SAT英语写作技巧之首段与主体段热门20篇

Let‘s cross the bridge when we come to it.船到桥头自然直。下面是小编为你带来的初中英语写作常用谚语，欢迎阅读。

1. All roads lead to Rome.

条条大路通罗马。

2. Well begun is half done.

好的开端是成功的一半。

3. East, west, home is best.

金窝、银窝，不如自己的草窝。

4. First think, then act.

三思而后行。

5. It is never too late to mend.

亡羊补牢，犹为未晚。

6. Time is money.

时间就是金钱。

7. A friend in need is a friend indeed.

患难见真交。

8. Great hopes make great man.

远大的希望，造就伟大的人物。

9. Where there is a will, there is a way.

有志者，事竟成。

10. Stick to it, and you‘ll succeed.

只要人有恒，万事都能成。

11. Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.

早睡早起，富裕、聪明、身体好。

12. A good medicine tastes bitter.

良药苦口。

13. It is good to learn at another man‘s cost.

前车之鉴。

14. Let‘s cross the bridge when we come to it.

船到桥头自然直。

15. No pains, no gains.

不劳则无获。

16. Nothing is difficult to the man who will try.

世上无难事，只要肯登攀。

17. Where there is life, there is hope.

生命不息，希望常在。

18. An idle youth, a needy age.

少壮不努力，老大徒伤悲。

19. A plant may produce new flowers; man is young but once.

花有重开日，人无再少年。

20. God helps those who help themselves.

自助者，天助之。

21. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

只工作，不玩耍，聪明孩子也变傻。

22. Diligence is the mother of success.

勤奋是成功之母。

23. Truth is the daughter of time.

时间见真理。

24. No man is wise at all times.

智者千虑，必有一失。

25. Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

今天能做的事绝不要拖到明天。

26. Kill two birds with one stone.

一石双鸟。

27. Easier said than done.

说起来容易做起来难。

28. Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.

天才一分来自灵感，九十九分来自勤奋。

29. He who laughs last laughs best.

谁笑在最后，谁笑得最好。

30. He who has health has hope, and he who has hope has everything.

身体健壮就有希望，有了希望就有了一切。

31. No man is born wise or learned.

人非生而知之。

32. Action speak louder than words.

事实胜于雄辩。

33. Courage and resolution are the spirit and soul of virtue.

勇敢和坚决是美德的灵魂。

34. There is no smoke without fire.

无风不起浪。

35. Many hands make light work.

人多好办事。

36. Reading makes a full man.

读书长见识。

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

胸中有知识，胜于手中有金钱。

38. Seeing is believing.

百闻不如一见。

39. Money is a good servant but a bad master.

要做金钱的主人，莫作金钱的奴隶。

40. It‘s hard sailing when there is no wind.

无风难驶船。

41. The path to glory is always rugged.

通向光荣的道路常常是崎岖的。

42. Living without an aim is like sailing without a compass.

没有目标的生活如同没有罗盘的航行。

43. Quality matters more than quantity.

质重于量。

44. The on-looker sees most of the game.

旁观者清。

45. Joys shared with others are more enjoyed.

与众同乐，其乐更乐。

46. Happiness takes no account of time.

欢乐不觉日子长。

47. Time and tide waits for no man.

岁月不等人。

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

若要求知，必须刻苦。

49. Learn to walk before you run.

循序渐进。

50. From words to deeds is a great space.

言行之间，大有距离。

51. Skill and confidence are an unconquered army.

技能和信心是无敌的军队。

52. Habit is a second nature.

习惯成自然。

53. Two heads are better than one.

三个臭皮匠顶个诸葛亮。

54. Nothing is impossible to a willing mind.

世上无难事，只怕有心人。

55. You can‘t make something out of nothing.

巧妇难为无米之炊。

56. Nothing for nothing.

不费力气，一无所得。

57. He who makes no mistakes makes nothing.

不犯错误者一事无成。

58. Nothing seek, nothing find.

无所求则无所获。

59. A little of every thing is nothing in the main.

每事浅尝辄止，事事都告无成。

60. A great ship asks deep waters.

大船要走深水。

一、引出开头

1. It is well-known to us that…(我们都知道……)==As far as my knowledge is concerned...就我所知……)

2.Recently the problem of… has been brought into focus. ==Nowadays there is a growing concern over …(最近……问题引起了关注)

3.Nowadays(overpopulation)has become a problem we have to face.(现今，人口过剩已成为我们不得不面对的问题)

4.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)

5.With the rapid development of science and technology, more and more people believe that…(随着科技的迅速发展，越来越多的人认为……)

6.It is a common belief that…==It is commonly believed that…(人们一般认为……)

7.A lot of people seem to think that…(很多人似乎认为……)

8.It is universally acknowledged that +句子(全世界都知道……)

二、表达不同观点

1.Peoples views on…vary from person to person. Some hold that…However, others believe that…(人们对……的观点因人而异，有些人认为……然而其他人却认为……)

2.People may have different opinions on…(人们对……可能会持有不同见解)

3.Attitudes towards (drugs)vary from person to person.==Different people hold different attitudes towards(failure)(人们对待吸毒的态度因人而异)

4：There are different opinions among people as to…(对于……人们的观点大不相同)

三、表示结尾

1.In short, it can be said that…(总之，他的意思是……)

2.From what has been mentioned above, we can come to the conclusion that…(从上面提到的，我们可以得出结论……)

3.Taking all these factors into consideration, we naturally/reasonably come to the conclusion that…(把所有的这些因素加以考虑，我们自然可以得出结论……)

4.Hence/Therefore, wed better come to the conclusion that…(因此，我们最好的出这样的结论……)

5：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)

6.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……无法生活，但同时我们必须寻求新的解决办法来面对可能出现的新问题)

四、提出建议

1.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)

2.There is no doubt that enough concern must be paid to the problem of…(毫无疑问，对……问题应予以足够重视)

3.Obviously, if we want to do something … it is essential that…(显然，如果我们想要做么事，很重要的是……)

4.Only in this way can we …(只有这样，我们才能……)

5.Spare no effort to + V (不遗余力的)

五、预示后果

1.Obviously, if we dont control the problem, the chances are that…will lead us in danger.(很明显，如果我们不能控制这一问题，很有可能我们会陷入危险)

2.No doubt, unless we take effective measures, it is very likely that …(毫无疑问，除非我们采取有效措施，否则我们很可能会……)

3.It is urgent that immediate measures should be taken to stop the situation(很紧迫的是应立即采取措施阻止这一事态的发展)

六、表示论证

1.From my point of view, it is more reasonable to support the first opinion rather than the second.(在我看来，支持第一种观点比第二种更有道理)

2.I cannot entirely agree with the idea that…(我无法完全同意这一观点)

3.As far as I am concerned/In my opinion, ...(就我来说……)

4.I sincerely believe that…==I am greatly convinced (that)子句。(我真诚地相信……)

5.Finally， to speak frankly， there is also a more practical reason why …(最后，坦率地说，还有另外一个实际的原因……)

七、给出原因

1.The reason why + 句子 ...is that + 句子(……的原因是……)

2：This phenomenon exists for a number of reasons .First, ... , Second, ... ,Third, ... . 这一现象存在有很多原因的，第一……第二……第三…

3.For one thing, ... For another thing, ... ==On the one hand, ... On the other hand…一方面……另一方面……

4.I quite agree with the statement that…The reasons are chiefly as follows. 我十分赞同这一论述，即……其主要原因如下。

八、列出解决办法和批判错误观点做法

1.The best way to solve the troubles is… 解决这些麻烦的最好办法是……

2.As far as something is concerned,…就某事而言，……

3.It is obvious that…很显然……

4.It may be true that…but it doesnt mean that…可能……是对的，但这并不意味着……

5.It is natural to believe that…but we shouldnt ignore that…认为……是自然的，但我们不应忽视……

6.There is no evidence to suggest that…没有证据表明……

九、表示好处和坏处

1.It has the following advantages.它有如下优势

2.It is beneficial/harmful to us.==It is of great benefit/harm to us.它对我们有益处

3It has more disadvantages than advantage.他有很多不足之处

十、表示重要、方便、可能

1.It is important(necessary/difficult/convenient/possible)for sb to do sth.对于某人做……是……

2.It plays an important role in our life.

十一、采取措施

1.We should take some effective measures.我们应该采取有效措施

2.We should try our best to overcome/conquer the difficulties.我们应该尽最大努力去克服困难

3.We should do our utmost in doing sth.我们应该尽力去做……

4.We should solve the problems that we are confronted/faced with.我们应该解决我们面临的困难。

十二、显示变化

1.Some changes have taken place in the past five years.过去五年发生了很多变化2.Great changes will certainly be produced in the international communications.在国际交流中理所当然会发生很多大的变化3.It has increased/decreased from…to…他已经从……增加/减少到……

4.The output of July in this factory increased by 15%.这个工厂7月份产量以增加了15%

十三、表明事实现状

1.We cannot ignore the fact that…我们不能忽略这个事实……

2.No one can deny the fact that…没人能否认这个事实……

3.This is a phenomenon that many people are interested in. 4：be closely related to ~~ (与……息息相关)

十四、进行比较

1.Compared with A, B……与A比较，B…

2.I prefer to read rather than watch TV.

十五、常用英语谚语

1.Actions speak louder than words.事实胜于雄辩

2.All is not gold that glitters.发光的未必都是金子

3.All roads lead to Rome.条条大路通罗马

4.A good beginning is half done.良好的开端是成功的一半

5.Every advantage has its disadvantage有利必有弊

6.A miss is as good as a mile.失之毫厘，差之千里

7.Failure is the mother of success.失败是成功之母

8.Industry is the parent of success.勤奋是成功之母

9.It is never too old to learn.活到老，学到老

10.Knowledge is power.知识就是力量

11.Nothing in the world is difficult for one who sets his mind to it.世上无难事，只怕有心人

读后感写的是自己读了一篇文章或一部著作后的感想。观后感写的是看了一部电影或一出戏剧一部电视剧一场演出一幅书画后的感想。二者的写作要求是一样的：既要写看到的作品的内容，又要写由此产生的感想;作品内容要写得简略，感想要写得具体;要有叙述有议论。怎样写出符合要求的习作呢?我们可以这样做：

一、理解作品，选定感发点。

理解作品是写读后感、观后感的前提。我们要认真研读观看作品,理解作品的写的或表现的内容是什么，要说明什么道理赞扬人物的什么精神。在此基础上思考：这篇(部)作品的哪些情节精彩，为什么说它精彩?哪个地方使自己深受启发，受到了怎样的启发?哪个地方引起自己的联想，引起了怎样的联想?自己喜欢哪个人物，为什么喜欢?自己不喜欢那个人物，为什么不喜欢?这样以来，我们就会产生好多的感想,把所有的感想排排队，比较一番，看看其中哪一个(最多两个)感想最深刻、最有话可说、最有现实意义，就把这个(最多两个)感想作为这篇读后感、观后感的感发点。

二、起个凝练醒目的题目

读后感、观后感的题目要凝炼醒目。题目可以提示出习作的内容，如《〈周恩来〉观后感》、《读〈邱少云〉有感》;也可以提示出感发点，如读了《小马过河》写读后感，用“要亲身尝试”做题目。

三、开头要简洁，为下文做铺垫

读后感、观后感的开头要简洁明快，为下文做好铺垫。如“《灯光》读后感”这样开头：“读了《灯光》，我被郝副营长的英雄事迹感动得流下眼泪。”紧扣题目只用一句话就交待明白了读的文章是什么，总的感受是怎样的，为下文介绍郝副营长的事迹和具体写自己的感受做好了铺垫。

四、引述作品有关内容再分析议论亮出感发点

为了增强习作的说服力，接下来要把作品里引发自己感发点的内容简明扼要地引述出来，再对这些内容进行分析概括和议论，然后亮出感发点。如写“《周恩来》观后感”，用几十字引述周总理到农村去访贫问苦、到工厂去视察生产、到地震灾区指挥抗震救灾、在病重住院期间还坚持批阅文件的感人事迹后，再经过一番分析议论，然后亮出感发点：“周总理为了祖国和人民真是鞠躬尽瘁死而后已呀!”别人读了会觉得习作的感发点有理有据，入情入理，值得信服。

