.

The second characteristic is that the university has more time and space, there will be no university from 5 in the morning out of the dormitory class until 10 pm before going back to rest; not because of love to see "a dream of Red Mansions" but was afraid the teacher was found and hiding things, more importantly, there are a variety of activities waiting for you to participate in and experience in the University, and those in high school were regarded as a waste of time. In fact, from these things, we can also learn a lot of knowledge -- knowledge that is not in textbooks, learn many experiences or lessons, and learn the richness and richness of University.

So, I think, more important than knowledge is ability, and ability to cultivate a process, the university is such a good process.

Therefore, we need to seize every opportunity to better ourselves, improve ourselves, and enrich our university life, and win more fortune for ourselves.

University, and the various characteristics of the past:

In universities, where we can use mobile phones or computers, we can no longer bother to check electronic products for teachers, or even hide cellphones in trash cans or ceiling.

In addition to teaching outdoor, you can also go to library and participate in club activities. Besides, we dont have to live in monotonous or dull life everyday.

Universities do not have to make all sorts of reasons for asking for leave for a trip to the school.

The university will not be invited to the office by the teacher in charge of a few times with a friend of the opposite sex.

University,...

College life is really different from the learning life we have experienced in the past, and it contains at least a lot of surprises and highlights for me now. Of course, university life is too tempting for us, so this requires us to face with a correct and positive attitude and learn better address temptation.

If there is a chance that I can still struggle with university alumni to say a few words, I really want to tell them: work hard, strive for an early to experience college life, because imagination and true feelings really are different! I also want to say to the students who want to give up the University: University, it is a beautiful 4 years, do not leave a lifetime of regret for yourself!

In the end, I can also say: my college life is really wonderful!

大学，多少高三学子向往的地方。大学生活，每一个高中生都梦寐以求的的想去体验一番。至少当时的我是这样。但是，说句实话，大学对那时的我来说只是一种想象中的美好，但究竟如何，我想现在的我才对他有一定的了解。

在大学，不会再有老师苦口婆心的教诲和防腐不知疲倦的讲解；不会有每天做不完的习题和试卷；也不会天天为了分数、名次而焦急、苦恼……在体验大学生活的这一个月中，有这样一件事让我印象比较深刻：在大学的第一堂课上，有两个女生迟到了几分钟，按照以前的习惯打报告进教室。但后来老师说：“在大学中，如果你上课迟到或者有事想要早退的话，你不用打报告，只需悄悄地从后门出入，不要影响大家就好……”在这以后，我也遇到过其他在高中甚至想都不敢想的事情。比如可以随时出入宿舍和校门，因需要完成某事要逃课等。

所以，我总结出：大学，是一个完全靠自觉的过程。如果高中的我们还是一只雏鸟，那么大学的我们可以说已经长大，远离了父母的庇护，远离了老师的督促，剩下的只有自己做自己的主人。

所以，现在的我们要自己管好自己，自己规划自己美好的大学生活，并自己保证今后能够笑着谈起自己的大学生活。

大学的第二个特点就是有更多的时间和空间，大学中绝不会有从早上5点出宿舍上课直到晚上10点才回去休息的情况；也不会因为喜欢看《红楼梦》但怕被老师发现而东躲西藏的事情，更重要的是，在大学里有各种各样的活动等着你去参加和体验，而这些在高中都被视为纯属浪费时间的事情。其实，从这些事情中我们也能学到许多知识——课本里并没有的知识，学到许多经验或是教训，学到大学的丰富多彩……

所以，我认为，比知识更重要的是能力，而能力地培养需要一个过程，大学则是这样一个很好的过程。

所以，我们需要抓住每一个机会，更好地锻炼自己、提高自己，在丰富自己大学生活的同时，为自己多赢得几笔生活的财富！

大学，还有不同以往的种种特点：

大学，可以打手机、用电脑的地方，我们可以不必再为老师要查电子产品而苦恼，甚至把手机藏在垃圾桶里或者天花板上天；

大学，除教室外你还可以去图书馆、参加社团活动等地方，我们也不必过每天除了书本就是习题的单调、乏味的生活；

大学，不必为出一趟校门而绞尽脑汁地编各种请假理由；

大学，不会因为和某个异性朋友多说几次话而被班主任老师请进办公室；

大学，……

大学生活和以往我们经历过的学习生活真的不同，它至少对现在的我来说包含这太多的意外和精彩。当然，大学生活对我们来说也有太多的诱惑，所以这也就需要我们以正确、积极的心态去面对，学会更好的地址诱惑。

如果有机会可以让我跟还在为大学奋斗的学弟学妹们说几句心里话，我真的想告诉他们：好好努力，争取早点来体验大学生活，因为想象和真实的感受真的不一样！我也想对那些想要放弃大学的学生们说：大学，是美好的4年，不要给自己一生留下遗憾！

最后，也不妨说一句：我的大学生活，真的很精彩！

一、对全文进行归纳总结的句型

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

2.Taking into account all the factors, we may safely come to the conclusion that…

3.Judging from all the evidence offered, we may safely arrive at/reach the conclusion that…

