考研英语作文写作思路实用20篇

Directions:

Suppose you are a librarian in your university.Write a notice of about 100 words,providing the newly-enrolled international students with relevant information about the library.

You should write neatly on the ANSWER SHEET.

Do not sign your own name at the end of the letter.Use “Li Ming”instead.

Do not write the address.(10 points)

参考范文：

Notice

Welcome you to this university and this new-bulided library. I am a libraian in our university and will give you relevent information about the library.

To begin with, there is circulation desk in the circulation hall so that you can borrow and return books more quickly and conveniently. Besides, the hours of loan books is during 9:00-17:00 from Monday to Friday so that you can take best advantage of the library. Moreover, the computer room in the library is big enough for you to search for some academic information charged by the hour so you must ensure that some money is left in your ID card.

I hope you will find the above information useful and I would be ready to discuss the matter with you to further details. If you have any questions about the library, please call 123456or send messages to 123456@abc. Wish you a good time during your colledge life.

请注意

欢迎你来这所大学和这个new-bulided库。我是一个libraian在我们的大学会给你有关信息图书馆。

首先,在循环大厅有循环桌子,这样您就可以借并返回书更快更方便。此外,小时的贷款是在9:00-17:00从星期一到星期五,这样您就可以最好的利用图书馆。此外,在图书馆计算机房对你来说是足够大的去寻找一些学术信息按小时收取所以你必须确保一些钱留在你的身份证。

我希望你会发现上面的信息是有用的,我准备和你讨论此事进一步的细节。如果你有任何问题关于图书馆,请致电123456或123456 @abc发送消息。祝你一段美好的时光在你科莱奇的生活。

写作词汇提升是把“阅读词汇”转化为“写作词汇”的过程。举个例子，当我在课堂上问及大家“害怕”这个词英文表达的时候，很多同学不加思维的就告诉我是“afraid”，我再问大家这个词是什么时候学的时候，很多人恍然大悟，原来词汇早在初中甚至是小学的时候就学过了。那么，考研阅卷的老师如何以“afraid”这个词判断你到底是一个合格的大学毕业生还是一个仅仅上过初中的同学呢，现在我们就不难理解为什么考研写作的平均分只有满分的一半了。

当我们翻开大学的英语课本我们会发现，在大学的四年中(甚至只是大一大二的两年中)我们就学过很多表示“害怕”但却比“afraid”要高级的多的词汇，比如：horror，scared，astonished 等等。这当中的任何一个词都会比afraid得的分数要高，这就是所谓的高级词汇取代低级词汇的过程。

现在，我们就要树立一个思想，写作的最小组成单位是词汇，词汇有低级的(baby words)也有高级的(advanced words)，想要得到考研写作高分的第一步就是要有意识的在写作中用高级词汇去取代相对低级的词汇，从而反映出自己的词汇表现能力(lexical resource)。

英语写作技巧二、句型 —— 学会自创简单句

考研写作最基本的句式称之为“自创句”。“自创句”是根据所要表达的含义完全自主创作的英文句子，其基础是语法知识。阅读时不理解某些语法现象仍然能理解文章，而写作要求精确，是和语法联系最为紧密的语言功能。其中，简单句是一切句子的基础，简单句的创作可三步走：

1. 根据句义确定唯一的谓语动词。

2. 根据动词种类(无宾、单宾、双宾、宾补或系动词)补全句子成分，如主语、宾语、宾语补足语和表语等。

3. 注意谓语动词和主语在人称和数上的一致。

英语写作技巧三、构思 —— 学习英文独特的思想表达方式

当我们有了高级的词汇和复杂的句型之后，是不是就一定能写出高分的作文了呢?不一定。写作是一个人思维的理性表达，因此，对于写作来说，思维方式的优劣更是一篇文章好与坏的根本性的指向标。

英文有自己独特的思想表达模式，要学会用英文的表达模式写作。所以建议大家在夯实词汇、句型之后多读多背多写，练习地道的英文写作思维方式。阅读和背诵是积累语言素材的关键，《新概念》序言中甚至提到“只写读过的语言”。在此基础之上，“纸上得来终觉浅，绝知此事要躬行”，阅读背诵素材之后，写作提高需要大量的实战演习

俗话说“千里之行始于足下”。英语书面表达能力的形成不是一日之功，必须从平时的课堂学习一点一滴抓起，持之以恒。

一篇优秀的英语作文在内容和语言两方面应是一个统一体，任何一方面的欠缺都会直接影响到作文的质量。然而，很多考生在写作中或者由于粗心大意，或者由于基本功不扎实而经常出现名词不变复数、第三人称单数不加s，前后不一致，以及时态语态、句子完整性等方面的错误。

1. 审题不清

如2004年中考作文要求写一项最喜欢的课外活动，有些考生将作文的主题定位为“我最喜欢的活动”，偏离了“一项、课外活动”这一主题。依据作文的评分原则，若文章内容不切题，则不管语言如何规范、用词如何准确，都会被判为零分。

2.拼写错误

拼写是考生应该具备的最起码的基本功，但在考生的作文中却经常能发现很多拼写错误。有拼写错误的作文肯定会被酌情扣分，而且有大量拼写错误存在的作文不仅体现出语言基本功差，同时也直接影响内容的表达，通常会降低作文的档次。

3.名词单复数问题

误 my father and my mother is all teacher。

正 my father and my mother are both teachers。

[中考英语作文写作常见的三个错误

下面是由语文迷网小编精心为大家整理提供的英语句子，供大家写作参考。

1、Time flies.

时光易逝。

2、Time is money.

一寸光阴一寸金。

3、Time and tide wait for no man.

岁月无情;岁月易逝;岁月不待人。

4、Time tries all.

时间检验一切。

5、Time tries truth.

时间检验真理。

6、Time past cannot be called back again.

光阴一去不复返。

7、All time is no time when it is past.

光阴一去不复返。

8、No one can call back yesterday;Yesterday will not be called again.

