英语作文写作三要点通用20篇

一、开头句型

1.As far as ...is concerned

2.It goes without saying that...

3.It can be said with certainty that...

4.As the proverb says，

5.It has to be noticed that...

6.It`s generally recognized that...

7.It`s likely that ...

8.It`s hardly that...

9.It’s hardly too much to say that...

10.What calls for special attention is that...需要特别注意的是

11.There’s no denying the fact that...毫无疑问，无可否认

12.Nothing is more important than the fact that...

13.what’s far more important is that...

二、衔接句型

A case in point is ...

As is often the case...

As stated in the previous paragraph 如前段所述

But the problem is not so simple. Therefore 然而问题并非如此简单，所以……

But it’s a pity that...

For all that...In spite of the fact that...

Further, we hold opinion that...

However , the difficulty lies in...

Similarly, we should pay attention to...

not(that)...but(that)...不是，而是

In view of the present station.鉴于目前形势

As has been mentioned above...

In this respect, we may as well (say) 从这个角度上我们可以说

However, we have to look at the other side of the coin, that is... 然而我们还得看到事物的另一方面，即 …

三、结尾句型

I will conclude by saying...

Therefore, we have the reason to believe that...

All things considered,总而言之

It may be safely said that...

Therefore, in my opinion, it’s more advisable...

From what has been discussed above, we may safely draw the conclusion that….

The data/statistics/figures lead us to the conclusion that….

It can be concluded from the discussion that...从中我们可以得出这样的结论

From my point of view, it would be better if...在我看来……也许更好

四、举例句型

Let’s take...to illustrate this.试举例以兹证明

let’s take the above chart as an example to illustrate this.

Here is one more example.

Take … for example.

The same is true of….

This offers a typical instance of….

We may quote a common example of….

Just think of….

五、常用于引言段的句型

1. Some people think that …. To be frank, I can not agree with their opinion for the reasons below.

2. For years, … has been seen as …, but things are quite different now.

3. I believe the title statement is valid because….

4. I cannot entirely agree with the idea that …. I believe….

5. My argument for this view goes as follows.

6. Along with the development of…, more and more….

7. There is a long-running debate as to whether….

8. It is commonly/generally/widely/ believed /held/accepted/recognized that….

9. As far as I am concerned, I completely agree with the former/ the latter.

10. Before giving my opinion, I think it is essential to look at the argument of both sides.

六、表示比较和对比的常用句型和表达法

1. A is completely / totally / entirely different from B.

2. A and B are different in some/every way / respect / aspect.

3. A and B differ in….

4. A differs from B in….

5. The difference between A and B is/lies in/exists in….

6. Compared with/In contrast to/Unlike A, B….

7. A…, on the other hand,/in contrast,/while/whereas B….

8. While it is generally believed that A …, I believe B….

9. Despite their similarities, A and B are also different.

10. Both A and B …. However, A…; on the other hand, B….

11. The most striking difference is that A…, while B….

七、演绎法常用的句型

1. There are several reasons for…, but in general, they come down to three major ones.

2. There are many factors that may account for…, but the following are the most typical ones.

3. Many ways can contribute to solving this problem, but the following ones may be most effective.

4. Generally, the advantages can be listed as follows.

5. The reasons are as follows.

八、因果推理法常用句型

1. Because/Since we read the book, we have learned a lot.

2. If we read the book, we would learn a lot.

3. We read the book; as a result / therefore / thus / hence / consequently / for this reason / because of this, we’ve learned a lot.

4. As a result of /Because of/Due to/Owing to reading the book, we’ve learned a lot.

5. The cause of/reason for/overweight is eating too much.

6. Overweight is caused by/due to/because of eating too much.

7. The effect/consequence/result of eating too much is overweight.

8. Eating too much causes/results in/leads to overweight.

中国民间的传统节日，在夏历五月初五，也叫“端阳”、“蒲节”、“天中节”、“大长节”、“沐兰节”、“女儿节”、“小儿节”。它是汉族的传统节日之一此外，端午节还有许多别称，如：午日节、重五节，五月节、浴兰节、女儿节，天中节、地腊、诗人节、龙日、艾节、端五、夏节、重午、午日等等。虽然名称不同，但总体上说，各地人民过节的习俗还是同多于异的。 时至今日，端午节仍是中国人民中一个十分盛行的隆重节日。

A traditional Chinese Folk Festival, in the fifth day of the fifth lunar month lunar calendar in May, also called the "Dragon Boat Festival", "Dragon Boat Festival", "day day", "long day", "Mu Lan day", "daughter Festival", "childrens day". It is one of the Chinese traditional festival the Dragon Boat Festival and many another name, such as: Good afternoon, section, section five, May Festival, bath Festival, daughter of festival, festival days, to LA, poet Festival, dragon day, AI Festival, at the end of five, the summer festival, afternoon, afternoon and so on. Although the names are different, but generally speaking, people around the custom of the feast or more than the same. Today, the Dragon Boat Festival is the Chinese people is still a very popular in the grand festival.

