英语四级作文看图写作【通用20篇】

英语作文如何才能得高分呢?以下几种手段是增加句子复杂性的常见方法,也是得高分的“亮点”。

1. 改变句子的开头方式,不是一味地都是主语开头,接着是谓语、宾语,最后再加一个状语。可以把状语置于句首,或用分词作状语等。试比较:

(原文) My brother and I went to the cinema by bicycle the other day.

(修正) The other day my brother and I went to the cinema by bicycle.

(原文) The young man couldn’t help crying when he heard the bad news.

(修正) Hearing the bad news, the young man couldn’t help crying.

2. 在整篇文章中,避免只使用一两个句式,要灵活运用诸如强调句、主从复合句、分词短语、倒装句、省略句等。例如:

(1)强调句

(原文) The dog has saved my little sister bravely.

(修正) It is the dog that has saved my little sister bravely.

(2)主从复合句

(原文) We had to stand there to catch the offender.

(修正) What we had to do was to stand there, trying to catch the offender.

(3)分词短语、由with或without引导的短语

(原文) The driver escaped and didn’t stop, he left the old man lying on the road.

(修正) The driver escaped without stopping, leaving the old man lying on the road.

(4)倒装句

(原文) I went to bed at 11:30.

(修正) Not until 11:30 did I go to bed.

(5)省略句

(原文) While you are crossing the street, you should be careful.

(修正) While crossing the street, you should be careful.

3. 通过分句和合句,增强句子的连贯性和表现力。例如:

(原文) He stopped us an hour ago. He made us catch the next offender.

(修正) He stopped us half an hour ago and made us catch the next offender.

(原文) We had a short rest. Then we began to play happily. We sang and danced.

(修正) After a short rest, we had great fun singing and dancing.

4. 注意连接词与句子的运用。

以2001年高考作文为例,在信的开头,可加上“You want to know something about what is going on in schools in China?”这句话起承上启下的作用,使文章过渡自然;再如,用“What was worse?”引出减负前,晚上还要做作业,就寝时间11:30等要点。又如,“Now I have more free time...” 可引出减负后的情况。另外,在信的结尾,可用“How about you? I’m looking forward to hearing from you.”来自然地结束这封信。

5. 使用过渡词语。

写好了每个句子,并不一定就是一篇好文章,因为作为一篇文章,还必须行文连贯。那么,如何使文章行文连贯呢?这就要求我们在组成篇章时,要用好过渡性词语,过渡性词语就像是我们组装机械时使用的润滑剂一样,起着润滑的作用。常用的过渡词语主要有:

并列递进:and, also, as well as, besides, what’s more, furthermore, moreover, etc.

转折:but, yet, however, although, nevertheless, in spite of, after all, etc.

因果:because, as, for, since, for this reason, because of, so, therefore, thus, as a result, etc.

对比:or, otherwise, like, unlike, on the contrary, while, on the other hand, instead of, etc.

总结:in all, in brief, on the whole, in short, in general, in one word, etc.

总之,要使文章的层次高,可读性强,考生应增加些较高级的词汇与复杂的结构,并运用恰当的连接词和复合句,只有这样,才能在考试中取得理想的成绩。

一、单项选择题

(1)先易后难：一些考题的答案比较容易选定，可以先从这些考题入手。平时练习时，应以基础为主，主要精力不应放在偏题、怪题上。

(2)分析考查意图、运用相关知识：应学会分析出题者考查的意图，明确相关题的测试点是什么，然后运用所学知识，进行分析、判断，再进行选择。

(3)利用暗示进行选择：注意考题涉及的语境范围。平时应注重对习惯用语表达、惯用法和中英文化差别等方面知识的积累。

(4)运用排除法：可采取语言排除、逻辑排除、语法排除或选择排除等方法。先排除较容易、较明显的错误选项，缩小范围，而后对剩余的选项进行比较分析，最后确定答案。

二、完形填空题

1、搭配判断法。

根据对以往试题的分析，搭配型考题在完形填空题中占的比例最高。搭配型问题主要测试常见搭配的熟练程度，比如说哪些词要搭配不定式、动名词或某种从句，哪些词必须与某个介词搭配。我们在复习时要特别注意短语动词和介词的固定搭配。

2、结构判断法。

结构型问题主要包括句型、句式、连接词的选择等，解题时要运用句法知识，把握关键词，从而做出迅速正确的判断。完形填空题中有很多是利用语法的正确性与逻辑的排斥性间的矛盾来设计的。因此考生应结合上下文的合理性及意义关系的逻辑性选择最佳答案。完形填空中常考的逻辑关系主要有：

(1)转折、让步关系：这种关系表明后一种观点或事实与前一种观点或事实相比有些出乎意料。

常见的表示转折、让步的词或词组有：but，still，yet，however，though，although，no matter，in spite of，anyway，even if等。

(2)因果关系：

表示原因的连词或词组有：because (of )，due to，owing to，thanks to，since，for，as等。

表示结果的词或词组有：so，therefore，then，as a result，in consequence，consequently，thus等。

(3)递进、补充关系：这种关系表示对前一事实或观点做进一步阐述。

常用的词、词组有：moreover，likewise，besides，in addition，also，too，not only…but also，apart from，what‘s more 等。

(4)对比、比较关系：对比观点或事物间的差异性，比较观点或事物间的同一性。

表示对比的词或词组有：in contrast，by contrast，on the contrary，conversely，unlike，oppositely 等。表示比较的词或词组有：like，in comparison，compare…with，as，just as等。

3、词义判断法。

词汇型问题也是完形填空的一个考点，主要测试考生在段落语篇中把握语义连贯性的能力，提供选择的词可能是近义词、近形词也可能是随意拼凑的四个选项，遇到这类题，既要联系上下文，又要具有扎实的词汇基础，有时还须根据自己的文化背景知识做出判断、选择答案。

三、阅读理解

在做阅读理解题时，除了掌握前面介绍的基本题型、基本法则外，还要进行有意识的阅读训练。提高阅读能力的训练主要可以从下面几个方面入手：词汇、方法、侧重点。

1、词汇：猜词的技巧。

在阅读过程中，不可避免地会碰到不认识的单词，考试中又不允许查词典，有些不认识的单词对文章的理解影响不大，可以忽略。但有些不认识的单词则会影响阅读者对文章理解的正确性。在这种情况下，必需猜测词的含义，这就需要利用猜词的技巧了。

最基本的猜词技巧有两种：一是根据构词法的规则猜，构词法的规则在前面的章节中已有介绍，这里就不重复了;另一种猜词的技巧是根据上下文的描述、解释、列举、比较等，运用已有的知识，分析、推断该词的含义。常用的猜词技巧可归纳为以下几种：

(1)利用词根、词缀构词法推测词义。通过构词法推测词义是最常用的方法之一。

(2)分析文中对该词的直接定义推测词义。

作者在行文中有时不得不使用某些难词、偏词，为使读者理解，作者常常会在文章中直接解释该词语。作者或通过同位语，或使用定语从句加以阐明，或用冒号、破折号、括号给出，或用语篇标志词引出，这类语篇标志词有：that is (to say); e.g.;oor，in other words;to put it in another way等。如：

She is bilingual.In other words，she speaks English and French equally well.(bilingual：会说两种语言的)。

