英语四级作文看图写作（优秀20篇）

想要顺利通过英语四级考试，相关的作文常用词汇考生们是需要进行记忆的。下面就随小编一起去阅读英语四级考试作文常用词汇，相信能带给大家帮助。

1. 认为，主张argue, maintain, hold, believe

2. 考虑take…sth. into consideration, consider, ponder, meditate, contemplate, think over, reflect on/ upon, meditate on the matter(思考这问题), ponder over

3. 下结论，断定come into conclusion, arrive at the conclusion, draw the conclusion, conclude, decide, assert(宣称)

4. 获得acquire, obtain, attain, reap

5. 赢得，取得earn, gain, procure

6. 支持，赞成approve of, in favor of, uphold, stand by ones side, agree with, give ones assent

7. 提倡advocate, recommend

8. 反对opposite, object to

9. 抵制resist

10. 意义深远的，重大的far-reaching, profound, significant, eventful(变故多的,重要的)

11. 重要的，有决定性的vital, crucial, critical, decisive

12. 充分运用optimize, make best use of, make full use of,

13. 使用employ, utilize(vt.)

14. 应用apply

15. 后来，然后 afterwards, later on, later, after all

16. 高兴的，心情好的be in a good mood, happy, cheerful, joyful, joyous, pleased, delighted

17. 当前，目前nowadays, at present, currently, presently

18. 表达voice, convey, express, deliver, communicate

19. 描绘，描述，描写depict, describe, picture

20. 勤奋的，勤勉的 diligent, studious(慎重的), industrious, assiduous

21. 认真的，谨慎的 conscientious, cautious

22. 冷静的，清醒的sober, reasonable, sensible, rational

23. 聪明的，有才智的intelligent，bright，wise，brilliant

24. 疲惫不堪的exhausted，fatigued，run-down，worn-out，weary

25. 适应be adapted to，be accustomed to，be adjusted to

26. 阻碍，阻止hinder(后面的), curb(路边), hamper, restrain, prevent, ward off, avoid

27. 好处，优点 advantage，merit，benefit

28. 坏处，缺点 disadvantage, defect, flaw, drawback, deficiency

29. 参加participate in, attend, take part in, go in for, engage in

30. 集中精力于 focus on, center on, concentrate on

31. 专心于 set ones mind on

32. 抽出时间做set aside, put aside, spare

33. 依赖，依靠rely on, lean on

34. 沮丧的，失意的 frustrated, discouraged, depressed, down-hearted, disheartened, low-spirited

35. 努力做，尽力做attempt to, make efforts to, endeavor(尽力) to, manage to do

36. 进步，成就，成绩advancement, achievement, accomplishment, feat, fulfillment, progress (v)

37. 志气，抱负，渴望 aspiration, ambition, yearning, thirst, long for, aspire after/ aspire to sth./ aspire to do sth.

38. 禁止ban, disallow(不接受), prohibit, forbid, ban sth./ ban sb. from doing

39. 除……之外 apart from, in addition to, along with

40. 开展，实施，做practice, carry on, conduct, perform, implement (bring into effect, put in practice.)

一、积累固定搭配，避免中式英文

在高考中，很多考生写作文时都是要先想好中文内容再来翻译成英文。这看起来并没有什么不对的地方，因为一般考生的水平都达不到直接用英文来思考的程度。但差别在于英文很好的人在整体构思自己的作文时可能会用汉语，但是写作时完全的英语写作并不会存在什么障碍;只有英语水平一般的人才会将每句的意思大致用汉语想好，但写作时还是要用英文的习惯句型和固定搭配来表达，有时甚至没办法流畅的翻译出自己想的内容，再者也存在一个单词一个单词累积拼凑句子的情况 ，这就是我们常说的中式英语;之所以会这样，主要原因还是在于考生自身积累的英语习惯句型和固定搭配太少了，所以考生平时要注意积累考试常用的句型和语法基础知识，这些内容并不是太多，只要用心总结，需要很少一部分时间就能掌握的很好。

二、模糊叙述，避免不确定词汇

英语考试写作中经常遇到的一个问题就是不确定的词汇，想要描述一个事物，但是那个单词始终想不起来，这是每个考生都会遇到的问题，不论你的词汇量有多丰富，总会有你不认识的词汇出现。那么这时在考场上，我们该如何应对呢?首先我们应该想到的是找一个类似的词来代替它，也就是模糊化即用同义词表达。其次，我们可以用一句完整的话来描述出来它，对其加以解释说明。再次，如果我们实在描述不了也替代不了，那么我们还可以把一些解释不清的东西略去不写。只写那些自己会写的，避开那些自己不会写的。扬长避短，在写作中才能避开容易犯的错误而得到高分。

三、基础不过硬，少用复杂句

不少考生在考试中喜欢用很长很复杂的句式来填充自己的作文，对于英语语法熟练的考生来说这很随意，但是英语水平不过硬的考生最好不要过多地运用复杂句、长难句，因为考试作文是检验一个考生写作水平的工具，命题人虽然会以复杂句来判断考生的英语水平，但是复杂句也表示它容易出错的几率要高很多。因此，在考试中虽然我们要写复杂句但是注意不能写太多这样的句子，考试作文的句子要长短结合。基础不好的考生避免运用长难句，这样自己出错扣分的概率也小很多。

四、认真审题，思考作文分支观点

很多考生在拿到考试作文题时第一感觉是这个作文自己有话说，并且知道应该说什么，但是认真开始提笔时却往往不知道从何写起，之所以会这样是因为考生对作文的审题和观点把握并不清晰，此时考生应该先审题;其次思考简单的分支观点并且考虑可以采用的哪些简单而又成熟的句型。近几年的四级或六级题目大多都会给出提纲，一般提纲中都会包含考生需要的中心句，围绕这个中心句，考生可以考虑自己的文章结构。对于分支观点这方面，考生要尽量量力而行，不要思考太深的观点，要结合自己语言表达的能力而定。

五、重点研究近几年真题作文，掌握固定结构

准备作文的时候背诵真题作文是不可避免的，但是四六级作文真题范文数量太多，有些历时已经有些久远，参考的价值并不是很大，而要把这些都背下来似乎也不太可能，所以考生要把注意力放在近几年的作文范文上，在复习时间不太充裕的时候，并不需要整篇全部背诵，主要是学习范文的行文结构，熟悉适合自己的固定句型，这样大家背诵范文的目的就已经达到了。

1、individuals, characters, folks代替people ,persons。

2、positive, favorable, rosy(美好的),promising (有希望的),perfect, pleasurable ,excellent, outstanding代替good。

3、dreadful, unfavorable, poor, adverse(有害的)代替bad， 如果bad做表语,可以有be less impressive代替。

举例： An army of college students indulge themselves in playing games, enjoying romance with girls/boys or killing time passively in their dorms. When it approaches to graduation, as a result, they find their academic records are less impressive.