端午节是全年四大节之一。五月是毒月，五日是毒日，五日的中午又是毒时，居三毒之端。端午节又叫“五月端”。五月是整个热天的开端，五毒蛇开始活跃，鬼魅魍魉也会猖獗，这些都会给人特别是会给无所顾忌又无抵抗能力的孩子带来灾难，必须在五月端这天集中地为孩子消灾防毒，因此，人们又把五月端午节说成是“小孩节”或“娃娃节”。

The Dragon Boat Festival is one of the four major festivals throughout the year. May is the month of five days is poison, poison, five noon is poison, poison ranks three in the end. The Dragon Boat Festival is also called "the end of the May". May is the beginning of summer, the beginning of the five active snakes, ghosts and monsters are rampant, these will give people in particular will give no children and no resistance to bring disaster, must focus on that day in May at the end of anti disaster for the children, therefore, the people and the Dragon Boat Festival in May as a "childrens Day" or "doll festival".

过端午节，是中国人二千多年来的传统习惯，由于地域广大，民族众多，部分蒙古、回、藏、苗、彝、壮、布依、朝鲜、侗、瑶、白、土家、哈尼、畲、拉祜、水、纳西族、达斡尔、仫佬、羌、仡佬、锡伯族、普米、鄂温克、裕固、鄂伦春等少数民族也过此节，加上许多故事传说，于是不仅产生了众多相异的节名，而且各地也有着不尽相同的习俗。其内容主要有：女儿回娘家，挂钟馗像，迎鬼船、躲午，帖午叶符，悬挂菖蒲、艾草，游百病，佩香囊，备牲醴，赛龙舟，比武，击球，荡秋千，给小孩涂雄黄，饮用雄黄酒、菖蒲酒，吃五毒饼、咸蛋、粽子和时令鲜果等，除了有迷信色彩的活动渐已消失外，其余至今流传中国各地及邻近诸国。有些活动，如赛龙舟等，已得到新的发展，突破了时间、地域界线，成为了国际性的体育赛事。

The Dragon Boat Festival, is a traditional Chinese habits of more than two thousand years, because of the vast territory, numerous nationalities, part of Mongolia, Hui and Tibetan, Miao, Yi, Zhuang, Buyi, Dong, Yao, Bai, North Korea, Tujia, Hani, Yu, Lahu, water, Naxi, Daur, Mulao, Qiang, Gelao, Xibe, Pumi, Ewenki, Yugur, E Lunchun and other ethnic minorities also have this day, plus many stories, not only have so many different section, but also has the same throughout. The main contents are: his daughter back home, the clock up like, welcome the ghost ship, hide afternoon, with midday leaf character, hang calamus, wormwood, travel sickness, Sachet, prepared sweet wine offerings, dragon boat race, tournament, batting, swing, give the child Tu Xionghuang, drinking realgar wine, sweet wine, eat a cake, salted eggs, dumplings and seasonal fruits, in addition to a superstitious activities have gradually disappear, the other has spread throughout China and neighboring countries. Some activities, such as dragon boat racing, has been the development of new, breakthrough time and geographical boundaries, become an international sporting event.

端午祭正式被韩国申请为非物质文化遗产，并已获得成功，这对我们中国人本国文化遗产的保护也是一次深刻的教训。

The Dragon Boat Festival was officially apply for non-material cultural heritage of Korea, and has been successful, which is the Chinese people to protect their cultural heritage is also a profound lesson.

1.I hate hiking and Im not into classical music.

2.I surf the Internet all the time and I like playing computer games.

3.Rock music is OK, and so is skiing.

4.Chuck is a businessman who is always so busy that he has little time for his friends.

5.One day Chuck is on a flight across the Pacific Ocean when suddenly his plane crashes.

6.He realizes that he hasn’t been a very good friend because he has always been thinking about himself.

7.Chuck learns that we need friends to share happiness and sorrow, and that it is important to have someone to care about.

8.When he makes friends with Wilson, he understand that friendship is about feelings and that we must give as much as we take.

9.The lesson we can learn from Chuck and all the others who have unusual friends is that friends are teachers.

10.I found the bathroom, but I didn’t find what I was looking for.

11.Don’t forget to buy me some ketchup on your way back.

12.There are more than 42 countries where the majority of the people speak English.

13.In total, for more than 375 million people English is their mother tongue.

14.In China students learn English at school as a foreign language, except for those in Hong Kong, where many people speak English as a first or a second language.

15.In only fifty years, English has developed into the language most widely spoken and used in the world.

16.With so many people communicating in English every day ,it will become more and more important to have a good knowledge of English.

17.For a long time the language in America stayed the same, while the language in England changed.

18.In the same way Americans still use the expression “I guess “(meaning “I think”),just as the British did 300 years ago.

19.At the same time, British English and American English started borrowing words from other languages ,ending up with different words.