昨日不复来。

9、Business neglected is business lost.

忽视职业便是放弃职业。

10、One today is worth two tomorrows.

一个今天胜似两个明天。

11、The morning sun never lasts a day.

好景不常;朝阳不能光照全日。

12、Christmas comes but once a year.

圣诞一年只一度。

13、Pleasant hours fly past.

快乐时光去如飞。

14、Happiness takes no account of time.

欢娱不惜时光逝。

15、Time tames the strongest grief.

时间能缓和极度的悲痛。

16、The day is short but the work is much.

工作多，光阴迫。

17、Never deter till tomorrow that which you can do today.

今日事须今日毕，切勿拖延到明天。

18、Have you somewhat to do tomorrow,do it today.

明天如有事，今天就去做。

19、To him that does everything in its proper time,one day is worth three.

事事及时做，一日胜三日。

20、To save time is to lengthen life.

节省时间就是延长生命。

21、Everything has its time and that time must be watched.

万物皆有时，时来不可失。

22、Take time when time cometh,lest time steal away.

时来必须要趁时，不然时去无声息。

23、When an opportunity is neglected,it never comes back to you.

机不可失，时不再来;机会一过，永不再来。

24、Make hay while the sun shines.

晒草要趁太阳好。

25、Strike while the iron is hot.

趁热打铁。

26、Work today,for you know not how much you may be hindered tomrrow.

今朝有事今朝做，明朝可能阻碍多。

27、Punctuality is the soul of business.

守时为立业之要素。

28、Procrastination is the thief of time.

因循拖延是时间的大敌;拖延就是浪费时间。

29、Every tide hath ist ebb.

潮涨必有潮落时。

30、Knowledge is power.

知识就是力量。

31、Wisdom is more to be envied than riches.

知识可羡，胜于财富。

32、Wisdom is better than gold or silver.

知识胜过金银。

33、Wisdom in the mind is better than money in the hand.

胸中有知识，胜于手中有钱。

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

为了求知识，代价虽高也值得。

35、Doubt is the key of knowledge.

怀疑是知识之钥。

36、If you want knowledge,you must toil for it.

若要求知识，须从勤苦得。

37、A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

浅学误人。

38、A handful of common sense is worth a bushel of learning.

少量的常识，当得大量的学问。

39、Knowledge advances by steps and not by leaps.

知识只能循序渐进，不能跃进。

40、Learn wisdom by the follies of others.

从旁人的愚行中学到聪明。

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

前车可鉴。

42、Wisdom is to the mind what health is to the body.

知识之于精神，一如健康之于肉体。

43、Experience is the best teacher.

经验是最好的教师。

44、Experience is the father of wisdom and memory the mother.

经验是知识之父，记忆是知识之母。

45、Dexterity comes by experience.

熟练来自经验。

46、Practice makes perfect.

熟能生巧。

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

经验学校学费高，愚人旁处学不到。

48、Experience without learning is better than learning without experience.

有经验而无学问，胜于有学问而无经验。

49、Wit once bought is worth twice taught.

由经验而得的智慧，胜于学习而得的智慧;一次亲身的体会，胜过两次的教师教导。

50、Seeing is believing.

百闻不如一见。

拓展阅读：段首万能句子

1. 关于……人们有不同的观点。一些人认为……

There are different opinions among people as to ____ .Some people suggest that ____.

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

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

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

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

4. 现在，……很普遍，许多人喜欢……，因为……，另外(而且)……。

Nowadays，it is common to ______. Many people like ______ because ______. Besides，______.

5. 任何事物都是有两面性，……也不例外。它既有有利的一面，也有不利的一面。

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

6. 关于……人们的观点各不相同，一些人认为(说)……，在他们看来，……

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

7. 人类正面临着一个严重的问题……，这个问题变得越来越严重。

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

8. ……已成为人的关注的热门话题，特别是在年青人当中，将引发激烈的辩论。

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

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

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

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

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

考研英语应用文写作范文之感谢信感谢信

结构要点感谢信是就某事向收信人表示感谢的信件，分为三个部分：

1． 指出对方帮助自己的事情，表示感谢；

2． 展开叙述这件事；

3． 再次感谢，并可表示希望回报对方。

Suppose your were recommended by Professor Sun to get further education in Yale University last June and now you have been admitted by that university. Write a letter to Professor Sun to express your gratitude in about 100 words. Do not sign your own name, using “Li Ming” instead.Dear Professor Sun,

I am writing to extend my gratitude to you—without your help I would not have been a postgraduate student of Applied Mechanics Department of Yale University.

Last June, you helped me with no reservation when I applied for Yale University. You wrote a recommendation letter for me to Professor W, the dean of the department. You gave me instructions on how to fill the application forms and write the application letters. Whats more, you also taught me how to take care of myself and get along with others, which I believe are lifes great lessons.

Your help enabled me to fulfill my dream to pursue my studies in a great university. In the following days I will remember what you have told me and work and study hard to be a capable, conscientious and responsible person.

Yours truly,

Li Ming

感谢信

语言注意点感谢信应充分表达自己的谢意，切不可给对方草率的印象。可借助谈对方的帮助来进一步表达感激之情。言辞应真挚、得体。

Suppose you were taken good care of by Aunt Sun when you pursued your studies in Los Angels where Sun lived. Write a letter in about 100 words to extend your appreciation. Do not

sign your own name, using “Li Ming” instead.Dear Aunt Sun,

It is a great pleasure to extend my sincere gratitude to you for your hospitality and consideration while I pursue my bachelors degree at University of California.

As soon as I arrived in Los Angeles, you found me an apartment near my university. When I met with difficulties you often sent your daughter to help me and when I felt homesick you often talked to me patiently. You told me how to improve my efficiency in both work and study and how to get on well with teachers and schoolmates. Furthermore, you invited me to dinner on nearly every weekend.