4、(an army of; an ocean of; a sea of; a multitude of; many, if not most)代替many。

注：用many, if not most一定要小心,many后一定要有词。

举例：Many individuals, if not most, harbor the idea that….同理用most, if not all ,代替most。

5、a slice of, quite a few ,several代替some。

6、harbor the idea that, take the attitude that, hold the view that, it is widely shared that, it is universally acknowledged that)替think。

因为是书面语,所以要加that。

7、affair ,business ,matter代替thing 。

8、shared代common。

9、reap huge fruits代替get much benefit。

10、for my part, from my own perspective代替in my opinion。

11、Increasing(ly),growing代替more and more(注意没有growingly这种形式。所以当修饰名词时用increasing/growing.修饰形容词,副词用increasingly)

举例：Sth has gained growing popularity. Sth is increasingly popular with the advancement of sth.

12、little if anything,或little or nothing代替hardly

13、beneficial rewarding代替helpful be beneficial of

14、shopper, client, consumer, purchaser,代替customer

15、exceedingly, extremely代替very

16、hardly unnecessary, hardly inevitable ...代替necessary, inevitable。

17、sth appeals to sb, sth exerts a tremendous fascination on sb代替sb take interest in

18、capture ones attention代替attract ones attention

19、facet, dimension, sphere代aspect

20、be indicative of ,be suggestive of ,be fearful of代indicate, suggest ,fear

21、give rise to, lead to, result in, trigger代替cause

22、There are several reasons behind sth代替..reasons for sth

23、desire代替want。

24、pour attention into代替pay attention to。

25、bear in mind that代替remember。

26、enjoy, possess代替have。(注意process是过程的意思。)

27、interaction代替communication。

28、frown on sth代替be against ,disagree with sth。

29、to name only a few as an example代替for example。

30、next to/virtually impossible,代替nearly impossible。

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。

H1N1 influenza, since the claws reached into the earth and stuck it into our world caused great sensation. From Moscow, the United States, Japan, ... ... to China, have spared, showing the speed of its spread. While we use some of the medical technology we have can be prevented, you can cure, but it is still scary. The most laughable thing is that some people thus do not eat pork. However, these are not the focus of my concern, I am concerned, I am sad is:

When we state the first to be infected were found, one who returned from abroad Sichuanese, I heard mostly blame everyone, it makes me sad exception. Had returned from abroad is a good thing, is between the happy event. But because even not aware of being infected was a complete mess of things hands and become pieces of sad things. At first, I think we should sorry for him, should go to help him. However, many people said: "In the U.S., do not come back Well!" "We also are engaged in a state of panic." ... ...

So I write this, would like to call everyone together for their fuel.

Unfortunately, they are infected, and now has been isolated, they can not see their loved ones, they have lost freedom, they are very painful, very unwilling. So let us give them the courage to give them strength! Let us wish them a speedy recovery!

H1N1流感，自从这个魔爪伸进地球，伸进我们的世界就引起了极大的轰动。从莫斯科，美国，学习英语的网站，日本……到我们中国，无一幸免，可见其传播速度之快。虽然我们利用我们己有的医学技术，可以预防，可以根治，但是却还是令人恐慌。最可笑的是，有人因此而不吃猪肉。然而，这些都不是我关注的焦点，令我关注的，令我伤心的是：

当我们国家的第一个被传染者被发现时，就是那个从国外回来的四川人，我听到的大部分都是大家的苛责，这令我异常难过。原本从国外回来，是件好事，是间喜事。却因为连自己也不知道被传染的事搅的得一塌糊涂，成了件悲事。原本我想我们应该为他难过，应该去帮助他。然而，很多人却说：“在国外就不要回来嘛!”“还搞的我们人心惶惶的。”……

所以我写这篇，学英语的好网站，想呼吁大家，一起为他们加油。

他们不幸感染上了，现在被隔离，他们不能见到自己的亲人，好的英语学习网站，他们失去了自由，他们也很痛苦，很不甘。所以让我们给他们勇气，给他们力量!让我们一起祝愿他们早日康复!

健康：中药能够战胜甲流吗？

英语写作：Freedom in my Dream

英语是一种语言，从语言学角度来看，学生在掌握一定数量的词汇与语法知识后，就要用来表达自己的思想、见解，这些落实到纸面上就是书面表达。针对初中生的实际能力，书面表达为初中英语教学的一大难题，其常见形式多为看图作文。结合自己教学与写作的经验，对看图作文谈几点体会。

看图作文的写作从整体上可分为两个过程：一，感性认识过程，即通过画面直接获得信息的过程(究竟画面展示了一个什么情景);二，理性认识过程，即针对画面让学生发挥想象力，挖掘画面间的内在联系融入自己的思想与见解(画面的内涵是什么)。在实际教学过程中我将这两个过程具体渗透到五个环节(一“抓”，二“列”，三“变”，四“连”，五“检”)中去。

一“抓”为抓主题。首先，根据图片内容确定好题材与体裁 — 是写人还是写景，是说理还是叙事，是书信还是日记或其他应用文体。这一环节可采用 a, 求同法，即寻找画面中相同的人物、地点或时间等，来帮助学生确定主线，不致于跑题; b ，求异法，即启发学生观察几幅图的不同之处，挖掘出它们之间的内在联系从而确定体裁。

二“列”为列要点。由于书面表达是以一定的情景为基础，考查具有一定的针对性，因此要点要全面，无遗漏。要点主要是结合图片中的情景用自己熟悉的结构与词汇列出，忌用生疏的结构与词汇按汉语思维盲目罗列，原则“不求难，不求异，唯求准”。

三“变”为变要点为句子。将第二个环节中所罗列的要点，先按一定的时间、空间及逻辑顺序排列;然后选定恰当的主语与人称，再根据动作发生的时间与主谓关系拓词成句。结合初中生的实际，要求用他们熟悉、简单的结构来表达，避免因用长句和大量的复合句而出现过多的语法错误。如果遇到必须用长句表达时，可仿照、套用课本或各种阅读材料中出现的句型，切勿用汉语思维生造句子。

四“连”为连句成篇。这一环节是最关键的一环。首先，要根据题目所要求及画面展示确定好题材与体裁。其次，要确定好行文的人称与时态的基调。再次，要在句与句以及段与段之间加一些表转折、递进和因果等关系的关联词与过渡句，使文章前后照应，行文流畅。最后结合题目要求字数适当加入一些表达自己思想、见解的内容，使文章丰满显得有血有肉。

五“检”为文章检查。文章写成之后错误在所难免，检查这一环节不能省。检查可从如下几方面入手： 1 ，文章的体裁格式是否正确。 2 ，要点有无遗漏。 3 ，句子(人称、时态、语态、主谓一致、结构、词语搭配等)。 4 ，词汇(意义、拼写、时态语态，形容词与动词的形式，名词单复数)。 5 ，标点符号是否有遗漏与错误。

在经过以上几个环节之后，一篇符合要求的看图作文就算完成了。在这里还要提到的是，英语做为一门语言基本功的训练不可忽视，书面表达中书写尤为重要。此外，还应不断加强基础词汇与语法的积累与锤炼，只有这样书面表达才能有真正的提高。

