期末考试英语记叙文写作指导合集20篇

导语：好的句子正确运用能给作文带来意想不到的效果，下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的英语作文，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

1. According to a recent survey， four million people die each year from diseases linked to smoking.依照最近的一项调查，每年有4，000，000人死于与吸烟有关的疾病。

2. The latest surveys show that quite a few children have unpleasant associations with homework.最近的调查显示相当多的孩子对家庭作业没什么好感。

3. No invention has received more praise and abuse than Internet.没有一项发明像互联网一样同时受到如此多的赞扬和批评。

4. People seem to fail to take into account the fact that education does not end with graduation.人们似乎忽视了教育不应该随着毕业而结束这一事实。

5. An increasing number of people are beginning to realize that education is not complete with graduation.越来越多的人开始意识到教育不能随着毕业而结束。

6. When it comes to education， the majority of people believe that education is a lifetime study.说到教育，大部分人认为其是一个终生的学习。

7. Many experts point out that physical exercise contributes directly to a persons physical fitness.许多专家指出体育锻炼直接有助于身体健康。

8. Proper measures must be taken to limit the number of foreign tourists and the great efforts should be made to protect local environment and history from the harmful effects of international tourism.应该采取适当的措施限制外国旅游者的数量，努力保护当地环境和历史不受国际旅游业的不利影响。

9. An increasing number of experts believe that migrants will exert positive effects on construction of city. However， this opinion is now being questioned by more and more city residents， who complain that the migrants have brought many serious problems like crime and prostitution.越来越多的专家相信移民对城市的建设起到积极作用然而，越来越多的城市居民却怀疑这种说法，他们抱怨民工给城市带来了许多严重的问题，像犯罪和卖淫。

10. Many city residents complain that it is so few buses in their city that they have to spend much more time waiting for a bus， which is usually crowded with a large number of passengers.许多市民抱怨城市的公交车太少，以至于他们要花很长时间等一辆公交车，而车上可能已满载乘客。

11. There is no denying the fact that air pollution is an extremely serious problem： the city authorities should take strong measures to deal with it.无可否认，空气污染是一个极其严重的问题：城市当局应该采取有力措施来解决它

12. An investigation shows that female workers tend to have a favorable attitude toward retirement.一项调查显示妇女欢迎退休。

13. A proper part-time job does not occupy students too much time. In fact， it is unhealthy for them to spend all of time on their study. As an old saying goes： All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.一份适当的业余工作并不会占用学生太多的时间，事实上，把全部的时间都用到学习上并不健康，正如那句老话：只工作，不玩耍，聪明的孩子会变傻。

14. Any government， which is blind to this point， may pay a heavy price.任何政府忽视这一点都将付出巨大的代价。

15.Nowadays， many students always go into raptures at the mere mention of the coming life of high school or college they will begin. Unfortunately， for most young people， it is not pleasant experience on their first day on campus.当前，一提到即将开始的学校生活，许多学生都会兴高采烈。然而，对多数年轻人来说，校园刚开始的日子并不是什么愉快的经历。

写作技巧在写作活动中的具有极其重要的作用。小编收集了2018年高考作文指导：如何训练写作技巧，欢迎阅读。

第一，写作技巧是实现作者写作意图的重要条件。一般来说，作者的写作活动都具有一定的写作意图。所谓的写作意图，就是指作者打算在文章或作品中表达什么样的生活和思想内容，以及通过这种表达达到什么目的。而要使这一写作意图圆满实现，就必须依靠写作技巧。

第二，写作技巧是构成文学作品艺术性的内在因素。文学作品的艺术性，即文学作品反映社会生活或表达思想感情所达到的完美程度。这种艺术性的取得，决定于作者的世界观、创作方法和写作技巧。在具体的作品中，艺术性表现在作家在一定世界观的指导下，运用各种写作手法，创造出具有审美价值的艺术意境我典型形象，从而给读者带来审美愉悦。文学作品的艺术性虽不同于形式美，但它更多地体现在与内容和谐统一的艺术形式之中，而艺术形式的完美创造，则依靠写作技巧。

那么什么是写作技巧的操作训练呢?

(一)师法生活

生活是写作的源泉，丰富多采的大自然和人类社会，不仅为我们提供了取之不尽的写作材料，而且为我们提供了生动鲜活的关于写作形式与写作技巧的深刻启示。例如，巧合与悬念，往往是某些生活事件展示在人们面前时固有形式或“手法”;对比与映衬，常常是构成大自然优美景观及“艺术”美感的重要因素和“手段”;“人有悲欢离合，月有阴睛圆缺”作文人网 你也可以投稿，人生和自然的规律中寓含着曲折美、变化美、节奏美;“蝉鸣林逾静，鸟鸣山更幽”，常见的景象中包含着动与静相反相成的艺术辨证法则……因此，我们学习写作技巧，必须首先向生活学习。只有勤于观察生活，深入体验生活，才能使自己的写作技巧真正得到提高。

(二)阅读、借鉴

即从古今中外的优秀文章(以及音乐、绘画等艺术形式)中汲取营养。凡优秀的文章，内容和形式的完美程度都较高，其写作技巧往往是娴熟而又富于创造性。多读优秀的文章，在注意思想内容的同时，注意其写作技巧，看作者是运用哪些来表现思想内容，实现写作意图的，并且分析这些写作手法的具体运用情况及其所取得的写作效果。在此基础上，还应结合实际(写作者自身的思想和艺术修养的实际与题材和表现对象的实际)进一步思考，看哪些手法可以“拿来”，经过改造为我所用。这样，久而久之，潜移默化，自己的写作技巧，自然会有所提高。

(三)经常练笔

这是具有本质意义的技巧“操作训练”。清人唐彪写道：“谚云，‘读十篇不如做一篇’。盖常作则机关熟，题虽甚难，为之亦易;不常做，则理路生，题虽甚易，为之则难。沈虹野云：‘文章硬涩由于不熟，不熟由于不多做。’信哉言乎!”多写才能熟，熟才能生巧，这是不可更易的规律，任何企图改变或超越这一规律的人，永远也掌握不了写作技巧，永远也写不出好文章。只有经常写，反复写，才可能在写作者身上固定下一个写作技巧的“概括化系统”，一个“自动化的”写作“行动方式”。懂得了这一点，我们就会懂得那些语言艺术大师们为什么谆谆劝诫“我们大家都应该写、写、写，写得尽量多”了。

写作技巧的掌握是有一个过程的。这个过程可以分为两个阶段。一是“技能”阶段，一是“熟练”阶段。“技能”阶段，是无法之中求有法，能过观察、体验、多读、多写，学习并掌握了一些写作的基本手法，且能将它们运用于写作实践。这是掌握写作技巧的第一阶段。“熟练”阶段，是有法之中求变化。在第一阶段的基础上，进而掌握了包括写作的辨证艺术在内的多种写作手法，并能将它们纯熟自如、富于创造性地运用于写作实践。这是掌握写作技巧的第二阶段。古人说：“学诗当识活法。”“所谓活法者，规矩具备，而能出于规矩之外;变化不测，而亦不背规矩也。”识得“活法”，并能运用“活法”是掌握写作技巧第二阶段的重要标志。

掌握写作技巧，对写作具有重要的意义，任何否定写作技巧在写作中的客观作用的观点无疑是错误的。但是，我们也不能把技巧绝对化，走到唯技巧论的极端。因为，决定文章价值的主要因素，还是内容，脱离了丰富而深刻的内容，文章的审美价值乃至艺术性，也就不复存在了。这一点，尤其应该引起初学写作者的重视。