Without your help, I would not have graduated with honors and found a satisfactory job back here in China. I know I can never repay you for everything you have done for me in the past four years, but you can be sure that I

Best regards.

Yours faithfully,

Li Ming ll never forget it.

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

一、“功能段落”突破CET写作

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

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

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

下面，结合近年真题展示功能段落内容：

2011-06：Online Shopping

1.现在网上购物已成为一种时尚

2.网上购物有很多好处，但也有不少问题

3.我的建议

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

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

1. 目前不少父母为孩子包办一切

2. 为了让孩子独立， 父母应该……

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

2009-12：Creating a Green Campus

1. 建设绿色校园很重要

2. 绿色校园不仅指绿色的环境……

3. 为了建设绿色校园，我们应该……

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

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

二、写作短期提分方略

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

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

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

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

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

表达积累

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

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

背写：思路+表达

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

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

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

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

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

1. 帮助别人是一种美德

2. 但是帮助陌生人容易使自己陷入麻烦

3. 我的看法

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

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

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

三、冲刺复习安排建议

总体原则：先背再写、阶段总结、适当模拟。

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

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

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

题目：On English Learning

提纲：1. 英语学习很重要;2. 英语者所面临的困难;3. 如何学好英语

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

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

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

导语：英语作文也是需要日积月累的练习的，下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的优秀英语作文，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

1. We re often told that ......But is this really the case ?

我们经常被告知......但事实真是这样吗?

2. People used to ......however , things are quite different today .

过去，人们习惯......但,今天的情况有很大的不同。

3.some people think that ......Others believe that the opposite is true . There is probably some truth in both sides.But we must realize that ......

一些人认为......另一些人持相反意见。也许双方的观点都有一定道理。但是我们必须认识到......

4.Recognizing a problem is the first step in finding a solution .

认识到问题是找到解决办法的第一步。

5. It is another new and bitter truth we must learn to face .

这是一个我们必须学会面对的痛苦的新情况。

6. In short , we must work hard to make the world a better place .

简而言之，为了把世界变成更美好的地方，我们必须勤奋工作。

7.Lost time is never found again.

岁月既往，一去不回。

8.Everybody should have a dream.

每个人都该有个梦想.

9.Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

抱最好的愿望,做最坏的打算。

10.Failure is the mother of success.

失败乃成功之母。

11.Lets look on the bright side.

让我们往好处想吧。

1. There is absolutely no reason for us to believe that a brighter future

for the world is an impossibility .

我们丝毫没有理由相信，世界不可能会有一个更光明的未来。

2. Meteorologists offer computer models leaving little doubt that this

years El Nino phenomenon has disappeared .

气象学家提供计算机模型，充分证明今年的厄尔尼诺现象已经消失了。

3. Facts prove the unjustifiability of claims that China will be unable to

feed itself by the year 2020 .

事实证明：断言中国到2020年将不可能养活自己是不合道理的。

4. Previous explanations of the rising divorce rate in China are simply

untenable . The fact is that many marriages were simply based on convenience and

wives are no longer willing to accept the abusive domineering attitudes of

husbands .

以前对中国离婚率升高的解释是完全站不住脚的。事实是许多婚姻仅仅建立在便利的基础上，而且妻子不再愿意接受丈夫作威作福的态度。

5. Claim that entering the Chinese market offers foreign companies an

immediate road to profits are grossly misstated and have been proven wrong time

and again . The key to entering China rests with the phraseology " vast

potential market " , and how long one is willing to wait for returns .

声称进入中国市场会给外国公司带来立即获利的途径是非常错误的，事实已经一次次地证明了这一点。进入中国的关键在于“广阔的潜在市场”这一说法以及为了回报愿意等待多久。

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

1.爱屋及乌 Love me, love my dog.

2.百闻不如一见 Seeing is believing.

3.比上不足比下有余 worse off than some, better off than many; to fall short of the best, but be better than the worst.

4.笨鸟先飞 A slow sparrow make an early start.

5.不眠之夜 whe night

6.不以物喜不以己悲 not pleased by external gains, not saddened by personnal losses

7.不遗余力 spare no effort; go all out; do ones best

8.不打不成交 No discord, no concord.

9.拆东墙补西墙 rob Peter to pay Paul

10.辞旧迎新 bid farewell to the old and usher in the new; ring out the old year and ring in the new

11.大事化小小事化了 try first to make their mistake sound less serious and then to reduce it to nothing at all

12.大开眼界 open ones eyes; broaden ones horizon; be an eye-opener

13.国泰民安 The country flourishes and people live in peace

14.过犹不及 going too far is as bad as not going far enough; beyond is as wrong as falling short; too much is as bad as too little

15.功夫不负有心人 Everything comes to him who waits.

16.好了伤疤忘了疼 once on shore, one prays no more

17.好事不出门恶事传千里 Good news never goes beyond the gate, while bad news spread far and wide.

18.和气生财 Harmony brings wealth.

19.活到老学到老 One is never too old to learn.

20.既往不咎 let bygones be bygones

21.金无足赤人无完人 Gold cant be pure and man cant be perfect.

22.金玉满堂 Treasures fill the home.

23.脚踏实地 be down-to-earth

24.脚踩两只船 sit on the fence

25.君子之交淡如水 the friendship between gentlemen is as pure as crystal; a hedge between keeps friendship green

26.老生常谈陈词滥调 cut and dried, cliché

27.礼尚往来 Courtesy calls for reciprocity.

28.留得青山在不怕没柴烧 Where there is life, there is hope.

29.马到成功 achieve immediate victory; win instant success

30.名利双收 gain in both fame and wealth

31.茅塞顿开 be suddenly enlightened

32.没有规矩不成方圆 Nothing can be accomplished without norms or standards. 33.每逢佳节倍思亲 On festive occasions more than ever one thinks of ones dear ones far away.It is on the festival occasions when one misses his dear most.

34.谋事在人成事在天 The planning lies with man, the outcome with Heaven. Man proposes, God disposes.

