英语四级作文看图写作（汇集20篇）

一、遣词方面：用词要贴切而丰富，善用短语 ,词汇是语言的建筑材料，文章的好坏，选词很关键，如果用词精湛，就会使文章“亮”起来。

1、措辞要贴切具体

试比较下面句子：

A man is walking down the street.

A man is strolling down the street.

通过比较可以看出，前一句不如后一句表达得具体、生动。一个词如果内涵越具体，那么在特定的场景中恰当地使用它，就会收到意想不到的效果。很多同学写作时常随便用一个很笼统的词来描述一个具体事物或人，如 a nice man给人感觉很笼统空泛，我们可以用很多有个性的、具体的词描绘一个人，如 generous(大方的，慷慨的)，humorous(幽默的)，smart(漂亮的，潇洒的)，kind-hearted，warm-hearted，hospitable(好客的,招待周到的)，gentle(文雅的)，optimistic(乐观的)，easy-going(随和的)，spirited(英勇的)，cultivated(有教养的)，manly(有男子气概的)，knowledgeable(知识渊博的)等等。

2、要善于运用短语

短语用得好，会给评卷员留下深刻印象。如：

When he was a child，he wanted to learn everything.( 普通)

When he was a child，he had a strong appetite(胃口) for knowledge.(高级)

3、要避免汉语思维

用词要符合英语习惯，避免汉语思维的影响，如某些名词和动词搭配已约定俗成，不能随意打乱其搭配习惯，否则会显得生硬和词不达意。如汉语中的“学到知识”，英语中就不能说“learn knowledge”，而要说acquire knowledge (获得知识) 。类似的动宾结构还有achieve success (获得成功)，gain reputation (获得声誉)，attain ones end (达到目的)等。

二、造句方面：句式要准确而多变，活用复合句

简单句用得太多，会造成文章读起来乏味。在评卷员看来，同样意思的内容，能够运用比较复杂的句式结构来表达，当然会认为其运用语言的能力要比只会用简单句来表达要强，评分自然就高。

1、巧用非谓语动词

运用非谓语动词，可使文句看起来更简洁，使语言更加丰富多彩，重点更加突出，增加文采。如：

I covered my ears，trying to keep the noise out，but failed. (2004广东卷)

2、巧用with复合结构

“with+名词/代词+现在分词/过去分词/形容词/副词/介词”结构，常作伴随状语以增加被描绘内容的生动性和情感性，使文章读起来更简洁明了。试比较：

I couldnt go on studying because there was so much noise troubling me. (普通)

I couldnt go on studying with so much noise troubling me. (高级)

3、巧用复合句

高考评分标准强调使用语法结构的数量和复杂性，鼓励考生尽量使用较复杂的结构，并且对由此产生的错误采取了宽容的态度。如果恰当运用各类从句，就会使文章出彩。

如：(定语从句) Whats more，people have easy access to the Internet，which enables them to send and receive e-mails whenever they like.

4、巧用倒装句、感叹句、强调句、虚拟语气句等

使用这些句式可使文章化平淡为生动，加强语气，使评卷老师感受作者的强烈情感。

(倒装句)Only in this way can Internet Bars be well used by people.

(感叹句)I thought，“How hard mum is working! She must be very tired.”

5、巧用排山倒海句

如能运用一个个排比句、对偶句、不定式或短语，可令文章增色不少，会给评卷员眼前一亮的感觉。如：

The purpose of the program are to make our school more beautiful，to make the air cleaner and fresher，and to turn our school into a better place for us to study and live in.

三、谋篇方面：结构要清晰而流畅，巧用过渡词

众所周知，语言的最高层次不是传统语法所说的句子，而是语篇。语篇指的是一系列连接的语段或句子构成的语言整体。一篇好的文章不但句子正确，要点齐全，更重要的是有效地使用了语句间的连接成分。因此，恰当使用好连接性的词语和句子，是使作文获得高分的一个重要因素。

下列各组表示列举或补充的短语或句式非常实用，对高考写作很有帮助：

(1)Firstly...，secondly...，thirdly...，finally...

(2)In the first place...，in the second place...，in the third place...，lastly...

(3)to begin with...，then...，furthermore...，finally...

(4)to start with...，next...，in addition...，finally...

(5)first and foremost...，besides...，last but not least...

(6)most important of all...，moreover...，finally...

如果只有两层意思，可选用下列两组中的任一组：

(1)On the one hand...，on the other hand...

(2)For one thing..., and for another thing...技巧，希望对大家有帮助

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。

I woke up early this morning. I went out to play with my neighbor. We watched cartoon at his home. After I went home about 4 Oclock in the afternoon, I helped my mother to do some house work. She is very happy so I am happy too.

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

一、记叙文的特点

1. 叙述的人称

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

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

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

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

2. 动词的时态

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

3. 叙述的顺序

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

4. 叙述的过渡

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

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

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

What a moving and unforgettable scene!

5. 叙述与对话

引用故事情节中主要人物的对话是记叙文提高表现力的一种好方法。适当地用直接引语代替间接的主观叙述，可以客观生动地反映人物的性格、品质和心理状态，使记叙生动、有趣，使文章内容更加充实、具体。试比较下面两段的叙述效果：

I was in the kitchen, and I was cooking something. Suddenly I heard a loud noise from the front. I thought maybe someone was knocking the door. I asked who it was but I heard no reply. After a while I saw my cat running across the parlor. I realized it was the cat. I felt released.

这本来应是一段故事性很强的文字，但经作者这么一写，就不那么吸引人了。原因是文中用的都是叙述模式，没有人物语言，把"悬念"给冲淡了。可作如下调整：

I was in the kitchen cooking something. "Crash!" a loud noise came from the front. Thinking someone was knocking at the door, I asked, "Who?" No reply. After a while, I saw my cat running across the parlor. "Its you." I said, quite released.

二、写好记叙文的基本要领

1. 头绪分明，脉络清楚

写好记叙文，首先要头绪分明，脉络清楚，明确文章要求写什么。要对所写的事件或人物进行分析，弄清事件发生、发展一直到结束的整个过程，然后再收集选取素材。这些素材都应该跟上述五个" W "和一个" H "有关。尽管不是每篇记叙文里都必须包括这些" W "和" H "，但动笔之前，围绕五个" W "和" H "进行构思是必不可少的。

2. 突出中心，详略得当

在文章的框架确定后，对支持故事的素材的选取是很关键的。选材要注意取舍，应该从表现文章主题的需要出发，分清主次，定好详略。要突出重点，详写细述那些能表现文章主题的重要情节，略写粗述那么非关键的次要情节。面面俱到反而使情节罗列化，使人不得要领。这一点是写好记叙文要解决的一个基本问题，也需要一定的技巧。如：

One night a man came to our house and told me, "There is a family with eight children. They have not eaten for days." I took some food with me and went.