【题目】

阅读下面的文字，根据要求写一篇不少于800字的文章。

在某中学读书的一名学生，总觉得自己屈才。和班上同学比，自己成绩稍差，他就抱怨老师“水平太低”，参加市里的中学生作文比赛没获奖，他又抱怨比赛组织者“有眼无珠”；父母都是普通百姓，他就经常埋怨他们没能耐，不能为自己的未来创造优越的条件……

有一天，他的一位朋友倾听了她的叙说，沉默片刻，说：“为什么我听到的全都是别人的错误和责任？个人在他自己的学习、工作、生活中，应该学会承担起自己的责任，让自己对自己负责啊。”

读了以上材料你有什么感想？写一篇不少于800字的文章。

要求选准角度，明确立意，自选文体，自拟标题；不要脱离材料内容及含义的范围作文，不要套作，不得抄袭。

【写作指导】

此则材料卒章显志：“个人在他自己的学习、工作、生活中，应该学会承担起自己的责任，让自己对自己负责啊。”可以这样表述最佳立意：

1、 自己的路要自己走。

2、勇于担当，不要抱怨。

记叙文是写人物的经历和事物发展变化的文章，因此，一篇记叙文常常要具备时间、人物、地点、事件的起因、经过、结果这六要素。写作记叙文时，要注意把自己的见闻和经历、对生活的真切感受，通过生动、形象的语言，描述出来，展示给读者。一般来说，叙述和描写是记叙文的主要表达方式，而精当的议论和抒情，也常常成为一篇记叙文的点睛之笔、精彩所在。

写作记叙文要做到：

第一，要素具备。无论写人记事，还是写景状物，一般都要交代清楚时间、地点、人物，事件的起因、经过、结果，否则文章内容或结构就显得不完整。

第二，线索清楚。虽然观察的角度、记叙的方式可以不同，但每一篇文章都应当有一条统贯全篇的中心线索，否则文章就会显得松散无序。

第三，人称一致。无论用第一人称“我”记述，还是用第三人称“他”记述，都要通篇一贯，一般不宜随意转换，否则就容易造成思路上的混乱。

第四，记叙文虽以叙述为主，但往往也间有描写、抒情和议论。它是一种形式灵活、写法多样的文体。

一、充分准备，打好基础。

为了提高初一英语作文写作水平，平时应加强阅读，多背诵一些句形、段落甚至短文。俗话说：读书破万卷，下笔如有神，只有多读，多记，多背诵，才能出口成章，下笔成文。此外，写好初一英语作文还要掌握一些应用文体的写作方法，如书信、日记、通知等，它们大多有固定的格式。

二、认真审题，明确要求

在写初一英语作文的时候仔细看清写作要求和提示，分清材料的主次，接着确定体裁、格式和人物、地点等要素；最后确定时态，同时考虑相关的语态搭配用法。 三、遣词造句、表达规范

初一英语作文用词要恰当，不可逐句把提示翻译成英语。写作时，应尽量选用你最熟悉、最有把握的词和句型来表达思想。如果有些单词不会些，有些句型不会表达，可以设法绕开，用熟悉的同义词、同义短语或同义句来代替。要学会善于运用适当的关联词，如and, or, but, so，because, since等，以使初一英语作文行文逻辑紧密，自然流畅。 四、认真撰写，卷面整洁

初一英语考试中也会有初一英语作文题，如果时间允许，书面表达一定要先写草稿。在抄写入答题卷前，要先进行检查修改。首先检查所写内容是否切题；之后检查主题是否明确，表达方式是否恰当；最后检查所用时态、语态、人称是否符合要求，前后是否一致。 中考复习研讨会指导课件，极具价值。 关联词

1.表示并列或递进: and, as well as, both&and, not only&but also, neither&nor;2.表示选择: or, either∨3.表示转折: but, however, although, though, after all, 4.表示因果: because, so, therefore5.表示条件: if , unless6.表示对比: instead, not&but, on the one hand&on the other hand;7.表示解释: for example, for instance, such as, that is to say, in other words;8.表示顺序: to begin with, firstly, first (of all), second(ly), next, later, since then, from then on, finally, in the end;9.表示强调: also, besides, what’s more, actually, in fact, 10.表示结论: all in all, altogether, in a word, generally speaking,

写作练习：旅游活动（中段考范文）

【单元财富运用】

假定你是李华，上周末和家人开车去大角湾度假。请你根据以下要点，给你的美国朋友Tom介绍你的旅游经历。

1. 出发时间：周六早上7点；

2. 准备物品：零食、衣服、相机等；

3. 旅游活动：游泳，欣赏海水、海滩、日出和日落等美景，吃海鲜，买纪念品；

4. 你的感受。

【注意】：1. 词数100；

2. 开头已给出，但不计入总词数；

3. 可以适当增加节，以使行文连贯。

Last weekend my family and I went to Dajiaowan Gulf for a holiday.______________________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________

步骤1：认真审题，提炼要点。

一定体裁：记叙文，记叙一次旅游活动

二定时态：旅游发生在过去，因此描述旅游前的准备和过程都应该采用一般过去

时；而感想则可以用一般现在时或现在完成时。

三定要点：结合写作内容，整理和罗列要点。

表达旅游活动的常用词汇：

步骤2：整合信息，连词成句。

1. 星期六早上7点开车出发。

_____________________________________________________________________

2. 准备好零食、衣服、相机等。

__________________________________________________________________

3. 在海滩游泳，欣赏海水日出和日落等美景。

__________________________________________________________________

4. 吃海鲜，买纪念品；

___________________________________________________________________

5. 谈感受。

___________________________________________________________________

步骤3：连句成段，用上适当的关联词。

not only…but also…, where, what’s more /besides / in addition, then, because…..

【我的作文】

Last weekend my family and I went to Dajiaowan Gulf for a holiday.______________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

心中，原本是有磅毫秒年黑色的寂静。如一个空空荡荡的风穴，一阵阵寂寞呼啸而过。是谁？悄悄点起一盏灯，一点点黄晕的光，点燃希望，送来关怀，一闪又一闪，给我温暖。

那是很久以前了，我小时候，因为相貌的关系，一直没什么朋友。即使有和我说话的，也不过是来讽刺讽刺，挖苦挖苦的。我一直固执的认为，我不需要朋友。这有什么呢？直到有一回，老师让我们互相找伙伴玩一个游戏，而我却孤零零地站在圈外时，我才近乎绝望地发现，自己在友情的洪流中，是多么渺小。那一天，我很晚才回家。这几天妹妹来我家玩，大家都围着她转去了。我静静地走在大街上，身边灯火辉煌，我却决定什么也感觉不到。仿佛世界上没有什么是我可以融入进去的。只能平淡地看着别人带着他们的友情走过时间的河流。

来到小区，我看到家家都亮起了灯，饭菜的香味在温暖灯光中袅袅地传了出来。楼道里没灯，我在晶莹惨白的月光下，拖着我寂寞的影子，默默地走着。一边编着晚归的理由。楼道里，是一片黑色的寂静。如同我心中的风穴，阵阵寂寞呼啸而过。但是，我发现，家门口点着一盏小灯，一点点黄晕的光，一闪又一闪。在一片黑暗中是如此的明亮。一种莫名的喜悦在我心中荡漾开来，我加快脚步，跑到了门前。那光仿佛是一团火，在我心中点起一盏明灯。

妹妹来给我开门，她什么也没说，我却有些抑制不住自己的感动。大家都在等我说家呢。

那一次我终于感受到了一种平时从未感受到的情感，那是什么呢。集友情、亲情为一体的感情。

现在，我知道了它有一个响亮的名字——温暖。

快乐是一种主观享受，我终于明白，美好的事物其实就在身边。当别人在你心中点上一盏心灯时，你就会感到心中的一缕阳光，在幸福的泪水的哺育下，渐渐，渐渐地成长。即使物质需求降至最低，仍可以拥有快乐的人生。