五、立足感发点引申联想

亮出感发点后，还需要联系社会生活中类似的或相反的事例、现象，展开分析议论，以增强文章的现实意义和感染力。如看华君武的漫画《假文盲》写观后感，在亮出感发点“假文盲的行为危害了正常的社会生活秩序”后，联想到社会上一些人随地吐痰践踏草地不走斑马线等不文明不道德的行为，并分析议论他们给社会带来的危害，又联想到小同学在乘车时主动为老年人、孕妇让座的事例，与前者进行对比，然后褒扬小同学的高尚品质。这样以来，不仅文章的内容丰富了，而且有了针对性，有了现实意义，感染力就增强了。

六、结尾注意强调、升华感发点

读后感观后感结尾时要注意强调和升华感发点：如“《小兵张嘎》观后感”这样结尾：“张嘎凭着机智勇敢战胜了敌人，他是一个小英雄。我要学习张嘎，机智勇敢地应对学习和生活中的种种挑战和考验。”既强调了感发点——嘎子机智勇敢，又说了自己要机智勇敢地应对学习和生活的挑战和考验，从而升华了文章的中心。

文无定则。初写读后感观后感，同学们可以按这个步骤写，在基本掌握了写作方法后就要追求创新。相信你们一定能写出优秀的读后感、观后感。

[写好观后感作文的写作技巧

题目：请以“My Class Teacher”为题，写一篇不少于60个单词的作文。

My Class Teacher我的班主任

My class teacher is Mr. Wang. He is strict but kind. He has taught us Chinese for two years.我的班主任是王老师，他是一个要求严格而亲切的老师。他已经教了我们两年语文。

He always tells us to study hard but not all the time. Sometimes he plays with us. He says, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." I think he is a good class teacher.他总是告诉我们要好好学习，但不是时时刻刻学习。有时他会和我们一起玩。他说：“只会用功不玩耍，聪明孩子也变傻。” 我觉得他是个很好的班主任。

点评：这篇文章取材的是身边熟悉的人，作者也有东西可写，更具有可读性。另外，写人时把主语稍作调整，读起来轻松多了。

I am a 15-year-old girl. My name is [ename]Cherry[/ename]. Now I am studying in the middle school. I want to be an actress because I think it is a funny and exciting job...

写人的常见句式如：

This is my friend, Mary.

She is... years old.

She is a teacher/ an artist/ a singer...

She/ He gets up at 6/5... / early/ late.

She/ He has sports at school.

She/ He likes...

She/ He is strong/ fat/ slim/ kind/ thin/...

She/ He looks like...

She/ He is good at English/ maths/ Chinese/ physics...

2017年的小升初考试要开始了。下面是小编整理的2017年小升初作文写作技巧：确认主题，欢迎阅读。

作文在中考语文试卷所占比重之大是人皆共知的，其得分直接影响着中考语文成绩，一篇好的作文得分能在48分以上，而一篇较差的作文得分可能不足30分，要想使中考作文取得一个令人满意的成绩，做到以下几个方面是至关重要的：

思想内容深刻是作文得分关键。今年我市高分作文大多是内容丰富，见解深刻的作文，考生或阐述对生活的感悟，或表达自己对生活独到的见解;而那些得分较低的考生作文，内容则显得空洞贫乏，缺少实实在在的内涵，仅仅是凑一些字数，敷衍成一篇非常乏味的“政治式论述题”。因此考生在写作文时一定要结合自己的实际生活阅历，运用自己的眼光去深入思考、提炼作文的主题，表达自己的生活感悟，展示自己的思想境界，写出一篇实实在在的文章，切不可蜻蜓点水一带而过，更不可架空文章。

结构完整，这是中考作文最基本的要求。一篇未及完篇的作文，无论语言多么优美，观点如何新颖，也只能归入三类卷，所以在中考作文时一定要避免无结尾作文的出现。如果实在没有时间，也应结合作文的开头急就一个作文结尾。

其次，作文一定要做到主题集中，作文应围绕同一主题作深入阐述，切忌东拉西扯，主题涣散甚至无主题。

另外，作文篇幅也应控制在600~700字之间，作文太短了，会让人觉得内容单薄，太长了又会让人感到厌烦。

要想在众多的考生作文中脱颖而出，赢得阅卷老师的青睐，作文切入角度的新颖不失为一条行之有效的途径。今年我省的中考作文为半命题作文，大部分的考生都是从题目的提示语中选择一个词语填入题中，如写珍惜拥有的“亲情”、“青春”、“幸福”等，这样的文题当然可以，但写的人多了，阅卷者难免会觉得乏味，如果作文语言不是很精彩，那么你的作文就很难得到高分。但有些考生就很聪明，他们舍弃了这些考生常用的话题，而另辟蹊径，有的写珍惜拥有的“挫折”，有的写珍惜拥有的“对手”等，这样新颖别致的文题就很能引起阅卷老师的注意，如果言之成理或描述得当，则很容易得高分。

俗话说“千古文章意为高”高考作文最忌讳人云亦云，没有个性、没有特色。“删繁就简三秋树，领异标新二月花”写作怎么能想别人之所未想，发别人之所未发，让自己的作文在“繁花三千”中脱颖而出呢？怎么能独树一帜，赢得高分呢？

1、四好战略是前提

1）一个好的标题

题目是文章的眼睛。一个亮丽的题目，往往给人赏心悦目的感觉。简洁、清晰、生动、新颖是题目亮丽的要素。一个醒目鲜活的文题，往往是内容的高度概括。它可以总领全文，不但会照亮整篇作文，还会照亮阅卷者的心灵。而拟题的技巧多种多样，有修辞法、公式法、字母符号法等。而修辞法则是最能使题目异彩飞扬的一种。如《在我指头跳跃的阳光》、《人生若只如初见》、《流泪的紫水晶》、《海棠依旧？绿肥红瘦？》等，看到这样的文题。阅卷老师的眼睛怎不会为之一亮？心灵怎不会为之一震？

2）一个好的开头

一般来说，文章开头力求做到一简二美三有哲理。简，就是开篇语言简洁，直奔主题。使读者一目了然；美，就是开头的语言能给人以美感，或文采斐然，或意境深远，或情趣盎然，使读者心灵产生共振。哲理，是一种深度，一种高度，如果都做到了，那效果肯定错不了。开头的方法有很多如：趣事，引人人胜；引用名句，起点高远；排比句，气势磅礴；设问句，发人深思。高考作文，由于受时间字数的限制，最好是“开门见山”，直奔主题。

3）一个好的结尾

古人云，结句当如撞钟，清音有余，结尾是文章结构的有机组成部分，是文章的收笔处和落脚点，是全文的归宿。任何虎头蛇尾的文章，都很难引起读者的审美情感，很难获取高分。结尾的方法也很多：总结全文，以揭示主旨；展示未来，以鼓舞斗志；抒发情怀，以增强文章感染力，当然，最好要首尾呼应，整合一体。

4）一手好字

见字如见人，一手好字能给人一种很直观的美感，就算文章写的不错，主题鲜明，文字优美，意境深远，但是很难让人有读下去的欲望。要记得，书写是文章的服饰，标点是文章的呼吸，丑陋是永远打不赢的“官司”。我们要尽最大的努力展示出自己的书写水平：一要端正，二要清楚。三要美观。标点也是文章准确表情达意的工具。不要只是“一点到底”。不要只会单纯地使用逗号、句号，一篇文章，应该能够准确、灵活、生动地使用六七种标点符号。书写美观了，“感情分”也就上去了！

2、新鲜的素材，完善的知识储备是关键

同学们都想做到作文见解新颖，材料新鲜，给读者以耳目一新的冲击力和震憾力。这就要求同学们不断感知和体验。有意识地在生活实践和课外阅读中仔细观察自然、观察社会，尤其是多观察各种各样的人，深入细致地体验生活、体验“喜怒哀乐忧”等各种情感，并把自己拥有的新鲜材料激活。

从阅读和生活中尽可能开阔视野，拓展知识、增加积累、提高自身的素养和知识面的深度，深入体验，才可能做到临场发挥“左右逢源”、“为我所用”。作文，追求和表现自己的个性，有了新鲜的材料，还要下功夫联系自己思想实际和生活实际来立意，做到这一点，写出自己的真情实感和真知灼见就很容易了。

3、反复锤炼语言是重点

语言是为内容服务的，但是，运用的语言鲜活而富有个性风格，就会使文章大放异彩。写作训练中要学会反复锤炼，努力做到词语生动、句式灵活，修辞方法恰当。概念化的、抽象的、生涩的词语尽可能少用，多用富有色彩、动感和情绪体验，能诉诸人的感官，调动人的形象思维，撞击人的情感世界的词语，学会用近义词和反义词来体现事物细微的差异和鲜明的对比。学会灵活得体地交替使用长句和短句、主动句和被动句等。

锤炼语言，要学着恰当引用诗词佳句来增添文章的文字情趣，增添新意。可妙引经典句式，以此来优化文章语言，增强语言的表达效果。如“不必说……也不必说……单是……就……”、“没有……就没有……更没有……”等经典句式。还可以妙引流行词句，增添语言情趣。如广告词“没有最好的，只有更好的”、“快乐，你懂得”等。学着巧用修辞。多用排比、拟人、比喻等修辞方法，使句子生动形象，耐人咀嚼。如此一来，整篇文章也就有了生命力了！

一、什么是记叙文

对中学生而言,记叙文是一种比较熟练也比较容易掌握的文体。然而，我在阅卷中也常常看到文体感不强的记叙文。例如1994年的高考作文，要求以“尝试”为题，写一篇不少于700字的记叙文。可是，有不少文章或叙议并重，平分秋色;或议论过多，喧宾夺主;或叙少议多，本末倒置。据江苏省高考语文阅卷点的粗略统计，该省20万考生中，不符合文体要求的有3%之多。有的考生，其选材的眼光就决定了他不可能写出像样的记叙文。例如，有一位考生，写同学到“我”家来玩，因为父母不在家，“我们”就自己“尝试”着包饺子，一篇700多字的文章，用了23个“再”字：先弄一点面粉，再加水，再揉，再搓，再擀成饺皮……先把菜剁碎，再加一点盐，再加一点酱油……尽管文章也是有头有尾，清楚完整，但却很难说是一篇记叙文，而是比较典型的“怎样包饺子”的程序说明文。当年，许多写“尝试”着做一个物理实验、化学实验，“尝试”着解剖一只青蛙、一条鲫鱼的作文，严格地说来都不是记叙文，而是说明文或应用文。

记叙文以叙述、描写为主要表达方式，运用形象思维的手段，通过叙事、记人、写景、状物等来反映丰富多彩的现实生活。

二、记叙文的特点

1. 创造性

这可以从三个方面来理解：首先，记叙文虽然不像文学作品那样，对生活现象进行集中概括，通过典型形象来反映生活;而是常常选择日常生活中的那些亲眼所见、亲身经历、亲自体验过的生活内容作为写作的材料;但是，这决不意味着作者可以把现成的生活材料照抄到文章中去，决不意味着作者不需要对生活材料进行加工改造、提炼生发;相反，这是把生活材料转化成文章的必不可少的“工序”。这种加工改造、提炼生发的过程，包含着作者大量的创造性劳动。以写作成品形式出现的记叙文，不可能是客观生活的翻版，也不仅是作者心灵的视像，它是饱和着作者心血的精神产品，是作者心灵和客观事物遇合所孕育出来的创造物。其次，记叙文是用语言文字作为传达的媒介的，从本质上看，记叙文就是某种经验(外在世界的人、事，内在世界的思想、情感等)的陈述，运用语言文字进行叙述，本身就是一种创造。语言文字无法代替真实存在，语言化了的世界就不再是真实存在的世界本身。将真实存在转化成语言文字的工作，就是一种创造性的工作。第三，把真实存在转化成语言文字可以有千万种不同的方式，选用哪一种方式，即最后完成的文章是何种模样，其中必然包含着作者个人心灵的运作。因此，任何记叙文总是不可避免地带有作者个人心灵的色彩，正如苏联作家秋切夫所说：“我在一切之中，一切之中都有我。”所以，我认为，尽管记叙文是客观世界的反映，但这种反映，又总是和作者个人的创造性劳动结合在一起的，是通过作者个人的创造性劳动来反映的。