20.Except for these differences in spelling, written English is more or less the same in both British and American English.

21.However,most of the time people from the two countries do not have any difficulty in understanding each other.

22.Many people travel because they want to see other countries and visit places that are famous, interesting or beautiful.

23.Many of today’s travelers are looking for an unusual experience and adventure travel is becoming more and more popular.

24.Instead of spending your vacation on a bus, in a hotel or sitting on the beach, you may want to try hiking.

25.Hiking is fun and exciting, but you shouldn’t forget safety.

26.A raft is a small boat that you can use to paddle down rivers and streams.

27.If you want a normal rafting trip, choose a quiet stream or river that is wide and has few fallen trees or rocks.

28.The name “whitewater “comes from the fact that the water in these streams and rivers looks white when it moves quickly.

29.As with hiking ,you should always think about your safety and wear good clothes.

30.Jane and Betty are going on separate holidays in a few days’ time.

31.When are you off to Guangzhou?

32.My plane leaves at seven, so I think we’ll take a taxi.

33.See you when I get back.

34.The next moment the first wave swept her down, swallowing the garden.

35.Now ,the water, which was cold as ice and flowed faster than a river, was above her knees.

36.Jeff and Flora looked into each other’s face with a look of fright.

37.Flora,whose beautiful hair and dress were all cold and wet, started crying.

38.Tree after tree went down, cut down by the water, which must have been three meters deep.

39.The garden that was once so beautiful was completely destroyed, swept away by the wild water.

40.I found some photos of interesting places which were not too far away from Chengdu.

41.He told me that I could go on a two-day trip to Leshan and Emei, which wasn’t too expensive.

42.First,we went to Leshan, where we climbed all the way up the mountain to see the Buddha.

43.Looking up at the large head and down at the large feet makes you feel so small.

44.Wei Bin took photos of us standing in front of the Buddha.

45.Steven Spielberg, whose mother was a music teacher, was born in 1946 in a small town in America.

46.In 1959 Spielberg won a prize for a film which he made when he was thirteen years old.

47.The reason why he could not go there was that his grades were too low.

48.Here he worked on a short film, which won him a job as the youngest film director in the world.

49.This was the moment when Spieberg’s career really took off.

50.It is about a big white shark that attacks swimmers who are spending their holidays in a small village by the sea.

不少同学在问了，英语作文怎么写?如何写好英语作文，下面是小编为大家收集的初中英语作文的写作方法，欢迎阅读。

初一英语写作题，题材一般是写人、写事、写物、写景、日记、书信、通知、便条等文体。一般来说，不同的写作题材，它的人物，时间，写作的重点也是不尽相同的。下面结合一些常见的题型介绍一下写作的注意事项以及写作技巧。

各地的评分标准略有差异，但是都包括以下几个方面：整体印象、语言表达、词数规定等几方面内容。我们在写作中要尽量避免扣分，争取有加分点。当然用英文写作不同于用母语那样得心应手，常常会受到生词、语法、惯用法的限制，只要同学们平时注意两种语言的异同性，抓住写作要点，也可妙笔生花。

1、为了保证文章层次分明、条理清楚，要把时间固定下来，如：记叙一件事要用过去时;写经常发生的事或对人物的描写，要用一般现在时。整个文章中的人称要一致，首尾呼应，不要随意改动，以免造成误解。

2、不要为了追求“一鸣惊人”而去找一些生冷的词汇，对这些一知半解的词你不会用，不知道如何搭配，结果可能适得其反，使文章显的生硬、不协调，甚至错误百出，所以要使用有把握的词，避免不必要的失分。比如说发生了一起意外事件，我们通常用“have an accident ”来表示，不要错误的使用“have an incident”。

3、注意不同语言的表达习惯，也是写好英语作文的重要环节，如“我的理想是做一名歌手”，很多同学写成“My ambition is to do/make a singer，” “to do”表示“做”或者“干”，“to make”表示“制作”，而“做一名歌手”则表示“成为一名歌手”应该用“be/become a singer”;又如“看书、看报”应用“read a book/newspaper”，而不是“see a book/newspaper”。因此，平时应该注意不同语言的表达习惯，切忌望文生义或一味生搬硬套。

4、有些同学因怕出错而只写短句或简单句，写出的文章过于幼稚、空洞乏味。要使文章有血有肉就要把平时学的知识用进去，如：定语从句、宾语从句、非谓语动词和比较等句型，关键时用上一、二个，就能使文章不同凡响，更有文采，特别是对关联词的使用，如“so that”、“not…but ”“not only...but also”等，会使你的文章逻辑结构紧密、层次鲜明、条理清楚，更能显示出你的英文功底，但要做到这些并非一日之功，要靠平时的不断训练和积累。

5、最简单的增分点就是认真的书写。工整漂亮的书写会给评卷老师留下美好的第一印象，在扣分时自然会“手下留情”，而且很多地区都在写作上有1分的书写分。只要平时多下点功夫，得到这一分并不难。