当你心中的果实成熟时，你就会感受到，温暖，其实就藏在你身边。

篇三：初一期末考试作文400字

外面一阵咚咚咚的脚步声，随着房门吱嘎一声打开，爸爸圆圆的脑袋探了进来：“女儿，起床了！”“爸，”我半死不活地说，“我没睡好，梦见鬼了，晚点起来。”“再晚我就不送你了。今天你可是要考试呢！以后不许看鬼片了！”爸爸进了房间，像老顽童似的在我面前蹦蹦跳跳。

“考试”，多么要命的字眼啊！我挣扎着从把我像肯德基鸡肉卷一样卷起来的被子中爬出来。我最近的状态非常不好，连续几次单元测验或模拟考都考得非常糟，上个星期五的英语口语又紧张的连老师说什么都听不懂，悲惨啊！

“爸，我这次肯定玩完，你要有心理准备啊。”“知道，”一旁的妈妈说话了，“你已经给我们打过Ｎ次预防针了。”在客厅里打什么“伏虎拳”的爸爸一边“嗨！嗨！”鬼叫着，一边对我说：“你是大考大玩，小考小玩，不考也玩，怎么可能考得好呢？”说罢，他又停了下来，一脸严肃地看着我：“不过，也不要紧张，已经努力了就行。我们对这种成绩都无所谓，你不要有太大的压力。”还说什么无所谓，那为什么还这么紧张我有没有压力？

空调开得好大，爸爸的车里温暖如春。回想爸爸妈妈小心翼翼地劝我别紧张，生怕又触动我敏感的心、徒增压力，我的心中如同开了几十个空调般温暖。爸爸妈妈，其实你们的女儿已经长大了，变得懂事也变得坚强了。这一份温暖，我会永远珍藏在心中，不管考得怎样，它都会给我力量，让我继续努力、不断进步！

[初一期末考试语文作文

上个星期五，我们进行了期末考试的测试。

很多同学被填空题和操作题难住了。有的人这边问问、那边问问，有的人东望望、西望望，没一个认真的！我想，这都是因为平时张老师叫我们背的定义没背，家庭作业不认真做上课不认真听讲的缘故啊！

试卷发下来了，我看到大部分同学都考得很差，连一个考满分的也没有！教室里所有的同学都在问答案。我回到座位上，我的试卷也被齐朵朵拿去看了，唉！

考试时，我也被填空题的第四题给难住了，我睡在桌上瞄同桌的卷子，但我绝望了，因为我同桌也被难住了。做操作题时，我用三角板拼角时，心里就急得很，想！快做完了，要快一点！就把角的顶点画弯了。最后一题我不该错，全班就只有我没有写等于符号，白白的丢掉了0.5分。

我做错的原因就只有一个，就是：心很急。因为我心急，把定义忘记了；因为我心急，画错了角；因为我心急，没有写等于符号！为什么心急？是因为我一直想着要比别人速度快一点，一直想着不能输给别人，我还没有得过第一，所以我的心就变得更急！

我觉得，跌倒了还要爬起来才行，因为失败是成功之母，所以，以后我们还能是全年级第一！

在结束期末考试后 ，我深深的反思了一下我发现我犯了很多不该犯的错误。

我一向数学不错可这次竟然丢了7分，我一向语文不好经过我仔细的反思，我想可能是与阅读题目不认真都有着重大的关系，它使我在很多计算和语法上有差错，有时题只看了一半就把题答上了，这使我丢了许多不该丢的分还有答题不仔细，丢一个字母；少一个标点；差一位小数点，这都是我常犯的毛病。

我知道各科老师对我有着很大的期望的，可是我辜负了老师们对我的期望，没进入年组前50名，对于这点我有着无尽的歉意。但是犯了错就要勤于改正首先我要改正阅读不仔细的毛病，把一些不该丢的分挽救回来，然后再把答题不认真的毛病改正，这个毛病会影响各科成绩，少则一、两分多则五、六分如果这些分都加上怎么说也能进年组2、30名，这样我也高兴父母也乐呵，老师也欣慰，最后我还要加强语、数、外、政治、历史等7科的习题强化，通过考试我明白了人外有人、天外有天，平日里普通的试题感不到什么差别，而真正考试中我同桌把我远远落下。所以，我一定要加倍努力，从这次考试中汲取教训、经验，化失败为力量，为下一次考试做好基础，这次考试幸好不是中考，我还手有机会的，争取不让对我有期望的人不失望。也希望各位老师不要对我失去信心。

我暗暗鼓励自己：“为了将来爸爸和我的奥迪；为了将来母亲和妻子迪奥；也为了将来我孩子的奥利奥，加油！你可以的！

期末考试马上要来临了，大家准备的怎么样了下面这篇编辑老师为大家推荐，初一期末考试作文700字，大家一起来看看吧!初一期末考试作文700字：迈出第一步每个人对自己的未来都充满了憧憬和幻想，小心翼翼地担惊受怕地迈出人生中的每一步。我是一个与众不同的人，我坚信这一点;我是一个可以自立的人，我坚守这一点。然而，在人生路上，总是充斥着许多的质疑和猜想。“沫沫，将来想上哪个高中啊”舅舅懒散地坐在沙发上看着手机，“当然是市实验了。”我想都没想，接着说了上来。“你怎么这么肯定来”舅舅的手习惯性地揪着胡子，斜着眼看着我，“为什么不肯定我会上的!”我一直坚信着，我的目标，我的动力，我只有考入了市实验，我的前途才会大放异彩，我从来都坚信着!正当我的眼睛中燃烧起熊熊烈火，“你准备靠你爹，哈哈”舅舅的一句话，瞬间扑灭了我眼中的炽热，我感到了有一个人用一盆冰凉的水把我从头到脚浇了个透。顿时，一种说不出的委屈占满了我的双眸。难道，我在别人心目中就是这样的一个人吗!我开始紧张，开始辩解，我要告诉他真正的我。却又开始感到无力。或许，我在别人眼中就是这样。舅舅这一句话给我的印象很深。或许我生活中的一切，我的学校，我的漂亮衣服，我各种各样的用具，没有一样是由我自己的辛勤和汗水换来的。连我身边的亲人，也这样看我。学习，只有学习，只有学习才是证明自己的方式。别人可以嘲笑我们的年轻，但是我们会告诉他们，谁才是真正的主宰。我的人生，要靠我自己来奋斗，我绝不会让任何人或者成为我的主宰，包括我的亲人。

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

叙事就是叙述事情，就是以书面的形式把一件事情说清楚。那么怎么写好叙事作文呢？ 下面是小编整理的叙事作文写作指导，欢迎浏览。

表达自己的真情实感

我国大教育家叶圣陶先生说：“作文要说真话，说实在话，说自己的话……”强调的就是作文要讲究“真实”。

因此学生如果写自己有感受的事，就容易写得生动、活泼、具体；如果写自己不熟悉的事，即使费了9牛2虎之力，也写不好。这是什么道理呢？文章是人们表情达意的工具，文章的材料必须来源于人们的生活，没有人们的工作、学习以及丰富多彩的生活，就没有文章。我们写作文就是要把自己周围的事，周围的人，通过具体、生动、形象的语言写下来。写作文不是做算术，有了一道题，运用几个公式套一套，就可以做出来。写作文必须要具备材料，写自己感受深的事，就能“表”我们自己的“情”，“达”我们自己的“意”。

