大学英语写作常用句型(实用20篇)

1.经济的快速发展 the rapid development of economy

2.人民生活水平的显著提高/ 稳步增长the remarkable improvement/ steady growth of people’s living standard

3.先进的科学技术 advanced science and technology

4.面临新的机遇和挑战 be faced with new opportunities and challenges

5.人们普遍认为 It is commonly believed/ recognized that…

6.社会发展的必然结果 the inevitable result of social development

7.引起了广泛的公众关注 arouse wide public concern/ draw public attention

8.不可否认 It is undeniable that…/ There is no denying that…

9.热烈的讨论/ 争论 a heated discussion/ debate

10. 有争议性的问题 a controversial issue

11.完全不同的观点 a totally different argument

12.一些人 …而另外一些人 … Some people… while others…

13. 就我而言/ 就个人而言 As far as I am concerned, / Personally,

14.就…达到绝对的一致 reach an absolute consensus on…

15.有充分的理由支持 be supported by sound reasons

16.双方的论点 argument on both sides

17.发挥着日益重要的作用 play an increasingly important role in…

18.对…必不可少 be indispensable to …

19.正如谚语所说 As the proverb goes:

20.…也不例外 …be no exception

21.对…产生有利/不利的影响 exert positive/ negative effects on…

22.利远远大于弊 the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages。

23.导致，引起 lead to/ give rise to/ contribute to/ result in

24.复杂的社会现象 a complicated social phenomenon

25.责任感 / 成就感 sense of responsibility/ sense of achievement

26. 竞争与合作精神 sense of competition and cooperation

27. 开阔眼界 widen one’s horizon/ broaden one’s vision

28.学习知识和技能 acquire knowledge and skills

29.经济/心理负担 financial burden / psychological burden

30.考虑到诸多因素 take many factors into account/ consideration

31. 从另一个角度 from another perspective

32.做出共同努力 make joint efforts

33. 对…有益 be beneficial / conducive to…

34.为社会做贡献 make contributions to the society

35.打下坚实的基础 lay a solid foundation for…

36.综合素质 comprehensive quality

37.无可非议 blameless / beyond reproach

39.致力于/ 投身于 be committed / devoted to…

40. 应当承认 Admittedly,

41.不可推卸的义务 unshakable duty

42. 满足需求 satisfy/ meet the needs of…

43.可靠的信息源 a reliable source of information

44.宝贵的自然资源 valuable natural resources

45.因特网 the Internet (一定要由冠词，字母I 大写)

46.方便快捷 convenient and efficient

47.在人类生活的方方面面 in all aspects of human life

48.环保(的) environmental protection / environmentally friendly

49.社会进步的体现 a symbol of society progress

50.科技的飞速更新 the ever-accelerated updating of science and technology

51.对这一问题持有不同态度 hold different attitudes towards this issue

52.支持前/后种观点的人 people / those in fovor of the former/ latteropinion

53.有/ 提供如下理由/ 证据 have/ provide the following reasons/ evidence

54.在一定程度上 to some extent/ degree / in some way

55. 理论和实践相结合 integrate theory with practice

56. …必然趋势 an irresistible trend of…

57.日益激烈的社会竞争 the increasingly fierce social competition

58.眼前利益 immediate interest/ short-term interest

59.长远利益. interest in the long run

60.…有其自身的优缺点 … has its merits and demerits/ advantages and disadvantages

61.扬长避短 Exploit to the full one’s favorable conditions and avoid unfavorable ones

62.取其精髓，取其糟粕 Take the essence and discard the dregs。

63.对…有害 do harm to / be harmful to/ be detrimental to

64.交流思想/ 情感/ 信息 exchange ideas/ emotions/ information

65.跟上…的最新发展 keep pace with / catch up with/ keep abreast with the latest development of …

66.采取有效措施来… take effective measures to do sth

67.…的健康发展 the healthy development of …

68.有利有弊 Every coin has its two sides。

No garden without weeds。

69.对…观点因人而异 Views on …vary from person to person。

70.重视 attach great importance to…

71.社会地位 social status

72.把时间和精力放在…上 focus time and energy on…

73.扩大知识面 expand one’s scope of knowledge

74.身心两方面 both physically and mentally

75.有直接/间接关系 be directly / indirectly related to…

76. 提出折中提议 set forth a compromise proposal

77. 可以取代 “think”的词 believe, claim, maintain, argue, insist, hold the opinion/ belief that

78.缓解压力/ 减轻负担 relieve stress/ burden

79.优先考虑/发展… give (top) priority to sth。

80.与…比较 compared with…/ in comparison with

81. 相反 in contrast / on the contrary。

82.代替 replace/ substitute / take the place of

83.经不起推敲 cannot bear closer analysis / cannot hold water

84.提供就业机会 offer job opportunities

85. 社会进步的反映 mirror of social progress

86.毫无疑问 Undoubtedly, / There is no doubt that…

87.增进相互了解 enhance/ promote mutual understanding

88.充分利用 make full use of / take advantage of

万圣节又叫诸圣节，在每年的10月31日，是西方的传统节日。以下是关于万圣节的英语素材，供大家参考。

11月1日万圣节英文：Hallowmas，南瓜是万圣节的代表。

10月31日是万圣夜英文：Halloween，华语地区常将万圣夜称为万圣节。

Halloween is a holiday celebrated on October 31. By tradition, Halloween begins after sunset. Long ago, people believed that witches gathered together and ghosts roamed the world on Halloween. Today, most people no longer believe in ghosts and witches. But these supernatural beings are still a part of Halloween.

万圣节前夜是在10月31日庆祝的一个节日，根据传统，万圣节前夜的庆祝活动从太阳落山开始。在很久以前，人们相信在万圣节前夜女巫会聚集在一起，鬼魂在四处游荡。现在，大多数人们不再相信有鬼魂和女巫的存在了，但是他们仍然把这些作为万圣节前夜的一部分。

The colors black and orange are also a part of Halloween. Black is a symbol for night and orange is the color of pumpkins. A jack-o’-lantern is a hollowed-out pumpkin with a face carved on one side. Candles are usually placed inside, giving the face a spooky glow.

黑色和橙色仍然是万圣节前夜的一部分，黑色是夜晚的象征，而橙色代表着南瓜。南瓜灯是用雕刻成脸型，中间挖空，再插上蜡烛的南瓜做成的，带来一个毛骨悚然的灼热面孔。

Dressing up in costumes is one of the most popular Halloween customs, especially among children. According to tradition, people would dress up in costumes (wear special clothing, masks or disguises) to frighten the spirits away.