(3)分析文中对该词的近义复述推测词义。

同一短文中前后两个句子、短语或单词通常有互释作用，可以从上下文的复述中获取与某一单词或短语相关的信息以猜测词义。如：

It is difficult t

o list all of my fathe‘s attributes because he has so many different talents and abilities.(attribute：特质;才能)

(4)分析文中对该词的对比和并列表述推测词义。

利用上下文中的对比或并列表述猜测词义是最常用、最可靠的方法。有不少句子会在上下文中给出某个生词(尤其是偏词、难词)的同义词或反义词，运用对比或并列表达对这些生词加以推测。通过了解词与词之间的连接关系，特别是一些语篇标志词，如：however;on the other hand;nevertheless等，我们不难推断这些生词的词义。如：

If you agree，write “yes”;if you dissent，write “no”。(dissent：不同意）

1)结构2)内容要点 3)语言(词组搭配、句型、句式变化、过渡词)看结构和内容要点定分数档，看语言给成绩。这是中考英语阅卷的潜规则。 三段四步法——中考英语满分杀手锏 知己知彼，方能百战不殆，既然中考阅卷流程和内部标准已经明朗化，相对的策略也就顺利成章的形成了。现在和大家分享，笔者教学和阅卷过程中总结创立的写作满分秘诀。

1 “三段”(三个段落)——针对的阅卷老师先看文章结构和内容要点，让阅卷老师不得不给你定位一类文。 中高考情景是作文，无论是那种文体，都可以用三段法来表示。这个方法的起源是来自美国的“高考”SAT考试，(SAT是美国或它国学生想要申请美国大学必须参加的考试，故被叫过美国的高考)。 我们管这样的文章叫做HamburgerWriting(汉堡写作)

顾名思义，就是无论是记叙文、还是议论文、或者08年中考以及09一模西城的夹叙夹议文章，都可以通用。简单解释如下：

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

写作是考研英语的第二大重头戏，仅次于阅读。但是这部分又经常被考生忽略，考前不动手，依赖临考模板，很难写出高分作文。那么，如何准备2018考研英语写作呢?一起来看下。

对于考研英语写作，最基本的要求是考前必须动笔写出35篇文章，其中十篇应用文，二十五篇图画作文。注意：动笔写的文章最好是有范文的题目。写作应分为五步：

NO.1 写作

写作写作，第一步首先是写!一定要动手写，你看多少，背多少，都没有动手写来得实在，建议同学们拿考题多加练习。

NO.2 仔细对比

第二个就是仔细对比，写完后对照范文从三个方面去研究：第一个是内容，也就是构思和原文有何区别;第二个是语言，也就是用词、用句和原文有何区别?第三个是结构，就是你的行文思路和原文有什么区别?这是第二个步骤，写作的区别其实就是写作的弱点。

NO.3 背诵

第三步骤就是背诵：也就是可以去背诵一些范文。有的同学说了，范文我背过了，但是写作的时候还是不会写。有两个原因，第一个原因是你背得不熟，背得结结巴巴，还不如不背;第二个原因是没有练过，只是死记硬背。

所以为什么背了还不会用，有两个原因，第一背不熟，第二没有练过。背到什么程度，有12个字“滚瓜烂熟、脱口而出、多多益善。”要背到不需要去想，不需要去动脑子!如果背一篇文章还需要去想，那就证明还背得不熟。大家上考场，如果能想起平时的70%，那已经是相当不错了。所以一定要背熟，这就是第三个步骤。

NO.4 默写

第四个步骤就是默写：背熟后把书合上，把这篇文章默写下来。默写后，做一个工作：仔细对比原文发现写作弱点，你会发现你默写的文章和原文会有一些出入，包括拼写、语法、标点等，这种错误就是你写作的弱点，最好能够把这些错误用红笔标出来。大家为什么写作拿不到高分，根源只有一个——错误太多。很多错误自己都不知道。

NO.5 仿写

第五个步骤就是仿写：什么叫仿写?就是模仿你背过的文章再写出一篇新文章。在背完一篇文章后，要想想这篇文章有什么精彩的词组、词汇和句型可以使用。然后换一个话题，把这篇作文用一下，用里面词汇、词组和句型去构思另一篇文章。

写作的注意点和技巧：写作首要的是，一、不跑题;二、字数达到要求;三、字迹整洁工整;四、少有语病。

这些是很基本的要求，考试的时候就要好好落实。比如，拿到作文题目后要审题。在写的过程中注意字数的限制，不要写太多，会扣分的，字数不够也会扣分。所以实在不行就写完一段话，停下来数一数字数。字迹工整可能短期内提高不了。只要你比平时稍慢一点写字母，就会写得比较整洁。要知道老师的印象分是很重要的。病句的避免技巧就是，凡是你想的过程中感觉别扭的句子，多半就是病句。干脆不要写出来，换一种形式去表达。不要追求好词，要追求准确性。

在考前，小作文的提高是非常快的。方法就是分析小作文的类型。应用文写作部分(小作文)考查内容包括投诉信、咨询信、道歉信、求职信等信函类应用文，而且涵盖报告、通知、海报等告示类应用文。不同类型的作文，要自己总结模版。小作文是完全可以准备模版的，其作用也是常明显。一定要注意：总结出自己的模板。

Each years Arbor Day across the country will be massive tree-planting activities, because of afforestation greening and beautifying the home, not only can also at the same time expanding forest resources, prevent water loss and soil erosion, protecting farmland, regulating climate, and promote economic development, and so on, is a grand project of contemporary, benefiting future. But the meaning of the Arbor Day is not everyone want to plant a tree in the Arbor Day this day, but through the Arbor Day again come, make us more attention of greening, the problems of environmental protection.

As we all know: the earth is in arid and desert area covered are increased year by year, but we seem to feel these are far from us, but in our side have such a group of people: they are quietly for planting green the earth, they are called "hero", some are called "contemporary yu gong", some even are foreign friends... They plant trees in their practical action to tell us, was the event of all mankind, is benefiting future generations of the ten thousand.

Hundreds of millions of years ago, the earth belongs to the animals with lush plants, everywhere full of vitality, full of green, however, IQ is far more human than the other animals, plants like enchanted decreased dramatically. That is because the human in order to build houses, caused by the cutting down trees. Have a plenty of because business needs, large teams of cut down the trees to set aside space, used to build the building. Because many people without authorization, cut down trees and trees, so nature was damaged.

The disadvantages of cutting down trees a lot. We all know trees can be recycled carbon dioxide, if a large number of cut down trees, trees will sharply reduce the number of, we cant get exhaled carbon dioxide cycle. Lush trees can stop the sandstorm, two years before Beijing encountered sandstorms, the entire city was shrouded by sand that is because of the lack of protection in the trees.

Trees are the earths lungs, I hope everyone can protect the forest, protection of trees, green make urban life add a minute! Protect trees is to protect the earth is to protect our humanity!

But for all of us, the meaning of the Arbor Day is not just as simple plant a tree. Arbor Day to express meaning not only for us is to plant more trees, but to cultivate citizens to take good care of our natural, low carbon a philosophy of life.

Arbor Day if there are no conditions to plant trees, we can do from daily life and the same effect to plant trees. Such as a piece of paper with a pair of disposable chopsticks, less waste less and less an air-conditioner and so on. The concept of low carbon, saving itself is beneficial to the progress of the society, the protection of the trees. Only our demand for trees, trees cut down will be less, then the love will be more and more trees. Arbor Day, what are you waiting for, from now on, since you have come together to love nature, low carbon a day!