用语言文字把生活材料转化成记叙文，本身就包含创造性因素在内，如果在转化的方式上能够别出心裁，与众不同，其创造的程度就愈高。所以，写好记叙文的关键，一是要选择新颖的材料，二是要采用新颖的写法。

2. 形象性

议论文是以抽象的概念、判断、推理来揭示事物的本质，表达对生活的认识，它在许多具体的个别的事物中概括、抽取共同的特点，而把产生这些认识所依赖的一个个具体的个别的表象留置在作品之外。记叙文则恰恰相反，它往往抓住具体的个别的事物“做文章”。所以，它以叙述、描写为主要的表达方式，即使偶用议论，其目的也是为了“画龙点睛”，并且也往往是在画好全龙以后，才去轻轻一“点”。在这里，“龙身”是主体，是基础。记叙文要靠具体的形象去感染读者。叙述，必须清楚地交代事情的来龙去脉、前因后果以及具体的发展过程;描写，必须使读者如见其人，如闻其声，如触其物，如食其味，历历可感，如在目前。在记叙文写作中，创造场面是最基本的手段。因为说到底记叙文总是要在纵横两个方面来组织结构，纵就是时间的延续，横就是空间的展开，而场面就是对人或物在特定的时空中存在或活动状况的描述。只有组织起一连串的场面，记叙文才能获得生动具体的形象感。

所以，那种连贯、整一、富有动态感的材料，是记叙文最需要的材料。对短小的记叙文来说，就更是如此。那种千里来龙，百年纷争式的材料，不是记叙文的好材料，记叙文需要的是缩时间于一瞬，寓空间于一隅的短小精悍的材料。

3. 情趣性

从格调上来说，记叙文不像议论文那样庄重严肃，也不像说明文那样冷静客观，它追求的是以情动人，以趣逗人。从选材方面来看，记叙文并不要求一定要选择重大题材，而往往是从日常生活中选择富有情趣的凡人小事，作者往往通过对凡人小事的记述，来寄寓自己的感情，来表现丰富多彩的现实生活的某一侧面。从表现手法方面来看，记叙文追求的是引人入胜的表达效果，它要求把写作内容表现得曲折生动，意趣盎然。有时，记叙文也传达作者对某种事理的认识，但是，它一般不展开直接的议论，而是把这种认识潜藏在具体的生活画面之中。它通过具体形象的描绘，潜移默化地影响读者，从情感、情趣方面去晕染读者，让读者用审美的眼光去领悟作品的意蕴。

在写作记叙文的时候，写人，最好要选择那些内心情感丰富复杂的人物作为描写对象;写事，固然要注意事件本身的脉络，但更要注意流荡在事件中的情感线索，特别要注意选择富有情感内涵的细节来充实、丰满事件的血肉;写景、状物，固然要注意准确地描摹景物的外在状态，但更重要的是，要写出客观景物与主观感受的“化合”。

三、写好记叙文的关键：选材

写好记叙文的关键是选材，选到了一个好的材料，文章就成功了一半。那么，什么样的材料才是记叙文最需要的材料呢?

1.要选择有较强的情感内涵的材料

老舍先生说过：“小说是情感的记录，而不是事实的重述。”记叙文写作也是如此。事件，线索等等仅仅是记叙文的表层结构，其深层结构是充溢其中的情感内涵。事件、线索等等仅仅是承载情感内涵的框架，真正感动人的是蕴含在框架中的情感。为什么有的文章看起来也是有头有尾，清楚完整，但就是清淡无味，不生动，不感人呢?最关键的一点就是其中缺乏深厚的情感。在“记叙经历”的文章中，最好要选择富有情感内涵的经历。那些没有情感内涵的“经历”不是记叙文的好材料。把一次一般性的大扫除的经过记叙得再详细，把一次实验课的过程描写得再具体，把一次郊游的经历写得再热闹，如果其中不流淌在真挚的情感，也是不可能动人的。因为“感人心者，莫先乎情”(白居易语)。

1988年的高考作文题是《习惯》，文体不限。这与近两年的话题作文有点相似。当年不少写记叙文的考生都选择了写老师。应该说，这是一种比较聪明的选择。因为阅卷的是老师，写老师容易博得好感。然而，写老师的什么呢?不少考生都是这样写的：到了晚上，某老师又习惯性地坐到了窗前的书桌旁，照例开始备课、改作业。这样的材料其实没有什么写头，因为它只是在表扬老师的敬业精神，在情感上没有什么特别的动人之处。试想，一位老师晚上不去备课、改作业，而是去跳舞、搓麻将，会是一位好老师吗?可是，有一位考生的选材却不同凡响，他写道：新学期开学了，王老师又像往常一样来到了学校，当他快到教室门口时，突然想起自己已经退休了。于是，只好悻悻地回了家。第二天一早，他又准备到学校去了，但这一回他记起自己已经退休了，他应该在家“挎垮篮子，生生炉子、抱抱孙子”了。可是，他在家里犹如芒刺在背，坐立不安，什么事也干不了。他老是惦记着他的学生。于是，他又来到了他任教的教室旁。他要看一看他的学生。然而，他又怕影响正在听课的学生。于是，他蹑手蹑脚地来到了教室的窗下，躲在那里听学生上课的情况……这样的选材就要高明得多了。因为这个材料中饱含着王老师对学生的梦萦魂牵的一腔深情，这是一个老教育工作者挥之不去、无法排解的对教育事业的真情。这样的选材与晚上备课、改作业，不是一个精神等级，不可同日而语。由此可见，只有那些饱含情感内涵的材料，才是记叙文真正需要的材料。

那么，在“记叙经历”时，可以写哪些情感呢?

从程度方面来说，可以写温情、热情、激情等等;从类属方面来说，可以写亲情、友情、爱情等等。要把文章写得激动人心，要使文章具有较强的情感冲击力，在选材时还要注意以下几点：

(1)要写那些人人都能感知、体会的人之常情。情感虽然是一种说不清、道不明的内在感觉，但是“人同此心，情同此理”，这就是情感具有可体验性的生理、心理基础。有许多情感内容是人们共有的，共通的，传达这样的情感，就会激起别人的共鸣，就会使人感动。例如，1999年江苏的高考优秀作文《伤心儿女》一文，写三个不孝儿女，在母亲的弥留之际，不是给母亲留下最后一点安慰，而是通过移植母亲的记忆，寻找母亲的遗产，然而，他们在母亲的记忆中，却看到了母亲的艰辛，母爱的伟大，母亲的忍辱负重，看到了自己的丑陋。母亲的记忆，荡涤了不孝儿女灵魂深处的污垢，于是，他们的灵魂也得到了升华。对父母的孝顺，是埋藏在中华民族心灵深处最深厚的感情，写这样的内容，最能激起人的共鸣。这篇作文，在阅卷现场就使许多阅卷教师感动得热泪盈眶，在媒体发表以后，又广为传诵，被视为当年全国高考的最佳作文。其中最主要的一点，就是它所传达的情感打动了千千万万人的心。

(2)要写那种超出常规的强烈的反常合道的情感。有时候，人物的所作所为与一般的人不一样，似乎不大正常，但这种反常的行为中往往包含着强烈的情感。这种情感具有很强的冲击力，往往给人留下难以忘怀的印象。例如，上面说的那位退休的王老师，在一般人看来是有点不大正常，这么大年龄了，居然蹑手蹑脚躲在窗户下听课。但是，正是从这反常的举动中，我们看到了他对学生执着的爱，看到了他对教育事业的痴迷，并对他产生了崇高的敬意。相反，那种一到晚上就坐到窗前备课，改作业的老师，正因为他们的合常、平常、正常，反而激不起我们情感的涟漪。当情理冲突，必须舍理取情的时候;当正确与正确之战，必然要舍弃一方，形成悲剧冲突的时候;当人物对某种事物痴迷、执着到难舍难分而与常规的做法不一样的时候;情感就开始动人了。《灌园叟晚逢仙女》中爱花如命的“花痴”，《聊斋志异》中的书痴、石痴、鸟痴、情痴，都是这方面的典范，我们应该从中得到启发。

(3)情感要能产生振荡和分化。文似看山不喜平，那种一览无余的、直线发展的情感，缺少回环蕴藉的美感，很难使人产生情感的激荡。因此，在描述情感的时候，要尽量展示情感的曲折和波澜，一步一步把读者引入情感的旋涡。

2.要选择有较深的主题潜能的材料

所谓主题，是指文章使用的材料所蕴含的基本意义以及作者通过对材料的思考、体验所传达的基本思想和评价。前者是主题的客观性，也就是说，这种基本意义是材料本身所固有的;后者是主题的主观性，是指作者对材料内涵的洞见开掘。主题是客观性和主观性的结合。所以鲁迅先生要求“选材要严，开掘要深”。选材和立意是记叙文写作中两个重要的环节，他们处于互相影响的联动状态。材料选得好，为开掘主题提供了最大的可能性;主题的开掘和深化，又反过来制约、促进材料的选择和加工。就选材这一环节而言，和选择矿点的道理是一样的，矿藏的深厚度如何，质量如何，有无开采价值，这都是打井前需要认真考虑的。有些考生在选材时往往只考虑是否切题，却很少考虑材料的主题潜能，正如鲁迅先生批评的那样：“将一些琐屑的没有意思的事故，便填成一篇。”这样的文章当然不可能获得高分。有时候，同一材料，在不同的作者手里，可以写出主题深浅不一的作品。但是，也有不少材料，本身并不具有什么内涵，无论你怎样妙笔生花，也很难开掘出多深的主题来。这就提示我们，在选材的时候，一定要事先估测一下材料的主题潜能，看看它们有没有可开发性。

举一个例子来说吧。1994年的高考作文《尝试》，不少考生写的都是尝试着学骑车，学游泳，学烧饭做菜，学干农活等等。这样的材料固然也切题，却没有什么可以深层开发的主题潜能，充其量也就是告诉人们“只要去尝试，就可能成功”的道理。而这样的道理是人们共知的常理，是相当肤浅的，它并没有为人们提供新的认识和新的启示。这是材料本身的局限。

那么，怎样才能选择到具有丰富的主题潜能的材料呢?

(1)要摒弃老套的选材思路，开拓选材的视野。比如，写《灯下》，就不要只是想到自己或别人在台灯下刻苦读书;写“假如记忆可以移植”，就不要只想到不劳而获地去移植名人的记忆。这一类老套的材料本身的主题容量就很小，当然更谈不上新意了。其实，每一个题目，每一个话题，可写的材料很多。就拿《灯下》来说吧;灯，可以有电灯、油灯、路灯、探照灯、聚光灯等等多种多样的灯;人们在灯下也可以做各种各样的事。“假如记忆可以移植”，本来就是一个开放性极强的话题，可写的东西太多太多了。为什么非要去一窝蜂地移植别人的记忆呢，可不可以把自己的记忆移植给别人呢?为什么非要去移植名人、伟人的记忆呢，可不可以移植普通人的记忆呢?移植了别人的记忆，人物双方会发生些什么事呢?……一旦把思路打开，选材的天地是非常广阔的。当年，有的考生要把自己游历祖国名山大川的美好记忆移植给自己从来没有出过门的奶奶，让她也体会一下祖国美好河山的大好风光;有的考生要把自己看到的万紫千红、五彩缤纷的大千世界的记忆移植给从小失明的“小弟弟”;有的考生要把自己聆听美妙音乐的记忆移植给从小失聪的“小妹妹”。角度一变，境界全出。

(2)要善于从日常的生活小事中发现具有丰富内涵的材料。中学生的生活阅历当然不可能太丰富，但是，“对于我们来说，生活中不是缺少美，而是缺少发现”(罗丹语)。其实，具有丰富内涵的写作材料无处不在，关键是作者要有一双善于发现的眼睛。也正因为中学生的生活阅历不够丰富，就更需要从日常的生活小事中去发现有意义的材料。从某种意义上来说，愈是能从细小的生活现象中发现深邃的内涵，其作品的质量就愈高。“一粒沙里看世界，半瓣花上说人情”，这是艺术的高致。2001年江苏的高考优秀作文《一毛钱与诚信》，从微不足道的一毛钱中看到了诚信的弥足珍贵，看到了道德的巨大力量，这样的选材是独具慧、颇有新意的。