盛装是最受欢迎的万圣节风俗之一，尤其是受孩子们的欢迎。按照传统习俗，人们会盛装(穿戴一些特殊的服饰，面具或者装饰)来吓跑鬼魂。

Popular Halloween costumes include vampires (creatures that drink blood), ghosts (spirits of the dead) and werewolves (people that turn into wolves when the moon is full).

流行的万圣节服装包括vampires(吸血鬼)，ghosts(死者的灵魂)和werewolves(每当月圆时就变成狼形的人)。

Trick or Treating is a modern Halloween custom where children go from house to house dressed in costume, asking for treats like candy or toys. If they dont get any treats, they might play a trick (mischief or prank) on the owners of the house.

欺骗或攻击是现代万圣节的风俗。孩子们穿着特殊的衣服走街串巷，讨取糖果和玩具之类的赏赐。如果他们得不到任何的赏赐，就可能会对屋主大搞恶作剧或者胡闹了。

The tradition of the Jack o Lantern comes from a folktale about a man named Jack who tricked the devil and had to wander the Earth with a lantern. The Jack o Lantern is made by placing a candle inside a hollowed-out pumpkin, which is carved to look like a face.

南瓜灯的传统来自于一个民间传说。一个名叫Jack的人戏弄了恶魔，之后就不得不提着一盏灯在地球上流浪。南瓜灯是用雕刻成脸型，中间挖空，再插上蜡烛的南瓜做成的。

There are many other superstitions associated with Halloween. A superstition is an irrational idea, like believing that the number 13 is unlucky!

和万圣节有关的迷信还有很多。迷信是一种不合常理的想法，比如认为13是不吉利的数字!

Halloween is also associated with supernatural creatures like ghosts and vampires. These creatures are not part of the natural world. They dont really exist... or do they?

万圣节还和一些诸如鬼魂和吸血鬼之类的超自然的生物有关。这些生物不是自然界的一部分。他们实际上是不存在的......或许他们其实真的存在?

Witches are popular Halloween characters that are thought to have magical powers. They usually wear pointed hats and fly around on broomsticks.

女巫是万圣节很受欢迎的人物，人们认为她们具有强大的魔力。他们通常戴着尖顶的帽子，骑在扫把上飞来飞去。

Bad omens are also part of Halloween celebrations. A bad omen is something that is believed to bring bad luck, like black cats, spiders or bats.

恶兆也是万圣节庆祝活动的一部分。人们相信恶兆会带给坏运气，黑猫、蜘蛛或者蝙蝠都算是恶兆。

Protecting the Environment

With the improvement of our living standard, more and more people can afford a car. As a result, our roads are more often than not crammed with cars. However, with more and more waste gas being discharged by the cars, the problem of air pollution becomes even more serious. So nowadays we advocate to lead a low-carbon life.

My suggestion is we should ride bikes more often instead of driving cars.By riding a bike, we can not only exercise our body but also protect our environment. Why not have a try, my dear friends?

2005年英语考纲有重大变化，其中之一就是作文考查的变化。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。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

When students go to college, they are much free than before and can have time to do what they want. Without the school’s regulation, college students can wear the fashionable clothes. As they are affected by the commercial ads, more and more college students pursue fashion. But they need to measure their situation.

当学生上大学了，会比以前自由很多，也有时间去做他们想做的事情。没有了学规，大学生可以穿时尚的衣服。由于他们收到了商业广告的影响，越来越多的大学生追求时尚。但是他们得要衡量要自己的情况。

On the one hand, college students have the right to pursue fashion. They are young and full of energy, it is good for them to dress out their styles. The skill to dress in different situation is the course for them to learn. They will learn how to dress in the process of pursuing fashion.

一方面，大学生有权利去追求时尚。他们年轻，充满了活力，穿出自己的风格对他们来说是好的。在不同场合的穿衣技巧是他们要学习的课程。他们会在追求时尚的过程中学习打扮技巧。

On the other hand, the crazy about fashion is not proper for them. As students, they don’t have much money, they are relying on their parents, so it is not right to spend parents’ money to pursue fashion. What’s more, students’ main duty is to study, focusing too much on fashion is not right for them.

另一方面，对时尚的狂热追求是不合适的。作为学生，他们没有很多钱，还得依靠父母，所以使用父母的钱来追求时尚是不对的。而且，学生的主要责任是学习，过度关注时尚是不对的。

College students can pursue fashion, but they should not be crazy about it. They need to measure their situation and make the wise choice.

大学生可以追求时尚，但是他们不应该过度追求。他们需要衡量自己的情形，做出明智的选择。

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俗话又说：一言既出，驷马难追。诚信是立足之道，为人之本。下面请看语文迷为大家整理的关于诚信的英语名言，希望对你有帮助。

believes really is to link the intelligent bridge up , to be expert in the people who cheats , to arrive at forever the bridge another one holds without end. The sincere message, is one strands of Qing Quan诚信是沟通心灵的桥梁，善于欺骗的人，永远到不了桥的另一端。

Heres the rule for bargains "Do other men, for they would do you." Thats the true precept.Charles Dickens. British novelist这里有一条交易法则：“欺骗他人，因为他们也欺骗你。”这是真正的经商之道。英国小说家 狄更斯 C

it will wash away Augean stable cheating , lets everyone the world corner be flowing cleanly.诚信，是一股清泉，它将洗去欺诈的肮脏，让世界的每一个角落都流淌着洁净。

Economy the poor mans mints; extravagance the rich mans pitfall.Martin Tupper. American economist.节约是穷人的造币厂，浪费是富人的陷阱。美国经济学家 塔珀 .M。

the sincere message is the most beautiful overcoat of person , is an intelligent the holiest and purest fresh flower.诚信是人最美丽的外套，是心灵最圣洁的鲜花。

the sincere message is your no humble price shoes , traverses the length and breadth of a journey filled with numerous difficulties and dangers, mass cantrespondtoeternalinvariable.诚信是你价格不菲的鞋子，踏遍千山万水，质量也应永恒不变。

Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to damned, and no body to be kicked?Edward Thurlow, British Lawyer公司既没有灵魂可以被诅咒，又没有躯体可以被踢翻，难道你指望它有什么良心吗?英国律师 瑟洛杉矶 .E.