When I finally came to that family, I saw the faces of those little children disfigured (破坏外貌) by hunger. There was no sorrow or sadness in their faces, just the deep pain of hunger.

I gave the rice to the mother. She divided the rice in two, and went out, carrying half the rice. When she came back, I asked her, "Where did you go?" she gave me this simple answer, "To my neighbors - they are hungry also!"

3. 用活语言，准确生动

记叙文要用具体的事件和生动的语言对人、事、物加以叙述。一篇好的记叙文的语言既要准确、生动，又要表现力强，这样才能把人、事描写得具体生动，其可读性才强。试比较下面一篇例文修改的前后效果。

原文：

One day Xiaoqiang was wandering away. He was soon lost among people and traffic. He could not find the way back home and started crying. Just then, two young students who were passing by found him standing alone in front of a shop and crying. They went up to Xiaoqiang and asked him what had happened. Xiaoqiang told them how he got lost and where he lived. The two students decided to take him home. Mother was pleased to see Xiaoqiang come back safe and sound. She invited the two students into the house and gave them some money, but they didnt take it. She served them with tea but they left.

修改后：

The other day, five-year-old Xiaoqiang left home alone and wandered happily in the street. After some time, he felt hungry so he wanted to go back home. But he found he was lost among the crowded people and heavy traffic. When he could not find the way home, he started and crying. Just then, two young students who were passing by from school found him sanding crying in front of a shop. They immediately went up to him.

"Little boy, why are you standing here crying?" they asked.

"I want Mom, I go home." said the boy, still crying.

"Dont worry, well send you home."

And they spent the next two hours looking for the boys house. With the help of a policeman, they finally found it.

When the worried mother saw her son come back safe and sound, she was so thankful and she invited the students into her house. Gratefully, she offered them some money, saying it was a way to express her thanks, but the young students firmly refused it and left without even a cup of tea.

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。

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

12a. A proper part-time job does not occupy students too much time. In fact， it is unhealthy for them to spend all of time on their study. As an old saying goes： All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.一份适当的业余工作并不会占用学生太多的时间，事实上，把全部的时间都用到学习上并不健康，正如那句老话：只工作，不玩耍，聪明的孩子会变傻。

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

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

清明，是24节气之一，是中国的流传千年传统节日，我想，在每一个人的心中，它都有着不一样的含义。它的由来很耐人寻味。

Qingming Festival, is one of the 24 solar terms, is Chinas thousands of years of traditional festivals, I think, in each persons heart, it has a different meaning. Its origins are quite afford much food for thought.

清明节与春秋五霸晋文公重耳有关。重耳耳垂大，肋骨是连在一起的，一只眼睛里有两个眸子。晋国内乱，公子夷吾和重耳逃亡在外。公子夷吾杀太子自封晋惠公，对他更加无礼，重耳只好带着狐偃、狐毛、介子推等人去投奔齐国，在途中公子重耳因连日吃野草，发病了，奄奄一息，可在荒山野岭中哪有大夫?为了就自己主公，介子推割下身上的一块大腿肉生火做汤，把肉汤送给重耳，他的病好了。

The Qingming Festival is associated with the spring and Autumn Annals chonger. One ear, the ribs are linked together, one eye in two eyes. The civil strife, Wu and his son in exile. Who killed the prince - Wu Jin Hui Gong, more rude to him, he had to take the Huyan, fox fur, Jie et al to Qi, on the way to one of the princes due to days of eating weeds, disease, be at ones last gasp, but in the wild hills where the doctor? In order to his master, the muon push to cut a piece of thigh meat fire off the soup, broth gave Chonger, his disease.

他到了秦国，在秦穆公的帮助下回了晋国做了晋文公，国家建立之后，晋文公把手下的有功之臣都封了官，有人告诉他那肉汤是介子推的肉，说重耳忘记给介子推封官了。于是他后悔忘了给介子推封，可是现在六部的尚书都有人做了，他去请介子推去做官，谁知介子推隐居绵山，文公不忘本，就亲自去绵山请他，但是就是找不到他。

He went to Qin, Qin Mugong help next time in the Jin Jin, after the establishment of Jin State, his meritorious official seal, someone told him that the broth is muon push meat, that he forgot to give demonstration of the muon push. So he regrets that he forgot to muon push email, but now six of the book is done, he went to please muon push an official, who knows the meson pushes in Mianshan, Wen did not forget, then went Mianshan to please him, but I could not find him.

有人出了一个馊主意：烧山必他出来。但是介子推和老母就是不出来，后来两个人抱着两棵老柳烧死了。文公命一看追悔莫及，下令举国哀悼介子推，把绵山重新命名介山，规定每年的这一天全国不许用火，并要插柳，还将4月5号命名为清明，又称寒食节。

Someone out of a bad idea: burning mountain will him out. But Jie Zitui and mother is not out, then two people holding the two old tree willow. Wen Gongs life at her mourning, ordered the muon push, to rename the Mianshan medium mountain, stipulated every year on this day the no fire, and must be inserted Liu, also named April 5th as the Qingming Festival, also known as.

两千年来，我们中国人很重视这个节日，在清明节这一天家家不动火，只吃一些隔天的菜或青团之类的。近来我国又把它定为法定假日。让人们有时间去祭祖、扫墓、踏青。

In two thousand years, we the Chinese people attach great importance to this holiday, during the Ching Ming Festival this day every family does not get angry, just eat some vegetables such as green or the next day. Recently, our country had made it a statutory holiday. Give people time to worship ancestors, sweep the tombs, outing.

清明节，标示着中国千百年来的一个传统，说明中国人是讲义气的，重感情的，中国人有恩不忘。

The Qingming Festival, marked by a tradition for thousands of years in China, shows that the Chinese people is the sense of obligation, the feelings of the Chinese people did not forget, grace.

以下是由语文迷网精心为大家整理提供的关于教育的英语名言，欢迎大家参考选择。

Education has for its object the formation of character.

教育的目的在于品德的培育。——斯宾塞

He can ill be master that never was scholar.