(3)要处理好虚和实的关系。中学生写记叙文，大多数选材都比较实，都是实实在在地叙述、描写。其实，最具有主题潜能的材料，往往是那些具有象征意蕴的事物。如《白杨礼赞》《荔枝蜜》等都是运用事物的象征意蕴来拓展作品的主题的。因此，我们在选材时，不仅要注意那些写实性的材料，也要注意那些具有象征意蕴的材料。象征的事物往往能使作品的主题具有多义性、多层性、多向性，从而使读者产生丰富的联想，使作品产生特有的艺术魅力。像《门》《坡》《风》这样的题目，就既可以是写实的，也可以是象征的，当然也可以是二者结合的。有时候，在总体写实的情况下，选择一些具有象征意蕴的事物穿插其间，也能使作品荡出虚神，收到言已尽而意无穷的艺术效果。

3.要选择有有初步形式意味的材料

在考虑记叙文选材时，许多考生往往只注意材料内部方面的某些因素，强调选材要积极健康、典型生动等等。这固然不错。但是，如果忽略了记叙文的形式规范对选材的特殊要求，就会造成文体感不强，记叙文的文体特征就会因为选材不当而显示不出来。从某种意义上来看，记叙文区别于其他文体的特点主要就表现在选材上。

那么，记叙文本身特有的形式规范，对选材有哪些要求呢?概括起来就是三点：连贯、整一、动态。

(1)整一。整一，就是记叙文的材料必须相对集中。这种集中，不是要求作者像写议论文那样围绕中心(主题)选材，而是要求围绕记叙文自身的内部要素选材，或集中于人物，或集中于事件，或集中于环境，这也是记叙文内部又可以分为写人、叙事、绘景等类型的原因所在。议论文是旁征博引，运用零散的、片断的材料来证明中心论点，它是在观点与材料统一的原则之下，靠理性的辐射来集中材料;而记叙文则要靠自身的时空关系来凝结材料。在写作训练中，我们经常可以看到《记XXX》 之类的作文，但是，这类作文往往不像记叙文而更像议论文，其原因就在于作者在选择材料时运用的是议论文选材的方法：为了证明xxx具有某种思想品质，于是就从XXX 的生活经历中选择出与这种思想品质有关的“二三事”。其实这正是议论文中的例证法。用这种方法来选择材料、记叙经历、刻画人物，其事件往往是凌乱的，人物的思想性格往往是浮浅的，主题也往往是直露的。在1999年的高考作文中，运用一连串的“假如记忆可以移植”的排比段来展开记叙的文章，之所以文体感不强，显得松垮，散乱，其原因也就在这里。

(2)连贯。连贯，就是要求记叙文的材料，最好是截取现实生活中连续发生的片断。当然，在具体描写的时候，可以有详略，疏密等。这里需要特别注意的是记叙文的一个重要因素：时间。在记叙文中，要始终潜藏着时间的暗流，也正因为如此，人们把叙事作品称之为时间的艺术。在议论文中，也往往要叙事，但是，它所叙之事，往往是拧去了时间的抽象的说明性格或主题的例证。无论是整篇的议论文还是作为例证的叙事片断，时间往往消解在议论的逻辑展开之中，它所使用的材料，也没有时间序列的具体要求。

在充分认识到时间在记叙文中的重要作用以后，又必然引出记叙文的另外两个要素：原因和结果。我们强调时间序列在选材时的重要作用，并不意味着一切具有时间序列的“流水账”都可以作为记叙文的材料，相反，只有在时间序列中包含着“价值”的材料，才是记叙文需要的材料。这里的所谓“价值”，就是伴随着时间演进的因果裂变。福斯特曾经打过一个很有意思的比喻：国王死了，王后也死了，这叫做“时间生活”，没有入文的价值;国王死了王后也伤心而死，这叫做“价值生活”，就可以入文了。由此可见只有伴随着时间的演进中，产生一系列因果裂变的材料，才是真正适合写记叙文的材料。至此，我们可以说，所谓连贯，不仅仅包含着时间的连续，而且也包含着因果关系的连缀。

(3)动态。动态，就是要求在事物的发展过程中，在动态流程中表现某种主题。因此，只有那种具有动态感、过程感的材料才是记叙文真正需要的材料。从本质上看，叙事都是对已经过去了的事情的追述。但是，这种追述，在不同的文体中有不同的方式，在说明文中，运用的常常是“一般现在时”;在议论文中，运用的常常是“一般过去时”;而在记叙文中则常常要把它转化成“现在进行时”。

我们说，记叙文的真正中心是人，但是，决不是用二三事的例证法就可以把人写活的只有把人放到动态发展的人生中去，放到人的历史性展开的过程中，才能展示人的丰富生动的性格。即使是在写景状物，主要表现空间关系的游记之中，也只有写出诸如曲径通幽、移步换景、豁然开朗等动态景观，写出人与自然景物的沟通、交流、融合等等，才能带来艺术的美感。这也正是静止的介绍景物的导游图、说明书与散文、游记的区别所在。在议论文中作为例证的叙事片断，只要交代人物做过些什么，做了些什么;而在记叙文中，则不但要写出人物做什么，更主要的是，要表现人物怎样去做(动态)。在导游的说明中，主要是交代那里有什么(静态);而在记叙文中则主要描写“我”在那里看到了什么(动态)，它在“我”心里引起了什么反应(动态)，“我”的行为引起了别人什么反应(动态)。

选择具有动态感的材料，还要注意，动态发展的流程最好是波浪式的，而不是直线式的，因为那种直线式的事件、直线式的情感缺乏回环蕴藉的美。“文似看山不喜平”，在那些优秀的作品中，我们总会感到，人物的性格、人物的内在情感、事件的发展过程，总是曲曲折折地向前发展的中国古代小说中的那些三迭式情节，如三打祝家庄、三顾茅庐三打白骨精等等，为我们提供了成功的范例，我们应该从中得到启发。

[佳作示范]

好 奇 心

2008年 江苏考生

在那个不寻常的中午，在她坚定地迈出每一步时，阳光碎了。

很喜欢这样一句话，每个女孩都是天使。但当我第一次看到她时，我觉得她不是。

她是那个坐在教室角落里的女生，不美，而且她只有一条腿。也许正是因为这，我的好奇心才会像雨后的小草一样“嗖嗖”地长了出来。

那天的阳光好像格外刺眼，中午放学后我走得迟了点，刚好看见她拄着拐杖缓缓地走向楼梯。这时，我的好奇心告诉我：为什么不跟过去看看她怎么下楼梯呢?于是，我悄悄地跟了上去。

只见她拄着拐杖艰难地走下楼。楼梯并不高。但对于她来说每一步都是一次挑战吧!她先将拐杖拄在下一级台阶上，再用腋下顶住拐杖，用力地将那条独腿挪到下一级台阶。我看到她的双手紧紧抓住拐杖，手上的青筋清楚可见。

这时，我的好奇心不但没有减退，反而更加强烈了。不知是谁将吃剩的香蕉皮随手扔在了楼梯上，大概是想恶作剧吧!不知道她会不会注意到，我屏住呼吸看着她艰难地一步一步地走下去。近了，近了……

她要做什么?只见她一手抱住栏杆，一手将拐杖放下来，接着，她蹲下身……她，竟将香蕉皮捡了起来。我的好奇心仿佛一下子被击碎了。我觉得自己好像是一个恶魔，站在这个角落，阴险地看着这样一个天使走进危险。

阳光透过窗射进来，我仿佛一下子被照亮了。我不再好奇她会怎样走下楼梯，赶紧思考怎样去弥补我的好奇犯下的错误。

于是，我飞快地朝她走去。她正努力着站起来。也许是因为太累了，她怎样努力都没有用。这时，我伸出手想把她拉起来。她抬起头，用疑惑的眼神望着我。我轻轻地对她微笑，她便也微笑着将手递给我。于是，我就这样扶着她走下了楼梯。虽然，我们没有说一句话，但我却从她手心的温度中感受到了来自她内心深处的温暖。这温暖慢慢地将我融化，将我的好奇心融成了一颗有爱、有温暖的心。

走出教学楼，她微笑着对我说：“谢谢。再见。”接着便向路边的垃圾筒走去，她小心翼翼地将香蕉皮扔进垃圾筒，然后又迈着坚定的步伐走出校门。耀眼的阳光洒在她瘦小的身上，我仿佛看到了她变成了一个天使。只不过她是一个单翼的天使。她头顶上的隐形的光环温暖了我的心。

我站在金急雨的花树下，将那颗好奇心小心翼翼地放进心中的角落，用她给我的充满爱的心温暖自己。

评析

我已经好久没有看到写得这么精彩的记叙文了!见多了粗糙的叙述，俗套的描写，读到这样的开头：“在那个不寻常的中午，在她坚定地迈出每一步时，阳光碎了。”我禁不住陡然一惊，我预感到：好文章要来了!

果然，每一处描写，都是那样的细腻、真切，每一处心理的变化都是那样的自然、动人，每一句话都是那样的耐得起咀嚼、品味。请特别注意文中关于“阳光”的描写，在阳光的映衬下，文中的许多描写，都成了诗，成了画，成了美的精灵!

写人，固然要写人物“做什么”，但动人处往往在“怎样做”。

请仔细体会以下的细节描写：

只见她一手抱住栏杆，一手将拐杖放下来，接着，她蹲下身……她，竟将香蕉皮捡了起来。我的好奇心仿佛一下子被击碎了。我觉得自己好像是一个恶魔，站在这个角落，阴险地看着这样一个天使走进危险。

想一想，作者为什么要着力描写这个细节?“她蹲下身……她，竟将香蕉皮捡了起来。”这一句中的“……”和“，”隐藏着“我”怎样的心理过程?

好 奇 心

2008年 江苏考生

坐在我前桌的那个人竟然没来参加考试?!看着前面空荡荡的座位和那空白的答案纸，我的好奇心蠢蠢欲动。

她(他)是因为害怕吗?

如果是这样，我只能表示理解但并不赞成。我们这一届是江苏高中课改的第一届，放在科学实验中也就和“小白鼠”差不多，从教材内容到考试形式都是全新的，从老师到学生都是摸着石头过河，真正信心百倍的能有几个呢?但是，我们不能因为这些不确定的因素就临阵脱逃。高考固然可怕，但仔细想想，高考也是可爱的。它意味着我们终于能和数不清的作业、上不完的晚自习和考不完的试卷说再见了!我们终于能以最公平的方式和同龄人展开较量，证明自己的实力了!毛主席说得好，“数风流人物，还看今朝”!所以对于高考，今朝的咱们不用怕!

她(他)是因为复习太认真而病倒了吗?

如果是这样，那真的太不值得了。高考对于我们这群人来说是很重要，从某种意义上来说，它直接决定了我们未来五六十年的生活质量，很多家长都把高中生活说成是“辛苦三年，幸福六十年”，但高考的成败并不代表一切，上大学是一条出路，不上大学也照样有很多创造美好生活的选择，“条条大路通罗马”的古训永远都不会过时。所以，何必为了一次高考把自身给搞垮呢?高考诚可贵，健康价更高啊!还是咱毛主席说得好：“身体是革命的本钱!”

她(他)已经被某所著名院校提前录取了吗?

如果真是这样，我只能说：“太羡慕了!”上学期，我们班也有一位同学被南大录取了，当时那个轰动啊，真是无法形容。班上同学都羡慕得有点儿嫉妒，拼命吵着让那人请客，后来还是“老班大人”结束了这场骚乱，以每人一块德芙巧克力收场。要是我前桌的这个人真的被提前录取了，我倒挺幸运的，兴许还能沾沾她(他)的仙气，最后也能上一所重点大学，不知道这算不算是唯心主义思想啊?

去年有部特火的电影，叫《好奇害死猫》，说的是好奇心毁了一个家庭。不过今天，在这个考场上，好奇心帮了我一个大忙!顺利完成了这篇命题作文。要是有幸能拿到不错的分数，我一定会对身边所有的人说：“好奇心真是个好东西!”