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。

Direction: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay on the topic Choosing an Occupation. You should write at least 150 words following the outline given below in Chinese:

1.职业的选择很重要

2. 如何明智的选择自己的职业

3. 你的职业选择。

作文范文

Every individual faces the problem of choosing an occupation after graduating from university, which is of great importance in ones whole life. An appropriate occupation makes a man work with vigor and zest. Besides, it is beneficial for both the individual and the country。

To make an advisable choice, a graduate should take into account at least two aspects, namely, individual interest and the demand of the society. Only when the two aspects are connected, can a man show his ability and talent to the best advantage. If the two factors conflict, the former, in most cases, should give way to the latter, for it is interests that stimulate ones vigor and potentials。

In regard to my choice in the future, I want to work as an interpreter. I am keen on learning foreign languages, English in particular. Moreover, in the contemporary society, international exchange in economy and culture has been growing significantly. However, competent interpreters are far from enough. So I am determined to be a qualified interpreter。

[大学英语四级考试预测作文职业选择

小学低年级作文能力的培养，应该从看图写话训练起步，看图写话是作文最初步的训练，是培养刚刚进入小学的孩子的认识能力、形象思维能力、想象能力和表达能力的良好途径。

十余年来，我一直任教小学低年级语文，如何指导学生写好看图写话呢?这几年来，我在自己的教学实践中总结了以下五个方面：

1、看图说话，培养口头表达能力

口头表达能力是语言实践的重要工具，是书面表达，即写作的有力基础，有利于发展学生的思维。所以我们应该把看图说话当作一个重点来抓，是培养其表达能力的一个重要途径。有目的有计划地进行“看图说话”教学，可使学生在认识事物、口语表达的反复实践过程中，提高读写能力，增强对事物的观察能力和思维能力，进而发展智力。

低年级学生活泼好动，求知欲强，善于模仿，喜欢表现自己，凡事都要问个为什么，具体思维占优势，但是由于没有经过说话训练，表达起来缺乏条理性和连贯性，说起话来常是前言不达后语，跳跃性很强，有时重复，有时带有语病。在训练时不能操之过急，开始的要点不应过高。

在教学过程中，我注意了以下三点：

(1)要让学生先看明白，在想象的基础上，然后组织语言说出来，要求说得有头有尾，要遵循一定顺序，条理清楚，表达完整，声音响亮，并使用普通话。

(2)要表扬在语言表达上有独到之处的学生。鼓励学生用词的准确与生动，启发学生大胆思维、合理想象、积极发言。我总是要求学生：“谁能和大家说得不一样?还可以用哪个词语来形容?”注意发展学生的创造性思维。使学生兴趣盎然，表达精彩纷呈，富有童趣和灵性。一幅简单的图画，在不同的学生眼里就是一幅不同的图画。

(3)训练要有层次的进行。动员全班学生参与训练，敢说敢讲。先让口语表达较强的学生先说，再大面积展开。对有口头表达能力差的学生，要引导他们进一步提高口语能力：想好了再说，说完整、连贯的话，用自己的话来说。对那些胆小不敢说的学生，也要循循善诱，促其发言，哪怕是三言两语，也应予以肯定。

在此基础上再让学生写话，那自然是瓜熟蒂落、水到渠成了。

2、认真看图，培养观察力

看图写话，顾名思义就是就是要用眼睛看，看是基础。就是指导学生学会观察，养成良好的观察习惯。观察是一个知觉、思维、语言相结合的智力活动过程，观察是人们增长知识、认识世界的重要途径。观察能力的发展是思维、表达能力发展的基础和前提。看图说话之前只有经过认真仔细地观察才能有深厚的理解，才会在大脑里形成清晰的印象。学会观察和分析各种事物，就等于交给他们一把认识世界的金钥匙。但对于小学低年级的小朋友来说观察能力是十分欠缺的，他们看到一幅图往往毫无头绪，不知该如何下手，可以说无目的、无顺序。这就需要我们老师在旁边好好引导，教给他们观察的方法。首先引导他们看图要有顺序，或从上到下，从下到上;或从远到近，从近到远;或从左到右，从右到左：或从中间到四周。对画面所表达的主要内容先有一个整体性的了解。再从画面中人物的形体、相貌、服饰等，弄清人物的性别、年龄、身份;从人物的表情、动作，推测人物的思想，以及他在干什么，想什么;还要观察周围环境，弄清事情发生在什么时候，什么地方等等。使学生做到言之有序，使整幅图或多幅图画变成一个完整的、连贯的事物，使人物形象更加丰满逼真，故事情节更加曲折动人。

3、合理想象，培养想象力

看图写话的画面是一个个静止的人或物，而且比较单调，我们要引导学生通过仔细观察画面，通过老师适当的提问为支点，进行合理想象，使静止的画面尽量动起来，活起来，使单调的画面充实丰富起来。引导学生把不会思维的想象成为会思维的，把不会说话的想象成为会说话的，由一幅图联想到前前后后的几幅图由一个动作联想到前前后后的几个动作，有时，还可以只提供一种情境，让学生的想象自由驰骋。在语文教学中我们要积极引导学生进行思维训练，培养学生创造性思维能力，让学生插上想象的翅膀，使创新成为一种自觉的行动。

但是看图想象也要力求百花齐放，从“异”字入手。因为低年级的小朋友容易受到别人的影响，尽量让学生创新思维，进行大胆想象，想别人还没有想到的，说别人还没有说过的。正所谓“一花独放不是春，百花齐放春满园。”

4、看图写话，培养书面表达能力:

对于一年级的小朋友，我刚开始要求他们只要用一两句话写清“时间、地点、人物，干什么”就行了。慢慢地随着学生阅读量的增加，思维能力和口语表达的提升。我要求学生不仅要写完整，更是要写得具体、生动。写出人物的语言、神态、动作等等。

看图写话的画面是静止的，但是学生写出来的一段话或一篇文章是生动的、有趣的。充满了孩子对这个世界认知，写满了他们的善良和活泼。那一句句天真烂漫的话语让我们为之感动，为之欣喜若狂!

5、创设园地，培养写作积极性!

要想让在写作上刚刚起步的孩子们越写越有劲，越来越自信，就得让他们的进步得到老师和同学们的承认和肯定，享受成功的喜悦。我在教室一角开设一个“我的作文展”。把班内较好的作文随时上墙展览，学期结束，把他们的哪怕是几句或一段话或几篇文章收集成册，并进行打印。拿回去给爸爸、妈妈和朋友们看。让他们觉得自己是多么的了不起。这样等于在他们心中点了一把火，一把学生心中燃烧的希望之火。我相信这种乐观向上的心理才是最为可贵。

1. What is language for? Some people seem to think its for practicing grammar rules and learning lists of words--- the longer the words the better. Thats wrong. Language is for the exchange of ideas, for communication。

语言到底是用来干什么的呢?一些人认为它是用来操练语法规则和学习一大堆单词--而且单词越长越好。这个想法是错误的。语言是用来交换思想，进行交流沟通的!