没当过学生的人成不了一个好先生。

Teaching others teaches youself.

教学相长。

Better untaught than ill taught.

宁可不受教育也强于受坏的教育。

Instruction knows no cladistinction.

有教无类——《论语》

The best bred have the best portion.

最好的教养是最好的嫁妆。

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. (H.B.Adams, American historian)

教师的影响是永恒的;无法估计他的影响会有多深远。(美国历史学家 亚当斯 H B)

Better be unboun than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune. (Plato, Ancient Greek phiosopher)

与其不受教育，不知不生，因为无知是不幸的根源。(古希腊哲学家 柏拉图)

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with works, and ,need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? (Friedrich W.Nietzsche, German philosopher)

所有高尚教育的课程表里都不能没有各种形式的跳舞：用脚跳舞，用思想跳舞，用言语跳舞，不用说，还需用笔跳舞。(德国哲学家 尼采 F W)

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within the hearsay of children tends towards the formation of character. (Hosea Ballou British cducator)

教育始于母亲膝下，孩童耳听一言一语，均影响其性格的形成。(英国教育家 巴卢 H)

Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance. (Durant, American historian)

教育是一个逐步发现自己无知的过程。(美国历史学家 杜兰特)

Educaton does not mean teaching people to kow what they do not know ; it means teachng them to behave as they do not behave. (John Ruskin, British art critic)

教育不在于使人知其所未知，而在于按其所未行而行。(英国艺术评论家 园斯金 J)

Education is a admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught. (Oscar Wilde, British dramatist)

教育是令人羡慕的东西，但是要不时地记住：凡是值得知道的，没有一个是能够教会的。(英国剧作家 王尔得 O)

Example is always more efficacious than precept. (Samuel Johnson, British writer and critic)

身教胜于言教。(英国作家、批评家 约翰逊 S)

Histories make men wise ; poems witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep ; moral grave ; logic and rhetoric able to contend.(Francis Bacon , British philosopher )

历史使人明智;诗词使人灵秀;数学使人周密;自然哲学使人深刻;伦理使人庄重;逻辑修辞学使人善辨。( 英国哲学家 培根. F.)

If you dont learn to think when you are young , you may never learn .(Thomas Edison , American inventor )

如果你年轻时就没有学会思考，那么就永远学不会思考。(美国发明家 爱迪生 . T.)

Natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study.

(Francis Bacon , British philosopher )

天生的才干如同天生的植物一样，需要靠学习来修剪。(英国哲学家 培根 . F.)

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. (H.B.Adams, American historian)

教师的影响是永恒的;无法估计他的影响会有多深远。(美国历史学家 亚当斯 H B)

And gladly would learn, and gladly teach. (Chaucer, British poet)

勤于学习的人才能乐意施教。(英国诗人 乔叟)

Better be unboun than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune. (Plato, Ancient Greek phiosopher)

与其不受教育，不知不生，因为无知是不幸的根源。(古希腊哲学家 柏拉图)

Education commences at the mothers knee, and every word spoken within the hearsay of children tends towards the formation of character. (Hosea Ballou British cducator)

教育始于母亲膝下，孩童耳听一言一语，均影响其性格的形成。(英国教育家 巴卢 H)

Educaton does not mean teaching people to kow what they do not know ; it means teachng them to behave as they do not behave. (John Ruskin, British art critic)

教育不在于使人知其所未知，而在于按其所未行而行。(英国艺术评论家 园斯金 J)

Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance. (Durant, American historian)

教育是一个逐步发现自己无知的过程。(美国历史学家 杜兰特)

For a cultivated man to be ignorant of foreign languages is a great inconveniece. (Anton P.Chekhrv, Russian dramatist)

一个受过教育的人，不懂外语是极不方便的。(俄国剧作家 契克夫 A P)

一、教育类

● And gladly would learn , and gladly teach .( Chaucer , British pot

勤于学习的人才能乐意施教。(英国诗人, 乔叟)

●Better be unborn than untaught , for ignorance is the root of misfortune .(Plato , Ancient Greek philosopher)

与其不受教育,不如不生,因为无知是不幸的根源.(古希腊哲学家 柏拉图)

●Genius without education is like silver in the mine. (Benjamin Franklin , American president )

未受教育的天才，犹如矿中之银。 (美国总统 富兰克. B.)

●The roots of education are bitter , but the fruit is sweet .(Aristotle , Ancient Greek philosopher )

教育的根是苦的，但其果实是甜的。( 古希腊哲学家 亚里士多德)

二、知识类

●Activity is the only road to knowledge .(George Bernard Shaw , British

dramatist)

行动是通往知识的唯一道路。 (英国剧作家 肖伯纳. G.)

●A free man obtains knowledge from many sources besides books .(Thomas Jefferson ,

American president)

一个自由的人除了从书本上获取知识外，还可以从许多别的来源获得知识。(美国总统

杰斐逊 . T.)

●A great part to the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way .(Adams Franklin , American humorist )

我的大部分知识都是这样获得的：在寻找某个资料时意外的发现了另上的资料。(美国幽默作家

富兰克林. A.)

●If a man empties his purse into his head , no man can take it away from him , an investment in knowledge always pays the best interest .(Benjamin Franklin ,

American president )

倾已所有追求知识，没有人能夺走它;向知识投资，收益最佳。(美国总统

富兰克林. B.)

●Imagination is more important than knowledge .(Albert Einstein , American scientist )

想象力比知识更为重要。 (美国科学家 爱因斯坦. A. )

●Knowledge is power . (Francis Bacon , British philosopher )

知识就是力量。 (英国哲学家 培根. F.)