每年的植树节全国各地都会大规模开展植树活动，因为植树造林不仅可以绿化和美化家园，同时还可以起到扩大山林资源、防止水土流失、保护农田、调节气候、促进经济发展等作用，是一项利于当代、造福子孙的宏伟工程。但是植树节的意义不是在于每个人都要在植树节这天去种一棵树，而是通过植树节的又一次来临，使我们大家更加的关注绿化、环保的问题。

众所周知：地球正在沙化，沙漠的覆盖面积正在逐年的增加——可我们似乎觉得这些离我们还很远，但是在我们的身边有这样的一群人：他们在默默无闻地为这片大地播种着绿色，他们有的被称为“英雄"、有的被称为“当代愚公”，有的甚至是外国友人……他们用他们的实际行动告诉我们，植树是全人类的大事，是造福子孙万代的伟业。

几亿年前，地球归动物所拥有的时候植物繁茂，到处生机勃勃，充满了绿色，但是，智商远远高出其他动物的人类出现后，植物像被施了魔法一样的急剧减少。那是因为，人类为了建造房屋，砍伐树木所造成的。有的是因为商业需要，大批大批的砍伐树林留出空地，用来建造大楼。正因为许多人擅自砍伐树林和树木，所以大自然被破坏。

砍伐树木的坏处很多。大家都知道树木可以循环二氧化碳，如果大量砍伐树木，树木的数量就会急剧减少，我们呼出的二氧化碳无法得到循环。茂密的树木可以阻挡沙尘暴，前两年北京遭遇沙尘暴，整个城市被沙子所笼罩这也是因为缺少树木的保护所造成的。

树是地球的肺，我希望每个人都能保护树林、保护树木，让都市的生活添一分绿色!保护树木就是保护地球就是保护我们人类!

但是对于我们大家来说，植树节的意义并不仅仅是种一棵树那么简单。植树节向我们表达的意义不仅是要多种植树木，而是要培养我们广大市民爱护自然、低碳生活的一种理念。

植树节如果没有条件去种树，我们从日常生活中也可以做到和种树一样的效果。比如少用一双一次性筷子、少浪费一张纸、少开一次空调等等。这些节约低碳的理念，本身就有益于社会的进步，树木的保护。只有我们对树木的需求少了，树木的砍伐才会少，那么爱护树木的人就会越来越多。植树节，大家还在等什么，从现在开始，从你开始，都来一起爱护自然吧，低碳的过一天!

英语写作少不了积累句型。以下是小编带来的2017英语写作必背经典句型【集锦】，希望对你有帮助。

the + 形容词最高级 + n. + (that) + S(主语) + have ever seen / known / heard / had / read, etc

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

(海伦是我见过的最美丽的女孩。)

Nothing is + 形容词比较级 + than to + V(谓语)

例句：Nothing is more important than to receive education.

(没有比接受教育更重要的事。)

S cannot emphasize the importance of sth. 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。)

There is no doubt + that + 句子：毫无疑问，……

例句：There is no doubt that the economy is recovering.

(毫无疑问，经济已经逐渐复苏。)

It pays to + V + O(宾语)：……是值得的。

例句：It pays to help others.

(帮助别人是值得的。)

An advantage of + 名词结构+ is that + 句子：……的优点是……

例句：An advantage of using solar energy is that it wont create any pollution.

(使用太阳能的优点是它不会产生任何污染。)

There is no denying that + 句子：不可否认……

例句：There is no denying that the quality of our life has gone from good to better.

(不可否认，我们的生活质量日益改善。)

On no account can we + V：我们绝对不能……

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

(我们绝不能无视知识的价值。)

It is universally acknowledged that + 句子：全世界都知道……

例句：It is universally acknowledged that trees are indispensable[不可或缺的] to us.

(全世界都知道树木对我们是不可或缺的。)

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.

(我们必须种树的原因是它们能给我们提供新鲜空气。)

be closely related to sth.：与……息息相关

例句：Taking exercise is closely related to health.

(做运动与健康息息相关。)

So + 形容词 + be + S + 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，它经不起我们浪费。)

It is time + S + 动词过去式：该是……的时候了。

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

(有关当局是时候采取适当措施解决交通问题了。)

S + enable + O + to + V：……使……能够……

例句：Listening to music enables us to feel relaxed.

(听音乐使我们获得放松。)

be + forced / obliged / compelled + 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。)

a. + as + S + be, S + V + O：虽然……， 但是……

例句：Rich as our country is, the quality of our life is by no means satisfactory.

(虽然我们的国家富有，但我们的生活质量仍差强人意。)

It is conceivable / obvious / apparent that + 句子：可想而知/明显/显然……

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

(显然，知识在我们人生中扮演着重要角色。)

The + 形容词比较级 + S + V, the + 形容词比较级 + S + V：……愈……，……愈……

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

(愈努力，愈进步。)

Since + S + 动词过去式，S + 现在完成式： 自从……，……一直……

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

(自从上了高中，他一直很用功。)

By + V-ing, S can V：通过……，……能够……

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

(通过做运动，我们能够保持健康。)

be based on sth.：以.……为基础

例句：Progress in society is based on harmony.

(社会的进步是以和谐为基础的。)

That is the reason why +句子：那就是……的原因

例句：Summer is sultry[闷热的]. That is the reason why I dont like it.

(夏天很闷热。那就是我不喜欢它的原因。)

There is no one but + V + O：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。)

Due to / Owing to / Thanks to + sth. / V-ing：因为/ 多亏……

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

(因为他的鼓励，我终于实现了梦想。)

For the past + 时间, S + 现在完成式： 过去的……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。)

What a + a. + n. + S + V!= How + a. + 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!)

get into the habit of + V-ing = make it a rule to + V：养成……的习惯

例句：We should get into the habit of keeping good hours.

(我们应该养成早睡早起的习惯。)

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太满意。)

Those who + V + O：那些……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。)

have a great influence on sth.：对……有很大影响

例句：Smoking has a great influence on our health.

(抽烟对我们的健康有很大影响。)

spare no effort to + V：不遗余力地……

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

(我们应该不遗余力地美化我们的环境。)

do good / harm to sth.：对……有益/有害

例句：Reading does good to our mind.

(读书对心灵有益。)

pose a great threat to sth.：对……造成很大威胁

例句：Pollution poses a great threat to our existence.

(污染对我们的生存造成很大威胁。)

bring home to + S + O：让……明白……

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

(我们应该让人们明白努力的价值。)

do ones utmost to + V = do ones best to + V：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。)

st On January 2016, our country started to carry out two-child policy. It is good

and right for the development of our country now, because our country need more young workers. Many parents also want to have one more child. Althouth they may have some difficulties in affording another child’s life, education and so on, they will have another child to be with them. As for me, the only child in my family, I want to have a sister or a brother. Not only can we share happiness, but also we can help each other in our daily life.