2. The way to learn a language is to practice speaking it as often as possible。

学习一门语言的方法就是要尽量多地练习说。

3. A great man once said it is necessary to drill as much as possible, and the more you apply it in real situations, the more natural it will become。

一位伟人曾说，反复操练是非常必要的，你越多的将所学到的东西运用到实际生活中，他们就变的越自然。

4. Learning any language takes a lot of effort. But dont give up。

学习任何语言都是需要花费很多努力，但不要放弃。

5. Relax! Be patient and enjoy yourself. Learning foreign languages should be fun。

放松点!要有耐性，并让自己快乐!学习外语应该是乐趣无穷的。

6. Rome wasnt built in a day. Work harder and practice more. Your hard- work will be rewarded by god one day. God is equal to everyone!

冰冻三尺，非一日之寒。更加努力的学习，更加勤奋的操练，你所付出的一切将会得到上帝的报答，上帝是公平的。

7. Use a dictionary and grammar guide constantly. Keep a small English dictionary with you at all time. When you see a new word, look it up. Think about the word-- use it, in your mind, in a sentence。

经常使用字典和语法指南。随身携带一本小英文字典，当你看到一个新字时就去查阅它，想想这个字---然后去用它，在你的心中，在一个句子里。

8. Try to think in English whenever possible. When you see something think of the English word of it; then think about the word in a sentence。

一有机会就努力去用英文来思考。看到某事时，想想它的英文单词;然后把它用到一个句子中去。

9. Practice tenses as much as possible. When you learn a new verb, learn its various forms。

尽可能多的操练时态。学习一个动词的时候，要学习它的各种形态。

10. I would also like to learn more about the culture behind the language. When you understand the cultural background, you can better use the language。

我想学习和了解更多关于语言背后的文化知识，当你理解了文化背景，你就能更好地运用语言。

下面是由小编收集的关于初中英语写作的基础，欢迎阅读。

一、找到学生写作中存在的问题

1.汉语思维的影响。学生在写作中经常用汉语思维，忽略了英汉语序之间是有差别的，导致出现了大量的式英语，尽管洋洋洒洒一大篇，却没有得分点。

2.词或词组的用法及搭配出现错误。如enjoy，finish等单词后面只能接v-ing形式;“forget to do”和“forget doing”在意思上存在着显著的差异等。学生在做选择题或用所给词的适当形式填空时，大多数学生能做对，但在作文中，学生往往忽略了其用法，出现了不必要的错误。

3.时态、语态的构成及使用错误。例如，一般过去时的否定句中，助动词didn’t后的动词用原形，而完成时的句子中往往用动词的过去分词，在这方面，学生的拼写容易出现错误。

4.单词的拼写错误，标点使用不当，不注意大小写，遗漏冠词，介词的误用等。

5.结构松散。关联词的使用可使上下句和段落合理衔接，承上启下，使表达合乎逻辑，同时使文章结构严谨、紧凑，部分考生的作文虽然内容和语言还不错，但是由于过于执着于表格所给内容的顺序，没有进行灵活的处理，整篇文章看起来就象是句子翻译，并且句与句之间关系松懈，缺乏连接，以至于文章毫无流畅、优美之感。

二、如何培养学生英语写作能力

1.从单词入手。单词是英语学习的基础，单词过不了关，写作就无从谈起，因为单词是写作的基本单位。但是单词记忆又是学生学习英语的最薄弱环节，因此我们必须时刻告诫学生，单词的学习过程，实际上就是人与遗忘作斗争的过程，要长期坚持下去。 志和必胜的信心。

2.由“句式”到“段落”的训练阶段。从七年级开始就对学生进行书写小段落的训练，做到口笔同步。随着教学的不断深入，写作内容也不断丰富，八年级就要注意段落中的时态差异、句型变化以及过渡句的使用等。到了九年级就要注意文章的体裁、格式、写作方法、复句的正确性以及中外文化的差异性。

3.课前几分钟进行Free Talk。学生可以准备谜语、笑话、小故事、即兴演讲等。之后向听的学生进行提问，其他学生只有认真听才能回答出问题。Free Talk为学生提供了很好的实践机会。

4.在课堂上，我们要注重听说的训练，给学生提供大量的口语练习材料，从句子到对话，从对话到文章，以培养学生的语感。同时，加强写的训练，利用所学的句型大量翻译句子，使学生能够真正做到举一反三。此外，还要让学生在练习时注意区分英汉语序的不同。

5.要求学生多写多练。教师按照每个单元呈现的重点内容为学生规定文题或写作范围，指导学生写一些代表性的文章，并结合学生比较优秀的作文进行讲评，取其精华，去其糟粕，完成一篇优秀的范文。使学生在讲评的过程中领略这些文章的优缺点，教会学生如何自己修改作文，并将范文抄写在固定的作文本上，不断积累，并随知识的不断扩展对已写的文章根据需要不断进行修改或扩充，使其更加完美。

6.加强背诵。看了好文章，不单是理解就够了，还应该在理解的基础上多多背诵，才能达到融会贯通、据为已有的效果。英语宜多诵多背，把一些句型、短语，一些文章的片段或全篇，背得滚瓜烂熟，让这些材料在你的脑袋里扎根，当你要用的时候，它们便会而然地冒出来。背诵可以培养正确使用语言的习惯，增强语感，这样就可以避免生搬硬套地写一些式的。加强背诵能变难为易，变费力为省力，能有效地帮助学生提高写作能力。现在背诵和熟记一些语言材料，对中学生来说将会受用无穷。

7.通过缩写和改写课文，培养学生的概括能力。缩写课文会激励学生去认真钻研课文内容，有助于加深学生对课文的理解，提高学生归纳和进行简要表达的能力。缩写课文一般应该用自己的话来写，不能只停留在拼凑原文的词句上。这样既可以使学生熟练掌握英语表达方法，也是对知识进行再创造的一个过程。

导语：写作方法就是写作中进行表现时运用的方法，是作者为表情达意而采取的有效艺术手段。

学生写作时，如果语句平平，只选用一些普通的、直截了当的词，那么，这样写出来的文章根本没有可阅读行，就像是一碗没有油盐酱醋面条一样，让人提不起一点精神和看下去的欲望，呆板、单调，没有可读性。如果一篇文章要让读者有可读性、有深度，同学们更应该掌握一些高级点词和语句来装饰你的文章，突出这篇文章的彩头，使文章增添文采，给读者以不一样的感受。具体方法可以参照下面的语句：

1. 画龙点睛，一篇文章的开头很重要。

在通常情况下，英语句子的排列方式为“主语+谓语+宾语”，即主语一般都会在谓语前面。但若根据情况适当改变句子的开头方式，比如在文章的开始的时候写一些倒状语句或以状语为起始语句的开头，这样子的文章更具表现力和感染力。如：

(1) There stands an old temple at the top of the hill.

→ At the top of the hill there stands an old temple.

在小山顶上有一座古庙。

(2) You can do it well only in this way.

→ Only in this way can you do it well.

只有这样你才能把它做好。

(3) A young woman sat by the window.