If Enterprise is afoot, wealth accumulates whatever may be happening to Thrift; and if Enterprise is asleep, wealth decays, whatever Thrift may be doing.John Maynard keynes British economist如果企业在进展，不论节俭不节俭，财富也在衰落。国经济学家 凯恩斯 .J.M.

the sincere message is a road, with the fact that pioneers step extends; The sincere message is wisdom , seeks rope accumulation with having a wide knowledge of a scholars; The sincere message is successful , persons going all out approaches with advancing bravely; The sincere message is the wealth seed , is therefore likely to find the key opening a state treasury as long as your sincere desire moves downwards kind.诚信是道路，随着开拓者的脚步延伸;诚信是智慧，随着博学者的求索积累;诚信是成功，随着奋进者的拼搏临近;诚信是财富的种子，只要你诚心种下，就能找到打开金库的钥匙。

sincere message resembles a mirror , break in a single day, crack will appear over your personality.诚信像一面镜子，一旦打破，你的人格就会出现裂痕。

is sincere for message glorious , breaking faith disgraceful. That诚信为荣，失信可耻。

Busineunderlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life, Witnethe fact that in the Lords prayer the first petition is for daily bread, No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stoach.Woodrow Wilson. American President生活包括精神生活的基矗不容置疑的事实是，在主祷文中向上帝祈求的第一件事是让我们天天有面包。没有人能饿着肚子敬奉上帝或热爱他的邻居。 美国总统 威尔逊 W.

the sincere message is foundation of conducting self , base of starting ones career.诚信是做人之根本，立业之基。

establishes up sincere message campus , sets up up sincere message style of study , becomes the sincere message student.创起诚信校园，树起诚信学风，成为诚信学子。

诚信的英语作文

What is integrity? Integrity is a good quality of being honest. It is a fine virtue for everyone. A man of integrity is loved by all. Without integrity, he will lose the best friend.

Integrity is especially important for students. We should finish our homework independently. We must return books when it is due. We should listen to the teacher carefully no matter what kind of lesson it is. If we promise to do something, we should try our best to do it well.

高考英语作文中常用一些大家都知道的短句能为自己的作文加分。下面是语文迷整理的英语作文短句，供大家参考。

1. at the thought of一想到…

2. as a whole (=in general) 就整体而论

3. at will 随心所欲

4. (be) abundant in(be rich in; be wellsupplied with) 富于，富有

5. access(to) (不可数名词) 能接近，进入，了解

6. by accident(=by chance, accidentally)偶然地，意外.Without accident(=safely)安全地，

7. of one’s ownaccord(=without being asked; willingly; freely)自愿地 ,主动地

8. in accord with 与…一致 . out ofone’s accord with 同…。不一致

9. with one accord (=with everybodyagreeing)一致地

10. in accordance with (=in agreement with)依照，根据

11. on one’s own account

1) 为了某人的缘故， 为了某人自己的利益

2) (=at one’s own risk) 自行负责

3) (=by oneself)依靠自己

12. take…intoaccount(=consider)把..。考虑进去

13. give sb. an account of 说明， 解释 (理由)

14. account for (=give an explanation orreason for) 解释，说明。

15. on account of (=because of) 由于，因为。

16. on no account(=in no case, for noreason)绝不要，无论如何不要(放句首时句子要倒装)

17. accuse…of…(=charge…with; blamesb. for sth. ; blame sth. on sb. ;

complain about) 指控，控告

18. be accustomed to (=be in the habit of,be used to)习惯于。

19. be acquainted with(=to have knowledgeof) 了解; (=to have met socially)熟悉

20. act on 奉行，按照…行动; act as 扮演; act for 代理

21. adapt oneself to(=adjust oneself to) 使自己适应于

22. adapt…(for) (=make sth.Suitable for a new need) 改编，改写(以适应新的需要)

23. in addition (=besides) 此外， 又， 加之

24. in addition to(=as well as, besides,other than)除…外

25. adhere to (=abide by, conform to,comply with, cling to, insist on,

persist in, observe, opinion, belief ) 粘附; 坚持， 遵循

26. adjacent(=next to, close to) 毗邻的， 临近的

27. adjust..(to) (=change slightly)调节; 适应;

28. admit of (=be capable of, leave roomfor) …的可能，留有…的余地。

29. in advance (before in time) 预告， 事先

30. to advantage 有利的，使优点更加突出地

31. have an advantage over 胜过

have the advantage of 由于…处于有利条件

have the advantage of sb。知道某人所不知道的事

32. take advantage of (=make the best of,utilize, make use of, profit from,

harness)利用

33. agree with 赞同(某人意见) agreeto 同意

34. in agreement (with) 同意， 一致

35. ahead of 在…之前， 超过…. ahead of time 提前

36. in the air 1)不肯定， 不具体. 2)在谣传中

37. above all (=especially, most importantof all) 尤其是，最重要的

38. in all (=counting everyone oreverything, altogether) 总共，总计

39. after all 毕竟，到底; (not)at all 一点也不;

all at once(=suddenly)突然; once andfor all 只此一次; above all 最重要的; first of

all 首先; all in all 大体上说; be all in 累极了; all but 几乎

40. allow for (=take into consideration,take into account) 考虑到，估计到

41. amount to (=to be equal to) 总计， 等于。

42. answer for (undertake responsibilityfor, be liable for, take chargefor) 对…负责。

43. answer to (=conform to) 适合，符合。

44. be anxious about 为…焦急不安; 或anxious for

45. apologize to sb. for sth. 为…向…道歉

46. appeal to sb. for sth. 为某事向某人呼吁.appeal to sb. 对某人有吸引力

47. apply to sb. for sth. 为…向…申请; applyfor申请; apply to 适用。

48. apply to 与…有关;适用

49. approve of (=consent to, be in favorof, favor, agree to, consider good,

right) 赞成， approve vt. 批准

50. arise from(=be caused by) 由…引起。

51. arrange for sb./sth. to do sth. 安排…做…

52. arrive on 到达; arrive at到达某地(小地方);得出，作出; arrive in 到达某地(大地方);

53. be ashamed of (=feel shame, guilt orsorrow because of sth. done)

以…为羞耻

54. assure sb. of sth. (=try to cause tobelieve or trust in sth.)