可是，有些同学往往不理解这一点，许多有感受的事放着不写，偏偏去写道听途说的，自己没有经历过的事。这样写成的作文，还有什么真情实感可言呢？由于写的是缺乏感受的事，因而语言也是一副“大人腔”，缺少我们自己应该有的童趣。

那么怎样才能做到这一点呢？学生进行以真实生活为题材、以生活的需要为目的的写作练习，写自己感兴趣的事，说自己想说的话。如写写日记、周记、随记、书信、读书笔记等，自己选题，自由发挥，放手写作，畅所欲言。练笔先从自己写起，从自己身边的人和事写起。这种大量的持续的作文自主练笔，既记载了真实生活，又有助于学生良好写作习惯的养成。

选择材料要新颖

写叙事的文章，选材是关键的一步。挑选材料时，不能“拣到篮里就是菜”。我们在生活的事件与生活现象中选取材料时要注重新而别致，这就是指选择新颖的材料。

平时，我们注意观察，积累写作材料，生活是作文的源头。我们小学生写作文，就应该写自己的生活。我们少年儿童的生活是丰富多彩的。我们用自己的眼睛去看、耳朵去听，时刻观察、用心体验，往往就会发现我们身边发生了许多新奇的事、新奇的现象。这些会引起我们特别的注意、特别的思考，只要我们把注意现察的许许多多新鲜的、富有生活气息的材料，写到作文里去，寻求新的立意就能写出新颖的、有深度的作文。

1、要写出一个“新”字来。

捕捉身边的事物时，关键是看能否反映个“新”字，即过去所没有的、新近才发生的变化，写文章时一般就从这个“变化”入手，再去探究这个变化的原因来。

2、要写出新意来。

捕捉身边的事物时，要留意写出事物的新意来。可以以小见大，从身边的小事反映时代前进的步伐，可以从一种事物的现象看到事物的本质、善良的人性等，还可以从不起眼的生活琐事中观察思考，产生新的发现、新的感受。这样的材料平中见奇，也不失为新颖的材料。

中心要明确

我们都知道，一篇好的叙事文，必定有一个明确的中心，也可以说是文章的立意。立意，就是在下笔之前先明确写作意图，确定主题。从我们平时的经验来看，文章质量的高低、价值的大小、作用的强弱，衡量的关键，主要看中心是否明确。因此，确定文章的中心，是叙事的根本。

文章的中心如此重要，那我们怎样才能做到叙事有中心呢？首先，我们要明确，一篇文章思想要健康正确，主题要明确集中，立意要深刻、鲜明、新颖。在叙事时，我们要善于从事件的表面揭示其蕴含的科学性、哲理性或事件的社会意义。小中见大，平中见奇，从平凡、不显眼的事件中揭示其不寻常的思想意义。其次，我们还要明确，我们所写的记叙作文不是为记而记，而是有感而发，有悟所写。所感所悟就是叙事的中心，写作时要注意把它贯穿于全文之中。最后，在阐明我们的观点时不要生搬硬套、削足适履，而应自然而然、水到渠成。一般来说，点明中心在文章的结尾较多，因为这样从记叙事情到引出意义，比较自然，有时会起到画龙点睛的作用；有时，中心在文章开头，也就是在记事之前先点明意义，让读者有一个心理准备。两种方式各有所长，但不管怎样，点明中心都要自然和谐，不能为套中心而强发议论，大呼口号。文章的中心就像人的灵魂，在叙事时，一定要有明确的中心，要以中心意义为线索贯穿全文。

把事情经过分步写具体

我们已经知道了叙事文章的“六要素”，可在作文过程中，我们不能像问答式一样，把“六要素”讲完就算。这样的文章，读来是不吸引人的。在“六要素”中，“经过”是事情的主体，要分几步写清楚。每一件事情的发展一定有它的先后顺序，我们在写作前，一定要考虑清楚事情的发展过程，有关内容要写得细致、清楚，这样，把事情的发展过程写具体了，一件事就会清晰地呈现在读者面前，使读者读了以后，有身临其境的感觉，写作的目的才能真正达到。

那么，我们怎样才能做到一步一步写具体事情的经过呢？首先，我们可以找找事物的规律。虽然有些事物比较纷纭复杂，不很容易认识清楚，但它总有一定的规律。了解了它内在的联系，知道了它的因果关系，写起来就比较具体了。其次，观察要仔细。人们每做一件事，会有许多动作、神态、语言上的表现，我们要善于现察，了解特点，抓住特征来写。另外，我们在仔细观察的过程中加以适当的联想，使文章就像一株繁茂的大树，既有突出的主干，又有婆娑的树叶。这样，就能把事情的经过写具体了。

写清事情的“六要素”

叙事就是叙述事情，就是以书面的形式把一件事情说清楚。因为文章是写给别人看的，为了让别人看明白你写的事情，我们必须在叙事时把事情的来龙去脉交代清楚。事情的来龙去脉是指事情发生的时间、地点、人物，事情的起因、经过和结果，这就是事情的“六要素”。记得一08世纪德国着名作家歌德曾经说过：一个人只要把一件事情说得很清楚，他也就能把许多事情说清楚了。可见一个人说清楚一件事情的重要性。对我们小学生来说，写清一件事情的“六要素”，这是最起码的基本功了。

一般来说，要写好一篇叙事为主的记叙文，写清这“六要素”是少不了的，但并不是每篇文章都要写明“六要素”。个别要素，有时虽在字面上不显示出来，却隐含在文章中，也是可以的。

写作过程中怎样来安排“六要素”呢？可以说，没有统一的格式。较多的是先交代时间、人物、地点，然后再逐步写出起因、经过、结果。但有时也可以变化，应根据写作时的具体情况而定，不拘泥于一种格式。

What can I say about Pixar? Amazing?? Perfect?? Got to see this at the Cannes Film Festival in France (went>【扩展阅读篇】

所谓“感”

可以是从书中领悟出来的道理或精湛的思想，可以是受书中的内容启发而引起的思考与联想，可以是因读书而激发的决心和理想，也可以是因读书而引起的对社会上某些丑恶现象的抨击、讽刺。读后感的表达方式灵活多样，基本属于议论范畴，但写法不同于一般议论文，因为它必须是在读后的基础上发感想。要写好有体验、有见解、有感情、有新意的读后感，必须注意以下几点：

首先，要读好原文

“读后感[1]”的“感”是因“读”而引起的。“读”是“感”的基础。走马观花地读，可能连原作讲的什么都没有了解，哪能有“感”?读得肤浅，当然也感得不深。只有读得认真，才能有所感，并感得深刻。如果要读的是议论文，要弄清它的论点(见解和主张)，或者批判了什么错误观点，想一想你受到哪些启发，还要弄清论据和结论是什么。如果是记叙文，就要弄清它的主要情节，有几个人物，他们之间是什么关系，以及故事发生在哪年哪月。作品涉及的社会背景，还要弄清楚作品通过记人叙事，揭示了人物什么样的精神品质，反映了什么样的社会现象，表达了作者什么思想感情，作品的哪些章节使人受感动，为什么这样感动等等。

其次，排好感点

只要认真读好原作，一篇文章可以写成读后感的方面很多。如对原文中心感受得深可以写成读后感，对原作其他内容感受得深也可以写成读后感，对个别句子有感受也可以写成读后感。总之，只要是原作品的内容，只要你对它有感受，都可能写成读后感，你需要把你所知道的都表示出来，这样才能写好读后感。

第三、选准感点

一篇文章，可以排出许多感点，但在一篇读后感里只能论述一个中心，切不可面面俱到，所以紧接着便是对这些众多的感点进行筛选比较，找出自己感受最深、角度最新，现实针对性最强、自己写来又觉得顺畅的一个感点，作为读后感的中心，然后加以论证成文。