注意事项

最后将英语写作的基本步骤和技巧归纳为以下几个环节：

1、细心审题细读题目中每一项提示或观察所给的每一幅画，明确文章的中心思想，弄清题意，确定写作体裁，掌握所要表达的要点做到心中有数，避免随心所欲，文不对题。

2、理顺要点在所给提示或图上标出要点，然后按事件先后的顺序或各要点之间的内在联系排序，分出层次。如果是看图作文，则要按图构思，这样做既可避免要点遗漏，又可使表达内容条理清楚。

3、构成框架将理顺的要点或每幅图画的含义加以连贯，构成写作的整体框架，进一步定人称、定时态语态、定顺序、定段落、定开头结尾。基本框架构成后，写作就有了把握。

4、组织句子用自己最熟悉的短语或句型将理顺的要点逐句表达出来，多用简单句，用有把握的复合句。要扬长避短，避难就易。若遇到表达障碍，可换一种说法，将一句变成两、三句，只求达意。

5、串句成篇将写好的句子连贯地组织起来，注意上下句的逻辑关系，适当采用递进、让步、转折、因果等关联词语，使短文浑然一体，层次分明，过渡自然。6、检查修改文章草成后，默读1～2遍，检查修改，尤其要注意人称、大小写、拼写、习惯用语、格式有无错误，要点有无遗漏，文句有无语病，词数是否恰当，行文是否连贯。

英语写作水平的提高是一个渐进的过程，只要同学们在平时多加训练，多读文章，做一个有心人，就能在英语作文中取得理想的成绩

1.用形容词"very"，"single"等表示强调

eg.You are the very person Im looking for.

你就是我要找的那个人。

Red Army fought a battle on this very spot.

红军就在此地打过一仗。

Not a single person has been in the office this afternoon.

今天下午竟然没有一个人来过办公室。

2.用反身代词表示强调

e.g.I myself will see her off at the station.

我将亲自到车站为她送行。

You can do it well yourself.

你自己能做好这件事情。

3.用助词"do/does/did+动词原形"表示强调

e.g.The baby is generally healthy，but every now and then she does catch a cold.

那孩子的健康状况尚好，但就是偶尔患感冒。

Do be quiet.I told you I had a headache.

务必安静，我告诉过你，我头疼。

4.用"...and that"，"...and those"，等结构表示强调

e.g.They fulfilled the task，and that in a few days.

他们在几天内完成的就是那项任务。

I gave her some presents，and those the day before yesterday.

前天我送给她的就是那些礼物。

5.用双重否定结构表示强调

e.g.There is no reason why this new immigrant should not have the same success.

完全有理由相信这些新移民应该拥有相同的成功。

A man can never have too many ties.

一个男人有再多的领带也不为过。

I cant thank you too much.

我无论怎样感谢你都不过份。

A mother can never be patient enough with her child.

I am not unfaithful to you.我对你无比忠诚。

6.用短语"in every way"，"in no way"，"by all means"，"by no means"，"only too"，"all too"，"but too"，"in heaven"，"in the world"，"in hell"，"on earth"，"under the sun"等表示强调

e.g.His behaviour was in every way perfect.

他的举止确实无可挑剔。

The news was only too true.

这消息确实是事实。

Where in heaven were you then?

当时你到底在哪里?

7.用倒装句表示强调

8.用强调句型表示强调

It is that或 It is who

e.g.It was the headmaster who opened the door for me.

正是校长为我开的门。

It was yesterday that we carried out that experiment.

就是在昨天我们做了那个实验。

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. 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。

"I like honest men of all colors."我喜欢所有诚实的人。

"I start out by believing the worst."我凡事先做好最坏的打算。

"It requires more courage to suffer than to die."茍活比牺牲需要更多的勇气。 。

"I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest."我已做了所有的打算，其余就交给上帝了。

"Our hour is marked, and no one can claim a moment of life beyond what fate has predestined."生死有命，没有人能要求多活一秒钟。

"If I had not been born Napoleon, I would have liked to have been born Alexander."如果今天我不是拿破仑的话，我想成为亚历山大。

"The great proof of madness is the disproportion of ones designs to ones means."一个人的计划与实践存在太大的落差即是疯狂的表现。

"The stupid speak of the past, the wise of the present, and fools of the future."聪明的人谈现在，愚蠢的人谈过去，傻子才谈未来。

"We must laugh at man to avoid crying for him. "与其后来替一个人婉惜，不如先嘲笑他算了。

"When you set out to take Vienna, take Vienna."一旦你着手要攻下维也纳，就把她拿下吧﹗

"What I did is immense. What I had decided to do, and what I had projected werestill more so"我所做的是大事业，而我当初的决定与计划亦是如此。

"The word impossible is not in my dictionary."在我的字典里找不到「不可能」这个字。

"I wished to found a European system, a European Code of Laws, a European judiciary; there would be but one people in Europe."我想建立一个整合的欧洲体系，包含了法律，法庭，与人种。