2016年1月,我国开始实施的二胎政策。它是好的

现在对我们国家的发展,因为我们的国家需要更多的年轻工人。许多家长也想要一个孩子。虽然他们可能有困难提供另一个孩子的生活,教育等等,他们会有另一个孩子。至于我,我家里唯一的孩子,我想有一个姐姐或者哥哥。不仅我们能分享快乐,而且在我们的日常生活中我们可以互相帮助。

：

一、形成性评价的概念

形成性评价(Formative Assessment)是美国评价学专家斯克里芬在1967年在其所著的《评论方法论》里提出来的。所谓的形成性评价是相对于传统的终结性评价(Summative Assessment)而言的，指的是对学生日常学习过程中的表现、所取得的成绩及所反映出来的情感、态度和策略方面的发展做出的评价，这种评价是通过对学生学习的整个过程持续观察、记录和反思之后得出来的。

形成性评价的目的是为了激励学生学习，帮助学生调控自己的学习过程。让学生获得成就感，增强其自信心和团结合作精神，让学生从被动接受评价变成一个评价的主体和积极参与者。形成性评价能够帮助教师了解学生的学习情况，从而制定下一步的教学计划。与终结性评价相比，形成性评价不只以考试成绩来衡量学生的学习情况，它更加灵活方便，也更加科学有效。形成性评价注重对学生学习行为和表现的评估，能够有效发挥学生的主动性和创造性，有利于培养学生的学习兴趣，也能够有效提高学生的自信心。

在英语口语教学中运用形成性评价，能够让学生在课堂中互相评价，增强学生参与课堂教学的积极性，在提高英语口语能力的同时体会到成功的快乐，形成一个教师与学生、学生与学生之间良好互动的课堂。形成性评价注重开发学生的创新能力和思考能力，而要培养这些能力就必须依靠坚持不懈的学习和运用来完成。

二、形成性评价的方法与工具

首先，一般而言，形成性评价的方法大致分为：自我评价、同伴互评和教师评价。

自我评价是指学生在学习的过程中就自己学习进程中的某个阶段性成果的总结和评价。自我评价是形成性评价中尤为重要的评价方法，只有通过自我评价才能尽力发挥其的主观能动性，积极主动地参与课堂教学活动。只有主观积极地参与课堂，就自己不同阶段的水平，才能更好地定位自己进一步的目标，并在课程初期、中期及末期分别给予自己相对客观中肯的评价，以促进下一阶段的学习。

同伴互评是指在课堂活动中，就某一活动进行同学之间的评价，评价包括学习态度、学习能力及学习方法的评价。在同伴互评的过程中，学生们可以相互探讨学习方法、交流学习心得、提出改进的建议和意见。同伴之间相互比较、竞争，相互取长补短，既增强了合作精神又促进了学习能力和学习效率的提升。同伴互评作为形成性评价重要的方法之一，其评价形式既增强了课堂的趣味性又增强了学生的学习自信心和学习热情。

课堂学习的主体是学生，但是学习评价的主体却是教师。形成性评价侧重过程教育，在教学过程中，根据需要调整教学计划和内容，该评价尤其重视学生与教师在课堂的共同参与度，而非教师“一言堂”。首先，教师在教学过程中设定好学生自我评价与同伴评价的量化标准，列好学生自我评价和同伴评价的核查表；其次，学生根据核查表才可有的放矢，对照核查表所列的内容一一检查，每节课后，客观公正地给予自己和他人中肯的评价；最后，结合学生自我评价和同伴评价的反馈结果，教师针对学生课堂上的表现，纵向对比某一特定学生评价前后的差异，或者横向比较某一特定组别在同一活动中每位学生各项指标的完成情况，同时，以多种形式反馈给学生并提出整改意见。因而，在教学的不同阶段，根据学生的能力发展状况，教师可适时调整评价方式，不断改进教学方法和教学手段。

只有将自我评价、同伴评价与教师评价结合在一起评价方式才能保证较好的教学效果，才能促进教育改革的进一步深化，真正达到以素质教育培养复合型人才的终极目标。

其次，形成性评价的行为评估工具有课堂观察、学生档案、座谈、问卷调查、访谈和对话周记等。如何运用以及怎样运用这些评价工具要根据所授课程、课程目标和授课对象等诸多因素做适当调整。

课堂观察是教学行为和技巧的基本方式。根据Genesee and Upshur(2001:79)的观点，教师在观察的基础上，可以评估学生已掌握和未掌握的内容。换言之，教师应该评估促进或阻碍学生学习的策略。与此同时，教师还可评估一些特定的教学策略的有效性，确定学生们欣赏哪些课堂活动和形式。课堂观察有助于教师更好地了解课程设计和学生需求的契合度。通过正式或非正式的观察，教师可掌握大多数学生对于教学安排的可接受程度，根据学生的需求改进或调整教学安排等，以提升教学效果。

“questionnaires and interviews can all be thought of as conversations between students and teachers”（Genesee and Upshur，2001:136）。如上所述，问卷调查和访谈都可被看作教师和学生间的对话，访谈和问卷调查是相似的，但决定使用访谈或者问卷调查可依据不同的教学目的。无论是哪种方式，都是老师和学生之间相对正式的会谈，这非常有利于老师对他的教学效果进行评估,诊断学生在英语学习遇到的困难，为学生寻找合适的解决问题,获得良好的学习策略和学习得到更多的进步。访谈和问卷调查设计应该根据学生的个人需求并符合教学目标。

对话周记作为教师和学生沟通的另一种方式，深受学生的喜爱。因课程设置和班级规模的不同，课堂观察、问卷调查及访谈都相对比较片面，而对话周记则可以关注到每个学生的不同需求。师生间定期通信，既增加了教师和学生之间的相互了解，增强彼此的信任，又能解决学生的个案问题，做到因材施教；同时，为了促进“教学相长”，学生可及时反馈教师的课堂教学，对于教师的教学提出较好的建议和意见。

学生档案是一个综合各项评估功能于一体的评估工具。它可以记录学生的成长、课堂变化且兼顾多种需要。如今，众多评价工具只把学生作为评价的对象，而评估的责任和任务的则落到了教师身上。但事实上，几乎没有一种评价工具能很好地管理学生活动并对其课堂行为负责。相比之下, 建立学生档案，需要学生亲力亲为；本着自我负责的原则，他们要更好地自我监督和控制，同时，在建档案的过程中，学生可以见证自己的进步与成长，增强学习的自信，提高学习的效果。

三、形成性评价对于英语口语教学的重要性与紧迫性

众所周知,教育评估在大学英语课程改革中扮演着相当重要的角色。英语教学的重点已从传播知识转移到培养能力。多年来，在中国，人们只注重英语写作和阅读的能力的提升，而一直忽视英语口语交际能力。多年来，教学评价已经被狭义理解为量化教学，而后进一步局限于教学测试。考试作为教学的终极目的，期末考试的成绩也就成为教师评价学生的最重要的依据。而对于口语课堂，单一的这种评估方式和依据增加了大多数学生的心理压力和少部分学生侥幸心理。考试成绩给学生很大压力，危害学生的发展，评估过程中，学生一直被动地参与，无法调动其积极性。当课程结束时，教师将得不到及时准确的学生反馈，无法改善评估方法以助于提高学生的英语口语能力。

“形成性评价源于诊断性测试。与终结性评价相比，形成性评价通过教学过程中多方面的评价发现问题，解决问题，强调过程性、目标性和学生学习的主动性。” (魏薇，2005) 鉴于终结性评价在口语测试评分中的片面性和主观性，大学英语口语表达能力的培养还是受到了这种终结性评价的制约。在大学英语口语教学中，形成性评价最重要的任务的是帮助教师监控学生英语口语的学习过程，提高学生的英语口语学习。如能将形成性评价的理论引入大学英语口语课堂教学与测试中，建立大学英语口语课程与形成性评价相结合的评估模式，则会推动大学英语口语教学和测试的改革进程。