第四、叙述要简

既然读后感是由读产生感，那么在文章里就要叙述引起“感”的那些事实，有时还要叙述自己联想到的一些事例。一句话，读后感中少不了“叙”。但是它不同于记叙文中“叙”的要求。记叙文中的“叙”讲究具体、形象、生动，而读后感中的“叙”却讲究简单扼要，它不要求“感人”，只要求能引出事理。初学写读后感引述原文，一般毛病是叙述不简要，实际上变成复述了。这主要是因为作者还不能把握所要引述部分的精神、要点，所以才简明不了。简明，不是文字越少越好，简还要明。

第五，联想要注意形式

联想的形式有相同联想(联想的事物之间具有相同性)、相反联想(联想的事物之间具有相反性)、相关联想(联想的事物之间具有相关性)、相承联想(联想的事物之间具有相承性)、相似联想(联想的事物之间具有相似性)等多种。写读后感尤其要注意相同联想与相似联想这两种联想形式的运用。

编辑本段如何写读后感

格式

一、格式和写法

读后感通常有三种写法：一种是缩写内容提纲，一种是写阅读后的体会感想，一种是摘录好的句子和段落。题目可以用《读后感》;还可以用自己的感受(一两个词语)做题目，下一行是——《读有感》，第一行是主标题，第二行是副标题。

二、要选择自己感受最深的东西去写，这是写好读后感的关键。

三、要密切联系实际，这是读后感的重要内容。

四、要处理好“读”与“感”的关系，做到议论，叙述，抒情三结合。

五、叙原文不要过多，要体现出一个“简”字。

六、要审清题目。

在写作时，要分辨什么是主要的，什么是次要的，力求做到“读”能抓住重点，“感”能写出体会。

七、要选择材料。

读是写的基础，只有读得认真仔细，才能深入理解文章内容，从而抓住重点，把握文章的思想感情，才能有所感受，有所体会;只有认真读书才能找到读感之间的联系点来，这个点就是文章的中心思想，就是文中点明中心思想的句子。对一篇作品，写体会时不能面面俱到，应写自己读后在思想上、行动上的变化。

八、写读后感应以所读作品的内容简介开头，然后，再写体会。

原文内容往往用3～4句话概括为宜。结尾也大多再回到所读的作品上来。要把重点放在“感”字上，切记要联系自己的生活实际。

九、要符合情理、写出真情实感。

写读后感的注意事项

①写读后感绝不是对原文的抄录或简单地复述，不能脱离原文任意发挥，应以写“体会”为主。

②要写得有真情实感。应是发自内心深处的感受，绝非“检讨书”或“保证书”。

③要写出独特的新鲜感受，力求有新意的见解来吸引读者或感染读者。

④禁止写成流水账!

编辑本段要写关于学习的读后感应该读什么有感

(1)引——围绕感点 引述材料。简述原文有关内容。

(2)概——概括本文的主要内容 ,要简练,而且要把重点写出来。

(3)议——分析材料，提练感点。亮明基本观点。在引出“读”的内容后，要对“读”进行一番评析。既可就事论事对所“引”的内容作一番分析;也可以由现象到本质，由个别到一般的作一番挖掘;对寓意深的材料更要作一番分析，然后水到渠成地“亮”出自己的感点。要选择感受最深的一点，用一个简洁的句子明确表述出来。这样的句子可称为"观点句"。这个观点句表述的，就是这篇文章的中心论点。"观点句"在文中的位置是可以灵活的，可以在篇首，也可以在篇末或篇中。初学写作的同学，最好采用开门见山的方法，把观点写在篇首。

(4) 联——联系实际，纵横拓展。围绕基本观点摆事实讲道理。写读后感最忌的是就事论事和泛泛而谈。就事论事撒不开，感不能深入，文章就过于肤浅。泛泛而谈，往往使读后感缺乏针对性，不能给人以震撼。联，就是要紧密联系实际，既可以由此及彼地联系现实生活中相类似的现象，也可以由古及今联系现实生活中的相反的种种问题。既可以从大处着眼，也可以从小处入手。当然在联系实际分析论证时，还要注意时时回扣或呼应“引”部，使“联”与“引””藕”断而“丝”连这部分就是议论文的本论部分，是对基本观点(即中心论点)的阐述，通过摆事实讲道理证明观点的正确性，使论点更加突出，更有说服力。这个过程应注意的是，所摆事实，所讲道理都必须紧紧围绕基本观点，为基本观点服务。

光阴似箭、日月如梭。

——题记

时间过得真快啊，一眨眼的功夫就要升入六年级了，虽然对五年级的生活有一万个不舍，但是我们不得不告别它，迎接新的挑战，踏上六年级的征途。为了给自己五年级的生活画上一个完美的句号，也为了使自己在五年级的最后一次考试中取得一个优异的成绩，所以我给自己设计了一个完美的期末复习计划。

语文期末复习计划：1、每天读一单元课文，家长提写10—20个较难生字，20—30个较难生词，默写日积月累。2、熟读每篇课文的词语解释、句意赏析、中心思想。3、每天看5—10篇作文，摘抄好词好句。

数学期末复习计划：1、背会、默写课本上的所有定义。2、把每次小测试上的错题抄题再做一遍。3、把每一单元的练习题挑几个容易错、较难、对自己来说比较难懂的题再做一做。

英语期末复习计划：1、家长提写本模块单词、短语，给家长背课文。2、把每次小测试上的错题抄题再做一遍，做完后家长检查。3、每天做3—5篇小学生阅读理解题。4、每天听20分钟英语磁带。

同学们，其实考试并不可怕，只要放松心态，把它当成平时的小测试一样，认真做、细心做就可以了，现在我们只要抓紧复习，就能考出优异的成绩，来过一个快乐的暑假！同学们，期末考试难不倒我们，我们5。2班的同学都会是最棒的！加油！

对于这次英语考试，我并不是很满意我自己，在语、数、英这三科主课中，我英语算是最好的，但这次只考了85.5分，在语、数、英三科成绩中占居第二。我一开始还很有信心拿90分的好成绩，但考好之后，我就有点慌了——我有一种不祥的预感：这次准考不好。结果我的感应“显灵”了——90分都不到。

拿到试卷后，我大略地看了一下我的试卷，扣分主要扣在听力、基础和阅读。听力好像扣了4、5分（忘了扣了几分了），基础扣了5分，阅读扣了……（貌似是在3到5分之间）。

我这次听力之所以扣了这么多分，我想有两个原因：一是因为喇叭出了问题，声音很轻，听不清楚；二是因为我没有仔细地听，有一道题就是因为没听出应该是填什么单词，所以导致白白扣了1分。

我的基础题么，扣的也是比较厉害的，有一道题我把“exhibition”拼成了“excibition”，使得我又白白扣了1分，看到我这拼错的单词时，我感觉好压抑：起初我为什么不好好背单词呢？这样就不会扣分了。

阅读题我感觉有一点点的难度，对于在外面补过课的同学来说那是“小菜一碟”。至今我的英语成绩70%的几率比那些补过课的同学高，所以我并没有怨恨我当初为什么没上补习班，而且我也不想上，逼迫一个人去干他（她）不想做的一件事又没有任何意义，搞得父母忧心忡忡，又搞得自己闷闷不乐，不仅累着自己，还累着父母（话是这么说，不过我也得在阅读上下下功夫了，不然我的成绩要像“乘电梯”一样滑下来了，呵呵）。