→ By the window sat a young woman.

窗户边坐着一个年轻妇女。

2. 避免重复使用同一词语

为了使表达更生动，更富表现力，同学们在写作时应尽量避免重复使用同一词语来表示同一意思，尤其是一些老生常谈的词语。如有的同学一看到“喜欢”二字，就会立刻想起like，事实上，英语中表示类似意思的词和短语很多，如 love, enjoy, prefer, appreciate, be fond of, care for等。如：

I like reading while my brother likes watching television.

→ I like reading while my brother enjoys watching television.

我喜欢看书，而我的兄弟却喜欢看电视。

3. 合理使用省略句

合理恰当地使用省略句，不仅可以使文章精练、简洁，而且会使文章更具文采和可读性。如：

(1) He may be busy. If he’s busy, I’ll call later. If he is not busy, can I see him now?

→ He may be busy. If so, I’ll call later. If not, can I see him now?

他可能很忙，要是这样，我以后再来拜访。要是不忙，我现在可以见他吗?

(2) If the weather is fine, we’ll go. If it is not fine, we’ll not go.

→ If the weather is fine, we’ll go. If not, not.

如果天气好，我们就去；如果天气不好，我们就不去了。

(3) She could have applied for that job, but she didn’t do so.

→ She could have applied for that job, but she didn’t.

她本可申请这份工作的，但她没有。

4. 适当运用非谓语结构

非谓语结构通常被认为是一种高级结构，适当运用非谓语结构，会给人一种熟练驾驭语言的印象。如：

(1) When he heard the news, they all jumped for joy.

→ Hearing the news, they all jumped for joy.

听了这消息他们都高兴得跳了起来。

(2) As I didn’t know her address, I wasn’t able to get in touch with her.

→ Not knowing her address, I wasn’t able to get in touch with her.

由于不知道她的地址，我没法和她联系。

(3) As he was born into a peasant family, he had only two years of schooling.

→ Born into a peasant family, he had only two years of schooling.

他出生农民家庭，只上过两年学。

5. 结合使用长句与短句

在英语写作中，过多地使用长句或过多地使用短句都不好。正确的做法是，根据实际情况在文章中交替使用长句与短语，使文章显得错落有致，这样不仅使文章在形式上增加美感，而且使文章读起来铿锵有力。如：

At noon we had a picnic lunch in the sunshine. Then we had a short rest. Then we began to play happily. We sang and danced. Some told stories. Some played chess.

→ At noon we had a picnic lunch in the sunshine. After a short rest, we had great fun singing and dancing, telling jokes and playing chess.

中午我们晒着太阳吃野餐。休息一会儿后，我们唱的唱歌，跳的跳舞，还有的讲笑话、下棋，大家玩得很开心。

6. 适当使用短语代替单词

(1) He has decided to be a teacher when he grows up.

→ He has made up his mind to be a teacher when he grows up.

他已决定长大了当老师。

(2) He doesnt like music.

→ He doesnt care much for music.

他不大喜欢音乐。

(3) He told me that the question was now under discussion.

→ He told me that the question was now being discussed.

他告诉我问题现正正在讨论中。

7. 恰当套用某些固定表达

(1) He was very tired. He couldn’t walk any farther.

→ He was too tired to walk any farther.

他太累了，不能再往前走了。

(2) The film was very interesting. Both the teachers and the students liked it.

→ The film was so interesting that both the teachers and the students liked it.

这电影很有趣，学生和老师都很喜欢。

(3) Your son is old. He can look after himself now.

→ Your son is old enough to look after himself now.

你的儿子已经长大，可以自己照顾自己了。

8. 尽量使句子带点“洋味”

(1) Dont worry. Be bold and try it, and youll learn it soon.

→Dont worry. Just go for it, and youll get it soon.

别担心，大胆试一试，你很快就会学会的。

(2) Thank you for playing with us.

→Thank you for sharing the time with us.

谢谢你陪我玩。

9. 综合使用各类所谓的“高级”结构

(1) Now everyone knows the news. I think Jim must have let it out.

→ Now everyone knows the news. I think it must have been Jim who has let it out.

现在人人都知道这消息了，我想一定是吉姆把它泄露出去的。

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

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

我们所能做的只是站在那儿，设法抓住违章者。

(3) If her pronunciation is not better than her teacher’s, it is at least as good as her teacher’s.

→ Her pronunciation is as good as, if not better than, her teacher’s.

如果她的语音不比她的老师好的话，至少也不会比她老师的差。

10. 适当使用名言警句点缀

在写作时根据实际情况恰当地用上一两句名言警句来点缀文章，不仅使文章显得有深度、有智慧，而且会让文章在评分中上一个“得分档次”。如：

(1) As the proverb says, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” Though you fail this time, you needn’t lose heart. As long as you work hard and stick to your dream, you will succeed one day.

(2) There is a proverb goes like this “Life isn’t a bed of roses.” It is ture that it is likely for everyone to meet problems and difficulties in life.

(3) In the modern world, more and more people live alone, which is not so good for our life. It is better for us to make more friends and enjoy friendship. Just as a proverb says, “A near friend is better than a far-dwelling kinsman.”

[关于英语作文的写作方法指导

教案(Teaching Plan)是教师施教的课时计划或方案,是帮助教师有效地进行素质教育教学的依据.教案可以帮助教师有计划、有步骤地进行素质教育教学,充分利用课堂教学时间,高质量地完成教学任务.教案写得如何将直接影响教学效果的好坏.因此,在日常教学中,广大教师都非常注重写教案.那么写教案时应写什么呢?

一、写课题(Topic)和课型(Lesson Type)

课题相当于文章的标题,讲课时要首先告诉学生,并写在黑板上.因此要写得准确.课型是指该节课的讲授类型.初中英语的主要课型有:新授课(New lesson)、巩固课(Reinforcement Lesson)、复习课(Revision Lesson)、语音课(Phonetic Lesson)、听力课(Listening Lesson)、听说课(Aural-Oral Lesson)、阅读课(Reading Lesson)、语法课(Grammar Lesson)等.不同的课型应用不同的授课方式或方法,只有确定了课型,才能选择有效的素质教育教学方法.

二、写素质教育教学目标(Teaching Objective)

素质教育教学目标是教案的核心内容,是教师施教的准绳.教学目标要符合大纲对教材的要求.由于教学目标要在课堂上展示给学生,让学生明确,所以写素质教育目标时,要力求简明扼要,浅显易懂,便于操作和检测,一般3~4个目标为宜.

三、写素质教育教学的重点(Main Points)、难点(Difficult Points)和关键点(Key Points) 素质教育重点是课堂教学的主要任务;教学难点是师生顺利完成教学任务的障碍;素质教学关键是攻克教学难点的突破口.在教案中写清一节课的教学重点、难点和关键点,能提醒教师在讲课时注意突出重点、突破难点、抓住关键.

四、写教具(Teaching Tools)

课堂上需要什么教具要写清楚,如录音机、教材录音带、教学挂图、卡片、实物(或模型)、小黑板、刻印好的练习题、彩色粉笔、幻灯片等.