鉴于口语课堂的特点，为了克服传统终结性评价对于口语课堂的制约性，形成性评价与大学英语口语教学相结合有其不可忽视的重要性和紧迫性。

首先，由于口语表达能力除了包含最基本的发音、词汇、语法能力还有语用能力、文化知识储备力等多项复杂的技能，而所有的这些技能无法在某一次测试中完全体现出来。因口语学习的最终目的是运用到相关学科、为了更好地促进国际交流。

而形成性评价尤其注重过程教学，这种评价将教学过程分成了诸多阶段，学生可在每个不同的阶段就自己的学习态度、发音、语言运用的准确性、流利程度以及课堂活动参与的积极性进行横向的同学互评和纵向的自我比较。一方面，横向比较可以找到彼此间的差距，互相帮助已达到各方面的提升；另一方面，学生可在整理学习档案的过程中，纵向比较自己前后阶段的学习情况，时刻了解自己在每个阶段的学习状况，在教师和同学的辅助下，运用不同的学习方法和策略，逐项提高自己的口语能力。 另外，教师在学生进行评价的过程中，可真实地参与并记录学生在各方面的真实水平。

其次，口语课堂实际上是教师与学生、学生与学生之间的互动交际。教师需要花费大量的时间设计口语活动、鼓励学生参与活动、监控课堂活动、诊断学生的需求和问题、记录学生的表现等。学生则在各种学习任务和活动中不断地练习、发现问题、纠正偏差。

与传统的终结性评价不同，形成性评价的最显著特征是评价的主体是学生，学生和教师共同参与课堂，缺一不可。根据多数学生的关注点，学生参与确定研究目标、评分标准和英语口语的性能评估。因而，他们了解每一项活动的任务和目标，他们可合理运用各种评价方式和工具，课前认真准备，课堂上积极参与，能与教师积极互动，课堂上客观地评价自己、同伴和教师。这不仅是一种评价过程，更是学生回归自我认同感的方式。学生增加了学习自信，在评价过程中不断积累经验，逐步获得学习成就感。教师亦可在与学生互动的过程中，更好地了解学生的知识掌握和课堂反馈情况，根据反馈适时调整教学方法。如此良性循环，既增强了课堂的趣味性又提高了学生的学习效率。

四、结语

形成性评价，作为正常教学和学习过程的有机部分，可以全面、客观、科学、准确地提供与其学习目标相关的重要信息，它有助于促进学生的个性化发展和外语教学质量的根本性提高。形成性评价其中的一个重要作用是培养学生良好的英语学习习惯。将英语形成性评价与口语教学紧密地结合在一起，能提高学生学习的兴趣并及时、准确、客观地反映学生的真实水平，使学生的英语口语能力稳步提高。通过采用具体的形成性评价方式，发展学生的自我评价与学生间相互评价的能力，以促进学生的自我反思与自我管理能力。从而提高学生自主学习意识与自主学习能力，并为他们养成终身学习的意识与习惯打下基础。

词汇拼写错误较为严重，词汇选用上会有不当的情况。

应对策略就是平时阅读过程中注意单词拼写，关注单词使用语境，多积累高级词汇和句型。

语法掌握不好，句子的基本构成主谓结构掌握不清。

Due to the fact that the mental state, we have to keep a balance between the physical and the mental.

这句话中，due to the fact that后面需要接一个句子，而上句中只是一个名词性短语，所以错误。另外，between...and...需要连接两个名词短语，上句中形容词physical和mental后缺少名词性成分。改正为Due to the fact that the mental state plays a significant role, we have to keep a balance between the physical well-being and the mental health.

格式不正确，结构不清晰，汉语式英文思维太过明显，翻译的过程中常常不合英文写作要求。

应对的策略是多阅读范文，写作前列提纲，注意使用衔接词。

格式不正确常常出现在应用文中，有人会忘记写落款。这是我们在写作过程中特别需要注意的，否则格式错误就要相应的扣分。另外，有些文章结构不清晰，或者没有分段，或者段落之间的内容混乱。开头段就开始论述问题，第二段提出建议，结尾段又给出原因，逻辑混乱不清，抓不住重点。所以我们在写文章时一定要先打腹稿，明确行文结构和大概内容，这样在写作过程中才不至于不知道说什么，甚至瞎写一通。

总而言之，新大纲非常强调大家的英语写作技能，我们在平时的备考过程中一定要多进行英文文章的写作，养成良好的写作习惯，注意单词拼写、语法检查、逻辑结构，这样写出的文章才能过关。

中国是一个人口大国。为了解决人口问题，我国政府决定实施独生子女政策。执行一段时间后，许多人不仅看到了这个政策的优点还有缺点。因此，人们开始推崇二胎政策。在我看来，二胎政策是应该实施的。作文

First of all, two-child policy is the gift for some only child. For some families, maybe the parents are only child and they also can have only child. Put aside the loneliness of their child, when their child grows up and they grow older, their child marry with an only child girl accidentally, the burden on their child and his wife is unimaginable heavy. Their child and his wife have to take care of two old couples. Usually, a young couple looking after an old couple is a little difficult; if the pressure increasing twice, how can they stand it. But if their parents have two children, they can share the burden of taking care of their parents. It would be much better.

首先，二胎政策对于一些独生子女来说是天赐的礼物。对于一些家庭来说，也许父母都是独生子女，而他们也只生一个孩子。抛开孩子的孤独不说，当他们的孩子长大了，而他们也变老了，他们的孩子又和一个独生子女结婚，这样的话,压在他们孩子和孩子妻子肩上的压力是不可想象的。他们的孩子和他的妻子不得不照顾两对老人。通常，一对年轻的夫妇照顾一对老人就有点难了;如果压力增加了一倍，他们怎么能忍受呢。但是如果他们的父母有两个孩子，他们就能分享照顾父母的压力。这样会比较好。

Secondly, two-child policy can guarantee the number of Chinese population. As the widely spread of one-child policy, some people have changed their conception about giving birth. If they firmly believe one-child policy, there will be more and more the dink. After several decades, our country will famous for lack of population.

其次，二胎政策可以确保中国的人口数量。由于广泛宣传独生子女政策，有些人已经改变了他们的生育观念。如果他们认同独生子女政策，就会有越老越多的丁克族。几十年后，我国就会以人口短缺而著名了。

In conclusion, one-child policy has out of date. And tow-child policy is needed and necessary. It can solve the problem of nowadays and the future.