●The empty vessels make the greatest sound . (William Shakespeare , British dramatist )

满瓶不响，半瓶咣当。(英国剧作家 莎士比亚. W.)

well-known 众所周知 important 重要的 pollution 污染

focus 面对 benefit 益处 development 发展

society 社会 knowledge 知识 necessary 必要的

opinion 观点 harm 危害 exception 例外

advantage 优点 disadvantage 缺点 serious严峻的

measures 措施 solve 解决 overcome 克服

increase 增加 decrease减少 deny 否认

prefer 喜欢 example 例子 addicted 沉迷

useful 有用的

play an important role in our life在生活中扮演重要角色

with the development of our society 随着社会的发展

bring a lot of benefits 带来很多益处

everything has two sides 任何事物都具有两面性

Become more and more serious 变得越来越严峻

on the contrary 相反 take measures 采取措施

solve this problem 解决这个问题

the best way to 最好的方法

overcome the difficulties 克服困难

be faced with 面对

No one can deny the fact that 没有人能够否认这个事实。。。

in favour of 赞同 支持 For example 例如

become addicted to the Internet 沉迷于网络 All in all 总之

come to the conclusion 得出结论

As far as I am concerned that 就我而言

There is no doubt that 毫无疑问

in a right way 正确的方法

waste a lot of time 浪费时间

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Since ancient times first, laba is used to worship our ancestors and gods (including the goalkeeper, door god, house, kitchen, JingShen) sacrifice ceremony, praying for harvest and good luck., according to the si ji jiao, features "records, la is the" age of December, and get together to share everything without cable also."Dynasty called LaRi jia ping, shang dynasty to the qing si ", the zhou dynasty as the "big wax";Because the held in December said the month for the twelfth month, called the Greek festival this day LaRi.LaRi of pre-qin period after the winter solstice of the third day of the Buddhism was introduced later, at home in order to expand the influence by lines of traditional culture on the laba festival as the Buddha into way.Buddhism prevailed, followed the Buddha into day and LaRi fusion, known as a magic weapon "festival" in the field of Buddhism.Northern and southern dynasties began to fixed in the day.

According to the load: "three xu-gou after the winter solstice day god Greek festival."Visible, the third xu-gou days after the winter solstice was LaRi.Since Buddhism after intervention, LaRi change on December 8, since xiangyan into the vulgar.

自先上古起，腊八是用来祭祀祖先和神灵(包括门神、户神、宅神、灶神、井神)的祭祀仪式，祈求丰收和吉祥。据《祀记·郊特牲》记载，腊祭是“岁十二月，合聚万物而索飨之也。”夏代称腊日为“嘉平”，商代为“清祀”，周代为“大蜡”;因在十二月举行，故称该月为腊月，称腊祭这一天为腊日。先秦的腊日在冬至后的第三个戌日，后来佛教传入，为了扩大在本土的影响力逐附会传统文化把腊八节定为佛成道日。后随佛教盛行，佛祖成道日与腊日融合，在佛教领域被称为“法宝节”。南北朝开始才固定在腊月初八。

《说文》载：“冬至后三戌日腊祭百神。”可见，冬至后第三个戌日曾是腊日。后由于佛教介入，腊日改在十二月初八，自此相沿成俗。

对未来不懈追求，是理想形成的动力和源泉。下面是关于理想的英语名言，供大家写作参考。

1.And love, young men, and venerate the ideal. The ideal is the word of God. High above every country, high above humanity, is the country of the spirit, the city of the soul.

青年人啊，热爱理想吧，崇敬理想吧。理想是上帝的语言。高于一切国家和全人类的，是精神的王国，是灵魂的故乡。

2.Between the ideal and the reality, between the motion and the act, falls the shadow.

理想与现实之间，动机与行为之间，总有一道阴影。

3.Ideals are like the stars... we never reach them, but like mariners, we chart our course by them.

理想就像是星星...我们永远够不着它，但是我们像水手一样，靠星星指引航程。

4.The ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is thyself.

理想存乎已心，障碍亦是如此

5.Its is the most pleasant thing in the world to struggle for a noble ideal.

世界上最快乐的事，就是为理想而奋斗

6.Anything one man can imagine, other men can make real.

但凡人能想像到的事物，必定有人能将它实现。

7.Ideal is the beacon. Without ideal, there is no secure direction; without direction, there is no life.

理想是指路明灯。没有理想，就没有坚定的方向;没有方向，就没有生活

8.The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.

实现明天理想的惟一障碍是今天的疑虑。

9.High expectation are the key to every thing.

远大理想是开启万物的钥匙。

10.The important thing in life is to have a great aim, and the determination to attain it.

人生重要的事情就是确定一个伟大的目标，并决心实现它。

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

生活没有目标就像航海没有指南针。

12.Life is not all beer and skittles.

人生并不全是吃喝玩乐。

13.Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

不要放弃你的幻想。当幻想没有了以后，你还可以生存，但虽生犹死

14.No man or woman who tries to pursue an ideal in his or her own way is without enemies.

凡按自己的方式追求理想者，无不树敌。

15.How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

我们怎样打发日子，当然，也就是我们怎样度过这一生。

16.If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground. (Ibsen, Norwegian dramatist )

如果你怀疑自己，那么你的立足点确实不稳固了。 (挪威剧作家 易卜生)

17.If you would go up high, then use your own legs ! Do not let yourselves carried aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people’s backs and heads. (F. W. Nietzsche, German Philosopher)

如果你想走到高处，就要使用自己的两条腿!不要让别人把你抬到高处;不要坐在别人的背上和头上。(德国哲学家 尼采. F. W.)

18.It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest, but there is seldom any money in them. ( Mark Twain, American writer )

就是在我们母亲的膝上，我们获得了我们的最高尚、最真诚和最远大的理想，但是里面很少有任何金钱。(美国作家 马克·吐温)

19.The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully 19 have been kindness, beauty and truth.(Albert Einstein, American scientist)

有些理想曾为我们引过道路，并不断给我新的勇气以欣然面对人生，那些理想就是--真、善、美。 (美国科学家 爱因斯坦. A.)

20.The important thing in life is to have a great aim, and the determination to attain it. (Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, German Poet and dramatist)

人生重要的事情就是确定一个伟大的目标，并决心实现它。(德国诗人、戏剧家 歌德. J. M.)

21.If winter comes, can spring be far behind ?( P. B. Shelley, British poet )

冬天来了，春天还会远吗?( 英国诗人, 雪莱. P. B.)

22.The man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds. (Mark Twain, American writer)

具有新想法的人在其想法实现之前是个怪人。 (美国作家 马克·吐温)

23.When an end is lawful and obligatory, the indispensable means to is are also lawful and obligatory. (Abraham Lincoln, American statesman)

如果一个目的是正当而必须做的，则达到这个目的的必要手段也是正当而必须采取的。(美国政治家 林肯. A.)