"The French complain of everything, and always."法国人终其一生都在抱怨所有的事。

"He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat."害怕被征服的人，注定要失败。

"Victory belongs to the most persevering."坚持必将成功。

"Adversity is the midwife of genius." 逆境造就天才。

"Circumstances? I make circumstances!" 英雄造时势。

"Men take only their needs into consideration, never their abilities."人们常只想到自己的需要，而没考虑自己的能力。

"Men are moved by only two levers: fear and self interest."恐惧和兴趣能激励人。

下面的材料旨在丰富学生在是非问题写作方面的思想和语言，考生在复习时可以先分类阅读这些篇章，然后尝试写相关方面的作文题。

对于素材中用黑体字的部分，特别建议你熟读，背诵，因为它们在语言和观点上都值得吸收。学习语言的人应该明白，表达能力和思想深度都靠日积月累，潜移默化。从某种意义上说，提高英语写作能力无捷径可走，你必须大段背诵英语文章才能逐渐形成语感和用英语进行表达的能力。这一关，没有任何人能代替你过。

因此，建议你下点苦功夫，把背单词的精神拿出来背诵文章。何况，并不是要求你背了之后永远牢记在心：你可以这个星期背，下个星期忘。这没有关系，相信你的大脑具有神奇的能力。背了工具箱里的文章后，你会惊讶的发现：I can think in English now！

1.?????? Proverbs

1. A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that individuality is the key to success.

2. The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s time.

3. Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.

4. The classroom--not the trench--is the frontier of freedom now and forevermore.

5. Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

6. It is the purpose of education to help us become autonomous, creative, inquiring people who have the will and intelligence to create our own destiny.

7. You see, real ongoing, lifelong education doesn’t answer questions; it provokes them.

8. People will pay more to be entertained than educated.

9.the most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure.

10. The essence of our efforts to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each as equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different-to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind, and spirit he or she possesses.

11. A great teacher never strives to explain his vision-he simply invites you to stand beside him and see for yourself.

12. If you can read and don’, you are an illiterate by choice.

2. Damaging Research

A study by National Parent-Teacher Organization revealed that in the average American school, eighteen negatives are identified for every positive that is pointed out. The Wisconsin study revealed that when children enter the first grade, 80 percent of them feel pretty good themselves, but by the time they get to the sixth grade, only 10 percent of them have good self-images.

3. Education and Citizenship

An important aspect of education in the United States is the relationship between education and citizenship. Throughout its history this nation has emphasized public education as a means of transmitting democratic values, creating equality of opportunity, and preparing new generations of citizens to function in society. In addition, the schools have been expected to help shape society itself. During the 1950s, for example, efforts to combat racial segregation focused on the schools. Later, when the Soviet Union launched the first orbiting satellite, American schools and colleges came under intense pressure and were offered many incentives to improve their science and mathematics programs so that the nations would not fall behind the Soviet Union in scientific and technological capabilities.

Education is often viewed as a tool for solving social problems, especially social inequality. The schools, t is thought, can transform young people from vastly different backgrounds into competent, upwardly mobile adults. Yet these goals seem almost impossible to attain. In recent years, in fact, public education has been at the center of numerous controversies arising from the gap between the ideal and the reality. Part of the problem is that different groups in society have different have different expectations. Some feel that children should be taught basic job-related skills; still others believe education should not only prepare children to compete in society but also help them maintain their cultural identity (and, in the case of Hispanic children, their language). On the other hand, policymakers concerned with education emphasize the need to increase the level of student achievement and to improve parents in their children’s education.

Some reformers and critics have called attention to the need to link formal schooling with programs designed to address social problems. Sociologist Charles Moscos, for example, is a leader in the movement to expand programs like the Peace Corps, Vista, and Outward Bound into a system of voluntary national service. National service, as Moscos defines it, would entail “the full-time undertaking of public duties by young people whether as citizen soldiers or civilian servers-who are paid subsistence wages” and serve for at least one year. In return for this period of service, the volunteers would receive assistance in paying for college or other educational expenses.

Advocates of national service and school-to-work programs believe that education does not have to be confined to formal schooling. In devising strategies to provide opportunities for young people to serve their society, they emphasize the educational value of citizenship experiences gained outside the classroom. At this writing there is little indication that national service will become a new educational institution in the United States, although the concept is steadily gaining support among educators and social critics.

4. The Teacher’s Role

Given the undeniable importance of classroom experience, sociologists have done a considerable amount of research on what goes on in the classroom. Often they start from the premise that, along with the influence of peers, students’ experiences in the classroom are of central importance to their later development. One study examined the impact of a single first-grade teacher on her students’ subsequent adult status. The surprising results of this study have important implications. It is evident that good teachers can make a big difference in children’s lives, a fact that gives increased urgency to the need to improve the quality of primary-school teaching. The reforms carried out by educational leaders like James Comer suggest that when good teaching is combined with high levels of parental involvement the results can be even more dramatic.