通过这次检查、认识自己的错误后，我在学习上有了一定的目标，以后我要更加努力地学习！我相信经过我半年的努力，期末考试一定能取得好成绩！

[英语考试反省作文精选

“文似看山不喜平！”喜新、厌旧、好奇是人的天性。那么，该如何让作文开头多一些悬念，让情节摇曳多姿，波澜起伏，产生摄人心魄的艺术效果，以迅速激发读者的阅读兴趣呢？

一、剪辑一个精彩的片段

一个成功的电视电影导演，往往会把最精彩、最惊险、最刺激的片段或高潮放在开头，借此来吸引观众，增加影视剧的收视率，很多作家也是如此。我们写作文，也必须有把最精彩的内容放在开头的意识，力求让精彩的开头迅速抓住读者眼球。请看满分作文《“极地”挑战》的开头：

“快点！站好！右边第三个，手指贴紧裤缝！”“你——站出来，出来站还站不好，就给我站一个下午！听见没有？”那位教官正对着我前面的那几个男生凶巴巴地训话。再看看那几个男生，平时总是高昂着头，对女生更是凶巴巴的，而此时，全都成了绵羊。

如雷的吼声，严厉的批评，鲜明的对比，只三两句，就迅速地粘上了读者，让读者欲罢不能，只有乖乖地看下去。

二、提出一个思考的话题

这是最俗套也是最具悬念的作文开头。如果你所提的问题具有思考的价值，能够产生强烈的视觉冲击力，开启读者的思维，同样能产生巨大的艺术魅力，让人欲罢不能。请看满分作文《我的季节我做主》的开头：

花季青年，能撇开家长的支配，我的季节我做主，我的地盘我做主吗？

带着这道千年的难题，我穿越时空隧道，飘飘悠悠地来到了春秋战国，我要叩问孔子，叩问屈原，看看他们如何回答这个千古难题。

文章一开始就提出了一个严肃的问题，三言两语就留下了悬念，同时，文字也给人厚重之感。

三、亮出一个重要的物件

不少文章巧妙地选择了一条贯穿全文的线索，这条线索可以是人，可以是事，也可以是物。如果在文章开头，就让这个人、事或物带着几分“神秘”或几分“怪异”闪亮登场，同样能让人心驰神往。请看满分作文《那一幕，我难以忘怀》的精彩开头：

“号外，号外，林立在汶川的妹妹来信了，里面还有一沓照片呢！”

静谧的中午就这样被打破了。宁静的嗓门天生尖锐，加上她刻意捏起了嗓子，又运足底气，就格外具有震撼力。几个小子，加上几个“野丫头”早已按捺不住，一群“疯子”冲出来就想抢信。就连几个睡觉特别香的家伙也睡眼蒙眬地喊：“什么事？什么事？这么刺激！”

你肯定也被这神秘的信拽着，急切地想知道那里面是什么了吧？伴着读者的猜想，文章就这样一路悬念地展开，紧紧地牵扯住了读者的视线。

四、创设一个典型的环境

每个故事的发生、展开都需要一个环境，假如在文章的开头，直接把故事场景精心描绘一番，或者精心营造一个或凄凉或优美或静谧的氛围，巧妙地让读者置身于这个环境之中，同样能产生巨大的吸引力。请看满分作文《那一幕，我难以忘怀》的开头：

刺骨的寒风呼呼地吹着，不时地向我袭来，偶尔还会有顽皮的小雪花落下来，就像跳舞一样。走在路上，我想，在外做生意的爸爸应该回家了吧？

“刺骨的寒风”、“顽皮的小雪花”，开头仅用两句话，就营造了一种寒冷、静谧的氛围，引人入胜。

再看满分作文《乌江水霸王情》的开头：

乌江水的澎湃涛声依旧清晰可辨，它不停地翻滚着，不停地向人们诉说着那无尽的霸王情……

项君之力拔山兮，孤水无奈草萋萋，垓下虽败威尤在，何故弃骓哭虞姬？

文章一开始就渲染出一种悲壮、凄凉的氛围，巧妙地让读者置身于遥远的古战场之中，如闻其声，如见其景。

总之，作文的开头方式有很多，如何能只一眼便牢牢地吸引住读者是重中之重。同学们应在力所能及的情况下，选择适合作文体裁、结构及主旨表达的开头形式，力争在第一时间引起读者的阅读兴趣。

今天就和大家就分享到这，祝愿同学们用辛勤的汗水去收获美好的未来吧！

今天是期末考试，我非常紧张，我慢慢地走进教室，原本以为同学们会很紧张。可是一进教室，发现大家却很高兴。我走到自己的座位上，按照原来的样子复习。

第一课是考语文，老师把试卷发下来，我一看，都是平时复习过的。我紧张的心慢慢地放松下来。我飞快地做好试卷，看看没事做，就拿起尺子玩了起来。玩着玩着，我突然发现有一道题目忘记做了。我真是粗心啊，我连忙认认真真地检查了起来。哇，居然有那么多做错的题目。如果不检查，不知道会考多少分呢。时间到了，老师把试卷收了上去，我马上跑去和同学对答案，还好，改过的几道题目都改对了。

第二课是考数学，这次我吸取上次的教训，做完后，我就认认真真地检查起来。我发现有一个要量角的地方忘记量了。我马上去找量角器，可惜怎么也找不到。我仔细地回想了一下，我考完语文后，把量角器放进自己口袋里了。看来，粗心的习惯一时还没改掉。

数学考完了，饭也吃好了。接下来就要考英语了。英语是我的薄弱的环节，可是这一次的试卷相对来说有点简单。我立刻就有了自信，觉得应该可以考好。

考试考完了，我觉得我会考好，果然，皇天不负有心人，我数学考了95.5语文考了96.5,我最害怕的英语,居然成了最容易的了,我下次一定也要考好。

随着时光的飞逝，让人悲痛的期末考试来临。许多差生，写字极差无比的，知道这一次是电脑阅卷，一个个哭爹喊娘。有的求上帝，希望自己可以过关。好生，都非常高兴，想着考好了，过一个开心的暑假。

“叮叮叮~”考试铃声一响。余下，全是寂静。天地都安静了！但还是能听见考生们急促的呼吸声。

一分钟过去了……五分钟过去了……一个小时过去了。终于，考试结束了！我听见我们班吴沐逸说：“这真是坑爹的答题卡！”还有人说：“没救了，没救了！这次肯定考得稀巴烂。”

这整天，我都兴高采烈的。

第二天，成绩出来了！我看着妈妈昏暗的眼神。我料到，我的成绩肯定不堪设想！

接着我怀着忐忑的心情，一步一步地走过去。脚后，好像拉着几十个大胖子。走啊走，我走到妈妈那，说：“妈，我考了几分啊？”妈妈失落地说出了成绩。这成绩，就是晴天霹雳，是太阳下面下大雨。那让人心酸的成绩，让我怦然一震，把我吓出了冷汗。

妈妈语重心长地说：“虽然考差了，但是，只要下次再加倍努力，总有考好的一天的！”

听了老妈的话，我的心，温暖了许多。

是呀！考差了没关系，但是，考差了，不想再考好，才是最可怕的！

天空是白云的舞台，在那里，白云可以尽情勾勒出千态万状;丛林是飞鸟的舞台，在那里，飞鸟可以自由展示悠扬宛转的歌喉;剧场是演员的舞台，在那里，演员可以逼真地演绎人生的百态;生活是我们的舞台，在这里，我们可以焕发出独特的风采……请以“舞台”为题目，写一篇文章。

要求：

(1)将题目抄写在答题卡上。

(2)不限文体(诗歌除外)。

(3)字数在600—1000之间。

(4)作文中不要出现所在学校的校名或师生姓名。

人生的舞台，播种着你的梦想，挥洒着你的汗水，展现着你的精彩。

——题记

在人生这个硕大的舞台上，有些人拥有着属于自己的精彩演出，而有些人却被淹没在了茫茫的人海。这样的差异往往不是在一瞬间形成的，而是因为日积月累。茫茫的人海中是容易迷失方向的，你只有选对了方向，并且有坚定的信念相陪，这样人生的舞台才有可能被你主宰。有些人具备了这样的品质，然而有的人却没有，时间久了，怎么可能没有差距呢?