评析

在紧张的考场上，作者居然注意到前面有一位缺考的考生，于是激发了自己的好奇心，展开了丰富的联想，成就了这样一篇奇文。

文中关于为什么缺考的三种揣测，来自活生生的高中生活，个中滋味，甜酸苦辣，既自然真切，充满了生活的质感，又写得轻松活泼，幽默诙谐。能做到这一点，靠的是平时对生活的体察，靠的是从容和自信的心态。

仔细体会，本文绝不是简单的“灵机一动”，而是长期积累和妙手偶得相结合的成果。

从本文中我们应当得到这样的启示：写作的素材其实是无处不在的，关键是要善于体察。文中富有现场感的“前面空荡荡的座位和那空白的答案纸”，以及关于缺考原因的三种揣测，无不来自于作者对生活的体察。而我们的许多考生，被沉重的书山题海压得连喘气的工夫都没有了，感觉器官也迟钝、麻木了，对书山题海以外的事物，甚至对与自己紧密相关的生活现象也变得视而不见，听而不闻，触而不觉了，哪里还有什么“好奇心”呢?闭目塞听，麻木不仁，哪来写作的素材呢?身在宝山不识宝，也只能空手而归啊。从这个意义上来说，开发五官，永远保持一颗敏感而活跃的“好奇心”，拥抱生活，体察生活，才能接纳写作的源头活水。

让我走远看看你

2008年 湖南考生

我是你生命的延续。命运的精灵在我出生之日起便用血缘的长绳将我和你绑在一起，挣不脱，扯不断。我们紧紧相伴十八年，却因置身太近，使我在这十八年的晨光与黑夜感受不到我们之间真实存在的温暖厚重的那个字。

以后啊，让我走远看看你。

很小的时候，别的孩子还被全家捧在手心的时候，别的父母还小心翼翼地牵着孩子过马路的时候，你把我带到游泳池边，用命令的口吻说：“下水。”几岁的孩子，即便在浅水区也不及水深的高度，怎么敢走向那未知的恐惧?你没法向我说明求生技能的重要，狠心扔入水中，且拦住急欲下水救援的哥哥半分钟，任那么小的小孩子在水中挣扎、叫喊、哭泣。那是如死亡般恐怖的记忆。让我在那么近的距离里深深怨恨着你。然而，当十岁的我被教练一眼相中，加入县游泳队的时候，当独自去海南潜水却中途弄掉氧气嘴的时候，我突然发现这一技之长竟如此有用，而此时，我已经远离了你。

小学的时候，别的孩子还举着棉花糖坐在单车后座的时候，别的父母还做好可口的饭菜为孩子端上桌子的时候，你配了一把亮闪闪的钥匙挂在我胸前，随口叮咛：“靠着右边走。”于是，长长的20分钟的路程，一个刚上一年级的丫头片子，便这样一点一点学着自己走了。因为步行，每天要早起10多分钟;因为步行，每天要晚回家10多分钟。回家后，没有炊烟，没有人声，先做作业，等父母回来。你永远不会觉得一个人呆在家里是多么恐怖的事，自强如你，只会觉得那是天经地义。那是如粗布般灰暗无光的记忆，让我在那么近的距离里深深怨恨着你，然而，当四年级的我便能独自骑车去上学的时候，当12岁的我便一个人走南闯北的时候，我突然发现我的自立竟如此超人，而此时，我已经远离了你。

初中的时候，你调去外地，留我一人在家读书。妈妈尚且每周回来一次，而你，即使我过去，也未必能找到时间陪我。好强如你，只是在偶尔见面时责备我的功课，那是如羽毛般苍白无力的忘记，让我在那么近的距离里深深怨恨着你。然而，当我顺利考入重点中学的时候，当我在高中亦能平平稳稳的时候，我突然发现严厉竟能如此激励一个人的成长，而此时，我已经远离了你。

今天早上，你又骂骂咧咧地责怪我不会买圆规，硬是自己上街重新买回一个最好用的，亲自送到教室，然后转身离开。我站在远处看着你，和近距离的相处不同，我突然觉得你已苍老一个世纪。

父亲，我亲爱的父亲，过去的十八年，我们相离得太近，因而感受不到爱的存在，那么以后，让我走远看看你。看看你是如何用自己坚实的臂膀为自己的女儿撑起一片爱的天空。

评析

2008年，湖南的高考作文题是这样的：

阅读下面文字，按要求作文。

“天街小雨润如酥，草色遥看近却无”是唐代诗人韩愈的诗句。意思是说，在滋润如酥的初春细雨中，春草发芽，远远望去，一片淡淡的绿色，可是走近后，却只见到极为稀疏的草芽，绿色反而感觉不到了。诗句的意境是美的，隐含的哲理也很丰富。它使我们领悟到：置身太近，有时反而感觉不到实际存在的东西;要把握某一事物，有时需要跳出这一事物;人对事物的看法与美的感受同距离是有关系的……其实，生活中的许多事物和现象都含有这两句诗的意境与哲理，关键在于你的观察和体会。

请根据自己阅读诗句所体会到的意境与哲理，联系现实生活，写一篇不少于800字的议论文或记叙文。

本文作者准确地理解了命题的意图，紧紧扣住材料中有关“距离”的提示，写出了在“近处”看父亲和在“远处”看父亲的不同的体会和感悟，文章的内容切合题意;文章记叙了“很小的时候”、“小学的时候”、“初中的时候”与父亲在一起的时候感受到的父亲的严厉和自己的怨恨，以及“远离”父亲时才体会到这些特殊的教育方法所带来的好处。全文线索清楚，内容充实，语言流畅。

文章最后，父亲为自己“买圆规”这个细节以及自己站在远处看父亲的感受，不仅与全文的内容相扣相合，而且使文章的主题得到了进一步的强化。

仔细想想，本文的几个主要片段，也就是《我的父亲》之类的文章中常见的内容，但是却被作者用到规定性很强的试题中来了，而且非常切合题意，其中的奥妙在哪里呢?这就是我多次讲过的“语言周旋”“拉一拉，靠一靠，扭一扭”的技巧。你看，从文章的题目“让我走远看看你”到文中每写一事都反复强调“让我在那么近的距离里深深怨恨着你。”“而此时，我已经远离了你。”作者在“拉、靠、扭”上用了多大的力气!

把本文和2006年湖北的高考优秀作文《三生有幸遇上你》结合起来阅读，想一想，同样的材料，怎样转化运用到不同的题目中去。你学到一手了吗?

三生有幸遇上你

2006年 湖北考生

前生，今生，后世，这三生我所有的幸运都只是能够遇上你。——题记

佛说，因果有缘，千百年的轮回皆由缘而起。我想，上辈子也就是前生，我一定是千万次的回眸，亿万次的寻觅，才能在滚滚人流中遇到了你，惟一的你!

我是一个受命运诅咒的孩子。在我很小很小的时候，上天就带走了我的妈妈……一个熟悉的身影，眨眼间消失了，那种感觉，那种心痛贯穿了我的整个生命。从此，我变得敏感多疑，寡言少语，心灵封闭，没有安全感，缺少人情味儿。

我以为我会一直这样生活下去，与空虚相伴，与孤独同眠。然而，三生有幸，我遇见了你……

我还记得第一次见到你，是在那个微凉的晚秋，枯黄的叶子漫天飞舞的时候。你作为小学三年级的班主任出现在我的视线里：微胖，短发，一身黑色衣服，笑时给人温暖，不笑时给人一种严肃。那时，我已习惯于独守自己的心灵世界，不容外人涉足，那是伪装到最后的坚强，也是不容任何人去打破的宁静，对你也没有任何多余的感情。

奇怪的是，你并未因我的冷漠而忽视我，还让我当了学习委员，掌管班上大小事务。一有机会，便表扬我，一有时间，便找我谈心，鼓励我多与人交往，不断地教我一些做人的基本道理。你心疼我，我知道，可是，我心里的冰块是那么牢固，那么寒冷……

时光在你的关心和我的冷漠中如白驹过隙，一晃三年过去了，我离开了你，升上了重点初中，与你的联系少了许多，但是，你始终没放弃过对我的感化与疼爱。

几年如一日，你对我关爱有加，问寒问暖，情浓如水。

中考前的那个下午，我记忆犹新。你托人送给我一封信，看到信封上的熟悉笔迹，我感受到世界上最美的亲情：加油，好好考，我始终相信，你是最棒的!我的眼泪潸然而下，心里有股暖流在涌动，我仿佛听见了自己心里的冰层开始破碎的声音，我不禁笑了，这是妈妈“走”后，我第一次幸福而快乐的微笑。

考入县城重点高中后，我们学校与你家的距离更远了，但我们的心更近了。你时常拎着水果来看我，给了我全部的母爱。

你的信笺和电话成了我温暖的源泉，你的看望和谈心成了我愉悦的家园，你的汇款和米菜成了我幸福的粮仓，在我渴望的时候，你是春天般的及时雨。

高考临近，你发短信来说：“孩子，亲爱的：你要认真复习啊，好好考试，我一直认为你是最优秀的孩子!”老师，你不知道啊，我又一次落泪了，你老是惹我哭，惹得我激动地哭，惹得我高兴地哭……

今天是六月七日，高考的第一天第一科。此时，我想，你肯定捧着保温盒站在考场外，因为你说过，离这儿再远也一定来送考。今天不知为什么你来晚了，是拎的东西多了，还是堵车了?是节约车费步行艰难，还是走错了路?……如果你现在已经从百里之外赶到了这儿，我真的很想跑到考场外，拥抱你，亲吻你，对你说一声：“我想叫你一声妈，老师!”

妈，我三生有幸遇见了你，虽然你并不是我的亲生妈妈，但你满足了我对母爱所有的希望，妈，我爱你!是你教我懂得爱，懂得生活，懂得追求。上帝是公平的，它带走了一个亲妈，却还给我一个伟大的母爱!

三生有幸遇见你，希望我还有下一个“三生”，再下一个，生生世世，永远有幸与你相见!

妈妈，你听见了吗?但愿生我之身的妈妈升入天堂，爱我之身的妈妈永驻人间!

我爱你，妈妈!

评 析

本文从自己的生活经历中选材，写出了对一直关心“我”的老师的真挚、深沉的感情，文中对老师的肖像描写、对老师在场外送考的想象，都写得真切动人。文章从“题记”人手，扣上命题的要求，结尾时，又进一步照应“三生有幸”，首尾圆合。特别是“但愿生我之身的妈妈升入天堂，爱我之身的妈妈永驻人间”一句，更把文章的感情推向高潮，读来令人动容。

2006年湖北的高考作文题要求写出对带“三”字的词语(一个或几个，如“三思而行”“举一反三”“三省吾身”，等等)的联想与感悟，题目出得相当灵活，考生自由选择、自由发挥的余地是很大的。这位考生非常聪明，她(他)所写的其实也就是《我的老师》《记一个人》等题目中常见的内容，但她(他)巧妙地把这些内容融会到《三生有幸遇上你》这个题目中去了。我曾经在许多场合讲过，同样的材料，是可以转化运用到不同的题目中去的。北京有一位对高考作文颇有研究的特级教师甚至说，任何命题都是“不命题”。你对这篇文章的构思，你对这样的观点，有什么看法呢?