向…保证，使…确信。

55. attach(to) (=to fix, fasten; join) 缚， 系 ,结

56. make an attempt at doing sth. (to dosth.) 试图做…

57. attend to (=give one’s attention,care and thought)注意，照顾;attend

on(upon)(=wait upon, serve, look after) 侍候，照料

58. attitude to/ toward …对…的态度。看法

59. attribute…to…(=to believesth. to be the result of…)把.。归因于..,

认为.。是.。的结果

60. on the average (=on average, on anaverage) 平均

61. (be) aware of (=be conscious of ,having knowledge or

consciousness)意识到，知道。

62. at the back of (=behind) 在…后面

63. in the back of 在…后部(里面); on theback of 在…后部(外面); be on one’s back(=be

ill in bed) 卧病不起。

64. at one’s back(=supportingor favoring sb.) 支持，维护; have sb. at one’s back

有…支持，有…作后台

65. turn one’s back on sb. (=turnaway from sb. in an impolite way)

不理睬(某人),背弃，抛弃

66. behind one’s back 背着某人(说坏话)

67. be based on / upon 基于

68. on the basis of 根据…, 在…基础上

69. beat…at 在…运动项目上打赢

70. begin with 以…开始. tobegin with (=first of all) 首先，第一(经常用于开始语)

71. on behalf of (=as the representativeof) 以…名义

72. believe in(=have faith or trust in;consider sth./sb. to be true)

相信，依赖，信仰。

73. benefit (from) 受益，得到好处。

74. for the benefit of 为了…的利益(好处)

75. for the better 好转

76. get the better of (=defeat sb.) 打败， 胜过。

77. by birth 在出生上，论出身，按血统 at birth在出生时; give birth to 出生

78. blame sb. for sth. 因…责备某人 .blame sth. on sb. 把…推在某人身上

79. in blossom开花(指树木) be inblossom开花(强调状态) come into blossom开花(强调动作)

80. on board 到船上， 在船上， 上火车或飞机

81. boast of (or about) 吹嘘

82. out of breath 喘不过气来

83. in brief(=in as few words as possible)简言之

84. in bulk 成批地，不散装的

85. take the floor 起立发言

86. on business 出差办事。

87. be busy with sth。于某事。 be busydoing sth. 忙于做某事

88. last but one 倒数第二。

89. but for (=without) 要不是. 表示假设

90. buy sth. for…money 用多少钱买

91. be capable of 能够， 有能力

be capable of being +过去分词：是能够被…的

92. in any case(=for love or money, at anyrate, at any price, at any cost,

whatever happens; anyhow)无论如何

93. in case (=for fear that) 万一;

94. in case of (=in the event of)如果发生…万一

in the case of 至于…, 就…而言

95. in no case在任何情况下都不(放句首倒装句)

96. be cautious of 谨防

97. center one’s attentionon(=focus one’s attention on) 把某人的注意力集中在…上

98. be certain of (=be sure of) 有把握， 一定。

99. for certain of (=for sure )肯定地，有把握地

100. by chance(=accidentally, by accident)偶然

1. Knowledge is power.

知识就是力量。

2. Wisdom is better than gold or silver.

知识胜过金银。

3. Wisdom in the mind is better than money in the hand.

胸中有知识，胜于手中有钱。

4. Learn wisdom by the follies of others.

从旁人的愚行中学到聪明。

5. It is good to learn at another man’s cost.

前车可鉴。

6. Wisdom is to the mind what health is to the body.

知识之于精神，一如健康之于肉体。

7. Experience is the best teacher.

经验是最好的教师。

8. Experience is the father of wisdom and memory the mother.

经验是知识之父，记忆是知识之母。

9. Practice makes perfect.

熟能生巧。

10. Experience keeps a dear school, but fools learn in no other.

经验学校学费高，愚人旁处学不到。

11. Experience without learning is better than learning without experience.

有经验而无学问，胜于有学问而无经验。

12. Seeing is believing.

百闻不如一见。

13. Wisdom is a good purchase though we pay dear for it.

为了求知识，代价虽高也值得。

14. Doubt is the key of knowledge.

怀疑是知识之钥。

15. If you want knowledge, you must toil for it.

若要求知识，须从勤苦得。

16. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

浅学误人。

17. A handful of common sense is worth a bushel of learning.

少量的常识，当得大量的学问。

18. Knowledge advances by steps and not by leaps.

知识只能循序渐进，不能跃进。

中考英语考试中“书面表达”往往是最后一项，怎么样在那么短的时间内尽可能的拿到高分呢?

一、中考英语写作的概述

你对于在中考英语写作中拿高分有把握吗?实际考试中，许多学生却常常有“无话可说”的感觉。那要如何我们才能克服这种无话的状态，取得高分呢?

归根到底这是一个英语基本功——单词、短语和句型的问题。

英语作文的前提条件是掌握了一定量的词汇、语法及体裁、题材等方面的知识。学生如果想要在写作方面有本质上的提升，必须进行多次的写作练习。因此，必须合理地设置训练步骤，遵循从初级到高级，从简单到复杂的原则去练习，经过一段写作实践之后，写作水平一定会有大幅度的提高。

中考英语作文对考生的要求有四点：1、内容要完整。2、语句流畅。3、没有语法错误。4、书写规范。

二、中考英语写作的评分标准

1、老师拿到的标准

写作水平的高低和文章的好坏，分数是最直接的评分标准，也是考生们最关心的。但是多少考生真正透彻知道中考英语写作的评分标准?什么样的文章才是阅卷老师眼中的好文章?

评分标准：

(1)整篇作文满分20分，其中内容8分，语言8分，结构4分。

(2)内容贴切，句子流畅，用语准确，加整体印象分1分。

(3)不满60个词，少1——5个词扣0.5分，6——10个词扣1分。

(4)所有给出问题涉及的三项内容，每少一项扣3分。

(5)每个拼写，大小写，标点符号等错误扣0.5分;同一的拼写错误不重复扣分，扣分总和不超过2分。

(6)语法错误每项扣1分，同一错误不重复扣分，扣分总和不超过2分。

2、老师想看到的标准

语言(8分)：

词——固定搭配、高频重点词汇;

句——复杂句(各种从句)、特殊句型、正确的句子!

内容(8分)：(总、分)论点、论据支持句;简洁、切合主题的记叙内容。

结构(4分)：

语言结构——句子重点突出、内容清晰;

内容结构——论点、论据以及记叙之间的逻辑关系;

句数控制——对于相对内容的句数掌握;

亮点、出彩点——排比、拟人、谚语、成语、押韵等。

三、扣分

内容方面：要点缺失，可酌情扣分。比如中考作文“Iwanttodosomethingformyschool”，若没有写一件具体的事情，是要扣3分以上的;若写的事情太过于虚幻，没有实际内容，也会扣1-2分。

字数：少于60字的作文要酌情扣分。

中考英语作文要求60字以上，标点符号不算，少了就要扣分。

但是60字的作文能不能得高分?从我们拿到的实例作文来看，16分以上的作文，没有少于75字的，甚至少于80字的也少之又少。

当然，也极少有超过100字的，因为中考试卷的短线格一共80个，在格子下面大约还有2行的空间，可以加20字左右，再多阅卷人就很难看清了，也会影响卷面的美观。

所以，同学们如果想让作文得到高分，最好是让字数在75-100字之间。

语法和拼写错误：每个扣0.5，重复错误不计;