35.弄巧成拙 be too smart by half; Cunning outwits itself

A man was going to the house of some rich person. As he went along the road, he saw a box of good apples at the side of the road. He said, "I do not want to eat those apples; for the rich man will give me much food; he will give me very nice food to eat." Then he took the apples and threw them away into the dust.

He went on and came to a river. The river had become very big; so he could not go over it. He waited for some time; then he said, "I cannot go to the rich mans house today, for I cannot get over the river."

He began to go home. He had eaten no food that day. He began to want food. He came to the apples, and he was glad to take them out of the dust and eat them.

Do not throw good things away; you may be glad to have them at some other time.

【译文】

一个人正朝着一个富人的房子走去，当他沿着路走时，在路的一边他发现一箱好苹果，他说：“我不打算吃那些苹果，因为富人会给我更多的食物，他会给我很好吃的东西。”然后他拿起苹果，一把扔到土里去。

他继续走，来到河边，河涨水了，因此，他到不了河对岸，他等了一会儿，然后他说：“今天我去不了富人家了，因为我不能渡过河。”

他开始回家，那天他没有吃东西。他就开始去找吃的，他找到苹果，很高兴地把它们从尘土中翻出来吃了。

不要把好东西扔掉，换个时候你会觉得它们大有用处。

一：用介词短语替代从句，例：

原句：While they were playing tennis, she started an argument that lasted all morning.

修改后：During tennis she started an argument that lasted all morning.

原句：When you come to the second traffic light, turn right.

修改后：At the second traffic light turn left.

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

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

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

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

三：剔除你不需要的单词，例：

Two joint partners will present their views over a long-distance telephone call.

写完这样的句子后，你自己再读一遍，挑出单词"joint"和"telephone"，注意删去不必要的词。

英语写作注意两点

一、先审题，弄清写作要求审题是写好作文的前提，也是书面表达的基础。如果写偏了题，语言表达再好也很难得高分。审题时要注意两个方面：

1.认真地看两遍题目，包括提示，全面了解写作要求。

2.理清思路，确定体裁、框架结构和内容。

二、用英语进行思维英语写作时必须排除汉语思维的干扰。

从现在起应逐渐加大阅读量和听的输入量，将阅读、听力训练与书面表达有机地结合起来。经常体会和领悟作者传递信息和表达思想的方式。在话题讨论和写作中经常运用所学到的表达方式就会有所创造。还要尽量做到“五多”：多看、多听、多思考、多用心体验和感悟身边的人和事、多用英语说和写自己的体验和感受。