24.The dream is a kind of desire, think it is a kind of action. Dream is the dream and want to crystallization.梦是一种欲望，想是一种行动。梦想是梦与想的结晶。

25.A realization of dream, is a successful person.一个实现梦想的人，就是一个成功的人。

26.Dream no matter how vague, the total hidden in our hearts, our feelings never be quiet, until the dream become a reality.梦想无论怎样模糊，总潜伏在我们心底，使我们的心境永远得不到宁静，直到这些梦想成为事实。

27.Dream is the soul, is our secret truth ( Truman Capote )梦是心灵的思想，是我们的秘密真情(杜鲁门·卡波特)

28.Once the dream into action, will become sacred (, Ann Procter )梦想一旦被付诸行动，就会变得神圣(阿·安·普罗克特)

29.The dreamer is afraid of Destiny ( Thomas Phillips )梦想家的缺点是害怕命运(斯·菲利普斯)

30.A man is not old as long as he is seeking something. A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams. (J. Barrymore) 只要一个人还有追求，他就没有老。直到后悔取代了梦想，一个人才算老。(巴里摩尔)

31.If you would go up high , then use your own legs! Do not let yourselves carried aloft; do not seat yourselves on other people’s backs and heads . (F. W . Nietzsche , German Philosopher) 如果你想走到高处，就要使用自己的两条腿!不要让别人把你抬到高处;不要坐在别人的背上和头上。(德国哲学家 尼采. F. W.)

32.Have an aim in life, or your energies will be wasted.没有目标的一生注定碌碌无为，确定一个目标吧。——R.Peters

一、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。

二、~ the + ~ est +名词+(that)+主词+ have ever + 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。

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、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。

五、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。

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、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、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。

图表作文就是升级版的看图说话，在大学英语四级考试中，看图作文出现的概率相对来说要小一些，所以考生平时练习得也少一些，考试时就不容易把握住写作技巧，针对这个问题在此为大家总结了图表作文写作的一些技巧，希望对大家有帮助。

图表作文不像其他作文一样题干会给出提纲，我们需要看图来寻找信息确定文章写作思路，这无形中又增加了难度，尽管图表作文与一般作文有很大不同，但是基本的写作思路还是可以归结为以下三个步骤。

简要描绘图画直观内容

写好图表作文的第一步就是要把自己眼睛直观看到的图画内容简单的描述出来，这点在题干中也有强调。如果考生英语水平一般，无法组织好自己的语言，在对图画内容进行描述时，可以饮用图画中人物的对话。此外，这一段的描述简要描述即可，不用发散和深挖。这样一来，如果考生没看懂图画内容也可以照抄题干。

阐明观点并深层探讨

图画作文的观点一般在题干中都会清楚地给出来，考生在写作中除了需要看懂图画中的对话还要仔细审清题干，在写作过程中，考生阐明观点之后的思路与一般的六级英语作文提纲型写作一致，针对作文的观点可以先举例说明现象、然后再探讨导致现象的原因以及该现象可能导致的后果等;还可结合数字、研究、名言等材料对这个观点进行论证和深层探讨。总之，这一段就是要考生来发散和深挖内容。

总结陈述观点并给出合理建议

跟一般的提纲作文一样，图画作文的最后也要对全文进行观点总结，考生还要根据不同的图画内容和主题给出相应的建议或者评价，这一点有点类似解决问题型的作文结尾。对于第三部分的写作，考生一般都很熟悉，无论哪种作文，除了书信体以外，作文结尾一段都会要求考生给出自己的观点或意见，图画类的也一样。

英语四六级考试改革说明现在考试也开始注重创新和改变，所以作文类型也会灵活多变，不会仅仅拘泥于传统的提纲写作，考生在复习时要时刻保持对创新的热情，做到无论考试有什么变化，自己都能有所准备。

掌握了这些图表类作文的写作技巧大家就算入门了，除了这些技巧之外，考生平时依然不能放松语法和词汇的复习，希望大家考试顺利过关!

攻克英语写作：滴水穿石，积累成章

考研作文作为考查考生语言表达等综合能力的题型，是考研英语的压轴戏。考生在日常复习中应更趋向于积累。考研作文的复习和提高是与一些科学的学习方法和有效的学习技巧分不开的，在此，万学海文考研英语辅导专家提供大家一些练习方法及技巧，希望对同学们有所帮助。

考研作文分为大、小两类。小作文多以应用文体裁为主，例如求职信、感谢信、辞职信，道歉信等，这类作文不需要复杂华丽的文采修饰，表意明确就可以了；大作文的题型多是通过图片或者提示文字，要求考生完成提示所透视出来的问题。命题范围，从近几年看，都比较倾向于当前社会热门话题或观念。

一、欲速则不达，步步行进

想要达到一定的程度，首先要向这个程度看齐。就写作来说，如果你想将自己的作文水平提高到一个质的飞跃，首先你要懂得去吸取别人文章中的精华。这个吸取精华的过程就是阅读。只有多阅读，才能够培养起良好的语感，才会知道如何去构思，如何去质疑别人的观点，表达清楚自己的意思。正所谓"读书破万卷，下笔如有神"。无论何时，大家都勿急躁，因为"跑"得好的前提是"走"，

作文这种慢火候才能提高的题更是如此，一步一个脚印才是写作稳步提高的策略。

近些年写作考题的内容和主题，基本都与当年的热点话题有一定的关系，所以平时多阅读英语报纸、杂志，能够帮助你掌握更多的话题资源。对于比较热点、比较重要的主题，可以有目的地进行搜集整理。阅读的过程也应该讲究方法，应该以泛读与精读结合的方式进行学习。一些好的文章建议你读过以后做英文阅读笔记（即观后感）。在读与写的过程中，你的写作水平自然会得到快速提高。

二、在研读中背记

除了读与写，还要进行适当的背。背诵是积极备战快速提高写作成绩的一条捷径。建议考生可以选择历年真题中的写作佳文，先是研究，思考人家是怎么构思，怎么写的，获得高分的闪光点在哪。再在理解的基础上记忆，更能够在无形中增强你的表达能力。同学们也可以拿一些英语原著名篇来读、背，这样可以加强自己的语感，使自己的表达更加地道。

三、每周一练，积累成章

表达能力需要考生平时多一点练习，给自己制定一个写作计划。一周至少练习一篇文章。在加强写作练习之后，你的文章才能够 "成章"。因此，实际动手的能力至关重要。平时训练的重点应该锁定在文章是否切题，行文是否表意明确、通顺，有无语法错误等。另外，一定要给每一次行文限定一个可行的时间。并且，按照这个时间严格要求自己完成。

如果你能够找到范文，然后在练习之后进行比较，效果会更加明显。假使没有范文作为标样，建议你可以找英语水平较好的同学看一看。也许评看你作文的这个考生英语水平不是很高，但个人看别人文章的缺点很容易看出来。如果条件允许，找老师请教一下最好。

掌握好的方法加之持之以恒，相信最后的成功一定属于你，继续坚定的考研信念，自信满满的走下去。

英语写作当中经常会用到“……很重要”这一句式，一般考生会用something be important/essential的词汇表达。不过学了比较状语从句以后，大家可以试着用一种更高级的表达方式，一定会让阅卷老师眼前一亮，作文高分就不在话下啦。

箴言仿写：Cultivation is to the mind what food is to the body.