1.巧设悬念

把文章后面将要表现的内容，先在前面作一个提示，但不马上解答，以引起读者的好奇兴趣，产生急于看下去的迫切心情，这样文章的开头，我们称为巧设悬念。它的好处是能避免结构上的单调，使文章的情节波澜起伏，引人入胜。

2.一线串珠

记叙文的线索是贯穿全文、将材料串连起来的一条主线，它把文章的各个部分联结成一个统一、和谐的有机体。如果说丰富而生动的材料是一颗颗珍珠，那么线索就是将这些珍珠串连起来的一条线。

记叙文的线索主要有实物、人物、事件、时间、地点以及以作者的思想感情等。无论采取哪种线索，都必须从表现文章的中心思想和体现各种材料之间的内在联系出发，灵活巧妙地确定。

3.以小见大

以小见大，就是以小题材表现大主题的方法。生活中有些材料看起来似乎很平常，但却包含了深刻的意义。“一滴水也可以反映太阳的光辉”。只要善于透过现象发现本质，小材料同样能反映深刻的主题。如《一件珍贵的衬衫》。

4.穿插流动

5.粗笔勾勒

粗笔勾勒法就是用寥寥的几笔重点勾勒出人物外貌的主要特征。采用粗笔勾勒法描写人物肖像，可以对人物的身材、体型、衣着、容貌、神情、姿态、风度的某一方面或几个方面作简要的勾勒。

运用粗笔勾勒法描写人物肖像要抓住人物的最主要的特征，用朴实的文字简略地写出来，不宜用过多的形容词、过多的比喻。其次要简练传神，通过寥寥几笔勾勒出人物的大致形象。

6.烘托艺术

烘托艺术原是中国画的技法名称，是指渲染某一部分，衬托出另一主要部分来。把这种手法运用到文章的构思中来，就是从侧面通过描绘某件事、景或人的方法来衬托出主要人或事物，又称“衬托法”。衬托，也叫映衬。用类似的或反面的事物，使主要事物意思更加鲜明突出，从而达到强烈的表达效果。如“红花还须绿叶扶”。有了陪衬的事物，被陪衬的事物才会显得突出，才能得到更加充分的说明。

1、衬托，可分正衬和反衬。

正衬，就是用类似的事物，从正面去陪衬。烘托主要事物。如“风萧萧兮易水寒，壮士一去兮不复返。”用冷风寒水来衬托壮士此行的悲壮。又如“蓝天衬着矗立的巨大雪峰”，用蓝天衬雪峰，使雪峰更高大。

反衬，就是利用同主要事物相反或相异的事物作陪衬。如上例中的蓝天的蓝，来衬托雪峰的白，使雪峰更洁白。又 如“蝉噪林愈静，鸟鸣山更幽”，以有声衬无声。

2、运用衬托要爱憎分明，要宾主分明，陪衬事物与被陪衬事物，要让人一看便清楚，不能喧宾夺主。

3、衬托和对比的区别：

对比，是把两种不同的事物或同一事物的两个不同方面放在一起相互比较。它与反衬有些相似，但不同。对比，意在比，突出的对象是双方的，对立两事物无主宾之分。

衬托，意在衬，两事物有主宾之分，突出的是主要一方。如：“先天下之忧而忧，后天下之乐而乐”与“已是悬崖百丈冰，犹有花枝俏”，前句是对比，后句是反衬。

7.画龙点睛

画龙点睛是指在适当的时候以一二句议论，点明事物、人物、景物的意义之所在，或揭示作品主题，醒人之耳目，给人以启迪。点睛之处可以是在篇中，也可在篇末。

8.前后照应

前后照应法可以使文章严谨连贯，浑然一体，又突出内容和结构上的内在联系。照应一般有以下几种：

1、内容和标题相照应。这种照应方法常常是内容安排多处和题目照应，或在恰当的地方直接、间接地点明题意。如《背影》，文中多次描写“背影”，既与标题“背影”相照应，又进一步点明题旨，充分表达了作者对父亲深深的思念之情。

2、行文中间照应。这种照应方法就是在文章前面写事，后面行文交代前面所写事的结果，使内容相互补充，层层深入。

3、结尾与开头照应法。在文章的结尾处对开头交代的事情作必要的提及，使文章首尾一致，成为有机的整体。如《白杨礼赞》一文，开头和结尾照应，不但使文章结构显得非常完整，而且使作者的赞美之情得到了淋漓尽致的抒发。

9.卒章显志

在文章结尾时，用一两句话点明中心、主题的手法就叫卒章显志，也叫“篇末点题”，“志”就是指文章的主题、中心。恰当运用这种手法可以增加文章的深刻性、感染力和结构美，有“画龙点睛”的艺术效果。

10.一波三折

记叙性文章要避免平铺直叙，记流水账，如能写得波澜起伏，就能引人入胜，耐看。

俄国作家柯罗连科的写景小品《火光》通篇运用了象征手法，但从字面上看，数百字的短文，由作者的感受引发了一波三折的景物变化，黑夜泛舟，火光又明又亮，好像就在眼前，这是开头展示的基本景象；船夫不以为然，认为还远着呢，兴起一波；自己从不相信到信服，又兴起一波；由“非常遥远”到“毕竟就在前头”，重要的是“必须加劲划桨”再兴一波“一波三折”，“波折”要入情入理，让读者产生情理之中、意料之外的感觉，方能做到引人入胜。而脱离生活，故弄玄虚的“波折”非但不能吸引读者，还会适得其反。

11.欲扬先抑

“欲扬先抑”与“欲抑先扬”是相反的两种布局方法。 采用这种写作手法，要自然合理，切不可牵强生硬。

导语：不论从何种角度，环保都是当代世界发展不可忽视的一环。它也不再仅仅是一种措施和行动，而是一种经济行为，并带动了一系列相关的产业。下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的说明中国发展环保经济的状况的英语句子，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

1. While developing its economy， China will handle properly the relationship among the population， natural resources and the environment.

2. The Chinese government pays great attention to environmental problems arising from Chinas population growth and economic development.

3. China relies on improving supervision， management and technological progress to promote environmental protection.

4. Land， arable land in particular， should be used reasonably and economically. Strong measures will be taken to strengthen the building of the urban environmental infrastructure， regulate industrial structure and lay-out， shun the unpromising way of pollution first， treatment afterwards， and strengthen prevention and control of the pollution in major river valleys to ensure the security of the drinking water of the inhabitants.

【参考译文】

1、中国在发展经济的同时，将处理好的人口之间的关系，自然资源和环境。

2、中国政府高度关注中国人口增长和经济发展所带来的环境问题。

3、中国依靠强化监督管理和技术进步，促进环境保护。

4、土地，特别是耕地，应该合理和经济地使用。将采取强有力的措施来加强城市环境基础设施建设，调整产业结构和布局，避免“先污染，后治理的工作方式，加强预防和控制主要河流污染以确保居民饮用水安全。

1、重视增加阅读量是提高英语写作的途径之一

目前，考生在进行大量阅读的同时，应注重所读材料的文章结构以及连接词的运用(ontheotherhand，however，furthermore)、作者的表达方式(词汇、习惯用语和典型句子的使用)、作者是如何进行叙述和议论的。

2、在教师的指导下，平时应勤写多练

练习写作应从基本功抓起。在中译英翻译训练过程中，加强积累适量的词汇、词组和增加各种类型句子的运用。把握好各种句型和词汇的搭配，并从各类题材和体裁着手，多阅读好的范文。然后模仿写作，作文写好之后，一般都要修改。

第一遍收笔后，先看一看结构，然后从字词上推敲，使文章“充实”起来。更重要的是经老师修改过的作文一定要仔细地看一至两遍，然后再认真地抄写一遍，收获将会很大。

3、英文写作“四步走”

由于时间限制，考试时必须在所限定的时间内完成英语作文。英语作文步骤如下：

（1)作文动笔之前一般都要先打腹稿。在确立中心上、运用材料上、篇章结构上，充分酝酿。

（2)考虑好想写多少句子，该用哪些动词和词组等。

（3)边写边思考内容的连贯性，语言和句子的准确性。

（4)写完后一定要再细看一遍。

.确定中心，写出深意。我们要着于挖掘所写事件中含有的生活哲理或找出它闪光的地方，反复思考，确定文章的中心思想。即善于从普通的小事中写出深意来。小编收集了中考优秀作文写作技巧，欢迎阅读。

一.开头技巧

⑴欲扬先抑，开发胃口

唉，老师怎么让我和他坐一个桌呢?她可是我班最凶的女生啦!就因为这，大伙都叫她"虎妞"。--《同桌》

⑵开门见山，直截了当

我和阿敏的交情可不一般--初中三年的同桌。对她，我有一肚子的话要说。--《同桌》

⑶描形绘神，印象逼真

她，长得真丑：黄瘦的脸;尖尖的下巴;淡得几乎看不见的眉毛下，一双细眯的眼睛;鼻子扁而大;一口参差不齐的牙齿，略有黄色……唉!甭提了，她的外表真不符合这么动听的名字--祝丽丽。--《同桌》

⑷自然交代，平引下文

新学期一开始，我就注意到一个问题：我们班三十三名男生，二十七名女生，男生两人一桌恰好多一名，女生亦如此，必将出现一个男生和一个女生同坐一桌的危机。可万万没想到这个危机会降临到我的头上。--《同桌》

⑸歌词开头，响彻云际

"明天你是否会想起/昨天你写的日记/明天你是否会惦起/曾经最爱哭的你……"一曲悠扬的《同桌的你》从路边音像书店传了出来，那带着绵绵情思的乐曲，把我的思绪带回了三年前的时光……--《同桌》

⑹排比反复，创造旋律

朋友，就是我可以为他献出真挚情感的人;朋友，就是我可以对他付出全部信任的人;朋友，欢乐时与我分享，危难时与我同行。人生中没有朋友，就像生活中没有阳光。我就有着这样的一个好朋友。--《朋友》

⑺设问开篇，无沿无边

往事如烟，随着时光的流逝，大都渐渐淡忘，而那双眼睛，怎能使我忘怀?--《朋友》

⑻名言指路，开宗明义

培根说过："无真实朋友之人，可以谓之真可怜而永陷于孤独生活之人。"他的话道出了朋友的重要。是的，假如一个人丧失了友情，他简直无法生存在世界上。--《朋友》

⑼对比映衬，突出重点

随着岁月的流逝，许多人渐渐被我淡忘了，然而，有那么一双眼睛，一种声音一个身影，至今萦绕在我的心头，久久不能忘怀。--《朋友》

⑽倒叙开头，吸引读者

当我们乘着离开国防教育学校的时候，不知道为什么，泪水竟然在我的眼眶里打转。难道是留恋吗?是留恋那一段虽苦虽累但充满活力的生活，还是留恋那待人苛刻却真诚亲切的军人，我们的教官?--《朋友》

⑾拨乱反正，拨云见日

有人说，淡泊就是看破红尘，看透一切，认为一切都是假的、虚伪的……这种看法是对淡泊的曲解。如果我们翻一下词典就会明白，"淡泊"是不追求名利的意思……--《淡泊》

⑿泰山压顶，观点强现

目前，校园攀比之风肆虐，我认为这种风气确实需要刹一刹。--《攀比风，可休矣》

⒀联想象征，奇妙无穷

一个梦，曾经在西方强盗的炮舰下埋葬，留下的是老一辈辛酸是泪珠不止的心痛和望眼欲穿的期盼作为见证。伴随着流泪的长江长大的我们也就少年已尝愁滋味，踩着前辈留下的印证期待，期待着有那么一天……--《期待》

⒁环境描写，渲染气氛

十月九日又到了，鲁迅先生已经逝世六十年了。从傍晚到子夜，静静地，一个人坐在窗前，任冷雨打着窗棂。灯下一盆吊兰淡淡地涂抹一壁翠色书柜。夜风荡起，身上微微泛起寒意。想起了鲁迅先生，泪水就滑落下来。

⒂题记为冠，哲理为先

世间万物皆难逃自然辩证法，孰是孰非，孰优孰劣，孰喜孰忧，岂可一言以蔽之?--《假如记忆可以移植》

⒃博览群书，信手拈来

据说，在非洲的原野上，有一种食虫的花朵，色彩绚丽，芳香异常，许多飞虫抵御不了"诱惑"而葬身其中……--《抵御"诱惑"》

暮色中，几缕炊烟从农舍里袅袅升起。我捧着一束栀子花，站在张老师的窗前。张老师，您还是那样忙碌?该歇歇了吧，今天是您的节日--教师节。我带着我的收获来看您来了。--《琐忆》

⒅以物喻人，含义深长

在一望无际的旷野上，一棵古老的树，虽然生命已到了最后一刻，但它仍然倔强的生长着。在它的身旁，一棵小树正在抽出嫩嫩的芽。老树的根枯了，它把生命的汁液输给了小树;老树的叶黄了，它把绿色的生命注入了小树。老树历经沧桑，走完了它艰难的历程。如今，小树刚刚抽枝吐叶，老树却离开了它……这正像外公离开了我，他来不及接受我对他的报答之情，就匆匆离开了我。--《琐忆》

⒆解题铺陈，明示中心

责任，就是一个人分内应该做的事。军人，有保家卫国的责任;医生，有救死扶伤的责任;教师，有培养接班人的责任。工人、农民、职员、商人……人人都有自己的责任。在我们的社会里，各行各业都有许多尽职尽责的人，他们组成了一道道最美的风景--请允许我，从这道道美丽的风景画卷中撷取一幅动人的画面吧。

⒇设置矛盾，引人入胜

"我就不信，你在这个班生活了两年多，对这个集体就会没有一点感情?……"这是今天早晨班主任陈老师对我说的话。我望着陈老师愤怒的目光，委屈的眼泪直在眼眶里打转，心理说："陈老师，你误会了……我怎么能不爱我们的班级体呢?"