标点错误：每4个扣0.5。

四、加分

作文的组织结构分。就是根据学生使用复杂句型、单词和谚语、俗语的情况来加分。只要文章中有1个亮点，基本就可以争取到1分(3分的文采分是很难全部拿到的)。而这1分的亮点，是可以提前准备的。

“万金油”式的复杂句型，例如强调句型、only相关的倒装句等，只要同学们多操练几次，几乎是一定能用到作文当中，从而为自己争取到这1分。

其次就是卷面分。很多家长(微博)和同学，尤其是部分书法并不是十分整洁的同学，都会关心是否真的有“卷面分”的存在。虽然在阅卷标准里面并没有卷面分这一项，但是这个分数却真切地反映在了同学们的分数里面。

据阅卷老师的经验，在阅卷的时候并不是按这3个部分逐项打分的，而是在第一遍读完全文之后，心里已经形成了一个“印象分”，然后再细读第二、三遍，把印象分分配到各个打分部分。

因此，这个“印象分”就非常重要，而同学们的书法，也正是在这个环节，影响到了自己的分数。所以初三的考生，如果书法不好，一定要注意。

1、开头部分

How nice to hear from you again. Let me tell you something about the activity. I’m glad to have received your letter of Apr. 9th. I’m pleased to hear that you’re coming to China for a visit. I’m writing to thank you for your help during my stay in America.

2、结尾部分

With best wishes. I’m looking forward to your reply. I’d appreciate it if you could reply earlier.

Hi, My name is Jay, Im from the beautiful ancient city of Kaifeng. As you can see, I am a very casual girl, and a lot of people here, like 18-year-old, I love a lot, I love guitar, love to sing love dancing, very fond of English, I am very love to watch "Prison Break", like the actor micheal clever wit I like making friends, and hope you will be able to and I have become good friends, I think I will, and you get along with.Hello, everyone, please allow me to introduce myself with a minute let you know me, know me and accept me. I come from Shandong, xxx, 20-year-old, my hometown Qilu earth gave me a straightforward character, and yet steady, and later the city of Nanjing travel long distances to school.As one saying goes: "Ten years out of sharpening sharp, sword-jun to knowledge only pending." Zaikuzailei, I am willing to try, "eat life of hardship, Fang Wei Ren Exalted", in later school life, I will definitely be one to make their own efforts, but had a substantial significance of post-secondary life. Student life in the future please give more concern, a simple self-introduction is completed, thank you!

1)Some(people)argue/claim/believe/hold that……But others set(put)forth a different argument about/oppositive views on the matter in question.

(e.g. Some claim that setting off firecrackers is a good practice of celebrating the Spring Festival.……But others put forth opposite views on the problem.)

2)Some(people)advocate/endorse/favor/are for(或oppose/object to/are against)……Yet others stick to/hold on to/cling to the opposite views/argument/points.

(e.g. Some advocate changes intended to modernize the building code.……Yet others hold on to the opposite views.)

3)To some peoples mind/From some peoples point of view/In the eye(s)o f some people，the matter in question is/seems/should be/means……But to othersmind/from others point of view/in otherseyes，it is just/quite the other way around/contrary/opposite(或the opposite/reverse is the case/true.)

(e.g. To some peoples mind，reading should be done in a selective way.……But to others‘，it is just the other way around.)

4)Some(people)respond/react to……by……But others behave/act in the other direction/in the opposite way.

(e.g. Some people respond to failure by remaining inactive or avoiding it……But others behave in the opposite way.)

5)Some take the view that……And/But on the other hand，others argue for the opposite view that……

(e.g. Some are of the view that institutions mould characters.……And on the other hand，others argue for the opposite view that characters transform institutions.)

议论文写作是几种常见文体中要求较高的一种。下面语文迷网整理了一些写作方法，希望对你有帮助。

一、议论文的文体特点和写作要求

英语议论文同中文议论文一样也是以议论的方式，通过摆事实、讲道理来阐述自己观点的一种文体。高中英语议论文是一种限制性的写作, 其论点、论据、论证都必须十分明确，学生必须结合题目要求来阐述相关观点。

议论文的结构可分为三个部分：1、引言段引出一个令人关注的问题或明白地亮出自己的观点，如提倡什么，支持什么，反对什么。 2、主体段对提出的问题进行分析、推论、并运用归纳法、演绎法和类比法等进行论证，取得以理服人的效果。3、结论段可以用两三句话来结束文章，同时要注意重申论点，与引言段呼应，但不能照搬原话。务必做到论点明确、要点齐全、论证严密、结构严谨、层次分明、首尾呼应。

二、议论文的写作方法与技巧

一)、审好题

人们常说：“磨刀不误砍柴功”。审题是写作的开始，是写好作文的前提条件，“好的开始是成功的一半”，议论文写作也不例外。只有明确题目要求，确立观点，确定论证方法及全文段落安排，才可能成功写出一篇好的议论文。如果写偏了题，再精心的构思、再好的语言表达也是枉然。审题主要包括六个方面：一是判断议论文所属类型。英语议论文根据命题特点，从形式上来看可分为如下类型: ①“一分为二”的观点。如：“轿车大量进入家庭后，对家庭、环境、经济可能产生的影响”。②“两者选一”的观点。如：“乘火车还是乘飞机”。③“我认为……”型，如：“你对课外阅读的看法”。④“怎样……(how to)”型，如：“怎样克服学习中碰到的困难”。⑤ 图表作文，通过阅读图表中的数字与项目得出一个结论或形成一种看法(杨家贵，2005)。二是确立该文的论点或作者须持的观点，以及支撑论点的道理和事实。三是确定全文所包括的要点。四是确定段落数及每段适用的连接词、过渡句，使文章连接紧凑、过渡自然、层次分明。五是选择全文主要时态及各段适用的其它时态。六是判断该文的格式，是书信还是短文。审题完毕，随即列出提纲。

二)、注重主题句的设置

主题句又叫中心句(topic sentence)，是段落的论点，限制段落中议论的范围，是整个段落的纲领。主题句必须要正确，要明确表明作者赞成什么，反对什么。主题句在一篇百来字的议论文中好比“画龙点睛”，帮助作者分层次阐述自己的观点，让读者快速了解作者的观点。

1、确定主题句的位置

英语议论文的主题句宜设在段首第一句，这是由以下两个因素决定的。1)、主题句出现的位置有三种情况：①在段首，以便读者浏览主题句就可掌握文章的概要，这个位置适用于写提供信息或解释观点的段落;②在段末;③段中(高长梅，2000)。2)、英语民族的思维特点是常采用路标式(直线式)篇章结构，即主题句在段首。

2、写出好的主题句

好的主题句具有以下特点：①有一定的概括性，普遍性而不是罗列具体事实。②句意明确而不是模糊不着边际。③让人有话可写而不是给出无可辩驳的事实。④不以问题的方式出现，也不要同时表达两个以上的观点。笔者要求学生写了以下的主题句：

1)Staying up late is bad for our health.