——M·T·Cicero

上述句子可以概括为A is to B what C is to D.替换ABCD四个名词就可以用来表达“重要性”这一概念。

【例句】

★ 人生态度——乐观与悲观

A positive attitude is to life what the sun is to the earth.积极的态度对于生活，好比太阳对于地球一样。

★ 谈读书

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.阅读对于思想，好比运动对于身体一样。

★ 赡养父母——家庭

Family is to the people what life is to the individual.家庭对于人类，好比生活对于个人一样。

★ 投诉信

Cleanness is to the canteen what reputation is to the people.清洁对于食堂来说，好比名誉对于人一样。

★ 谈诚信

Honesty is to the people what life is to the creature.诚信对于人来说，好比生命对于人一样。

比较状语(倍数表达法)：

A+ be+倍数+as many/much as+ B

A+ be+倍数+the amount+ B

A+ be+倍数+what it was+ B

【例句】

★ 从1999年到2009年，奢侈品的销售增长了3倍。

①The sale of luxuries doubled from the end of 1999 to 2009.

②The sale of luxuries increased three times/three-fold from the end of 1999 to 2009.

③A three-fold increase was seen in the sale of luxuries from the end of 1999 to 2009.

④There was a three-fold increase in the sale of luxuries from the end of 1999 to 2009.

【写作练习】

定语从句与状语从句的写作方法指南：合并简单句!

1.通过指代关系合并简单句为定语从句

【例句】

★ 故事发生于19世纪末期。那个时候，中国正遭受西方列强的蹂躏。

A: The story happened in the late 19th century.

B: At that time, China was suffering from the invasion of western powers.

→合并为定语从句：The story happened in the late 19th century when China was suffering from the invasion of western powers.

2.通过逻辑关系合并简单句为状语从句

【例句】

★ 这个问题很复杂。我们花了近两周的时间才把它搞定。

A: The problem was very complicated.

B: It took us nearly two weeks to solve it.

→合并为结果状语从句The problem was so complicated that it took us nearly two weeks to solve it.

长难句虽然是考研[微博]复习中让很多考生都头疼的一部分，但可以说是无处不在的，不仅仅是阅读理解和翻译题中，需要我们去读懂并理解，更重要的是在作文题中，准确精彩地写出几个长难句，往往会让你的作文增色不少，也是你作文制胜的重要砝码，所以考研英语要想拿高分，千万不能忽视长难句哦。

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

中考英语作文中经常会出现跟天气有关的题材，下面是语文迷网为大家提供的关于天气的英语作文素材，一起来看看吧。

1. It rained cats and dogs last night. 昨晚雨下得很大。

Rain cats and dogs是一句非常受欢迎的俚语，几乎每个学英语的学生都懂得用 rain cats and dogs 来形容雨下得很大。

当然如果你不想用俚语的讲法，你可以说："Its raining really hard.(雨下得很大)"或是"Were having a heavy rain."同样也是“雨下得很大”。

那“雨下得很大，我被淋成了落汤鸡”这整句话要怎么讲?“落汤鸡”在英文里常用"I am soaked."(我湿透了)来形容。因此，我们可以说：Its raining cats and dogs out there so Im soaked.

2. We had a downpour. 我们刚遇到了一场倾盆大雨。

中文里常形容下雨像是用“倒”的一样，这在英文里也有同样对等的字眼喔!英文里用的是 downpour 这个词。所以“下雨像是用倒的”我们可以说："We had a downpour."

另外有一个十分口语的讲法就是"Its really coming down out there."，也是形容雨下得很大，像是用“倒”的一样。

3. Its just sprinkling. 只是在下毛毛雨而已。

在英文里不管下“毛毛雨”或是“毛毛雪”我们都可以用 drizzle 和 sprinkle 这两个动词来表示。

Drizzle 这个词就是气象术语“下毛毛雨”的意思，而sprinkle 则是一个动词表示“撒”，但也常被用来形容毛毛雨。

常听到的用法就是："Its drizzling." 或是 "Its sprinkling."另外还有一个词叫 scattered rain，指的则是“零零星星地降雨”。

例如：We have to cancel the track and field contest because of the scattered rain.因为零星的降雨所以我们必须取消田径赛。