俗话说：万事开头难。写作文也是如此。我国古代作家把一篇好文章分成三个部分，即凤头、猪肚、豹尾。凤头是传说中凤凰的头，这种传说中的鸟非常漂亮，我们在画家的笔下，可以看到凤凰头上的羽毛色彩斑斓，细腻可爱。由此可见，古人把文章好开头说成是凤头，是很动了一番心思的。写人的文章和其他的文章一样，开头至关重要，好的开头，能够一下子吸引读者的眼球。

我们平时接触写人的作文很多，只有写我们身边的人，写我们自己熟悉的人，才会有内容可写，才能够写得真实、具体、生动、形象。在自己熟悉的人当中，最好选取那些有明显特点和鲜明个性的典型人物来写。写一个人，不能像照相机那样把人照出来就行，而要把人物写活，让别人读了你的作文，仿佛人物就在眼前，这就是我们说的栩栩如生。

写人作文的开头，应该和人物的个性特征相联系，这样就能在文章开始给读者一个深刻的印象。一般情况下，可以采用以下几种方法开头：第一，外貌描写，抓住特征。这是写人的作文最常见的开头方法，为了避免千人一面，就要抓住人物有别于其他人的特征来写。第二，开门见山，直接介绍。这种开头应该交代清楚你和人物的关系，点明人物最主要的性格特点。第三，巧设悬念，吸引读者。运用这种开头的方法，要把人物和事件结合起来，既能表现人物的特点，又能让读者对发生在人物身上的事件产生浓厚的兴趣。第四，先声夺人，引出人物。每个人由于身份、年龄、性格等的不同，他的语言、声音也独具特色，我们可以抓住人物的语言特点，来巧妙地引出要写的人物。

[人物作文开头写作技巧大全

巧用过度句能使整个文章看起来结构更加清晰，表达的更清楚，成为一个整体。下面是语文迷网整理的过渡句，希望对你有帮助。

1)To prevent this phenomenon/trend from worsening/running wide/To guide the matter/situation to the best advantage， it is necessary/important to……(可用于分析建议类、原因分析类等议论文)

2)In the face of……some people take the position that……/some people come to believe that……， to which I cant attach/add my consent.(可用于批驳分析类议论文)

或：In the face of……people retain/take/show/assume different attitudes/position s/standpoints.(可用于各抒己见类议论文)

或：In the face of……many people have come up with……(可用于对比分析类议论文和知识性说明文等)

3)But many people feel puzzled about/perplexed at/over whelmed with……(the changes/situation)， so this essay is intended to……(可用于批驳分析类议论文和知识性说明文)

4)Although lots of people follow the fashion/trend， I still set my heart on……(可用于理由陈述类议论文)

5)To get a sense of how……we must turn first to causes for it/to what benefit(harm/problems/difference)it has brought to our society.(可用于分析建议和原因分析类议论文)

6)This is a(n)favorable/unfavorable/unhealthy/essential/marked/grateful change/tendency/situation， but factors/causes/reasons for it are not hard to find(或but its appearance/existence derives from a variety of factors)。(用于原因分析类议论文)

7)The progress/improvement/change(s)in……is(are)really tremendous/remarkable/prodigious/marvelous， so it is necessary to understand(see)what it(they)illustrate(s)/prove(s)/account(s)for.(用于原因分析类议论文和知识性说明文)

8)A comparison between these changes may be a good way to learn more about……(可用于对比说明文)

9)More insight/inspiration/truth/thought can be deduced from these changes.(可用于知识性说明文)

10)This situation/phenomenon/trend/tendency is rather distressing/disturb ing/depressing/heart-rending， for the opposite of it is just in line with our wishes/just what is to be expected.(可用于分析建议、批驳分析和原因分析等议论文)

11)In that case， however， I prefer to……rather than……(用于理由陈述、比较分析、批驳分析类议论文和知识性说明文)

12)This is what we are unwilling to see， so some way must be found out to……(可用于分析建议、对比分析、批驳分析类议论文和知识性说明文)

13)Fortunately， however， more and more people come/begin to realize that……(可用于分析建议、对比分析和各抒己见类议论文)

14)Unfortunately， things have worsened/come/developed to the point where……(用于分析建议、原因分析、批驳分析、各抒己见类议论文和知识性说明文)

15)But have you ever stopped to think what/how/why……?(可用于除理由陈述之外的各种议论文和知识性说明文)

16)If we take a further/colder/closer look at this problem/matter， however， more secrets/grounds/chances/ways will be found out for……

(e.g.……putting it right/taking action against it/improving it)(可用于分析建议、对比分析、原因分析等议论文和知识性说明文)

17)But this(dis)agreement ceases to exist as soon as……(用于各抒己见、批驳分析、对比分析等议论文和对比说明文)

18)A further/deeper analysis/study/exposure of……/A further comparison between……can reveal more about……/can show us more ways to……(how to……)可用于分析建议、原因分析、对比分析、批驳分析等议论文和对比说明文及知识性说明文)

19)If you push the analysis/study/argument/comparison/exposure further， you will see that……(用于分析建议、对比分析、批驳分析、各抒己见类议论文和对比说明文及知识性说明文)

20)The same is true of many cases in life.(用于举例说明文)

21)Now， lets see what would happen to……in this case/light(或in different conditions/circumstances)。(用于分析建议类议论文和对比说明文)

22)Perhaps， it is ideal/high/ripe time for us to tackle/handle/answer/take up the question in no half-hearted manner.(用于分析建议、原因分析类议论文和知识性说明文)

23)To be frank， I have turned the question over and over in my mind， but found no reason to sidestep it;so here are my ways to……/my reasons for……(用于理由陈述类议论文和知识性说明文)

24)I was once cursed/perplexed/seized with this question， but I have forged/made my own way out of it.(用于知识性说明文)

25)People from different backgrounds， however， put different interpretations on the same thing.(用于各抒己见类议论文和展开式界说性说明文)

26)But different people hold completely different views as to its nature.(用于各抒己见类议论文和界说性说明文)

27)If/When adopted to account for/define/expose……， it can come in different meanings.(用于具体定义说明文)

28)If it is intended for……， however， the divergence of outlook on it ceases to continue while a new meaning to it begins to stand out.(用于归纳性定义说明文)

29)Our life abounds with examples in point.(或The truth in the definition goes for/is applicable to many cases in our life.)(用于举例说明文)

Where possible, reduce the use of "which," "who" "that" "whom" "whether... or not" etc.

少用关系代词

学会运用关系代词是你学习英文过程中的一个重要的阶段。学会少用它们则表明你取得了更大的进步。在校对你的作品时，仔细检查一下所有的which’s, who’s that’s和whom’s是否必要。删除不必要的关系代词会使你的文章更精彩。

Example:

Unnecessary: It is a truth that is universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

(用两个 that’s，读起来很别扭)

Better: It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

-- Jane Austin

注：被动语态修饰的名词通常不须用关系代词。

Unnecessary: In 1970 India dedicated a nuclear power plant near Bombay, which was built with American assistance.

Improved: In 1970 India dedicated a nuclear power plant near Bombay, built with American assistance.

Unnecessary: During this period, Churchill spoke for a nation which was undivided and curiously happy, as it has never been in my lifetime, before or since.

Improved: During this period, Churchill spoke for a nation undivided and curiously happy, as it has never been in my lifetime, before or since.

Unnecessary: Justice theories have a long tradition, which goes back to Plato and Aristotle in the 5th century B.C.

Improved: Justice theories have a long tradition, going back to Plato and Aristotle in the 5th century B.C.

Unnecessary: Shirley Temple’s father blew nearly the entire $3 million that she made by tap dancing which made her famous in the movies.

Improved: Shirley Temple’s father blew nearly the entire $3 million she made tap dancing her way to fame in the movies.

Unnecessary: We told them they were the victims who deserved sympathy the most.

Improved: We told them they were the victims, most deserving of sympathy.

Unnecessary: Only a person who is oblivious* to the facts of modern life would doubt the need of vocational education today.

Better: Only a person oblivious to the facts of modern life would doubt the need of vocational education today.

Unnecessary: Not everyone in North America likes the taste of green tea, whether it contains caffeine or not.

Better: With or without caffeine, not everyone in North America likes the taste of green tea.

Unnecessary: Usually the Washington family married people who were socially better off than themselves, but the second marriage of George’s father was an exception.

Better: Usually the Washingtons married their social betters, but the second marriage of George’s father was an exception.

Unnecessary: In some instances, a letter can take ten days by air and six to eight weeks by ship to reach the person to whom the letter is addressed.

Better: In some instances, a letter can take ten days by air and six to eight weeks by ship to reach its intended receiver.

【技巧一】：作文成绩看字迹，得分要素是第一

任何形式的作文考试，阅卷老师打分时，第一眼，看的是字迹。因此，写作文必须要把字写好。记住，考作文考的是内容，而不是书法，切忌字迹潦草。

【技巧二】：考试作文五六段，干净整洁看卷面

考试作文中，要注意及时分段，三四个段落显得少了，八九个段落，显得琐碎了些。除非有特殊情况，段落以五六个段落为好。此外，卷面一定要整洁，不要涂改得乱七八糟。我的看法是，考试作文每段最好别超过5行，顶多是5行半。切忌一段都八九行，写成“大肚子作文”。一旦给阅卷老师视觉上的疲劳，影响他的心理，分数就受影响。如果有必要，死拉硬拽也要注意分段。

【技巧三】：色彩对比也关键，建议用笔选择蓝

考试作文的卷子上，都是用黑颜色印刷的方格。如果你用非常粗而且黑的钢笔答题，墨水容易“泄一滩”，影响卷面的干净。建议学生用不浅不深、笔画不粗不细的蓝色中性笔写作文。这样的作文写出来，与黑色的方格形成一定的视觉对比，阅卷老师在视觉上有眼前一亮的感觉，分数上可能就会占便宜。在用蓝色中性笔写作文的时候，注意不要用字把方格填满，建议占字格下面或者左下面的四分之三，这样，显得作文每行的层次感比较强。卷面显得也相对美观。

【技巧四】：开头结尾要简练，最好首尾两行半

除了切忌大肚子作文外，“大头作文”也要不得。建议考生在写作文的时候，开头结尾占两行半的卷面。顶多也不能超过三行半。想想看，一个开头就占太多的空间，阅卷老师的视觉又会有瞬间的疲劳，也会影响阅卷老师的情绪。

【技巧五】：动笔之前要拟题，漂亮标题如美女

考试作文中，一般都是由考生自己来拟定题目，题目不宜太长和太短。怎么拟题呢?对于成绩一般的考生，应该采取特别措施了。拟题的办法有2个：

一是你去搜索一下作文拟题目，可以找到作文老师讲述的类似技巧。

二是考生家长或考生，赶紧去翻阅最近一年的读者和青年文摘的合订本，根据题材，选择几十个比较精彩的标题，背下来，考试的时候可能比葫芦画瓢地就能采用到。

考研英语写作：应用文写作之感谢信

大纲对应用文写作的评价目标是：考生应能根据所设情景，写出不同类型的应用文，包括私人和公务信函、备忘录、摘要、报告等。写作时。考生应能：

1） 做到语法、拼写、标点正确、用词恰当；

2）遵循文章的特定问题格式；

3）合理组织文章结构，使其内容统一、连贯；

4）根据写作目的和特定读者，选用恰当语域。

应用文写作不需要华丽的辞藻和多变的句式，只需要能够用简洁概括的语言将事情叙述清楚就能够取得不错的成绩。应用文写作作为考研英语中性价比比较高的题目，考生必须重视对其复习。应用文写作可以充分借鉴模板，以达到更好的复习效果。下面，就为考生介绍一下感谢信的基本写作方法。

感谢信的目的是感激对方为自己的付出，感激之情要传达得真挚自然，不要刻意夸大。感谢信所涉及的内容多种多样，比如可以感谢对方替自己做了一件事情，在自己痛苦时安慰了自己，出席了自己的宴会等等。其内容包括：1)表达感激之情2)回顾事情的经过 3)肯定对方帮助的价值以及对自己的影响，表达自己回报的愿望。

常用套语有：

1表达感激之情：

Thanks so much for…;Abundant thanks to … for…

Im writing to express my heartfelt thanks for …

On behalf of my whole family, I wish to extend our heartfelt thanks for all the trouble you had taken in …I must write to thank you for inviting me to…

2肯定对方帮助的价值及影响：

You will never know how much we appreciated your kind and practical help. Your …meant more than I can express in words. Nothing can be more precious for me than your…

3表达回报的愿望：

I hope I can return the favor someday … Do call on me if I can ever return the favor. 感谢信中比较特殊是求职者面试后给面试官写的信。

此类感谢信的内容不只是感谢，而是一般感谢信和求职信的结合。其主要内容包括：(1)感谢对方给你面谈的机会，并注明你面试的时间和所求的职位;(2) 说明你对该公司、该职位的兴趣，强调你的知识与技能符合公司的需要，表示自己能为公司的发展做出贡献。也可以补充说明或澄清在面谈中忽略或没有讲明的问题 (3)重申你对该职位的兴趣，主动提供更多的材料，表示期待他们的消息。

Directions: You have just attended an interview in Apfel Incorporated for the position of marketing analyst. Write a letter of appreciation to the interviewer Mr. David Wayne. Your letter should include the following points:

1) express your appreciation for the interview

2) tell about your job-related skills and experience

实例：

Dear Mr. Wayne，

Thank you very much for taking the time from your busy schedule last Friday to interview me for the marketing analyst position at Apfel Incorporated. After our meeting, I am convinced that your company is an excellent place for my career.