2)The more cars, the better?

3)There are two reasons why some people are fascinated by Super Girls and two reasons why some dislike them.

4)Beijing is famous for the Great Wall, the Summer Palace, the Imperial Palace and other places of interest.

5)a. Tom is a middle school student.

b. Tom is a hard-working middle school student.

6)Living in small cities is better than living in big cities.

然后让学生对照主题句的特点，他们一致认为1)、5)b、6)为好的主题句。在实践和对比中，学生学会了如何写好的主题句，并且运用到议论文写作中，收到较好效果，见以下实例(下段黑体部分是主题句)。

Everyone lives by selling something. For example, teachers live by selling knowledge, philosophers by selling wisdom and priests by selling spiritual comfort. Though it may be possible to measure the value of material goods in terms of money, it is extremely difficult to calculate the true value of services which people perform for us. The conditions of society are such that skills have to be paid for in the same way that goods are paid for at a shop. Everyone has something to sell.

由此可见，好的主题句能帮助作者阐明观点，起到提纲挈领的作用。作者围绕段落的中心论点，运用多种方法展开论证，达到以理服人的效果。

三)、用好连接词和过渡句

从行文需要出发选用恰当的连接词、过渡句可使整篇文章文句流畅，句意转换自然，同时使表达合乎逻辑，文章结构严谨。倘若一篇议论文的段落里不乏高级词汇和复杂语法结构，但缺少了连接词、过渡句的润色而不能从一个观点自然地过渡到另一个观点，或段落里的各论据(supporting sentence)连接松散，势必削弱论证的效果，就算不上一篇好的议论文。下面分别说明如何有效运用连接词与过渡句。

1、句与句的连接词

连接词通常由连词、副词、介词短语和插入语等充当。如何有效使用连接词，使句意连贯、紧凑，以体现文章良好的严密的论证逻辑?

2.段与段的过渡句

过渡句帮助作者展示文章的条理和层次。恰当运用过渡句能使表达锦上添花。当文章从一个层次转换到另一个层次，或由一段内容转入另一段内容时需要用过渡句。恰当有效的运用过渡句，效果明显(见下文，题目及要求略，黑体部分为过渡句)。

Wearing school uniform every day spreads an order over many schools. Is it good or bad for students? Different people, however, have different opinions on this matter.

Some people say that it has a bad effect on developing students’ personal character. According to them, students are tired of wearing the same clothes every day, which is hard to tell who’s who. Furthermore, the cost of the school uniform is not low as many people think. With the bad quality, it’s not well worth the money.

However, as a popular saying goes: “Every coin has two sides.” Others argue that it is good for students. In their opinion, wearing school uniform will prevent students from wasting so much money on clothes and the time on catching up with the fashion. In addition, it’s easy for the teachers to recognize the students. There is no doubt that wearing school uniform every day is good for students.

In short, I firmly support the view that we should wear school uniform.(康珍，2005)

上文黑体部分综合体现了恰当、有效运用连接词和过渡句的最佳效果。全文行文流畅、衔接自然、条理清楚，浑然不觉作者是在套用各种连接词和过渡句。因此，非常有必要熟记一些常用典型的议论文过渡句，使议论文结构严谨，论点清楚，行文流畅。

1)引言段的常用过渡句

Recently we had a heated discussion on…, Opinions are various among different people.

Different people have different opinions on the question of …

They differ greatly in their attitudes towards …

Different people hold different views/opinions on this matter.

Although most people think… I believe…

此类过渡句能迅速引起读者注意，自然而然地引出全文要讨论的话题，或者开门见山地阐明文章的论点。

2)主体段的常用过渡句

Some may hold the view that… because… But others have a negative attitude. From their point of view…

Some people think that… While others believe…

Some people are for the idea of… because… But some people are against the idea of… because …

本文所指议论文的主体段可以是一段也可以是两段。通过正确使用过渡句，文章思路清晰，结构清楚，显示作者严谨思维，增强表达效果。

3)结论段的常用过渡句

As far as I am concerned, I totally agree with the statement that…

Therefore, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that…

As a consequence/result, I firmly support the view that…

Taking all these factors into consideration, we may reach the conclusion that…

To sum up/in a word/in conclusion/in short/above all/in general/ generally speaking, I still hold the view that…

运用过渡句的提示作用进入结论段，作者或是重申论点，或是强调论点，以便加深读者对全文的了解和深刻认识。

英语议论文范文：

Should Examination Be Abolished (取消)?

The examination system has come to be the main theme (主题)of modern education. One should take an examination andsucceed in passing it before he could be admitted， promoted or graduated. As it plays so important a role in the realm of education (教育的领域) it is under much criticism (评论) as to its validity (有效性) . People who are in favour of it try to develop this system more; those who are against it believe that such a system should be abolished. Should examination be abolished? In my opinion it should be.

Many people think that an examination is the only means to test knowledge， but， in fact， that is not true. A few questions given in an examination could by no means cover the whole field of the subject. Thus those who are able to answer them may be the poorest of the students and yet happen to know just a few points about that subject.

Id like to say that， because of the existence of the examination system， students pay so much attention to gaining high marks， that they often forget the chief purpose of education. The so-called clever students devote (贡献) themselves to the study of textbooks only. They， of course， know nothing but the skeleton (梗概) of knowledge. The end and aim of education， however， is to enable students to learn how to live. To do this， students must get themselves to do all kinds of training， physicalas well as mental. The present examination system has discouraged students from making such an attempt.

Moreover， since the students try so hard to put their lessons into memory in as short a time as possible， psychologically (心理上来看)， they soon forget the whole subject as soon as the examination is over. Surely this is one of the greatest wastes ever made in the history of civilization.

Lastly， in order to get high marks， there is a great temptation (诱惑) for students to cheat (作弊) in an examination. Indeed， such a practice becomes the means to the end. They cheat their teachers， their parents and also themselves. Such a tendency would impair (损害) our moral standards (道德标准) .

Therefore， I am of the opinion， in conclusion， that the examination system should be abolished.