天气的英语单词

downpour, shower 暴雨

storm, tempest 暴风雨

lightning 闪电

land wind 陆风

hurricane 飓风

cyclone 旋风

typhoon 台风

whirlwind 龙卷风

gale 季节风

gust of wind 阵风

breeze 微风

fog 浓雾

dew 露水

humidity 潮湿

freeze 冰冻

snowflake 雪花

snowfall 降雪

waterspout 水龙卷

dead calm 风平浪静

Indian summer 小阳春

drought 干旱

AM Clouds / PM Sun=上午有云/下午后晴

AM Showers=上午阵雨

AM Snow Showers=上午阵雪

AM T-Storms=上午雷暴雨

Clear=晴朗

Cloudy=多云

Cloudy / Wind=阴时有风

Clouds Early / Clearing Late=早多云/晚转晴

Drifting Snow=飘雪

Drizzle=毛毛雨

Dust=灰尘

Fair=晴

Few Showers=短暂阵雨

Few Snow Showers=短暂阵雪

Few Snow Showers / Wind=短暂阵雪时有风

Fog=雾

Haze=薄雾

Hail=冰雹

Heavy Rain=大雨

Heavy Rain Icy=大冰雨

Heavy Snow=大雪

Heavy T-Storm=强烈雷雨

Isolated T-Storms=局部雷雨

Light Drizzle=微雨

Light Rain=小雨

Light Rain Shower=小阵雨

Light Rain Shower and Windy=小阵雨带风

Light Rain with Thunder=小雨有雷声

Light Snow=小雪

Light Snow Fall=小降雪

Light Snow Grains=小粒雪

Light Snow Shower=小阵雪

Lightening=雷电

Mist=薄雾

Mostly Clear=大部晴朗

Mostly Cloudy=大部多云

Mostly Cloudy/ Windy=多云时阴有风

Mostly Sunny=晴时多云

Partly Cloudy=局部多云

Partly Cloudy/ Windy=多云时有风

PM Rain / Wind=下午小雨时有风

PM Light Rain=下午小雨

PM Showers=下午阵雨

PM Snow Showers=下午阵雪

PM T-Storms=下午雷雨

Rain=雨

Rain Shower=阵雨

Rain Shower/ Windy=阵雨/有风

Rain / Snow Showers=雨或阵雪

Rain / Snow Showers Early=下雨/早间阵雪

Rain / Wind=雨时有风

Rain and Snow=雨夹雪

Scattered Showers=零星阵雨

Scattered Showers / Wind=零星阵雨时有风

Scattered Snow Showers=零星阵雪

Scattered Snow Showers / Wind=零星阵雪时有风

Scattered Strong Storms=零星强烈暴风雨

Scattered T-Storms=零星雷雨

Showers=阵雨

Showers Early=早有阵雨

Showers Late=晚有阵雨

Showers / Wind=阵雨时有风

Showers in the Vicinity=周围有阵雨

Smoke=烟雾

Snow=雪

一、名人名言必背部分。

在英语作文中，我们经常会引用一些名人名言。这里就向大家介绍一些，务必要全部脱口而出!

高考英语作文素材，Culture 文化篇

1.A great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight.(P. B. Shelley , British poet )伟大的诗篇即是永远喷出智慧和欢欣之水的喷泉。(英国诗人 雪莱. P. B)

2.Art is a lie that tells the truth .( Picasso , Spanish painter )美术是揭示真理的谎言。 (西班牙画家 毕加索)

3.Humor has been well defined as thinking in fun while feeling in earnest. (Mark Twain , American novelist )幽默被人正确地解释为"以诚挚表达感受，寓深思于嬉笑"。(美国小说家 马克·吐温)

4.The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation; the two keep in their downward tendency.( Johan Wolfgang von Goethe , German poet )文学的衰落表明一个民族的衰落。这两者走下坡路的时间是齐头并进的。(德国诗人歌德 . J . W .)

5.When one loves ones art no service seems too hard .(O. Henry, American novelist)一旦热爱艺术，什么奉献也不难。 (美国小说家 欧·亨利)

Education 教育篇

6.And gladly would learn , and gladly teach .( Chaucer , British poet)勤于学习的人才能乐意施教。(英国诗人, 乔叟)

7.Better be unborn than untaught , for ignorance is the root of misfortune.(Plato , Ancient Greek philosopher)与其不受教育,不如不生,因为无知是不幸的根源.(古希腊哲学家 柏拉图)

Friendship 友谊篇

8. Some friends come and go like a season. Others are arranged in our lives for good reason.(Sharita Gadison)一些朋友随季节离去，而另外一些则伴我们度过美好的季节。

9.A true friend is someone you can disagree with and still remain friends. For if not, they werent true friends in the first place.(Sandy Ratliff)真朋友是可以与你有不同见解的，如果不是，首先就不是真朋友。

10.True friendship is felt, not said.(Mariecris Madayag)朋友是说不出的感觉。

11.Friends are like stars,you dont always see them, but you know theyre always there.(Hulali Luta)朋友是感觉不到的存在。

12.Memories last forever, never do they die. Friends stay together, never say goodbye.(Melina Campos)记忆永不死，朋友永不说再见。

Health 健康篇

13.light heart lives long.( William Shakespeare , British dramatist )豁达者长寿(英国剧作家莎士比亚. W.)

14.Early to bed and early to rise , makes a man healthy , wealthy and wise.(Benjamin Franklin , American president )早睡早起会使人健康、富有和聪明。 (美国总统 富兰克林. B.)

15.The first wealth is health .( Ralph Waldo Emerson , American thinker )健康是人生第一财富。 (美国思想家爱默生. R. W.)

Happiness 幸福篇

16.A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth. (G. Bernard Shaw, British dramatist)终身幸福!这是任何活着的人都无法忍受的，那将是人间地狱。(英国剧作家肖伯纳. G.)高考英语作文素材

17.Happiness is form courage .(H. Jackson, British writer)幸福是勇气的一种形式。 (英国作家 杰克逊. H.)

18.Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money ; it lies in the joy of achievement , in the thrill of creative effort .(Franklin Roosevelt ,American president )幸福不在于拥有金钱，而在于获得成就时的喜悦以及产生创造力的激情。(美国总统 罗斯福. F.)

19.Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be .(Abraham Lincoln ,American president )对于大多数人来说，他们认定自己有多幸福，就有多幸福。(美国总统 林肯. A.)

20.The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved .(Victor Hugo , French novelist )生活中最大的幸福是坚信有人爱我们。( 法国小说家 雨果. V .)

21.We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it . (George Bernard Shaw , British dramatist)正像我们无权只享受财富而不创造财富一样，我们也无权只享受幸福而不创造幸福.(英国剧作家肖伯纳. G. )

高考英语作文素材Ideal 理想篇

22.Do not, for one repulse, give up the purpose that you resolved to effect. (William Shakespeare , British dramatist)不要只因一次失败，就放弃你原来决心想达到的目的。(英国剧作家莎士比亚.W.)

23.Dont part with your illusions . When they are gone you may still exist,but you have ceased to live. (Mark Twain , American writer)不要放弃你的幻想。当幻想没有了以后，你还可以生存，但是你虽生犹死.(美国作家马克·吐温)

24.Ideal is the beacon. Without ideal, there is no secure direction;without direction, there is no life. ( Leo Tolstoy , Russian writer)理想是指路明灯。没有理想，就没有坚定的方向;没有方向，就没有生活。(俄国作家托尔斯泰. L .)

25.If winter comes , can spring be far behind ?(P. B. Shelley, British poet)冬天来了，春天还会远吗? ( 英国诗人, 雪莱. P. B.)

26.Living without an aim is like sailing without a compass.Alexander Dumas (Davy de La Pailleterie, French Writer)生活没有目标就像航海没有指南针。 (法国作家 大仲马. A.)

27.The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.(Franklin Roosevelt , American president)实现明天理想的唯一障碍是今天的疑虑。 (美国总统 罗斯福. F .)