总之，独生子女政策已经过时了。二胎政策是必要和必须的。这可以解决当前和未来的问题。

卷面整洁 书写清楚

构思简单 少犯错误

中心突出 层次分明

借助经典 名句俗谚

重在变化 避免重复

卷面整洁，书写清楚

1、打好腹稿再动笔，减少涂改。

2、书写漂亮的当然更好，达不到的最起码也要工整。

3、使用黑色水笔作答，白纸黑字，这样能够有效提高整洁度。

构思简单 少犯错误

根据阅卷经验，四级作文的主要错误集中在思路、标点、时态、单复数、结构等五个方面。

英语四级错误十错十察

1.句子成分残缺

We always working till late at night before taking exams.(误)

We are always working till late at night before taking exams(正)

2.句子成分多余

This test is end, but there is another test is waiting forus. (误)

One test ends, but another is waiting for you. (正)

3.主谓不一致

Someone/Somebody think that reading should be selective. (误)

Someone/Somebody thinks that reading should be selective. (正)

4.动词时态误用

I was walking along the road, and there are not so many cars on the street. (误)

I was walking along the road and there were not so many vehicles on the street. (正)

5.动词语态误用

The driver of the red car was died in the accident. (误)

The driver of the red car died in the accident. (正)

6.词类混淆

It is my point that reading must be selectively. (误)

In my opinion, reading must be selective. (正)

Honest is so important for every person. (误)

Honesty is so important for everyone. (正)

7.名词可数与不可数的误用

In modern society, people are under various pressures(误)

In modern society, people are under various kinds of pressure. (正)

8.动词及物与不及物的误用

Because of his excellent performance, the boss rose his salary. (误)

Because of his excellent performance, the boss raised his salary. (正)

9.动宾搭配不当

We must make solutions to the problem. (误)

We must find a solution to the problem. (正)

It also may help you to make success. (误)

It may also help you succeed/obtain your goal. (正)

10.根据中文逐字硬译

Let us touch the outside world of campus.

Let’s keep in touch with the world outside of the campus.

Don’t forget to keep a good body health.(误)

Don’t forget to keep fit/healthy.(正)

中考英语试卷写作的分数各个省市有所不同，一般在15-20分之间。下面从阅卷老师的角度分析一下中考英语作文的得分点和扣分点。

中考英语作文对考生的要求有四点：1、内容要完整。 2、语句流畅。3、没有语法错误。4、书写规范。能达到上述要求的作文，都会得到相应的高分。

一：先看一下扣分点：

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

2.字数：少于60字的作文要酌情扣分。

中考英语作文要求60字以上，标点符号不算，少了就要扣分。但是60字的作文能不能得高分?从我们拿到的实例作文来看，16分以上的作文，没有少于75字的，甚至少于80字的也少之又少。当然，也极少有超过100字的，因为中考试卷的短线格一共80个，在格子下面大约还有2行的空间，可以加20字左右，再多阅卷人就很难看清了，也会影响卷面的美观。所以，同学们如果想让作文得到高分，最好是让字数在75-100字之间。

3. 语法和拼写错误：每个扣0.5，重复错误不计;

4. 标点错误：每4个扣0.5.

二：加分点

除了这些扣分点，还有一些得分点：比如说作文的组织结构分，就是根据学生使用复杂句型、单词和谚语、俗语的情况来加分。

只要文章中有1个亮点，基本就可以争取到1分(3分的文采分是很难全部拿到的)。而这1分的亮点，是可以提前准备的。例如，有一些“万金油”式的复杂句型，例如强调句型、only相关的倒装句等，只要同学们多操练几次，几乎是一定能用到作文当中，从而为自己争取到这1分。

其次就是卷面分

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

据阅卷老师的经验，在阅卷的时候并不是按这3个部分逐项打分的，而是在第一遍读完全文之后，心里已经形成了一个“印象分”，然后再细读第二、三遍，把印象分分配到各个打分部分。因此，这个“印象分”就非常重要，而同学们的书法，也正是在这个环节，影响到了自己的分数。所以初三的考生，如果书法不好，一定要注意。所谓的书法并不需要写的很漂亮，符合3个简单的标准即可：没有斜体、没有连笔、涂改较少。

规范英语论文的格式,使之与国际学术惯例接轨,对从事英语教学,英语论文写作,促进国际学术交流都具有重要意义。下面是小编为你带来的关于英语论文的写作格式和规范，希望对你有帮助。

一、英语论文的标题

一篇较长的英语论文(如英语毕业论文)一般都需要标题页,其书写格式如下:第一行标题与打印纸顶端的距离约为打印纸全长的三分之一,与下行(通常为by,居中)的距离则为5cm,第三、第四行分别为作者姓名及日期(均居中)。如果该篇英语论文是学生针对某门课程而写,则在作者姓名与日期之间还需分别打上教师学衔及其姓名(如:Dr./Prof.C.Prager)及本门课程的编号或名称(如:English 734或British Novel)。打印时,如无特殊要求,每一行均需double space,即隔行打印,行距约为0.6cm(论文其他部分行距同此)。

就学生而言,如果英语论文篇幅较短,亦可不做标题页(及提纲页),而将标题页的内容打在正文第一页的左上方。第一行为作者姓名,与打印纸顶端距离约为2.5cm,以下各行依次为教师学衔和姓、课程编号(或名称)及日期;各行左边上下对齐,并留出2.5cm左右的页边空白(下同)。接下来便是论文标题及正文(日期与标题之间及标题与正文第一行之间只需隔行打印,不必留出更多空白)。

二、英语论文提纲

英语论文提纲页包括论题句及提纲本身,其规范格式如下:先在第一行(与打印纸顶端的距离仍为2.5cm左右)的始端打上 Thesis 一词及冒号,空一格后再打论题句,回行时左边须与论题句的第一个字母上下对齐。主要纲目以大写罗马数字标出,次要纲目则依次用大写英文字母、阿拉伯数字和小写英文字母标出。各数字或字母后均为一句点,空出一格后再打该项内容的第一个字母;处于同一等级的纲目,其上下行左边必须对齐。需要注意的是,同等重要的纲目必须是两个以上,即:有Ⅰ应有Ⅱ,有A应有B,以此类推。如果英文论文提纲较长,需两页纸,则第二页须在右上角用小写罗马数字标出页码,即ii(第一页无需标页码)。

三、英语论文正文

有标题页和提纲页的英语论文,其正文第一页的规范格式为:论文标题居中,其位置距打印纸顶端约5cm,距正文第一行约1.5cm。段首字母须缩进五格,即从第六格打起。正文第一页不必标页码(但应计算其页数),自第二页起,必须在每页的右上角(即空出第一行,在其后部)打上论文作者的姓,空一格后再用阿拉伯数字标出页码;阿拉伯数字(或其最后一位)应为该行的最后一个空格。在打印正文时尚需注意标点符号的打印格式,即:句末号(句号、问号及感叹号)后应空两格,其他标点符号后则空一格。

四、英语论文的文中引述

正确引用作品原文或专家、学者的论述是写好英语论文的重要环节;既要注意引述与论文的有机统一,即其逻辑性,又要注意引述格式 (即英语论文参考文献)的规范性。引述别人的观点,可以直接引用,也可以间接引用。无论采用何种方式,论文作者必须注明所引文字的作者和出处。目前美国学术界通行的做法是在引文后以圆括弧形式注明引文作者及出处。现针对文中引述的不同情况,将部分规范格式分述如下。

1.若引文不足三行,则可将引文有机地融合在论文中。如:

The divorce of Arnolds personal desire from his inheritance results in “the familiar picture of Victorian man alone in an alien universe”(Roper9).