一、~~~ the + ~ est + 名词 + (that) + 主词 + haveever + seen ( known/heard/had/read, etc)

~~~ the most + 形容词 + 名词 + (that) + 主词 + have ever + seen ( known/heard/had/read, etc)

例句：

Helen is the most beautiful girl that I have ever seen.

海伦是我所看过最美丽的女孩。

Mr. Chang is the kindest teacher that I have ever had.

张老师是我曾经遇到最仁慈的教师。

二、Nothing is + ~~~ er than to + V Nothing is + more + 形容词 + than to + V

例句：Nothing is more important than to receive education.

没有比接受教育更重要的事。

三、~~~ cannot emphasize the importance of ~~~ too much.(再怎么强调...的重要性也不为过。)

例句：

We cannot emphasize the importance of protecting our eyes too much.

我们再怎么强调保护眼睛的重要性也不为过。

四、There is no denying that + S + V ...(不可否认的...)

例句：

There is no denying that the qualities of our living have gone from bad to worse.

不可否认的，我们的生活品质已经每况愈下。

五、It is universally acknowledged that + 句子~~ (全世界都知道...)

例句：

It is universally acknowledged that trees are indispensable to us.

全世界都知道树木对我们是不可或缺的。

六、There is no doubt that + 句子~~ (毫无疑问的...)

例句：

There is no doubt that our educational system leaves something to be desired.

毫无疑问的我们的教育制度令人不满意。

七、An advantage of ~~~ is that + 句子 (...的优点是...)

例句：

An advantage of using the solar energy is that it wont create (produce) any pollution.

使用太阳能的优点是它不会制造任何污染。

八、The reason why + 句子 ~~~ is that + 句子 (...的原因是...)

例句：

The reason why we have to grow trees is that they can provide us with fresh air./ The reason why we have to grow trees is that they can supply fresh air for us.

我们必须种树的原因是它们能供应我们新鲜的空气。

九、So + 形容词 + be + 主词 + that + 句子 (如此...以致于...)

例句：

So precious is time that we cant afford to waste it.

时间是如此珍贵，我们经不起浪费它。

十、Adj + as + Subject(主词)+ be, S + V~~~ (虽然...)

例句：

Rich as our country is, the qualities of our living are by no means satisfactory. {by no means = in no way = on no account 一点也不}

虽然我们的国家富有，我们的生活品质绝对令人不满意。

十一、The + ~er + S + V, ~~~ the + ~er + S + V ~~~

The + more + Adj + S + V, ~~~ the + more+ Adj + S + V ~~~(愈...愈...)

例句：The harder you work, the more progress you make.

你愈努力，你愈进步。

The more books we read, the more learned we become.

我们书读愈多，我们愈有学问。

十二、By +Ving, ~~ can ~~ (借着...，..能够..)

例句：By taking exercise, we can always stay healthy.

借着做运动，我们能够始终保持健康。

十三、~~~ enable + Object(受词)+ to + V (..使..能够..)

例句：Listening to music enable us to feel relaxed.

听音乐使我们能够感觉轻松。

十四、On no account can we + V ~~~ (我们绝对不能...)

例句：On no account can we ignore the value of knowledge.

我们绝对不能忽略知识的价值。

十五、It is time + S + 过去式 (该是...的时候了)

例句：It is time the authorities concerned took proper steps to solve the traffic problems.

该是有关当局采取适当的措施来解决交通问题的时候了。

十六、Those who ~~~ (...的人...)

例句：Those who violate traffic regulations should be punished.

违反交通规定的人应该受处罚。

十七、There is no one but ~~~ (没有人不...)

例句：There is no one but longs to go to college.

没有人不渴望上大学。

十八、be + forced/compelled/obliged + to + V (不得不...)

例句：Since the examination is around the corner, I am compelled to give up doing sports.

既然考试迫在眉睫，我不得不放弃做运动。

十九、It is conceivable that + 句子 (可想而知的)

It is obvious that + 句子 (明显的)

It is apparent that + 句子 (显然的)

例句：It is conceivable that knowledge plays an important role in our life.

可想而知，知识在我们的一生中扮演一个重要的角色。

二十、That is the reason why ~~~ (那就是...的原因)

例句：Summer is sultry. That is the reason why I dont like it.

夏天很燠热。那就是我不喜欢它的原因。

二十一、For the past + 时间，S + 现在完成式.(过去...年来，...一直...)

例句：For the past two years, I have been busy preparing for the examination.

过去两年来，我一直忙着准备考试。

二十二、Since + S + 过去式，S + 现在完成式。

例句：Since he went to senior high school, he has worked very hard.

自从他上高中，他一直很用功。

二十三、It pays to + V ~~~ (...是值得的。)

例句：It pays to help others.

帮助别人是值得的。

二十四、be based on (以...为基础)

例句：The progress of thee society is based on harmony.

社会的进步是以和谐为基础的。

二十五、Spare no effort to + V (不遗余力的)

例句：We should spare no effort to beautify our environment.

我们应该不遗余力的美化我们的环境。

二十六、bring home to + 人 + 事 (让...明白...事)

例句：We should bring home to people the valueof working hard.

我们应该让人们明白努力的价值。

二十七、be closely related to ~~ (与...息息相关)

例句：Taking exercise is closely related to health.

做运动与健康息息相关。

二十八、Get into the habit of + Ving= make it a rule to + V (养成...的习惯)

We should get into the habit of keeping good hours.

我们应该养成早睡早起的习惯。

二十九、Due to/Owing to/Thanks to + N/Ving, ~~~(因为...)

例句：Thanks to his encouragement, I finally realized my dream.

因为他的鼓励，我终于实现我的梦想。

三十、What a + Adj + N + S + V!= How + Adj + a + N + V!(多么...!)

例句：What an important thing it is to keep our promise!

How important a thing it is to keep our promise!

遵守诺言是多么重要的事!

三十一、Leave much to be desired (令人不满意)

例句：The condition of our traffic leaves much to be desired.

我们的交通状况令人不满意。

三十二、Have a great influence on ~~~ (对...有很大的影响)

例句：Smoking has a great influence on our health.

抽烟对我们的健康有很大的影响。

三十三、do good to (对...有益)，do harm to (对...有害)

例句：Reading does good to our mind.读书对心灵有益。

Overwork does harm to health.工作过度对健康有害。

三十四、Pose a great threat to ~~ (对...造成一大威胁)

例句：Pollution poses a great threat to our existence.