五、写素质教育教学过程(Teaching Procedure)

素质教育教学过程是教案的主要部分.写教学过程主要写以下几方面的内容:

1. 写教学环节.教学环节即教学任务是什么要写清楚,做到心中有数.目前有些教师采用"三阶段六环节"教学模式,即:准备阶段(自由交流、复习检查)、讲练阶段(导入课程、分层操练)和发展阶段(巩固发展、布置作业).

2. 写知识点和所用时间.写好知识点,教师使用教案时能一目了然,有的放矢.写好所用时间,能使教师从容掌握教学速度,合理安排每个教学环节所需的时间,充分利用课堂时间.

3. 写教师活动.不仅要写教师"教什么",还要写出教师"怎样教",即写清楚教师要教的内容,写出讲授这些内容的方法.写出课堂用语和各环节的过渡语.课堂用语要求简练、口语化,用学生已经学过的熟悉的、听得懂的英语来解释或表达新的教学内容.各环节之间的过渡语要自然流畅.写出使用教具的时机和方法,写板书内容等.

4. 写学生活动.写出学生学习的内容和学习方法,特别是怎样学应写清楚.不能简单地把学生活动写成听、读、思考、操练、做题等.

六、写课堂训练题(Exercises)

备课时精心设计的有针对性的随堂练习题和达标题要写在教案中.写清出示这些题的办法,如用小黑板、看刻印材料或学生已有材料等.写出这些题的答案和解题方法.

七、写课堂小结(Summing-up on Teaching)

课堂小结是教师帮助学生回顾和总结本节课的学习内容的重要环节.小结的方式和方法要在教案中写清楚,不论是教师引导学生总结,还是由教师归纳总结,都要注意把本节课的内容纳入知识系统之中,使学生在整体上把握知识.

八、写板书设计(Blackboard Designs)

板书是有声有色的教学语言,它具有直观性、形象性和启发性.因此,教师在课堂上要有计划

地使用黑板,板书什么内容、写在什么位置、用什么颜色的粉笔等要在备课时设计好,并写在教案中.避免课堂上东写一个句子、西写一个短语、一会儿写、一会儿擦、一会儿擦了又写的板书混乱现象.好的板书能使讲课的内容系统化、结构化,有利于学生复习本节课的知识. 写教案时要考虑的问题

1、如何开始备课

在教师着手备课之前，必须吃透课程标准（大纲）及教材，在此基础上，考虑学生的认知规律和实际的语言能力，以确定课题和教学目的，明确教学目标。从教学目标出发，确定重点和难点，考虑用哪些教学法来组织课堂。然后精心挑选、设计练习，确定要做、改、删、增的练习，列授课计划提纲，再逐步仔细预测各种教学技巧和教学手段的应用，特别是涉及可能修改计划、增删内容的教学步骤。

2. 思考几个问题

（1）教学技巧上，是否有足够的变化可以使课堂教学生动有趣？成功的外语课上总有不同的活动，使学生思维活跃，情绪高涨。

（2）不同教学技巧的应用和教学的组织有没有得到有序的、合乎逻辑的安排？理想化的课堂教学须朝着教学目标由易及难、循序渐进。建立在新知识之上的教学活动必须精心安排。

（3）整堂课的节奏设计得好吗？节奏的含义，可以有以下三个方面：第一，活动不能太短，也不能太长。如果课堂活动多而短，那么学生刚刚找到某活动的“感觉”，又得“跳到”下一个活动去了。这样不好。第二，教师应考虑如何把各种教学技巧、教学手段和教学组织形式揉合在一起。例如，一堂课上连续搞全班俩俩全班小组俩俩全班……的活动，每个活动五分钟，那么，这些活动是难以发挥其应有作用的。第三，控制好节奏也有利于各个教学活动之间的衔接。例如：

（4）整节课的时间有没有安排好？这是备课最难控制的因素之一。新教师往往容易提早授完所备内容，而后又易矫枉过正，不能完成课时计划。这里有两点值得提醒。预先准备一些“备用”的复习活动。如果提早授完已准备的内容，则进行复习巩固练习。

3. 学生的个体差异

随着教学过程的重心由教师向学生转变，学生的主体作用日益突出。课堂教学必须充分考虑学生的个体差异。我们主张，备课一般应以中等程度的学生为准，但也应适当照顾两头的学生。可以考虑以下五个方面：（1）教学内容适当包含一些较难或较易的项目，（2）针对不同水平的学生问不同难度的问题，（3）设计的教学活动尽可能让全体同学都参与。

4. 学生谈话与教师谈话

备课时要充分考虑教师与学生的谈话时间。一般的英语课上，总是教师说得多， 学生说得少。要注意让学生有较多的机会进行交际。

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

要求考生列举出解决问题的多种途径：

１．问题现状

２．怎样解决(解决方案的优缺点)

In recent days, we have to face I problem-----A, which is becoming more and more serious. First, ------------(说明Ａ的现状)．Second, ---------------(举例进一步说明现状) Confronted with A, we should take a series of effective measures to cope with the situation. For one thing, ---------------(解决方法一). For another -------------(解决方法二). Finally, --------------(解决方法三). Personally, I believe that -------------(我的解决方法). Consequently, Im confident that a bright future is awaiting us because --------------(带来的好处).

中学英语教学大纲中明确指出：“写是书面表达和传递信息的交际能力。培养初步写的能力，是英语教学的目的之一。”在近年的高考中英语写作也占有相当比重。因此，在高中阶段教师应在指导和组织学生进行英语写作上下功夫，在平时教学中应有计划有目的地去训练和提高学生的写作能力。

一、学生能充分认识英语写作的重要性是写作能力提高的必要条件。

英语写作能力的提高需要持之以恒的长期训练。如果学生对写作重要性认识不够，他们就不能积极主动地去配合老师搞好写作训练，甚至产生逆反心理，产生对立情绪，英语写作就会半途而废，达不到预期目的。

在平时教学中，老师要经常性地有意识地对学生进行写作重要性的教育。学生一进入高中就要让他们了解初中和高中英语教学要求的异同。

我给学生找几份中考和高考题，帮助他们了解中考和高考英语试题对基础知识和基本技能要求的相同之处和不同之处，引导他们转变观念，更新和完善学习方法，要让他们了解到英语写作在高考中、实际运用中以及对将来继续学习英语的重要性。

我还联系在过去高考中英语取得优异成绩的毕业生，用书信介绍学好英语的方法，特别是在英语写作方面的成功经验和英语写作对他们当时及后来英语学习的重要性。这些毕业生有很大的感召力，很有说服性，尤其对那些有逆反心理的学生。

二、指导写作应注意的几个问题：

1．教师要有明确合理的教学计划和教学程序，组织系统规范的有序训练。

2．帮助和要求学生养成积极主动地坚持英语写作的良好习惯。

3．坚持循序渐进的训练原则。写作要先易后难，先短后长，先学会运用简单句、并列句，后学会用复合句表达，先写正确句子逐步过渡到围绕一个人、一件事、一个观点去写有中心的文章，由不限定时间到限定时间，由限定时间长到限定时间短，由限定字数少到多……