Because the role of the teacher is to change the learner in some way, the teacher-student relationship is an important part of education. Sociologists have pointed out that this relationship is asymmetrical or unbalanced, with the teacher being in a position of authority and the student having little choice but to passively absorb the information provided by the teacher. In other words, in conventional classrooms there is little opportunity for the students to become actively involved in the learning process. On the other hand, students often develop strategies for undercutting the teacher’s authority: mentally withdrawing, interrupting, and the like. Hence, much current research assumes that students and teachers influence each other instead of assuming that the influence is always in a single direction.

5. Education Philosophy

For the past fifty years our schools have operated on the theories of John Dewey (1859-1953), an American educator and writer. Dewey believed hat the school’s job was to enhance the natural development of the growing child, rather than to pour information, for which the child had no context, into him or her. In the Dewey system, the child becomes the active agent in his own education, rather than a passive receptacle for facts.

Consequently, American schools are very enthusiastic about teaching “life skills” –logical thinking, analysis, creative problem--solving. The actual content of the lessons is secondary to the process, which is supposed to train the child to be able to handle whatever life may present, including all the unknowns of the future. Students and teachers both regard pure memorization as an uncreative and somewhat vulgar.

In addition to “life skills”, schools are assigned to solve the ever growing stoke of social problems. Racism, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, drug use, reckless driving, and are just a few of the modern problems that have appeared on the school curriculum.

This all contributes to a high degree of social awareness in American youngsters.

6. Student Life

To the students, the most notable difference between elementary school and the higher levels is that in junior high they start “changing classes”. This means that rather than spending the day in one classroom, they switch classrooms to meet their different teachers. This gives them three or four minutes between classes in the hallways, where a great deal of the important social action of high school traditionally takes place. Students have lockers in these hallways, around which thy congregate.

Society in general does not take the business of studying very seriously. Schoolchildren have a great deal of free time, which they are encouraged to fill with extracurricular activities—sports, clubs, cheerleading, scouts—supposed to inculcate such qualities as leadership, sportsmanship, ability to organize, etc. those who don’t become engaged in such activities or have afterschool jobs have plenty of opportunity to “hang out”, listen to teenager music, and watch television.

Compared to other nations, American students do not have much homework. Studies also show that American parents have lower expectations for their children’s success in school than other nationalities do. (Historically, there has not been much correlation between American school success and success in later life.) “He’s just not a scholar”, the American parents might say, content that their son is on the swim team and doesn’t take drugs. (Some of the young do choose to study hard, for reason of their own, such as determining that the road to riches lies through Harvard Business School.)

What American schools do effectively teach is the competitive method. In innumerable ways children are pitted against each other—whether in classroom discussion, spelling bees, reading groups, or tests. Every classroom is expected to produce a scattering of A’s and F’s (teachers often grade A=excellent; B=good; C=average; D=poor; and F=failed). A teacher who gives all A’s looks too soft—so students are aware that they are competing for the limited number of top marks.

Foreign students sometimes don’t understand that copying from other people’s papers or from books is considered wrong and taken seriously. Here, it is important to show that you have done your own work and are displaying your own knowledge. It is more important than helping your friends to pass, whom we think do not deserve to pass unless they can provide their own answers. Group effort goes against the competitive grain, and American students do not study together as many Asians do. Many Asians in this country consider their group study habits a large contributor to their school success.

7. Adult Education

After complaining about many aspects of American life, a 40-year-old woman from Hong Kong concluded, “But where else could someone my age go back to school and get a degree in social work? Here you can change your whole life, start a new business, do what you really want to do.”

So at least to this person, school requirements weren’t inhibiting. And to millions of others, adult education is the path to a new career, or if not to a new career, to a new outlook. Schools generally encourage the older person who wants to start anew, and besides regular classes, schedule evening classes in special programs. Today there are so many people of retirement age in college that it is no longer remarkable.

8. Moral Relativism in American

Improving American education requires not doing new things but doing (and remembering) some good old things. At the time of our nation’s founding, Thomas Jefferson listed the requirements for a sound education in the Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia. In this landmark statement on American education, Jefferson wrote of the importance of education and writing, and of reading history, and geography. But he also emphasized the need “to instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests, and duties, as men and citizens.” Jefferson believed education should aim at the improvement of both one’s “morals” and “faculties”. That has been the dominant view of the aims of American education for over two centuries. But a number of changes, most of them unsound, have diverted schools from these great pursuits. And the story of the loss of the school’s original moral mission explains a great deal.

Starting in the early seventies, “values clarification” programs started turning up in schools all over America. According to this philosophy, the schools were not to take part in their time-honored task of transmitting sound moral values; rather, they were to allow the child to “clarify” his own values (which adults, including parents, had no “rights” to criticize). The “values clarification” movement didn’t clarify values; it clarified wants and desires. This form of moral relativism said, in effect, that no set of values was right or wrong; everybody had an equal right to his own values; and all values were subjective, relative, and personal. This destructive view took hold with a vengeance.