污染对我们的生存造成一大威胁。

三十五、do ones utmost to + V = do ones best (尽全力去...)

例句：We should do our utmost to achieve our goal in life.

我们应尽全力去达成我们的人生目标。

导语：英语作文在英语试卷中还是相当重要的一部分，你知道写作有哪些技巧吗?下面是yjbys作文网小编为您收集整理的资料，希望对您有所帮助。

初中英语作文分为四等。一等文：13-15分;二等文：9-12分;三等文：5-8分;四等文：0-4分。教给大家十个字，搞定初中英语写作，帮你拿到一等文。

要点+结构+逻辑+语法+亮点

要点：

实际上中考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。2014年中考英语写作技巧

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。

英语作文依靠的是同学们的语感和平时的积累，但是在面临中考的紧要关头，要想在短时间内提高英语写作水平不是一件容易的事情，这就需要同学们掌握中考英语作文写作技巧。

要写好英语作文，具体要做到以下几点：

注重英文阅读习惯的养成与坚持

坚持英语阅读的习惯，不仅可以保持对英语语感的敏感度，更重要的是它有助于培养英式思维，从而避免汉式思维句子的出现。

(1)平时多读，积累句型：读的越多，语感欲强烈，写作的时候自然而然就可以自如的运用灵活多变的句式来完整一篇小作文了，另外建议多积累名言警句、谚语等以作为高级句型运用与作文中。

(2)选出一些代表性范文精读：选出不同题材的优秀作文范文，读的时候注意文章的开头、结尾、层次结构以及所用句型等。要有目的、用学习的心态来精读优秀范文，并做到学以致用。

注重平时的写作训练

英语写作训练可以以日记、话题或仿写的形式来进行。通过坚持一个学期的英语日记，保持英语写作的习惯。所以一定要坚持每周两到三次的写作训练，正所谓习惯成自然就是这个道理。

五步写出一篇好作文

什么才是好作文呢?很多同学误认为只要像学校平时测验那样子“句子结构正确，无单词拼写错误”就应该得满分。而小升初对作文的考核并非如此简单，同学们应该走出对英语写作认识上的误区。那么除了以上两个方面外，我们怎样才能写出一篇优秀作文而在小升初中获取高分呢?下面就来看我们的“高分作文五步法”。

(1)认真审题，确定时态人称，同时关注题材格式

时态：故事性文章一般用过去时，其中表达感受时可用现在时。说明性或议论性文章一般用现在时，举例时可用过去时。根据题目要求也会出现时态的交错使用，如过去和现在的对比等。如果句中出现了时间状语，时态则要遵循时间状语。

如ago，last…过去时;next，in…将来时等

人称：注意在句子中人称的统一。

例如：

Thanks to the teachers， we have improved our English.

其中we和our就是人称的统一。

格式：注意书信格式的开头和结尾。

(2)找全信息点，紧扣主题，突出重点

切忌只看表格中或所列1、2、3中的信息点。一定把题读全，找齐信息点，建议用铅笔标出，写完后再涂掉。根据题目，可适当增加合理内容。特别注意文章要有开头和结尾。

(3)成文时表述正确，文字流畅

切忌与汉语提示的一一对应，使用所学表达方法将语义表达出来即可。首先考虑句子结构(如主谓宾，主系表等)。同时注意短语的正确使用和单词的拼写，最好使用课本上学过的短语和句式。

(4)文章结构清晰，重点句型画龙点睛，可使文章在得分上提高一个档次，考虑文章的篇章结构，使用适当的连接短语，使文章结构紧凑。

常用连接词：

1.表文章结构顺序：

First of all， Firstly/First，Secondly/Second…

And then， Finally， In the end，At last

2.表并列补充关系的：

What is more， Besides，Moreover，

3.表转折对比关系的：

However， On the contrary， but

On one hand… On the otherhand…Some…， while others…

4.表因果关系的：

Because， As、So， Therefore， As a result

5.表换一种方式表达：

In other words

6.表进行举例说明：

For example，句子;For instance，句子;such as + n/doing

7.表陈述事实：In fact

8.表达自己观点：

As far as I know， In myopinion

9.表总结：

In short， In a word.

文中正确使用两三个好的句型，如：感叹句、宾语从句、动名词做主语等。

宾语从句举例：

I believe Tianjin will be morebeautiful and prosperous.

感叹句举例：

How I want to study in thebest middle school in Guangzhou!

动名词做主语举例：

Reading books and swimming aremy hobbies.

常用状语从句句型：

1)时间：

when， not…until(直到…才…)， as soon as(一…就…)

2)目的：

so that + clause; (为了)

3)结果：

so…that…(如此…以至于…)， too…to do(太……以至于……)

4)条件：

if， unless(除非)， as long as(只要)

5)比较：

as…as…(与…一样)， not so…as…， than

(5)认真检查，检查信息点是否全面，时态、人称是否一致，句子结构是否清晰，短语使用、单词拼写是否准确等。

检查后，将草稿誊写在纸上，请注意按结构分段，书写清晰。

下面列举一些在检查中可发现的错误：

We livemore and more comfortable.

改正：comfortably(副词修饰动词)

2.we can getmany informations by reading newspapers.

改正：much information (不可数名词由much修饰)

3.There willhave a football game tomorrow.

改正：There will be a football game tomorrow.(Therebe句型的将来时结构)

4.I thinkride a bike can keep our health.

改正：I think riding a bike can keep us healthy.(动名词作主语)

英语写作中有不少短语和表达大家会经常用到，下面我们就总结了100条常用的短语和表达句子，希望能给大家一些参考。

1. 经济的快速发展 the rapiddevelopment of economy

2.人民生活水平的显著提高/稳步增长theremarkableimprovement/ steady growth ofpeople’s livingstandard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10.有争议性的问题 a controversialissue

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

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

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

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

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

16.双方的论点 argument on both sides

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

18.对…必不可少 be indispensableto …

19.正如谚语所说 As the proverb goes:

20.…也不例外 …be no exception

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

29.经济/心理负担 financial burden / psychologicalburden

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

31. 从另一个角度 from another perspective

32.做出共同努力 make joint efforts

33. 对…有益 be beneficial / conducive to…

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

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

36.综合素质 comprehensivequality

37.无可非议 blameless / beyond reproach

38.加大了…的可能性 increase the chances of

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

40. 应当承认 Admittedly

41.不可推卸的义务 unshakable duty

42. 满足需求 satisfy/ meet the needs of…

43.可靠的信息源 a reliablesource of information

44.宝贵的自然资源 valuable natural resources

45.因特网 the Internet (一定要由冠词，字母I

46.方便快捷 convenient andefficient

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

48.环保(的) environmental protection /environmentallyfriendly

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

50.科技的飞速更新 the ever-accelerated updating of scienceandtechnology

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

52.支持前/后种观点的人 people / those in favor of theformer/latteropinion

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

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

55. 理论和实践相结合 integratetheory with practice