Knowledge 知识篇

28.Activity is the only road to knowledge.(George Bernard Shaw , British dramatist)行动是通往知识的唯一道路 。 (英国剧作家 肖伯纳. G.)

29.Imagination is more important than knowledge .(Albert Einstein , American scientist )想象力比知识更为重要。 (美国科学家 爱因斯坦. A. )

30.Knowledge is power . (Francis Bacon , British philosopher )知识就是力量。 (英国哲学家 培根. F.)

Struggle 奋斗篇

31.Genius only means hard-working all ones life. ( Mendeleyev , Russian Chemist)天才只意味着终身不懈的努力。 (俄国化学家门捷列耶夫)

32.I have nothing to offer but blood , toil tears and sweat . (Winston Churchill, British Politician)我所能奉献的没有其它，只有热血、辛劳、眼泪与汗水。(英国政治家 丘吉尔 . W.)

33.Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet . (Jean Jacques Rousseau , French thinker)忍耐是痛苦的，但它的果实是甜蜜的。 (法国思想家 卢梭. J. J.)

34.There is no royal road to science ,and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of gaining its numinous summits . (Karl Marx, German revolutionary )在科学上没有平坦的大道，只有不畏劳苦沿着其崎岖之路攀登的人，才有希望达到它光辉的顶点。( 德国革命家马克思. K .)

35.Where there is a will , there is a way .( Thomas Edison , American inventor )有志者，事竟成。 (美国发明家 爱迪生. T.)

二、精彩必背部分。

在作文中经常有一些好句子可以借鉴，为此，特总结如下，务必全部脱口而出。高考英语作文素材

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

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

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

4. Many experts point out that physical exercise contributes directly to a person’s physical fitness.

许多专家指出体育锻炼直接有助于身体健康。

5.写信的开头：Very glad to receive your letter of July 13.

6.One day after school,XiaoMing passed a Café on his way home.

7.The boss had no choice but to let him in.

8.How he enjoyed himself on the computer!

9.Walking home full of fear,he was sure that he would be scolded.

10.However,other students are against the idea.

11.Sometimes we have too many examinations which are too difficult for us.

12.today’s activity has taught us the new meaning of the spirit of LeiFeng:sharing with others what you have—you time,energy,or knowledge—makes you fell warm in you heart.It has truly a difference in how I feel about myself.

13.The girl whose composition was well written is spoken highly of.

14.No matter what he says，I won’t believe.

15. Thanks to the good weather，our journey was comfortable.

16. At the news of his death，she went pale with sorrow.

三、写作指导

多使用过渡性词语。这样使文章更加连贯、更具有逻辑性。

(1)表示增加的过渡词：also，and，and then，too，in addition，furthermore，moreover，again，on top ofthat，another，first second third等。

(2)表示时间顺序的过渡词：now，then，before，after，afterwards，earlier，lat er，immediately，soon，next，in afew days，gradually，suddenly，finally等。(3)表示空间顺序的过渡词：near(to)，far(from)，in frontof，behind，beside，beyond，above，below，tothe right left，around，outside等。

(4)表示比较的过渡词：in thesameway，justlike，justas等。

(5)表示对照的过渡词：but，still，yet，however，on theotherhand，onthecon trary，in spite of，even though等。

(6)表示结 果 和 原 因 的 过 渡 词：because，since，so，as a result，therefore，then，thus，otherwise等。

(7)表示目的的过渡词：forthisreason，forthispurpose，so that等。

(8)表示强调的过渡词：in fact，indeed，surely，necessarily，certainly，withoutanydoubt，truly，torepeat，aboveall，mostimportant等。

(9)表示解释说明的过渡词：forexample，in fact，in thiscase，foractually等。

(10)表示总结的过渡词：finally，atlast，inconclusion，asIhaveshown，inoth erword，in brief，in short，in general，on the whole，ashasbeen stated等。

四、获得高分的英语书面表达的六大特性。

(1)条理性。指的是合理布局文章结构。首先，在文章思路、组织材料、叙述顺序等方面要有一定的条理性。其次，根据需要，安排好段落，各段之间要层次分明，也要重视每一段的开头和结尾，开头语往往是总起句，结尾语往往是总结句。

(2)准确性。指要求写出语法正确的句子，包括时态、语态、用词和句法等，要准确、地道地表达。必须要牢牢掌握一些常用句型或习惯表达，避免中式英语，在实践中不断总结中英用法的差异，养成用英语思维写作的习惯。高考英语作文素材。

(3)流畅性。指根据整篇文章思想的需要，有效采用不同的连接手段，使文章层次清楚、行文连贯。(4)简洁多样性。简洁性就是语言简洁，不重复。多样性就是能随情景内容的变化写出句式多样的语句。这也是新课程标准对写作的评价标准。

(5)思想性。新标准对写作的要求，增加了情感因素，在准确流畅表达写作要点的同时，适当增加句子的感情色彩，增加一些人情味，使文章读起来更亲切，完全达到与读者进行交流的目的。

(6)美观性。指的是卷面书写规范、清楚、干净、整洁。

五、写作步骤

高考英语作文素材，每次写作前问自己四个问题：这篇文章的体裁格式是怎样的?主体时态用什么时态?人称用第几人称?可以分几段，之间用什么过渡词、连接词?带着这四个问题去审题，搞清楚文章的主要内容，然后列出提纲。最后丰富自己的提纲就可以了。

英语四级成绩在500分及以上可以报考口语; 六级成绩在425分及以上可以报考口语。

大学英语四级考试425分可以报考大学英语六级考试。

◆英语四级多少分算过?及格线是多少?

全国英语四级改革之后，报道成绩满分为710分，凡考试成绩在220分以上的考生，由国家教育部高教司委托“全国大学英语四六级考试委员会”发给成绩单，不设及格线。但全国英语四六级规定“英语四级成绩达到425分以上(含425分)者，可以报考英语六级”。一般认为英语四级的及格线是425分。对于招聘企业来说，分数越高自然更受青睐。

◆英语四级多少分属于优秀呢?

四级考多少分算高分?每个人的看法不同,满分是710，肯定分越高，越优秀， 有网友也说道：起码要550，550可以参加口试。但是小编这里建议是目标要按照自己水平定，别给自己太大压力。将目标定得比实际水平略高，这样比较好。

◆四级要考多少分才能参加口试?

2005年6月及以后的纸笔或网考四级成绩为500分以上(含500分)。