4．分程度要求。对学生的要求不能一刀切，对学习好的要求要高，对学习差的要求要适当低一些。要避免有些学生轻而易举垂手可得，而有些学生又可望而不可及的情况发生。

5．注意讲评。要经常指出优点，以利模仿，指出缺点，警示避免。

6．鼓励优秀，耐心帮助差生。充分利用板报、专栏进行优秀作文展览，或者也可采用传阅方式进行。但不能放弃或岐视差生，要经常帮助他们树立信心，掌握写作方法和技巧。

7．基础知识和能力并重，听说读和写并举。教师在平时教学中应充分利用一切可以利用的机会启发引导学生提高自己的写作水平。如遇到优秀的句、段或篇提示学生注意欣赏作者的表达法，把它们作为范例，在自己写作中加以模仿和运用。又如遇到英汉表达方法不同之处，提示学生注意英语的正确表达法，切忌出现汉语式的英语。要帮助学生养成正确运用标点符号的好习惯，切忌一点到底的错误方法。

8．要求学生在写作中宁简勿误，不能养成随随便便的习惯，要养成严谨推敲的风气。

三、训练写作的常用方法。

写作训练应考虑循序渐进的原则，采取逐步提高的形式进行。

1．用学过的词、短语或句式，模仿课文中的表达法造句。2．换课文中的人物、时态、语态或体裁等改写课文。3．看图作文。4．填补式作文。5．写课文复述材料或写心得体会。6．将打乱顺序的句子按事件发展的时间顺序或逻辑关系等整理成一篇完整的短文。7．教师给出题目和提纲让学生写作。8．写日记或周记。9．材料作文。教师给出汉语提示让学生用英语表达。

四、注意纠正学生英语作写中容易出现的错误。

学生最初写作时，教师要给予必要的指导，使他们少犯错误。教师还要经常性地例举错误的表达法，提醒学生注意避免。在批阅作文时教师要随时标出学生错误之处，还要随时记录学生所犯错误，把学生的错误加以归类总结，把普遍性的错误提出来，让学生集体改错，使他们的语言表达尽可能地规范正确。

总之，学生英语写作能力在老师有计划的组织和耐心帮助、正确引导下，在学生长期积极密切的配合下是能够得以逐步提高的。

一、充分准备，打好基础。

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

二、认真审题，明确要求

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

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

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

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

要写好英语作文，还要带着敏锐的目光细心地观察，注意英语中一些表达上的习惯。小编收集了中考英语作文的写作技巧，欢迎阅读。

一、要善于模仿

对大多数学习英语的同学来说，英语的词汇量、句式的积累还极其有限，远不能达到用英文流畅表达，挥洒自如的境地。在这一阶段进行创作是不合时宜的，如果非要创造，只能写出“long time no see”这样的文字来。因此，模仿是这一阶段的必经途径。

谈到模仿，一些同学的办法就是背一堆范文，然后再到考场上进行一个“剪切”、“粘贴”的工作，效果可想而知。这不是真正意义上的模仿，充其量算是默写课文。如何模仿呢?

首先，模仿的目标要明确。模仿的重点永远要放在一定的句式结构上，而非个别的词汇。道理很简单：一个词，随着文章内容的变换，可能就不能用了;而句式结构是放置四海而皆准的东西，适用的范围广，学来对写作的帮助也就明显。

其次，模仿的材料要地道。像新概念英语这样的教材就提供了很多原汁原味的英语表达法。盲目选择文章学习，记一些不中不洋的句子，以讹传讹，浪费时间。

最后，模仿要体现在实际动笔上。比如说，新概念第三册有一个句式说：“…for the simple reason that…”表示某种现象的原因是什么，用在大学英语考试中，我们就可以拿来解释为什么自行车在中国如此的流行，表达为：“the bicycle is very popular in china for the simple reason that…”。然而，很多同学经常背了这些句式不用，一谈到原因仍然是“…because…”，等等。

二、要灵活变通

在批改英语作文的过程中，经常能发现一些将中文生硬地翻译成英文的表达法。由于中英文之间的差异和词汇量、表达法积累的不足，出现难于表达的情况是十分正常的。关键问题在于如何处理。有一句话叫做“立志如山，行道如水”，套用在这个问题上就很合适。写英文作文，一定要有决心把它写好，有信心把意思表达清楚，这是“立志如山”;但关键是遇到问题时要有个灵活的态度，能像流水一样变通解决问题。

有个翻译界的故事说：在某大型国际会议的招待会上，一道菜是用鸡蛋做的。与会的客人问翻译：“what is it made of?”本来是非常简单的一个问题，结果翻译太紧张，忘了“egg”这个词，但是他急中生智，回答：“it is made of miss hen’s son.”这里，就是一个灵活变通的范例。绕道表达，是写作中应该常常运用的一种方法。

三、要细心观察

要写好英语作文，还要带着敏锐的目光细心地观察，注意英语中一些表达上的习惯。

比如说，在正式文体的写作中，很少用 “it isn"t”这样的略缩形式，而往往是一板一眼地写作 “it is not”。同理，在正式文体中的日期一般不缩写，阿拉伯数字一般会用英文表达(特别长的数字除外)。

再比如说，翻翻新概念第三册所有的课文，会发现凡是一段文章的段首句出现转折时，转折词however都放在句子结构中的第二部分，以插入语的形式出现。分析原因，是因为段落一开始就用转折词，会时转折显得较生硬、突兀。

最后，许多同学在写作文时，习惯于把 “since” “because” “for”这样的词放在句首引导原因状语从句。事实上，在我们见到的英语报刊杂志文章中，这样的从句一般都是放在主句之后的。另外, “and”也常常被误放在一句话的开头，表示两个句子之间的并列或递进关系。其实，经常留心地道的英语文章能发现，如果是并列关系，完全可以不用连词;如果是递进关系，用 “furthermore” “what is more”更为普遍。

四、要心有全局

英文写作十分强调形式上的严谨性，特别是全局的丝丝入扣。如果写作时结构意识良好，应试写作就简化成为一个填空的过程了。框架万变不离其宗，适当地填如观点、素材，文章就自然而然地立起来了。

掌握了这些英文写作中的练习技巧，会使提高英文写作水平的努力有更大的收益。

下面智康教育跟大家分享写作的“五项基本原则” ：

1、 长短句原则

工作还得一张一驰呢，老让读者读长句，累死人!写一个短小精辟的句子，相反，却可以起到画龙点睛的作用。而且如果我们把短句放在段首或者段末，也可以揭示主题：

as a creature, i eat; as a man, i read. although one action is to meet the primary need of my body and the other is to satisfy the intellectual need of mind, they are in a way quite similar.

如此可见，长短句结合，抑扬顿挫，岂不爽哉?牢记!