In 1985 The York Times published an article quoting New York area educators, in slavish devotion to this new view, proclaiming, “They deliberately avoid trying to tell students what is ethically right and wrong.” The article told of one counseling session involving fifteen high school juniors and seniors. In the course of that session a student concluded that a fellow student had been foolish to return one thousand dollars she found in a purse at school. According to the article, when the youngsters asked the counselor’s opinion, “He told them he believed the girl had done the right thing, but that, of course, he would not try to force his values on them. ‘If I come from the position of what is wrong,’ he explained, ‘then I’m not their counselor.’”

Once upon a time, a counselor offered counselor, and he knew that an adult does not form character in the young by taking a stance of neutrality toward questions of right and wrong or by merely offering “choices” or “options”.

In response to the belief that adults and educators should teach children sound morals, one can expect from some quarters indignant objections (I’ve heard one version of it expressed countless times over the years): “Who are you to say what’s important?” or “Whose standards and judgments do we use?”

The correct response, it seems to me, is, is we ready to do away with standards and judgments? Is anyone going to argue seriously that a life of cheating and swindling is as worthy as a life of honest, hard work? Is anyone (with the exception of some literature professors at our elite universities) going to argue seriously the intellectual corollary, that a Marvel comic book is as good as Macbeth? Unless we are willing to embrace some pretty silly position, we’ve got to admit the need for moral and intellectual standards. The problem is that some people tend to regard anyone who would pronounce a definitive judgment as an unsophisticated Philistine or a closed-minded “elitist” trying to impose his view on everybody else.

The truth of the real world is that without standards and judgments, there can be no progress. Unless we are prepared to say irrational things—that nothing can be proven more valuable than anything else or that everything is equally worthless—we must ask the normative question. It may come, as a surprise to those who fell that to be “progressive” is to be value-neutral. But as Matthew Amold said, “the world is forwarded by having its attention fixed on the best things” and if the world can’t decide what the best things are, at least to some degree, then it follows that progress, and character, is in trouble. We shouldn’t be reluctant to declare that some things, some lives, books, ideas, and values are better than others. It is the responsibility of the schools to teach these better things.

At one time, we weren’t so reluctant to teach them. In the mid-nineteenth century, a diverse, widespread group of crusaders began to work for the public support of what was then called the “common school”, the forerunner of the public school. They were to be charged with the mission of school felt that the nation could fulfill its destiny only if every new generation was taught these values together in a common institution.

The leaders of the common school movement were mainly citizens who were prominent in their communities—businessmen, ministers, local civic and government officials. These people saw the schools as upholders of standards of individual morality and small incubators of civic and personal virtue; the founders of the public schools had faith that public education could teach good moral and civic character from a common ground of American values.

But in the past quarter century or so, some of the so-called experts became experts of value neutrality, and moral education was increasingly left in their hands. The commonsense view of parents and the publicthat schools should reinforce rather than undermine the values of home, family, and country, was increasingly rejected.

There are those today still that claim we are now too diverse a nation, that we consist of too many competing convictions and interests to instill common values. They are wrong. Of course we are a diverse people. We have always been a diverse people. And as Madison wrote in FederalistNo.10, the competing, balancing interests of a diverse people can help ensure the survival of liberty. But there are values that all American citizens share and that we should want all American students to know and to make their own: honesty, fairness, self-discipline, fidelity to task, friends, and family, personal responsibility, love of country, and belief in the principles of liberty, equality, and the freedom to practice one’s faith. The explicit teaching of these values is the legacy of the common schools, and it is a legacy to which we must return.

9. Schools Should Teach Values

People often said, “Yes, we should teach these values, but how do we teach them?” this question deserves a candid response, one that isn’t given often enough. It is by exposing our children to good character and inviting its imitation that we will transmit to them a moral foundation. This happens when teachers and principals, by their words and actions, embody sound convictions. As Oxford’s Mary Warnock has written, “You cannot teach morality without being committed to morality yourself; and you cannot be committed to morality yourself without holding that some things are right and others wrong.” The theologian Martin Buber wrote that the educator is distinguished from all other influences “by his will to take part in the stamping of character and by his consciousness that he represents in the eyes of the growing person a certain selection of what is, the selection of what is ‘right’, of what should be.” It is in this will, Buber says, in this clear standing for something, that the “vocation as an educator finds its fundamental expression.”

There is no escaping the fact that young people need as example principals and teachers who know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, and who themselves exemplify high moral purpose.

As Education Secretary, I visited a class at Waterbury Elementary School in Waterbury, Vermont, and asked the students, “Is this a good school?” They answered, “Yes, this is a good school.” I asked them, “Why?” Among other things, one eight-year-old said, “The principal Mr. Riegel, makes good rules and everybody obeys them.” So I said, “Give me an example.” And another answered, “You can’t climb on the pipes in the bathroom. We don’t climb on the pipes and the principal doesn’t either.”