4.All the evidence supports a sound conclusion that…

5.From what is mentioned above, we may come to the conclusion that…

6.To sum up/draw a conclusion, we find that…

7.In short/brief/a word/conclusion/sum/, it is…

8. Therefore/Thus/Then, it can be inferred/concluded/deduced that…

9. From/Through/According to what has been discussed above, we can come to/reach/arrive at/draw the conclusion that…

10. It is believed that…

二、表达个人观点的句型

1. As far as I am concerned, I agree with the latter opinion to some extent.

2. As far as I am concerned, I am really/completely in favor of the test/policy.

3. In conclusion/a word, I believe that…

4. There is some truth in both arguments, but I think the disadvantages of… outweigh its advantages.

5. In my opinion/view, we should…

6. As for me, I…

7. As I see , …

8. From my point of view, …

9. Personally/ I think…

10. My view is that…

11. I think/consider…

12. I take/hold a negative/positive view of…

三、表达建议的句型

1. It’s high time that we tried every possible means to put an end to…

2. It’s really high time we took measures to solve the problem of/put an end to…

3. There is still a long way to go towards solving the problem. We hope that efforts should be made to…

4. We must search for a quick action, because the present situation of…

5. There is no easy solution to the problem of…, but… might be useful.

6. There is no quick answer to the question of…, but … might be helpful.

7. It is necessary that effective/proper/quick actions/steps/measures be taken to…

8. It’s suggested that great efforts be made to…

9.To check/control the tendency/trend is no easy task, and it requires a good/deep awareness/consciousness/understanding of…

In a large, I need to do as much as possible to participate in some extracurricular activities, give yourself some training opportunities, including: regularly learning, understanding and practice of the party constitution, as well as their own words and deeds, feelings, as soon as possible through the audit, to join the Communist Party of China; actively participate in school the art style of campus activities, community activities, debate, speech contest, painting and calligraphy competition, in order to fully exercise the courage and ability to display personal style. Learn something new (simple dance, basketball, table tennis etc.) but the premise of all activities, must first learn! In the sophomore year, we must learn professional skills and make full use of school libraries, outsourced bookstores and network information, expand our horizons and expand our knowledge range, so as to inspire and develop our ideas and try to design academic innovation and technological innovation. Do more part-time jobs, contact more social practice, let yourself know more about the society, lay the foundation for entering the society after graduation, and prepare for some qualification tests. The target English is over four levels.

Machine two and so on. In the third, fully ready to go for a certificate, such as securities qualification certificate, qualification certificate and professional related to finished in Sandu, for the future lay the foundation for the accumulation of experience. You have to have some capital to talk to others. In the fourth year, the goal should be to improve the job hunting skills, collect the information of the company, and determine whether you want to get it. In professionalwritingacademicarticles, can boldly put forward their own views, exercise their ability to solve problems independently and creatively; to participate in the summer and professional work experience and exchange students work experience, understand the collection of information sources, and actively try to join the network, and have alumni, schoolmates talk about the job situation in previous years. More experience, as soon as possible for your career orientation, and try to make full preparation for the employment. Besides, we also need to develop the practical skills needed by the profession. Because employers, not only pay attention to the professional knowledge and skills of college students, but also pay attention to the plasticity of college students and some potential quality abilities. Take part in useful vocational training. Vocational training includes vocational skills training. Scientific evaluation of self professional ability, professional adaptability and professional values. In general, we should constantly improve the ability to cope with frustration, cultivate self - will and shape a good personality. Only with these basic abilities can we set up their own team and lay a solid foundation for their own development.

In the University, there is a popular sentence, "the university will regret for four years, and the university will regret for a lifetime without being in love." This view is at least disagreed at the moment. It may be an inevitable process to be in love at a university, and it should also be within the plan. It doesnt matter whether its important or not. Whats important is how to deal with it well. Its not only bad for oneself, but also affects itself, and more importantly, it may affect academic study and make oneself indulge in unrealistic imagination. Im afraid its not just regret for four years.

☆定语和状语（时间、地点等）都属于附加成分，在基本句型中一般都不列出。

☆时态包含于句子中，任何句子都有时态。

1主语＋谓语(不及物动词)：S+V

It will rain tomorrow.

He often runs in the morning.

They cried.

Tom exercises every day.

2主语＋谓语(及物动词)＋宾语：S+V+O

I miss my mother very much.

She wants to go home now.

The English club is going to hold an English party.

They all love her.

3主语＋系动词＋表语：S+V+P

The music sounds wonderful.

The leaves have turned red.

She is a student.

We keep silent about that.

4主语＋谓语(及物动词)＋间接宾语（人）＋直接宾语（物）：S+V+IO+DO

The teacher gave a book to him.=The teacher gave him a book.

They told me an interesting story.

The waitress offered me a bottle of wine.

My father will buy me a bike.=My father will buy a bike for me.

Miss Smith teaches us English.

5主语＋谓语(及物动词)＋宾语＋宾语补足语：                                      S+V+O+C

They call me Xiao Wang.

I saw him swimming in the river.

We elected him monitor of the class.

Dear Liu Dong,

Im back at school now. I wish to express my thanks to you for the wonderful vacation I spent with you and your family. During the vacation you taught me how to swim, boat and fish. I really appreciate① your taking time off work to take② me around and show me so many places.