I am extremely excited about the position and believe that my skills are a good match for the company. As you may remember, I completed a project that is similar in nature to the work I

would be doing at your company. I believe that I could make an immediate contribution to Apfel Incorporated.

Please let me know if I can provide you with any additional information about my background or goals. My email address is LiMing@yahoo.com, and my phone number is 12345678. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Li Ming

从本质上看来，小作文，其实就是一种语言综合运用题。语言运用题往往又是语基题方面的各种新题型的试验基地，是最值得广大考生关注和训练的。下面是小编为你带来的2017高考微写作命题预测及技巧点拨，欢迎阅读。

研究已出现过的小作文，其命题特点是非常明确的，就是字数限定在200字左右，注重单项训练，比如说明训练、描写训练、对话训练、想象训练……具体说来，高考小作文的种类大概有如下一些：

一是说明类

就是要求考生能写简短的说明文，能够采用说明的表达方式对事物进行简单说明和介绍。具体又可以包括：介绍日常实用物品、介绍一部影视作品、介绍说明漫画的画面内容、介绍一处场所或一种建筑、介绍时令特征等等。

二是描写类

就是要求考生能够进行各种各样的描写、描述、描绘、描摹等等，能够进行各种各样的想象，和对想象作出描绘等等。具体又可以包括：心理描写、肖像描写、动作描写、语言对话描写、想象联想描写、场景画面描写和综合性的描写等等。

三是赏析评价类

就是要求考生能够对某一事物、某种现象、某篇文章等发表评论或加以赏析。具体又可以包括：诗文漫画等赏析、思想评价、事物名称 评价、某种活动评价等等。诗文漫画等赏析。

四是应用类

就是要求考生们熟悉各种各样的应用文体，能够拟写各种各样的应用文，如请柬、书信、短信、通讯、消息、广告、通知、摘要、聘书、海报、解说词、申请书、讲话稿、留言条、欢迎辞、欢送辞、广播稿等等。

五是扩缩改写类

就是要求考生们能够对一些文字或文段进行扩展或压缩，或改写成其他形式的短文等等。

今后的小作文，会如何命题，命题的走势如何呢?我们的判断是，有继承，也有创新。一方面，将继承以往的形式和内容，具体地说就是，以上所列举的五大类的小作文命题形式，仍然会继承，这是毫无疑问的;另一方面，也会在继承的基础上进行一些创新，比如，创拟哲理笑话、写趣味小品文、写微型小小说、提 供情景、氛围等，要求转述;根据中间，补写首尾;把记叙文、散文等转换成诗歌，或把诗歌转换记叙文、散文……

此外，在小作文的备考中，一定要加强各种表达方式的训练。如说明方式，要弄清对象是具体事物、抽象事理，还是事物的形成过程;顺序是以空间、时间为序，还是以逻辑事理为序;语言是平实性说明，还是文艺性说明。如描写方式，要懂得按照对象分为，写景、写人、状物;按手法又可分为，工笔细描和粗笔勾勒;按顺序可，由远到近、由高到低、由大到小、由静到动、由整体到局部等。单就写人而言，要会运用语言描写、肖像描写、神态描写、心理描写、动作描写、细节描写等;单就写景而言，要能充分调动人的感觉器官，从人的听觉、视觉、味觉、嗅觉等方面表现景物的特点，要能充分运用拟人、比喻、对比、夸张、通感等修辞方法，要善于使用对比烘托、动静结合、虚实相生、情景交融等写作技巧。记叙、议论、抒情这几种表达方式，也都应做到分门别类，了如指掌才行。

下面是由小编整理的高分英语作文技巧，欢迎阅读。

要点+结构+逻辑+语法+亮点

要点：实际上中考[微博]英语写作就等于两个字，翻译!因为中考英语写作一般会给出几个要点，要求必须在文章中有所体现。文章写的再好，只要缺少要点就会扣分。所以要点，也就是文章的第二段内容，要做到全，围绕中心。

结构：中考最流行的结构就是三段式，深受各地区中考英语写作阅卷老师的喜爱。为什么尼?因为这种结构十分清晰。“观点——要点——总结”让人一目了然。三段式的第一段：简单明了，开门见山，不超过2句话，如，我们想表达小强很强壮，第一段直接说XQis extremely strong。观点明确，这一句足矣。

第二段：分2-3点说为什么他强壮。1. 每天吃10顿饭，He has ten mealseveryday!详举吃的是什么。2. 每天运动2小时，He does exercise 2 hours a day!详举做了什么运动。

第三段：经过第二段的论证，可以得出结论。但请注意，不能完全照抄第一段，要有升华。也可以提出希望和建议等。如，Howstrong and robust XQ is!I hope to be him one day!

逻辑：这里的逻辑实际指的就是逻辑词。最常用的就是表示递进的，转折的，总结的逻辑词等。递进：除了first，second，third，finally等还可以使用高级点的，如first of all(首先)，in addition，whatsmore，moreover(都是另外的意思)，in a word，all inall(表示总结的)。转折：but，yet，however等。真正有经验的阅卷老师会很注意这些逻辑连接词，因为这些词体现了这个文章的思路。

语法：其他几点都不是硬性的要求，不那样做不能说是错，只能说是不好，但是语法却是硬性的。如，单词的使用，时态等。

亮点：当我们将前八个字都做得很完美的时候也只能得到一个二等文的上。要想得到一等文，最后两个字，亮点至关重要。大家设想如果我们是阅卷老师。有两篇写人美丽的作文摆在我们面前，都是结构清晰的三段式，要点都很全，都用了一些逻辑词，都没有语法错误，但是A篇只用了beautiful，good-looking，B篇却用到了attractive，charming，catching等，我坚信正常人都会给B篇高分的。这些高级一点的词汇，词组，句型便是我们得到一等文的最有力的绝招。所以，以后写英语作文要养成一般词汇限量用的好习惯。

一、表达方式：记叙、描写、抒情、说明、议论?

二、表现手法：象征、对比、烘托、设置悬念、前后呼应、欲扬先抑、托物言志、借物抒情、联想、想象、衬托(正衬、反衬)

三、修辞手法：比喻、拟人、夸张、排比、对偶、引用、设问、反问、反复、互文、对比、借代、反语?

四、记叙文六要素：时间、地点、人物、事情的起因、经过、结果

五、记叙顺序：顺叙、倒叙、插叙?六、描写角度：正面描写、侧面描写?

七、描写人物的方法：语言、动作、神态、心理、外貌

八、描写景物的角度：视觉、听觉、味觉、触觉?

九、描写景物的方法：动静结合(以动写静)、概括与具体相结合、由远到近(或由近到远)?

十、描写(或抒情)方式：正面(又叫直接)、反面(又叫间接)

十一、叙述方式：概括叙述、细节描写

十二、说明顺序：时间顺序、空间顺序、逻辑顺序

十三、说明方法：举例子、列数字、打比方、作比较、下定义、分类别、作诠释、摹状貌、引用?

十四、小说情节四部分：开端、发展、高潮、结局

十五、小说三要素：人物形象、故事情节、具体环境

十六、环境描写分为：自然环境、社会环境

十七、议论文三要素：论点、论据、论证

十八、论据分类为：事实论据、道理论据

十九、论证方法：举例(或事实)论证、道理论证(有时也叫引用论证)、对比(或正反对比)论证、比喻论证

二十、论证方式：立论、驳论(可反驳论点、论据、论证)

二十一、议论文的文章的结构：总分总、总分、分总;分的部分常常有并列式、递进式。

二十二、引号的作用：引用;强调;特定称谓;否定、讽刺、反语

二十三、破折号用法：提示、注释、总结、递进、话题转换、插说。

二十四、其他：

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

文似看山不喜平。文章在选材、结构上要波澜起伏，这应该是精彩篇章的追求。写文章讲究波澜，或开头平缓，暴风狂雨却潜伏其中——那是树欲静而风不止;或出语不凡，如猛虎长啸——那是狂风卷巨澜。无波澜则平板静止，怎能得高分?

例文《细节之美》叙述的是生活中的凡人琐事，人人都看见、个个都明白，但被作者紧紧抓住了。你看，作者扣住了“细节”的题眼。为了突现其美，对生活中积累的事例作了筛选与剪裁，放在一年四季的四个情景中作多层面的生动的片段描写。虽然语不惊人，但一个小小的动作、一句轻声柔和的问候、一弯甜美的微笑而组成的美，如潺潺流水在我们心中流淌，激起情感上的层层波澜。你说这种看似平缓、波澜不惊，其实给你的感觉难道不也是波澜起伏、兴致盎然?你定然会觉“人间自有真情在”的美好情意。

例文：细节之美

生活中有很多细节之美。一个小小的动作，一句轻声柔和的问候，一弯甜美的笑……使美充满了我们的世界。

春雨如顽皮的孩子，嘀嘀哒哒闹个不停。冬季所遗留下的寒冷，还没有散去。这个时节的天气，使街上凄凉无比。呀，大街的一角，怎么有两位老人相靠着撑着一把伞?定睛仔细一瞧，鲜红的臂章系在他们的手臂上，原来是看自行车的管理员。再看看一旁，只依稀停着几辆自行车，车上还盖着两件雨衣。一阵风吹过，雨衣的一角被风掀了起来，两位老人蹒跚地走了过去……

夏季，小区的大草坪上满是青葱的小草。一位母亲在教她的孩子学步，孩子已会走几步路了，突然胖胖的小腿一软，瘫坐在草地上，不愿再爬起，孩子用他那水灵的眼睛望着母亲，希望她能跑来把她抱起，但母亲却一动也不动地站立在原地，用鼓励的眼神望着他，一秒，两秒，三秒……孩子终于屈服了，用两只白白的小手撑着地，屁股一撅，脚一蹬，又摇晃着向母亲走来，母亲的笑如花般绽放……

秋风扫落叶，整个世界被黄色的落叶所包裹着，一群红领巾，提着扫帚走到大街上。一堆堆的落叶如小山似的堆积了起来，一片片欢声笑语使原本凄凉的秋季变得生机盎然……

寒风随着冬季的到来笼罩着大地，可学校里却好是热闹。“我捐10元”“我捐5元”“我捐20元”……同学们争先恐后地向那献爱心的红箱子拥去，红通通的小手一个劲儿地往箱子里塞自己的“爱心”。温暖使原本寒冷的冬日不再寒冷……

一段段细节，一个个小片段，组成的美如潺潺流水在我们心中流淌。细节之美，在生活的每时每刻，在世界的每一个角落。