人生的起点就是播种梦想，一个没有梦想的人是茫然的，是没有目标性的。梦想并不是天马行空的，是要具有实际性的，有价值的。因为那些目前看似虚无缥缈的梦想都是建立在实际的梦想之上的。只有播种下了适合自己的梦想，这颗梦想之芽才会更好地生长。

光光播种梦想还是远远不够的，因为失去了悉心的照料，脆弱的小芽随时都有生命危险。确定了自己的梦想之后，就得努力地去追求，不管追求的路上遇到了什么样的困难，都不能轻易地放弃，因为那是上帝对你的考验，跨过了这道坎，就胜利了，放弃了，你的梦想就化作泡沫了。其实，只要你跨过自己心中的那道坎，一切事情都解决了。心中的畏惧没有了，那些挫折还算什么呢?早就说过，坚定的信念面前，没有打败不了的敌人，只看你能不能迎难而上、勇往直前。作文

挥洒完了你的汗水，接下来等待着你的就是属于你自己的精彩了。这时候的你，拥有了能够自己主宰的舞台，在人生的舞台上有着精彩的演出，见证了你骄傲的存在。此时此刻的你，是多么幸福，有着热烈的掌声，美丽的鲜花，赞扬的话语……然而面对这些，你的内心却是一片深深的宁静。

人生的舞台是精彩的，闪亮舞台背后的艰辛，却只有你自己心中明白……

[东城九年级上学期期末考试语文作文题

一、了解记叙文的写作特征

记叙文就是记载、叙述我们在生活中看到、听到、经历过、接触过的一些有人物和事件的文章。写好记叙文，应掌握记叙的四个要素，即时间、地点、人物和事件(起因、发展、结果)。运用这些要素时，应注意时间、地点必须具体、明确;人物的出场要能推动情节的发展，记叙的事情不论大小，都应把事情的起因、发展和结果写完整。

(一)记叙文的几种表达方式：记叙、描写、抒情和议论

记叙，就是记载和叙述人物的经历、活动以及事物发展变化的经过。

描写，即以形象的语言对人物、事件、环境作具体人微的描写，给人以真切的感受。

抒情，就是抒发、表述自己的感情。

议论，就是讲述道理，也就是作者通过对客观事物的评论，来表明自己的观点和态度。

1、记叙和描写是记叙文最基本的表达方式，记叙和描写的结合，是记叙文写作的基本要求：

(1)、记叙是通过一般的述说和交代，把人物或事件及其相互关系变化介绍给读者，把分散的场景、事物的片断贯穿起来，使读者对事物的发展和全貌有一个清晰的了解;

(2)、描写是在记叙的基础上，用生动形象的语言，将人物、事件、景物存在与变化的具体状态作精细的描绘，造成一种如见其人，如闻其声，如临其境的感觉，使读者受到艺术感染，留下难以忘怀的印象。记叙文如果缺少描写，就会平淡苍白，主题不突出，形象不鲜明，情景不感人，当然，描写要恰当，为中心服务。所谓恰当，即突出特征，符合身份，写出变化，多种手法。

描写的方法多种多样：

A、从描写的对象看，一般有三种：人物描写，主要有肖像描写、行动描写、语言描写和心理描写等。景物描写(也称环境描写)，包括自然环境和社会环境;细节描写，可以和人物描写、景物描写重叠或交*，构成人物和环境的完整描写。

B、从描写的角度看有正面描写(又称直接描写)和侧面描写(又称间接描写)。正面描写是作者直接对描写对象(人物、事件、环境)所作的刻画和描绘;侧面描写是作者通过对周围人物或环境的描绘来表现所要描写的对象，即间接地对描写对象进行刻画、描绘，使其鲜明突出。

C、从描写的风格来看，有白描和细描。白描，即运用最简练的文字，不加渲染烘托，没有浓烈色彩的描写，不借助比喻、拟人等修辞手法，也不用或少用形容词，抓住描写对象的主要特点，描写出事物的本质特征或人物的精神面貌。叙事，线条分明，言简意赅;写人，三言两语则揭示出人物的心态，如见其人，细描，即细致具体地描绘对象，运用比喻、拟人、夸张等修辞手法和象征、衬托、渲染等表现手法，使所写对象栩栩如生，逼真动人。

2、在记叙文中，在记叙描写的基础上适当地加以抒情和议论，不仅增强文章的感染力与表现力，而且突出文章的中心。记叙文中的抒情和议论，大致有三种情况：先叙(描)后议(抒)、夹叙(描)夹议(抒)、先议(抒)后叙(描)。议论和抒情的运用要从需要出发，适当运用，过多则使文章内容流于空泛。

3、在记叙文中，有时也需要进行说明，但这只能在必要的时候运用，否则用多了还会影响

(二)常用的记叙顺序有顺叙、倒叙、插叙和补叙四种。

1、顺叙，按事情、人物发展变化的时间先后顺序来记叙，其优点是层次清楚，容易反映情节发展的连贯性，如《一面》。运用顺叙要注意详略、情节的衔接、变化，否则会使人感到平铺直叙，呆板乏味。

2、倒叙，即把后发生的情节提前记叙、介绍，然后再叙述发生在先的情节。这种方法能突出主题或重点，给读者留下悬念，从而吸引读者往下读，引人人胜。如《第二次考试》。运用倒叙一定要把事件起因交代清楚，而且要衔接自然，如处理不当，则会使文章前后脱节，出现混乱。

3、插叙，就是在记叙中心事件的过程中，为了帮助开展情节，暂时中断叙述的线索，插入一些与主要情节有关的内容的叙述方法。如《故乡》中插叙了对闰土少年时代的回忆。恰当地运用插叙，可以扩大题材，丰富内容，深化主题。

4、补叙，即在记叙过程中，用少量文字对人物或事件作简短的补充说明。如《这不是—颗流星》中，“我”回忆后，用对话补说阿婆已经“走了”。

记叙文是以记叙描写为主要手段，以写人叙事为主要内容的文章，大体可以分记人记事两大类，写时要根据需要来确定内容和中心。写人时，要通过具体、生动的事实来表现人物，切忌冗长、空洞的鉴定式的介绍说明，要通过人物的语言、行动、肖像和心理活动等方面的描述，来表现人物的精神面貌，才能使文章生动感人。叙事主要通过描述事件的前因后果来表达某种思想和意旨。这就涉及记叙的顺序，只要运用得好，便能收到良好的效果。而在一篇文章中，往往不只使用一种方法，常常是综合运用只要运用得恰当，就能使文章的结构更多变，安排更灵活，从而达到较好的艺术效果。记事和写人不能截然分开，只能相对地有所侧重。记事不能没有人，写人也离不开事，因为任何事件中都必然有人物活动，而人物也只有在事件中才能表现得活泼有力。记事为主的文章，事件应记叙完整，写人为主的文章，重点在于表现人物，事件则不一定写完整。

二、中考作文题型

1、命题作文

按照规定的作文题目写作，题目中往往一个词或一个短语就概括了写作范围和内容，绝大多数没有审题障碍。如广州市2000年的作文题《我二十年后的某一天的日记》;2001年是《我和水》;2004年的作文题“我也是富翁”、“假如再有一次机会”;上海市2004年的作文题“我们是初升的太阳”、“我的视线”等。