这里,圆括弧中的Roper为引文作者的姓(不必注出全名);阿拉伯数字为引文出处的页码(不要写成p.9);作者姓与页码之间需空一格,但不需任何标点符号;句号应置于第二个圆括弧后。

2.被引述的文字如果超过三行,则应将引文与论文文字分开,如下例所示:

Whitman has proved himself an eminent democratic representative and precursor, and his “Democratic Vistas”

is an admirable and characteristic

diatribe. And if one is sorry that in it

Whitman is unable to conceive the

extreme crises of society, one is certain

that no society would be tolerable whoses

citizens could not find refreshment in its

buoyant democratic idealism.(Chase 165)

这里的格式有两点要加以注意。一是引文各行距英语论文的左边第一个字母十个空格,即应从第十一格打起;二是引文不需加引号,末尾的句号应标在最后一个词后。

3.如需在引文中插注,对某些词语加以解释,则要使用方括号(不可用圆括弧)。如:

Dr.Beaman points out that“he [Charles Darw in] has been an important factor in the debate between evolutionary theory and biblical creationism”(9).

值得注意的是,本例中引文作者的姓已出现在引导句中,故圆括弧中只需注明引文出处的页码即可。

4.如果拟引用的文字中有与论文无关的词语需要删除,则需用省略号。如果省略号出现在引文中则用三个点,如出现在引文末,则用四个点,最后一点表示句号,置于第二个圆括弧后(一般说来,应避免在引文开头使用省略号);点与字母之间,或点与点之间都需空一格。如:

Mary Shelley hated tyranny and“looked upon the poor as pathetic victims of the social system and upon the rich and highborn...with undisguised scorn and contempt...(Nitchie 43).

5.若引文出自一部多卷书,除注明作者姓和页码外,还需注明卷号。如:

Professor Chen Jias A History of English Literature aimed to give Chinese readers“a historical survey of English literature from its earliest beginnings down to the 20thcentury”(Chen,1:i).

圆括弧里的1为卷号,小写罗马数字i为页码,说明引文出自第1卷序言(引言、序言、导言等多使用小写的罗马数字标明页码)。此外,书名A History of English Literature 下划了线;规范的格式是:书名,包括以成书形式出版的作品名(如《失乐园》)均需划线,或用斜体字;其他作品,如诗歌、散文、短篇小说等的标题则以双引号标出,如“To Autumn”及前面出现的“Democratic Vistas”等。

6.如果英语论文中引用了同一作者的两篇或两篇以上的作品,除注明引文作者及页码外,还要注明作品名。如:

Bacon condemned Platoas“an obstacle to science”(Farrington, Philosophy 35).

Farrington points out that Aristotles father Nicomachus, a physician, probably trained his son in medicine(Aristotle15).

这两个例子分别引用了Farrington的两部著作,故在各自的圆括弧中分别注出所引用的书名,以免混淆。两部作品名均为缩写形式(如书名太长,在圆括弧中加以注明时均需使用缩写形式),其全名分别为Founder of Scientific Philosophy 及 The Philosophy of Francis Baconand Aristotle。

7.评析诗歌常需引用原诗句,其引用格式如下例所示。

When Beowulf dives upwards through the water and reaches the surface,“The surging waves, great tracts of water, / were all cleansed...”(1.1620-21).

这里,被引用的诗句以斜线号隔开,斜线号与前后字母及标点符号间均需空一格;圆括弧中小写的1是line的缩写;21不必写成1621。如果引用的诗句超过三行,仍需将引用的诗句与论文文字分开(参见第四项第2点内容)。

五、英语论文的文献目录

论文作者在正文之后必须提供论文中全部引文的详细出版情况,即文献目录页。美国高校一般称此页为 Works Cited, 其格式须注意下列几点:

1.目录页应与正文分开,另页打印,置于正文之后。

2.目录页应视为英语论文的一页,按论文页码的顺序在其右上角标明论文作者的姓和页码;如果条目较多,不止一页,则第一页不必标出作者姓和页码(但必须计算页数),其余各页仍按顺序标明作者姓和页码。标题Works Cited与打印纸顶端的距离约为2.5cm,与第一条目中第一行的距离仍为0.6cm;各条目之间及各行之间的距离亦为0.6cm,不必留出更多空白。

3.各条目内容顺序分别为作者姓、名、作品名、出版社名称、出版地、出版年份及起止页码等;各条目应严格按各作者姓的首字母顺序排列,但不要给各条目编码,也不必将书条与杂志、期刊等条目分列。

4.各条目第一行需顶格打印,回行时均需缩进五格,以将该条目与其他条目区分开来。

现将部分较为特殊的条目分列如下,并略加说明,供读者参考。

Two or More Books by the Same Author

Brooks, Cleanth. Fundamentals of Good Writing: A

Handbook of Modern Rhetoric. NewYork: Harcourt, 1950.

---The Hidden God: Studies in Hemingway, Faulkner, Yeats,

Eliot, and Warren. New Haven: Yale UP,1963.

引用同一作者的多部著作,只需在第一条目中注明该作者姓名,余下各条目则以三条连字符及一句点代替该作者姓名;各条目须按书名的第一个词(冠词除外)的字母顺序排列。

An Author with an Editor

Shake speare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. Ed. Louis B.

Wright. New York: Washington Square, 1959.

本条目将作者 Shakespeare 的姓名排在前面,而将编者姓名(不颠倒)放在后面,表明引文出自 The Tragedy of Macbeth;如果引文出自编者写的序言、导言等,则需将编者姓名置前,如:

Blackmur, Richard P.Introduction. The Art of the Novel:

Critical Prefaces. By Henry James. New York: Scribners,

1962.vii-xxxix.

如果引言与著作为同一人所写,则其格式如下例所示(By后只需注明作者姓即可):

Emery, Donald. Preface. English Fundamentals. By Emery.

London: Macmillan, 1972.v-vi.

A Multivolume Work

Browne, Thomas. The Works of Sir Thomas Browne. Ed.

Geoffrey Keynes. 4 vols. London: Faber, 1928.

Browne, Thomas. The Works of Sir Thomas Browne. Ed.

Geoffrey Keynes. Vol.2. London: Faber, 1928. 4 vols.

第一条目表明该著作共4卷,而论文作者使用了各卷内容;第二条目则表明论文作者只使用了第2卷中的内容。

A Selection from an Anthology

Abram, M. H.“English Romanticism: The Spirit of the Age.”

Romanticism Reconsidered. Ed. Northrop Frye. New

York: Columbia UP,1963.63-88.

被引用的英语论文名须用引号标出,并注意将英语论文名后的句点置于引号内。条目末尾必须注明该文在选集中的起止页码。

Articles in Journals, Magazines, and Newspapers

Otto, Mary L.“Child Abuse: Group Treatment for Parents.”

Personnel and Guidance Journal 62(1984): 336-48.

报刊杂志名需划线,但其后不需任何标点符号。62为卷号或期号,如既有卷号,又有期号,则要将二者以句号分开。如:(3.3);1984为出版年份,应置于圆括弧中。

Arnold, Marilgn.“Willa Cathers Nostalgia: A Study in

Ambivalance.”Research Studies Mar.1981:23-24,28.

月刊或双月刊须同时注明出版年月;23-24,28表示该文的前一部分刊于第23和24两页,后一部分则转至第28页。

Gorney, Cynthia.“When the Gorilla Speaks.”Washington Post

31 July,1985:B1.

引用日报上的英语论文必须同时注明报纸出版的年、月、日。B1为该文在报纸中的版面及页码。参考文献(略)(摘自《外语与外语教学》1999年第8期，原文：“英语论文写作规范”作者 刘新民)

小升初英语写作技巧之一：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.