56. …必然趋势 an irresistible trend of…

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

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

59.长远利益. interest in the long run

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

61.扬长避短 Exploit to the full one’s favorableconditions andavoidunfavorable ones

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

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

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

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

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

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

68.有利有弊 Every coin has its two sides。(不推荐用。。。) No gardenwithout weeds。

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

70.重视 attach great importance to…

71.社会地位 social status

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

73.扩大知识面 expand one’s scopeof knowledge

74.身心两方面 both physically and mentally

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

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

77. 可以取代 “think”的词 believe, claim, hold the opinion/beliefthat

78.缓解压力/ 减轻负担 relievestress/ burden

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

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

81. 相反 in contrast / on the contrary。

82.代替 replace/ substitute / take the place of 大写)

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

84.提供就业机会 offer job opportunities

85. 社会进步的反映 mirror of social progress

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

87.增进相互了解 enhance/ promote mutualunderstanding

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

89.承受更大的工作压力 suffer from heavier work pressure

90.保障社会的稳定和繁荣 guarantee the stability and prosperity ofoursociety

91.更多地强调 put more emphasis on…

92.适应社会发展 adapt oneself to the development of society

93.实现梦想 realize one’s dream/ make one’s dream come true

94. 主要理由列举如下 The main reasons are listed as follows:

95. 首先 First， Firstly， In the first place, To begin with

96.其次 Second, Secondly, In the second place

97. 再次 Besides，In addition, Additionally,Moreover,Furthermore

98. 最后 Finally, Last but not the least, Above all, Lastly,

99. 总而言之 All in all, To sum up, In summary, In a word,

100.我们还有很长的路要走 We still have a long way to go

最近几年的中考英语当中，很多省市已经摆脱了单一作文模式，采用一大一小两个作文相结合的模式。例如，去年辽宁沈阳中考英语作文就是一个小作文，应用文-写假条，加上一个大作文，汉语提示作文构成。今年，北京中考英语作文也将是两个，一个看图作文在加上一个提示作文构成。这一讲，我们先来学习一下看图作文的写法。

看图作文要求考生按照所给图画，通过合理的联想将一组画面的内容正确地表达出来。看图作文与其他类型作文的不同之处在于，它除了要求考生有英语语言表达能力，还要求考生有观察能力、分析能力和想象能力。

写好看图作文应注意的事项1、结合文字提示，正确理解图意。一般情况下，看图作文在提供图画的同时也附带有简要的文字提示，我们可以利用文字提示去正确地理解图意，得到要点。切忌孤立地看图而忽视文字提示。

写作从图画的细节出发。所谓细节，就是指图画中的人物、事件、地点、环境、时间、动作等。依据图画细节，就可以把图画的内容用英语具体而生动地表达出来了。

(三)例题分析(例题)

同学们，看到下面的四幅图片及相应的报道后，你感到最担忧的是哪两种情形?请简述你担忧的理由并提出建议或希望。

要求：

⒈ 从所给素材中任选两种情形进行阐述，不可多选或少选。

⒉ 条理清楚，意思连贯，语句通顺，标点正确;

⒊ 词数 80 ～ 100。

参考词汇： 建议 suggest v. suggestion n.

气体 gas n. 污染 pollution n.

THE POLLUTIONS

① One third of the worlds people dont have enough clean water.

② More and more diseases are caused by polluted air.

③ People are disturbed quite often by kinds of noises.

④ Every person in our city makes about 1.8 kilos of rubbish every day.

这道看图作文题，主题和图片连接得不是很紧密。从考查的形式上来说，虽是看图，实质上却属于提示性的作文。这个作文应该结合个人的观点，选择的余地还是很大的。做这个题应该注意几个方面：

1、认真读题。注意，题目虽然给了四幅图，但是却只要求写其中的两个就行。

2、题意要求的是阐述个人的观点-最担忧的两种情形。而不是对图片进行描述。

3、结合所给的提示。提示中，对每种污染都进行了阐述，考生可以这些描述进行写作。

4、注意字数，语法，拼写等，避免错误。

下面是两个例文，大家可以参考一下。

One possible version:

The environment is becoming worse and worse. There are many kinds of pollution I worry about. The most serious two are water pollution and air pollution, because people cant live healthily with dirty water and polluted air, nor can animals. More and more diseases are caused by polluted air.

I think factories should not pour dirty water into the river directly or produce more waste gas. Wed better go on foot or by like instead of by car, because more cars mean more waste gas. We should make our world more and more beautiful.

Another possible version:

The first fact I worry about is noise pollution. People cant sleep well if there is too much noise. Thats why so many people prefer to live in the countryside rather than live in the noisy city. I suggest all the factories and cars shouldnt make terrible noises. If they make terrible noise that isnt allowed, they will be fined, and we can also produce the cars which cant make terrible noise.

The other pollution is rubbish pollution. If everyone makes so much rubbish, one day we may live in a world filled with rubbish. Some people throw the waste paper about. I suggest rubbish should be put into different kinds of dustbins or paper bags.

下面，我们来看看这道题的评分标准。一般来说，各地的评分标准都和下面的这个标准差不多。这个最高的标准，实际上也就是我们写作的目标。

评分标准：

1. 内容完整，语句流畅，无语法错误，书写规范，给9-10分;

2. 内容较完整，语句较流畅，基本无语法错误，书写较规范，给6-8分;

3. 内容不完整，语句欠流畅，语法错误较多，书写较规范，给3-5分;

4. 只写出个别要点，语法错误较多，书写欠规范，只有个别句子可读或不知所云，给0-2分。

看图作文不可小视。希望大家掌握答好这种题型的要点，并积累词汇。