强烈建议：在文章第一段(开头)用一长一短，且先长后短;在文章主体部分，要先用一个短句解释主要意思，然后在阐述几个要点的时候采用先短后长的句群形式，定会让主体部分妙笔生辉!文章结尾一般用一长一短就可以了。

2、 主题句原则

国有其君，家有其主，文章也要有其主。否则会给人造成“群龙无首”之感!相信各位读过一些破烂文学，故意把主体隐藏在文章之内，结果造成我们稀里糊涂!不知所云!所以奉劝各位一定要写一个主题句，放在文章的开头(保险型)或者结尾，让读者一目了然，必会平安无事!

特别提示：隐藏主体句可是要冒险的!

to begin with, you must work hard at your lessons and be fully prepared before the exam(主题句). without sufficient preparation, you can hardly expect to answer all the questions correctly.

3、 一二三原则

领导讲话总是第一部分、第一点、第二点、第三点、第二部分、第一点… 如此罗嗦。可毕竟还是条理清楚。考官们看文章也必然要通过这些关键性的“标签”来判定你的文章是否结构清楚，条理自然。破解方法很简单，只要把下面任何一组的词汇加入到你的几个要点前就清楚了。

1)first, second, third, last(不推荐，原因：俗)

2)firstly, secondly, thirdly, finally(不推荐，原因：俗)

3)the first, the second, the third, the last(不推荐，原因：俗)

4)in the first place, in the second place, in the third place, lastly(不推荐，原因：俗)

5)to begin with, then, furthermore, finally(强烈推荐)

6)to start with, next, in addition, finally(强烈推荐)

7)first and foremost, besides, last but not least(强烈推荐)

8)most important of all, moreover, finally

9)on the one hand, on the other hand(适用于两点的情况)

10)for one thing, for another thing(适用于两点的情况)

4、 短语优先原则

写作时，尤其是在考试时，如果使用短语，有两个好处：其一、用短语会使文章增加亮点，如果老师们看到你的文章太简单，看不到一个自己不认识的短语，必然会看你低一等。相反，如果发现亮点—精彩的短语，那么你的文章定会得高分了。其二、关键时刻思维短路，只有凑字数，怎么办?用短语是一个办法!比如：

i cannot bear it.

可以用短语表达：i cannot put up with it.

i want it.

可以用短语表达：i am looking forward to it.

这样字数明显增加，表达也更准确。

5、 多变句式原则

1)加法(串联)

都希望写下很长的句子，像个老外似的，可就是怕写错，怎么办，最保险的写长句的方法就是这些，可以在任何句子之间加and, 但最好是前后的句子又先后关系或者并列关系。比如说：

i enjor music and he is fond of playing guitar.

如果是二者并列的，我们可以用一个超级句式：

not only the fur coat is soft, but it is also warm.

其它的短语可以用：

besides, furthermore, likewise, moreover

2)转折(拐弯抹角)

批评某人缺点的时候，我们总习惯先拐弯抹角说说他的优点，然后转入正题，再说缺点，这种方式虽然阴险了点，可毕竟还比较容易让人接受。所以呢，我们说话的时候，只要在要点之前先来点废话，注意二者之间用个专这次就够了。

the car was quite old, yet it was in excellent condition.

the coat was thin, but it was warm.

更多的短语：

despite that, still, however, nevertheless, in spite of, despite, notwithstanding

3)因果(so, so, so)

昨天在街上我看到了一个女孩，然后我主动搭讪，然后我们去咖啡厅，然后我们认识了，然后我们成为了朋友…可见，讲故事的时候我们总要追求先后顺序，先什么，后什么，所以然后这个词就变得很常见了。其实这个词表示的是先后或因果关系!

the snow began to fall, so we went home.

更多短语：

then, therefore, consequently, accordingly, hence, as a result, for this reason, so that

4)失衡句(头重脚轻，或者头轻脚重)

有些人脑袋大，身体小，或者有些人脑袋小，身体大，虽然我们不希望长成这个样子，可如果真的是这样了，也就必然会吸引别人的注意力。文章中如果出现这样的句子，就更会让考官看到你的句子与众不同。其实就是主语从句，表语从句，宾语从句的变形。

举例：this is what i can do.

whether he can go with us or not is not sure.

同样主语、宾语、表语可以改成如下的复杂成分：

when to go, why he goes away…

5)附加(多此一举)

如果有了老婆，总会遇到这样的情况，当你再讲某个人的时候，她会插一句说，我昨天见过他;或者说，就是某某某，如果把老婆的话插入到我们的话里面，那就是定语从句和同位语从句或者是插入语。

the man whom you met yesterday is a friend of mine.

i don’t enjoy that book you are reading.

mr liu, our oral english teacher, is easy-going.

其实很简单，同位语--要解释的东西删除后不影响整个句子的构成;定语从句—借用之前的关键词并且用其重新组成一个句子插入其中，但是whom or that 关键词必须要紧跟在先行词之前。

Sam Walton(1918-)

Contrary to popular belief, Sam Walton (the founder of Wal-Mart) was not from Arkansas. He was actually born in Kingfish, Oklahoma on March 29, 1918. He was raised in Missouri where he worked in his fathers store while attending school. This was his first retailing experience and he really enjoyed it. After graduating from the University of Missouri in 1940, he began his own career as a retail merchant when he opened the first of several franchises of the Ben Franklin five-and-dime franchises in Arkansas.

This would lead to bigger and better things and he soon opened his first Wal-Mart store in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas. Wal-Mart specialized in name-brands at low prices and Sam Walton was surprised at the success. Soon a chain of Wal-Mart stores sprang up across rural America. Waltons management style was popular with employees and he founded some of the basic concepts of management that are still in use today. After taking the company public in 1970, Walton introduced his "profit sharing plan". The profit sharing plan was a plan for Wal-Mart employees to improve their income dependent on the profitability of the store. Sam Walton believed that "individuals dont win, teams do". Employees at Wal-Mart stores were offered stock options and store discounts. These benefits are commonplace today, but Walton was among the first to implement them. Walton believed that a happy employee meant happy customers and more sales.

Walton believed that by giving employees a part of the company and making their success dependent on the companys success, they would care about the company.

By the 1980s, Wal-Mart had sales of over one billion dollars and over three hundred stores across North America. Wal-Marts unique decentralized distribution system, also Waltons idea, created the edge needed to further spur growth in the 1980s amidst growing complaints that the "superstore" was squelching smaller, traditional Mom and Pop stores. By 1991, Wal-Mart was the largest U.S. retailer with 1,700 stores. Walton remained active in managing the company, as president and CEO until 1988 and chairman until his death. He was awarded the Medal of Freedom shortly before his death.

Walton died in 1992, being the worlds second richest man, behind Bill Gates. He passed his company down to his three sons, daughter and wife. Wal-Mart Stores Incorporated (located in Bentonville, Arkansas) is also in charge of "Sams Club". Wal-Mart stores now operate in Mexico, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, China and Puerto Rico. Sam Waltons visions were indeed successful.

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

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

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

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

【译文】

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

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

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

不要把好东西扔掉，换个时候你会觉得它们大有用处。

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