2、半命题作文

通常有三种形式：命题部分在前，如《珍惜所拥有的_______》(安徽考题);命题部分在后，如《_____让我陶醉》(江苏考题);命题部分在中间或两端，如《当我面对_____的时候》。2001年广州市中考题是《发生在的纠纷》。

3、给材料作文

命题者从预设材料中引申出作文要求或题目，学生阅读材料并按要求作文。材料作文的审题至关重要，必须读懂材料，把握材料的重点，弄清要求，按照明确规定作文。如这样一个材料：一位雕塑家完成了一座非常完美的雕塑，有人问他：“你是怎样雕出这座完美的雕塑的?”雕塑家回答：“其实，这座雕像原本就在那里，我只是将它多余的边边角角去掉而已。”其实，在人生中，你就是那座雕像，只要去掉外面的边边角角，就能获得完美的自我!而那位出色的雕塑家，就是你自己!要求考生结合自己的成长经历，自选角度，自拟题目，自定文体，写一篇文章(山东考题)。而2000年广州市中考题也是“围绕自己身边的环境，自拟题目，写一篇文章。”

4、话题作文

所谓“话题”，即谈话的中心。话题作文是从命题者设计“材料”中引发一个既有开放性又有约束力的话题，展开联想和想象。话题作文具有导向性、灵活性、宽泛性的特点，近几年被广泛使用。如2002年广州市中考题以“阅读自然，阅读社会，阅读人生”为话题，2003年广州市中考题以“简单、智慧、勇气”为话题。

二、中考

记叙文写作技巧

(一)紧扣命题意图和写作要求

拿到作文题目后，要先弄清楚题目的意义、范围、中心，确定文章的体裁、题材、字数要求，再围绕中心选择材料，合理布局谋篇，运用恰当的表达方式进行写作。

1、确立准确的内容——在最短的时间内找到最适合自己的写作内容

(1)思维的发散

在落笔成文前，一定要慎重，要考虑到尽可能多的写作内容。

①充分利用作文题中的提示性语言，获得写作内容

如：也许你被真挚的母爱感动过，也许你被善良的帮助感动过，也许你为奥运会场升起的五星红旗流过热泪，也许你为无私的友谊掀起过情感的波澜……

请以“感动”为话题写一篇作文，文体不限，题目自拟。

作文题中的“也许…也许……也许……也许……”的提示语，没有内容写的同学完全可以把这段话作为自己的写作材料，写母爱、帮助、友谊等带给自己的感动。

②开辟独特、新颖的角度

A、类似联想

如由“花与刺”联想到阳光与阴影、成功与挫折、优点与缺点等。

B、内敛式联想

由如“英雄”联想到课堂上的英雄、公交车上的英雄、联欢会上的英雄等

C、逆反式联想

如由“心事”联想到“我没有心事”;由“感动”联想到自己是不懂感动的人，在母爱面前一点一点被征服被融化被感动的过程。

D、虚实转换联想

如写“位置”，可以实写班级的座位、一个人的职务等，也可以虚写自己在别人心目中的地位，人在自然界中的地位等等。

(2)思维的归纳

①写自己熟悉的内容——不要选择自己一知半解的事情作为写作材料。

②写自己能驾驭的内容——由自己的认知水平、思想深度和语言表达能力决定。

2、突出明确的中心

(1)符合题意

准确把握文章题目的范围和内涵，注意培养明确点明中心的意识。为此，可在文章内容构思好后，围绕中心编写几句(段)话，将它们安插在文章的开头、结尾或者文章的过渡、转折的地方，既提醒自己不要偏离中心，也提醒阅卷老师你有明确的中心意识。

(2)提升中心的品位

①要有深刻的思想

②有小中见大的眼光

③有化实为虚的能力

④有时代意识

⑤有新颖的角度

例如：以“风”为话题的作文，可以化实为虚，由不同季节的风的特点联想到不同性格的人;可以联系时代，写社会上的各种风气;可以联系自己，写中学生中流行的一些风气;可以由风想到沙尘暴等社会问题;由风想到关于风筝的记忆┅┅

(二)构思

1、探究下笔的角度

(1)视角的转换

同样一件事，观察者的身份、角度、立场、观念、态度不同，得到的印象和结论也不会相同。如果我们能换一个视角来叙述生活中的平凡小事，就能发掘出新意来。如同样是写“我”在公共汽车上让座，有位同学的满分作文就改变了习惯的视角，借一位需要座位的老大爷的心灵和眼睛，生动表现了一位中学生在让座与不让座之间徘徊犹豫的复杂矛盾的心理。

(2)故事新编

对于人人所熟知的材料，我们可以结合主题，从全新的角度下笔，设计出合理的细节，使自己地文章脱颖而出。如“诚信”为话题的满分作文《赤兔之死》，题材出自《三国演义》中关羽走麦城一节，通过虚构的赤兔马与伯喜的对话，对比董卓、吕布、关羽等人在诚信方面的表现，最后得出“士为知己而死，人因诚信而存”的观点。

故事新编必须注意三个方面：①对原着有较清晰的印象，避免张冠李戴，闹出笑话;

③想象要合理;③要突出中心。

(三)表达技巧

1、重视描写的运用

(1)描写人物语言——生动活泼、有个性

(2)描写人物动作——细描个体动作、精写连续动作(见片段1、2)

(3)描写人物心理——以景物映衬、以动作和神态暗示

(4)描写人物肖像——个体神态、描画笑容

(5)描写景物——映衬写景(衬托人物心理)、以景析理(情景交融)

2、精妙的表现手法

(1)借物抒情，化直接为含蓄，如《背影》

(2)妙用修辞，蕴深意于物象，如片段3

(3)双线展开，相得益彰，如片段4

(4)借助蒙太奇(将全文所表现的内容分为许多不同地镜头，然后有机地组合起来，产生连贯、呼应、对比、暗示、联想等作用)如片段5

3、展示才情和文化底蕴

这个学期已经渐渐逼近尾声，激动人心的期末考试也如约而至。

今天，是考试的日子。我刚走进教室，就听见一阵吵嚷。原来，同学们因为太激动，根本安静不下来。恰恰相反，其它班却在专心致志地复习，跟我们班形成了鲜明的对比。

这时，老师来了，我们急忙安静下来。老师严肃地对我们说：“今天考试，大家按照考号去自己的考室。”同学们点了点头，那动作像小鸡啄米一样好笑。

开始考试了，我被分在155班。第一节课考语文，80分钟。我飞快地看了一遍题目，拿出笔写了起来。题目并没有多难，大多都是书上有的，或是老师讲过的。只有几题例外。作文是想象作文，有3种题目可选：花和叶，课桌和板凳，铅笔、钢笔和橡皮。我仔细地想了想，还是花和叶子好一些，因为这个题目我比较喜欢。

第二节考数学，60分钟。前面的题还比较简单，后面就有点难了。当我正对着题抓耳挠腮时，老师突然就说了一句：“离考试结束只有几分钟了。”我一听，大吃一惊。因为我还有几道应用题没做完。我手一抖，笔都差点掉地上。我冷静了一下，立刻抓紧笔，头也不抬地写完了剩下的题，而且速度飞快。这时，老师又说：“哦，我刚才弄错了，还有20分钟。”我听了，有些愤愤不平。老师说得倒轻快！

第三节考英语，40分钟。题目很简单，我10分钟就停笔了。不过，接下来的30分钟对我来说很漫长，我把试卷检查了一遍又一遍。最后，终于，下课铃响了，老师也来收试卷了。

回家的路上，我感到一身轻松，终于考完了！我觉得路边的小树和小草正对着我微笑，这真是快乐的一天！