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,

要学好写英语短文，就必须经常练习写作。记日记是提高书面表达能力的有效方法之一。日记是每日生活的记载，是一种记事文体。

一、日记的格式

英文日记通常由书端和正文两个部分组成。日记常以第一人称记下当天生活中的所见、所闻、所做或所想的事情。中、英文的日记三格式大致一样。英语日记的书端 是专门写日记的日期、星期和天气的。左上角是日期(年、月、日)、星期。右上角写上当天的天气情况， 如：Sunny，Fine，Rainy，Windy，Snowy，Cloudy等。

1、日期表达有多种形式。年、月、日都写时，通常以月、日、年为顺序，月份可以缩写，日和年用逗号隔开。例如：

A)September 1，2004或September 1st，2004也可省略写成Sept. 1，2004或Sept. 1st，2004;the 1st of September in 2004(月份不可以缩写)

B)只有月、日：September 1或September 1st(月份可以缩写)

C)只有年、月：September 2004或the September of 2004(月份不可以缩写)

以上的1或1st都应读作the first.

2、星期也可以省略不写，可将其放在日期前或后，星期和日期之间不用标点，但要空一格，星期也可缩写。如：

Saturday，October 22nd，2004;October 22nd，2004 Saturday

3.天气情况必不可少。天气一般用一个形容词如：Sunny，Fine，Rainy，Snowy 等表示。写在日期之后，用逗号隔开，位于日记的右上角。如：

Saturday，March 4，2004，Windy;1st January，2004，Fine

二、日记的要求

日记的正文是日记的主要部分，写在星期和日期的正下方，可以顶格写，也可以内缩3至5个字母的空间。由于记载的内容通常已经发生，谓语动词多用一般过去 时。但也可根据具体情况，用其它时态。如：记叙天气、描写景色，为了描写生动，可以使用现在时，以表现当时的情景。再如文后发表感想或评论可用现在时态或 将来时态。记日记力求简单明了，有连贯性。若有文字提示，则应重视提示，把握要点。在句式上尽量使用简单句，以防繁杂，造成语法、句型错误。

三、日记的类型和训练

日记分为记事型、议论型、描写型和抒情型。建议大家在学习写日记的过程中，可按以下步骤进行：

①将一天所经历的主要事情和过程依次简要地记下来，不附加任何感情色彩，这是最简单的记日记的方法;

②阅读别人的日记，并利用所学过的句型来表达个人在一天中观察到的或感受到的事情。

「范文与点评」

March 12th，2003，Tuesday Sunny (Fine)

Today is Tree Planting Day. At 7∶30 in the morning，all the students in our class met at the school gate. We walked to the park. Miss Gao and other teachers went and worked with us. All the students worked very hard，and we planted about 200 trees. Though we were dirty and tired，we still felt very happy.

这是一篇记叙型的日记。结构严谨，中心突出，有选择地记录当天的见闻(人或事)，并加以分析和评论。

英文日记和汉语日记一样，是用来记叙一天中所发生的有意义的事情或对将来的打算等。以下是小编整理的英语日记写作的格式，欢迎阅读！

日记可分为记事、议论、描写及抒情等。记事型是用英语记述当天自己生活学习中发生的事情。议论型是对生活中的某一事情或情况现象谈自己的看法，发表议论。描写型或抒情型，则是对某人物事物的特征做细致的描述，或针对某事物抒发自己的感情。

1、格式：

一般是在左上角记上当天日期，星期，时间的排列法与书信一致，星期写在日期之后；右上角写上当天的天气情况，表示天气情况的词一般是形容词，如：fine（晴朗的），cold（寒冷的），snowy（下雪），sunny（阳光充足的），rainy（下雨的），cloudy（阴天的）等。日记的小标题写在下一行，也可省略不写。

2、时态：

写日记的时间一般是在下午、晚上，有时也可以在第二天补写，因此，日记中所记述的事情通常发生在过去，常用一般过去时；但当记述天气、描写景色或展望未来时，可以用一般现在时或一般将来时。

写法大致和写汉语日记相同，都是在正文之前有日期、星期几及当天的天气情况。注意内容表达要清楚连贯、准确。

扩展阅读：

日期格式用月日年（美式）或日月年（英式）都可以

1. 年、月、日都写时，通常以月、日、年为顺序，月份可以缩写，日和年用逗号隔开，例如：december 18, xx或者dec. 18, xx。

2. 如果要写星期，星期要紧挨日期，它既可以放在日期前面，也可以放在日期后面，星期也可以省略不写。星期和日期之间不用标点，但要空一格，星期也可缩写，例如：thursday dec. 18, xx或dec.18，xx thursday

3. 天气情况必不可少，天气一般用一个形容词如:sunny, fine, rainy, snowy等表示。天气通常位于日记的右上角。

一、首段

第一段四个句子,第一句宏观描述图画,并谈图画看似可笑但发人深思.第二句写出图画最强烈的视觉效果,第三句是主题句,谈用二十个单词的爆发力句型谈该现象对个人的发展和进步有破坏性,并引发思考,第四句是用贬义词批判这个现象是强烈的指责。

1、As is vividly depicted in the picture, which seems to be humorous and ridiculous but thought-provoking on second thoughts.

2、The most striking feature that impresses me deeply is that unbelievably,

3、Recent few years has witnessed a phenomenon of 主题 which seems to be disastrous to individual survival and prosperity.

4、This phenomenon of 主题 should be condemned severely or made illegal.

二、中间段落

中间段落从两方面论证问题的危害，并举例论证，预测危害的趋势

第二段七个句子,首先第一句从宏观上谈这种现象的总的有两到三个点危害或者原因,第二句谈这个现象的第一个危 害,用 “not only, but also”的五星级句子,通常是谈对个人身心健康的危害性, 第三个句子谈第二个危害,通常是用一个豪华级的比较级的句子,让老师耳目一新,通常是谈这个现象对社会的危害.第四个句子谈对家庭或学校的危害.第五个句 子谈一个代替 “for example”的十五个单词的好句子,意思是说没有更好的例子来证明正如下文.第六个句子是例子群体的出现,谈根据一项调查表明,80%以上的人只要从 事经历过这个消极的现象一定会对个人在精神和生活上有危害.最后一句话是预测趋势的二十五个单词的钻石级的句子,谈以下预测趋势,表明这种现象再这样下 去,就会导致恶劣的结果出现,甚至是毁灭性的后果。

1、To account for the above-mentioned phenomenon, several serious effects have been put forward.

2、To begin with,主题 not only results does harm to our physical and mental health but also results in a frustrating and humiliating life.

3、In addition, nothing is more harmful than主题 to contradict with a harmonious society.

4、Last but not the least, no issue is as harmful as 主题 to increase family burdens, which is a threatening situation we are unwilling to see.

5、No better illustration of this idea can be thought than the example mentioned below .

6、According to a survey made by China Daily, 63.93% of young people who have ever experienced主题will live a dull life or even feel loss of hope about the future.

7、If we cannot take useful means, we may not control this trend, and some undesirable results may come out unexpectedly, we will see the gloomy future of something.

三、结尾段落

最后一段要强调解决问题，谈的两点建议通常是提高人们的意识，加强执法

第三段六个句子, 第一个句子是下个结论,谈解决问题的必要性.第二个句子是第一个建议谈的是加强立法惩治这个现象,第三个句子谈提高人们的觉悟关于着这个现象能提高人们对 这个现象的觉悟.第四个句子谈个谚语,谈一下实践我的建议的重要性.五个句子谈解决的任重道远.第六个句子是解决问题之后的美好的未来。

1、From what have been discussed above, it is therefore, necessary that some effective measures are taken to prevent主题.

2、On the one hand, we should be sensible to strengthen the enforcement of the laws to protect something.

3、On the other hand, it is demanding for us to keep people aware of the importance of saving somebody out of the evil hands of destruction.

4、However, it is easier said than done.

5、Although the fight against it is long-standing and tremendous one,our efforts will eventually pay off.

6、Only when you attention to it can you see a colorful and harmonious future better sooner or later.