Your mother is such a terrific③ cook! I think I must have gained 10 pounds just in the week I spent with you. Surely Ive spent a happy vacation, which will be remembered for long.

I hope you will be able to visit our school sometime. Thank you again. Lets keep in touch.

Thanksgiving day is the united states and canada,the festival.it

originated in more than 300 years ago a shipment of 100 many immigrants from

europe to america,hunger and cold it is difficult to live,and most people in the

first year was dying of hunger in winter,more than 50 people at the local

residents,the indian help to go fishing,hunting,and to plant corn and

pumpkin.the second year of harvests,a thank god,and invited to attend.the

indians with.This is the origin of thanksgiving day.later,president lincoln

proclaimed the united states each year on the fourth thursday in november for

thanksgiving.

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

南瓜灯(Jack-O-Lantern)是庆祝万圣节的标志物。下面语文迷网整理了关于南瓜灯的故事作文，希望对你有帮助。

One story about Jack， an Irishman， who was not allowed into Heaven because he was stingy with his money. So he was sent to hell. But down there he played tricks on the Devil (Satan)， so he was kicked out of Hell and made to walk the earth forever carrying a lantern.

Well， Irish children made Jacks lanterns on October 31st from a large potato or turnip， hollowed out with the sides having holes and lit by little candles inside. And Irish children would carry them as they went from house to house begging for food for the village Halloween festival that honored the Druid god Muck Olla. The Irish name for these lanterns was "Jack with the lantern" or "Jack of the lantern，" abbreviated as " Jack-o-lantern" and now spelled "jack-o-lantern."

The traditional Halloween you can read about in most books was just childrens fun night. Halloween celebrations would start in October in every elementary school.

关于万圣节有这样一个故事。是说有一个叫杰克的爱尔兰人，因为他对钱特别的吝啬，就不允许他进入天堂，而被打入地狱。但是在那里他老是捉弄魔鬼撒旦，所以被踢出地狱，罚他提着灯笼永远在人世里行走。

在十月三十一日爱尔兰的孩子们用土豆和萝卜制作“杰克的灯笼”，他们把中间挖掉、表面上打洞并在里边点上蜡烛。为村里庆祝督伊德神的万圣节，孩子们提着这种灯笼挨家挨户乞讨食物。这种灯笼的爱尔兰名字是“拿灯笼的杰克”或者“杰克的灯笼”，缩写为Jack-o-lantern 。

现在你在大多数书里读到的万圣节只是孩子们开心的夜晚。在小学校里，万圣节是每年十月份开始庆祝的。孩子们会制作万圣节的装饰品：各种各样桔红色的南瓜灯。

With time goes by， it becomes a bit hard for me to remember everything about myself at the first day of my college life。 However， there was one thing for sure that I did feel quite excited and curious about my university。 There is no doubt that students like me have struggled for a long time so that can be permitted to enter the university。

随着时间的流逝，记得在我的第一天大学生活对我来说变得有点困难了。然而，有一点是肯定的，我对大学真的感到很兴奋很好奇。毫无疑问，很多像我这样努力了很长时间才可以进入大学的学生。

Dear Jim，

I‘d like to tell you that I‘ve been a senior high school student now.

At the sight of my new school，I found it so wonderful that I can‘t describe it with all my words.There are many trees，bright rooms，as well as a large playground.In addition，(www.unjs.com)I‘ve met a lot of new friends，who are very friendly to me.Also，I‘ve taken my first English class in senior high school today.My teacher is not only knowledgeable but also a little interesting，which made me rather excited.

At the end of the day，I felt a little tired but more than happy，for I‘ve met so many interesting classmates.

Best wishes to you！

yours，

If life is a book, then the university life is the most beautiful color in the book; if life is a drama, then the university life is the most wonderful scene of the play, if life is a long journey from birth to death; then we have a college life, can see the most splendid scenery. Friends, at the best time of life, have you raised the sail to the other side of the ideal? Have you stretched out your strong wings and go to the free sky? Is it very exciting to get into the University, to make the next wish and strive for it?

In the long dream, we bided sword, those unforgettable days are still visible before the eyes. In the day of harvest in our understanding through their own efforts to accomplish one thing is how meaningful, and we walked together to the beautiful campus, stand together through storm and stress. Standing at the new starting point, I was so excited, and how was it???

However, in the university life picture spread, I found in search of searching the end are not past the heart of "the person is in the dim light of joy". The dream he found Baidu, was veiled. This time, I have been confused and wandering, but time will not stop it from footsteps, forward Zhu Ziqing wrote "when I wash my hands, in the past day from the basin; when you eat, the days from their jobs in the past; when silent, the double eyes ningran from the past. I am aware of his rush?? "yes! Time is like water, and we have a lot of things to do in our life. In order to dream, let us cherish the time, from now on a little bit of accumulation. Lets make our college life more full, rich and rhythmic. In life I hope happy with success, I know the smile in every youth season, the call of the sea: we will not let the courage to fight back in the waves, blue sky call, cannot let fly wings degradation in dark clouds.