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

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。

想要写好一篇英语作文有哪些方法步骤呢?下面来看看语文迷网为大家带来的写作指导吧。

(一)仔细审题，确定要点。在开始写作这前一定要认真阅读题目中的所有信息(中文提示、图示、注意事项等)把需要表达的全部信息要点列成提纲，列要点时，如果提示是图表，要认真审图，从图中找出要表达的信息要点，如事件发生的背景，人物的衣着、表情、动作、位置、年龄、外貌、图中的英汉文字等，如果有参考词汇，一定要用上。

(二)根据要点，先词组句。近年来高考书面表达的要求不断提高，高分文章要有较多的词汇，较高级的词汇用法。比如表达丰富可以用rich,但如果你用abundant这个词就属于较高级的词汇。再比如“他强调小心驾驶的重要”这个句子 He emphasized the importance of careful driving.其中“强调”这个词如果你用 attach much importance to 效果更佳。

(三)确定时态及人称，内容连贯，结构紧凑。高考书面表达评分标准明确规定，如人称错误要扣分，不同的文体一般都有基本时态。日记通常记叙发生过的事情，多用一般过去时。议论文多用一般现在时，通知等文体通常用一般将来时。每个句子写好之后，句与句之间要选择恰当的连接词。比如：(1)表示承接、递进用语，besides(并且)、whats more(并且)，moreover(而且)，firstly,secondly,finally(最后)，from now on (从此)，afterwards I after that(后来)，to make things worse/ whats worse(使事情更为糟糕的是)，the worst thing of all(最糟糕的是)。(2)表示转折关系用语。but bowever,otherwise,though,despite,in spite of...(尽管)on the other hand(另一方面)，as(尽管)，all the same(尽管如此)。(3)表示因果关系用语。because/because of......for(因为)，owing to (由于)，thanks to (由于)，due to (由于)，so that (结果)。(4)归纳总结用语。to summarize(总而言之)，in short/in a word(简而言之)，on the whole(从总体看)，generally speaking(一般说来)，in my view(我的观点)，in conclusion(总之)。

(四)句式丰富，避免单词。英语书面表达评分标准第五档(21-25分)要求，“应使用较复杂结构，这要求学生不仅会运用基本句型，也要有意识地使用复杂句型，这是文章的亮点。如何使用复杂结构，我认为适当运用非谓语结构(分词短语、动名词或不定式短语)适当运用各种从句(定语从句、名词性从句、状语从句)是有效什么途径。比如：when he arrived in Beijing,he gave me an e-mail.(时间状语从句。一般)→On arriving in Beijing,he gave me an e-mail.Having arrived in Beijing.he gave me an e-mail.(使用了动名词，分别作状语。高级) Hardly had he arrived in Beijing when he gave me an e-mail.(改变时态，句子结构。高级)I wont believe what he says.(一般)→No matter what he says,I wont believe.(让步状从句，高级)。

(五)认真答写，卷面整洁。高考书面表达评分标准中对书写有较高要求。尤其今年英语作文要进行网上阅卷，如果书写较差，会影响到扫描质量，因此，考生在答卷时，一定要认真、清楚规范地书写，以保卷面整洁。

1. at the thought of一想到…

2. as a whole (=in general) 就整体而论

3. at will 随心所欲

4. (be) abundant in(be rich in; be well supplied with) 富于，富有

5. access(to) (不可数名词) 能接近，进入，了解

6. by accident(=by chance, accidentally)偶然地，意外. Without accident(=safely) 安全地，

7. of ones own accord(=without being asked; willingly; freely)自愿地 ,主动地

8. in accord with 与…一致 . out of ones accord with 同…。不一致

9. with one accord (=with everybody agreeing)一致地

10. in accordance with (=in agreement with) 依照，根据

11. on ones own account

1) 为了某人的缘故， 为了某人自己的利益

2) (=at ones own risk) 自行负责

3) (=by oneself)依靠自己

12. take…into account(=consider)把..。考虑进去

13. give sb. an account of 说明， 解释 (理由)

14. account for (=give an explanation or reason for) 解释， 说明。

15. on account of (=because of) 由于，因为。

16. on no account(=in no case, for no reason)绝不要，无论如何不要(放句首时句子要倒装)

17. accuse…of…(=charge…with; blame sb. for sth. ; blame sth. on sb. ; complain about) 指控，控告

18. be accustomed to (=be in the habit of, be used to)习惯于。

19. be acquainted with(=to have knowledge of) 了解; (=to have met socially) 熟悉

20. act on 奉行，按照…行动; act as 扮演; act for 代理

21. adapt oneself to(=adjust oneself to) 使自己适应于

22. adapt…(for) (=make sth. Suitable for a new need) 改编， 改写(以适应新的需要)

23. in addition (=besides) 此外， 又， 加之

24. in addition to(=as well as, besides, other than)除…外

25. adhere to (=abide by, conform to, comply with, cling to, insist on, persist in, observe, opinion, belief ) 粘附; 坚持， 遵循

26. adjacent(=next to, close to) 毗邻的， 临近的

27. adjust..(to) (=change slightly)调节; 适应;

28. admit of (=be capable of, leave room for) …的可能，留有…的余地。

29. in advance (before in time) 预告， 事先

30. to advantage 有利的，使优点更加突出地

I am so looking forward to my college life. I have pictured it thousands of

times in my mind. The free lifestyle and lively parties are always appearing my

mind. The great expectation of campus life endows me a lot of passion to keep

study. After two years’ study, I would find my lifestyle.

The first thing for me is to learn more knowledge. Most students find a way

to release themselves and skip or sleep in the class. They think study is just

the task, so they give up improving themselves and take part in all kinds of

activities, which bring them great joy. The wrong conception about college stage

makes most students miss the best time to equip themselves with skills. I

realize my job and dare not to loose study.

The second thing for me to learn is to make friends by joining activities.

I am a shy girl, but inside my heart, I am so eager to make more friends, so I

choose to join many activities in the spared time. I learn dancing and playing

tennis. The lucky thing is that I know many nice people and we become good

friends, who make my college colorful.

记叙文是记人叙事的文章，它主要是用于说明事件的时间、背景、起因、过程及结果，即我们通常所说的五个“ W ”( what, who, when, where, why )和一个“ H ”( how )。记叙文的重点在于“述说”和“描写”，因此一篇好的记叙文要叙述条理清楚，描写生动形象。下面就谈谈英语记叙文的特点和写好记叙文的基本要领。

一、记叙文的特点

1. 叙述的人称

英语的记叙文一般是以第一或第三人称的角度来叙述的。用第一称表示的是由叙述者亲眼所见、亲耳所闻的经历。它的优点在于能把故事的情节通过“我”来传达给读者，使人读后感到真实可信，如身临其境。如：

The other day, I was driving along the street. Suddenly, a car lost its control and ran directly towards me fast. I was so frightened that I quickly turned to the left side. But it was too late. The car hit my bike and I fell off it.