小升初英语写作技巧之二：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。

小升初英语写作技巧之三：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。

12月四级考试快到了，下面是yjbys网小编给考生提供四级作文的最新模板，希望考生能够合理利用时间，在作文上获得最大的收获。那么四级考试的作文基本是主题作文，图画作文及图表作文，下面我们来具体分析其框架：

一、主题作文及图画作文的模板：

These days 现象 often hits the headlines of newspapers and has been brought into focus of the public. Just as the picture shown that… (如果是图画作文可以写出具体的现象或问题，也可以一句话描述图画：As is vividly illustrated above, in the +地方 +动词(be, come, run, walk, jump, sit, stand, lie, crouch, float等)+主题词，非谓语动词/非限制性定语从句，独立主格/非限制性定语从句。) Indeed, it is widely accepted / acknowledged that it has gained increasing popularity among people in all walks of life/ college students.

Those who are in favor of 现象 maintain that 描述观点1. In their view, 阐释观点1. On the contrary, those who are against 现象 hold/ point out that 描述观点2. Besides, 阐释证实观点2 . (第二段可以根据文章来分析原因，影响，优点或缺点等。)

It is high time we put an end to the undesirable phenomenon of… (虚拟语气的句子) 然后再分条来说明措施。On the one hand, … on the other hand, … I believe we humans can overcome this difficulty and we will have a brighter future.

改革之后，图画作文考的比较多，无论是图画作文还是主题作文，上面的结构是可以通用的，考生可以重点记下图画作文与主题作文的句型。

二、图表作文各段的通用模板：

As is seen from the graph/chart, we can draw a conclusion that the number of …….decreased. Of these, the number of …….decreased the most, from …. in 1985 to ….. in 2000(根据图表写年代). On the contrary, the number of …….increased.

There are numerous reasons accounting for the phenomenon and I would like to explore a few of the most important ones here. Above all (To begin with), …….. In addition (What is more), ………

In my personal sense, it is imperative for us to take steps to reverse the disturbing trend illustrated in the charts. First and foremost,…….Last but not least,………Owing to +主题, not only can we accumulate wealth, but also establish our career, fit into society and even attain social status.

对于图表作文，考生也要了解并熟悉其结构和句型。我们在准备时一定要充分，不放弃任何一种题型。

与其他文体相比，英治议论文的结构一般较为固定，有下列几个部分组成：

1.提出需要议论的议题;

2.摆出正反两方面的观点;

3.表明作者持何种态度;

4.论证自己观点的正确性从而使读者接受自己的观点;

5.小结。

在具体写作中要注意下列几点：

1.议题的提出要开门见山，不要拖泥带水，啰啰唆唆

2.正反两方面的观点一般都要摆出，有时也有只强调一种观点的，那么这就等于将上述第二点和第三点合在一起了

3.作者的观点必须鲜明，不能模棱两可

4.论证自己的观点是议论文的最关键的部分。论证手段与英语说明文中的一些写作手法相同，常用的有罗列法、举例法、因果法、比较法等等。

5.对于较长的英语议论文还可以在文章结尾时对全文要点作一小结。

下面这篇学生作文是较为典型的一篇英语议论文：

Should Examination Be Abolished (取消)?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"the chances are that"替代了"may"，果然说话拐弯的生物不止是中国人。

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

作文结尾万用句，毫无破绽。

3、It is urgent that immediate measures should be taken to stop the situation. 应立即采取措施阻止这一事态的发展。

"It is urgent that"+被动，效果不错滴。

看图作文在高考书面表达中占有相当大的比例。怎么样写看图作文呢?下面是语文迷网为大家带来的技巧。

1.仔细阅读图画及文字说明，首先应确定文章体裁。这类文章一般以记叙文或说明文为主。

记叙文：要抓住记叙文的六要素：时间(when)、地点(where)、人物(who)、事件(what)、原因(w～)和过程(how)。即：五个“W”和一个“H”。根据图画提示把这六个问题写清楚了，至少可得及格分数。如2000年的全国高考题，时间：2000年2月8日清晨;地点：公园外的公园路上;A物;“我”、一个老头;事件;这个老头被一辆黄色小车撞倒，“我”把他送到了附近的医院;原因：司机害怕承担责任而逃走，过程：“我”当时正沿着公园路散步。

说明文：一般先要把图画联系起来，弄清楚图画的目的、意图;然后进行抽象概括，找出一个说明对象，接着根据图画从时间、过程、步骤等方面加以解释、说明;最后进行总结，得出结论。对事物进行说明时，一定要做到条理清楚，明了易懂。如20典型例题考英语试题，作者首先告诉对方已经为他找到了房间，接着介绍房间的情况，最后征求对方的意见。

2.确定人称。如果以日记、回忆录等形式来写，一般采用第一人称;如果是以讲故事的形式来写，则一般采用第三人称来写比较方便。但不管用哪种人称，全文都必须一致。

3.确定时态。根据图画内容及所采用的文章体裁，确定文章所要用的时态。切记全文时态的一致性。

4.发挥联想要合理、适度。这类文章的说明一般都要求考生作适当的联想和发挥，以便使上下文能更好地连贯起来。但联想和发挥一定要根据图画做到合情合理，不能过多地胡乱联想和发挥。如20典型例题考题，如果告诉对方：我几乎把城市找遍了，终于为你找到了一套房子。这样联想显然是可以的。然而，倘若你写成：我到东城区去找，那边的房子太贵;于是，我又到西城区去找，而那里正在建设之中，条件不太好;接着，我又到南城区去找，发现那里离新建的华文学校又太远了……像这样的联想和发挥就太夸张了。

5.虚实结合，详略得当。对于图画中的内容，该详细叙述、描写的，就必须要详细、具体;可以一笔带过的就一笔带过。也就是平常老师所讲的有时要泼墨如水，而有时又要惜墨如金。如图画中所有的时间、数字或言论需一词不漏地写清楚，而有些过程或原因则可适当简略。

典型例题

假设你是图①中的男孩。请根据以下图画提供情节线索，以SharingH。usework为题，用英文叙述你帮妈妈做家务的经过及感想。

注意：

1.书面表达必须包括图画所表现的主要内容，可以适当增减细节，使其连贯、完整;

2.词数：100词左右.

题目的与解题技巧：本题考查看图写一个故事。

【解析】本文记叙“我”帮妈妈做家务的经过，叙述的是已经做过的事，因此用过去时。要点：1.见妈妈同时做几件事情，觉得妈妈太累，决定帮妈妈做一点家务活;2.在帮妈妈洗衣服时，“我”的朋友来叫我去踢球，“我”拒绝了;3.等把衣服洗完时，“我”累得满头大汗;4.妈妈见“我”把衣服洗好了，夸“我”是个好孩子，“我”感到非常高兴。

One possible version:

One day when I was about to play football, I saw Mother was taking a lot of dirty clothes to wash and a bucket to carry water. I thought Mother was very tired, so I decided to help her wash clothes. While I was doing the washing , Li Ming came and asked me to play football with him. I refused him and told him that I would help Mother finish the housework first. When I got the housework done,I was so tired that I was sweating all over. When Mother came back home, she found I had washed all the dirty clothes and said that I was a good child . I felt very happy.

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

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

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

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

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

【参考译文】

1、中国在发展经济的同时，将处理好的人口之间的关系，自然资源和环境。

2、中国政府高度关注中国人口增长和经济发展所带来的环境问题。

3、中国依靠强化监督管理和技术进步，促进环境保护。

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

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