用第三人称叙述，优点在于叙述者不受“我”活动范围以内的人和事物的限制，而是通过作者与读者之外的第三者，直接把故事中的情节展现在读者面前，文章的客观性很强。如：

Little Tom was going to school with an umbrella, for it was raining hard. On the way, he saw an old woman walking in the rain with nothing to cover. Tom went up to the old woman and wanted to share the umbrella with her, but he was too short. What could he do? Then he had a good idea.

2. 动词的时态

在记叙文中，记和叙都离不开动词。所以动词出现率最高，且富于变化。记叙文中用得最多的是动词的过去的，这是英语记叙文区别于汉语记叙文的关键之处。英语写作的优美之处就在于这些动词时态的变化，正是这一点才使得所记、所叙有鲜活的动态感、鲜明的层次感和立体感。

3. 叙述的顺序

记叙一件事要有一定的顺序。无论是顺叙、倒叙、插叙还是补叙，都要让读者能弄清事情的来龙去脉。顺叙最容易操作，较容易给读者提供有关事情的空间和时间线索。但这种方法也容易使文章显得平铺直叙，读起来平淡乏味。倒叙、插叙、补叙等叙述方法能有效地提高文章的结构效果，让所叙之事跌宕起伏，使读者在阅读时思维产生较大的跳跃，从而为文章所吸引，深入其中。但这些方法如果使用不当，则容易弄巧成拙，使文章结构散乱，头绪不清，让读者不知所云。

4. 叙述的过渡

过渡在上下文中起着承上启下、融会贯通的作用。过渡往往用在地点转移或时间、事件转换以及由概括说明到具体叙述时。如：

In my summer holidays, I did a lot of things. Apart form doing my homework, reading an English novel, watching TV and doing some housework, I went on a trip to Qingdao. It is really a beautiful city. There are many places of interest to see. But what impressed me most was the sunrise.

The next morning I got up early. I was very happy because it was a fine day. By the time I got to the beach, the clouds on the horizon were turning red. In a little while, a small part of the sun was gradually appearing. The sun was very red, not shining. It rose slowly. At last it broke through the red clouds and jumped above the sea, just like a deep-red ball. At the same time the clouds and the sea water became red and bright.

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。

一、了解高分作文的特点

要想作文获得高分，必须了解高分作文具有的特点，才有助于我们朝之而努力。高分作文一般具有以下特点：

1、书写工整，书面整洁，很少有涂改痕迹。

2、分段合理。全文分段一般不止一个自然段，让阅卷老师很容易就能找到作文所要求写的要点和重要句子。

3、要点齐全，不缺要点。

4、首尾呼应，自然成一体。

5、使用了大量的高级词汇和句型。阅卷老师一看就知道这个同学的功底非不一般，自然就给打高分了。

6、开头言简意赅，不啰嗦，不偏题，迅速引入主题。

7、段与段之间，自然过渡。有合适的连接词。

8、句与句之间，有恰当的连接词，使之自然成一体。

9、全文中同一个意思，基本没有重复使用某一个词、短语或者句型等，说明这个同学的词汇量不同寻常。老师自然就对该作文有好感了。

10、能够恰当使用谚语、格言等给文章添彩。

二、勤积累，巧准备

要想作文得高分，除了了解以上的特点外，还要在平时的学习中注意一下方面：

1、牢记课标词汇是基础

一篇作文多数是由积极词汇写出来的，这些词汇主要来源于课标。因此，牢记课标词汇是写好作文的基础。

2、掌握课标词汇和短语的用法

要想作文不扣分或者少扣分，有个要求是作文的语病少。怎么能够减少语病呢?这就要求我们在平时的学习过程中反复通过练习，掌握课标词汇和短语等的用法。例如，对于assoonas、stopsomebodyfromdoingsomething、other、another等的用法很多学生就经常出错。

3、高度重视同一个意思的多种表达方式

高分作文有个特点是：让老师发现你拥有丰富的词汇量，你的水平高人一筹。这由何而来?靠我们在平时学习过程中，逐步积累起来的。比如：今年的中考作文，谈的就是帮助他人的问题。同一个意思“帮助”，假如你就用一个动词“help”，岂不显得你词汇贫乏?假如你在作文中不断地变换方式，用help、givesomebodyahand、giveahandtosomebody、beinneedof等以表达“帮助”同一个意思，岂不更好呢?

像这样的例子很多，比如：大家都觉得很简单又很基础的“表示姓名的方式”就有：MynameisJim.I’mJim.I’mcalled/namedJim.I’maboycalled/named/withthenameofJim.等等。

表达年龄的方式有：Sheis12.Sheis12yearsold.Sheisaged12.Sheisagirlof12(yearsold)。Sheisagirlaged12.等等。

很显然，使用高级一点的更好。

4、加强练习，积累经验

学习语言最好的方法是运用，作文也不例外。我们要想作文得高分，必须经常练习，才能提高水平。

5、充分利用作文范文

很多资料书上都有作文范文。诚然，他们有很多值得借鉴的地方。

我们怎么利用它们呢?首先，我们先不要看文章，自己先思考一下：假如你来写，你会怎么去写，会用到哪些词或者句子等。然后去比较，勾出其中的好词佳句，并且把它摘录在专门的作文册子上。供写作时选用。

另外，背一些范文也是很有必要的。

6、背诵一些谚语和警句

作文中如果出现恰当的谚语和警句，会有锦上添花的效果。

三、精心审题，沉着写初稿

很多同学看到作文后，下笔就写。这是不对的。一则很容易写偏题、写出病句，涂改后书面又不整洁，影响得分。

其实，会写作文的同学都知道，审题非常的重要，可以防止很多毛病，提高得分。那么我们审题要做些什么呢?

审题主要要做一下事情：

1、审人称、时态、体裁等

审题时，要求我们要弄清楚这篇文章主要使用的人称是第几人称，什么时态、什么体裁。这些问题解决后至少不会犯很严重的错误：全文皆错。例如，如果一篇文章，本来应该一般过去时，你的每句话却用了一般现在时态。你想想，那还能得高分吗?

2、明确必须表达的要点

高分作文有个特点是要点齐全。如果漏掉一个要点，则要扣分。因此我们必须认真细读其要求，把必须表达的要点勾出来。保证不漏掉任何一个要点。

3、罗列出可能会用到的短语、句型，确定好使用哪个?

4、确定好如何分段