This example is probably too simple to please a lot of people who want to make the topic of moral education difficult, but there is something profound in the answer of those children, something education should pay more attention to. You can’t expect children to take messages about rules or morality seriously unless they see adults taking those rules seriously in their day-to-day affairs. Certain must be said, certain limits lay down, and certain examples set. There is no other way.

We should also do a better job at curriculum selection. The research shows that most “values education” exercises and separate courses in “moral reasoning” tend not to affect children’s behavior; if anything, they may leave children morally adrift. Where to turn? I believe our literature and our history are a rich quarry of moral literacy. We should mine that quarry. Children should have at their disposal a stock of examples illustrating what we believe to be right and wrong, good and bad—examples illustrating what are morally right and wrong can indeed be known and that there is a difference.

What kind of stories, historical events, and famous lives am I talking about? If we want our children to know about honesty, we should teach them about Abe Lincoln walking three miles to return six cents and conversely, about Aesop’s shepherd boy who cried wolf if we want them to know about courage, we should teach them about Joan of Arc, Horatius at the bridge, and Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. If we want them to know about persistence in the face of adversity, they should know about the voyages of Columbus and the character of Washington during the Civil War. And our youngest should be told about the Little Engine That Could. If we want them to know about respect for the law, they should understand why Socrates told Crito: “No, I must submit to the decree of Athens.” If we want our children to respect the rights of others, they should read the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’ “Letter from Birmingham jail.” From the Bible they should know about Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi, Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers, Jonathan’s friendship with David, the Good Samaritan’s kindness toward a stranger, and David’s cleverness and courage in facing Goliath.

These are only a few of the hundreds of examples we can call on. And we need not get into issues like nuclear war, abortion, creationism, or euthanasia. This may come as a disappointment to some people, but the fact is that the formation of character in young people is educationally a task different from, and prior to, the discussion of the great, difficult controversies of the day. First things come first. We should teach values the same way we teach other things: one step at a time. We should not use the fact that there are many difficult and controversial moral questions as an argument against basic instruction in the subject.

After all, we do not argue against teaching physics because laser physics is difficult, against teaching American history because there are heated disputes about the Founders’ intent. Every field has its complexities and its controversies. And every field has its basics, its fundamentals. So they are too with forming character and achieving moral literacy. As any parent knows, teaching character is a difficult task. But it is a crucial task, because we want our children to be healthy, happy, and successful but decent, strong, and good. None of this happens automatically; there is no genetic transmission of virtue. It takes the conscious, committed efforts of adults. It takes careful attention.

10. College Pressures

Mainly I try to remind that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more unexpected turns than they think. There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don not want to hear such liberating news. They want a map—right now – that they can follow unswervingly to career security, financial security, Social Security and, presumably, a prepaid grave.

What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy grip of the future. I wish them a chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive as victory and is not the end of the world.

My wish, of course, is na?ve. One of the national gods venerated in our media—the million-dollar athlete, the wealthy executive—and glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old.

I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It is easy to look around for villains—to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, and the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no villains: only victims.

“In the late 1960s.” one dean told me. “The typical question that I got from students was ‘Why is there so much suffering in the world’ or ‘how I can make a contribution?’ Today it’s ‘Do you think it would look better for getting into law school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just majored in one of them?’” many other deans confirmed this pattern. One said: “They are trying to find an edge—the intangible something that will look better on paper if two students are about equal.”

Note the emphasis on looking better. The transcript has become a sacred document, the passport to security. How one appears on paper is more important than how one appears in person. A is for Admirable and B is for Borderline, even though, in Yale’s official system of grading, A means “excellent” and B means “very good.” Today, looking very good is no longer good enough, especially for students who hope to go on to law school or medical school. They know that entrance into the better schools will be an entrance into the better law firms and better medical practices where they will make a lot of money. They also know that the odds are harsh. Yale Law School, for instance, matriculates 170students from an applicant pool of 3,700; Harvard enrolls 550 from a pool of 7,000.

It’s all very well for those of us who write letters of recommendation for our students to stress the qualities of humanity that will make them good lawyers or doctors. And it’s nice to think that admission officers are ready reading our letters and looking for the extra dimension of commitment or concern. Still, it would be hard for a student not to visualize these officers shuffling so many transcripts studded with As that they regard a B as positively shameful.

The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and get a job. Long gone are the days of the “gentleman’s C.” when students journeyed through college with a certain relaxation, sampling a wide variety of courses-music, art, philosophy, classics, anthropology, poetry, religion—that would send them out as liberally educated men and women. If I were an employer I would rather employ graduates who have this range and curiosity than those who narrowly pursued safe subjects and high grades. I know countless students whose inquiring minds exhilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I do not know if they are getting As or Cs, and I do not care. I also like them as people. The country needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to relax. They cannot.

Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room, and board at most private colleges now come to at least $7,000, not counting books and fees. This might seem to suggest that the colleges are getting rich. But they are equally battered by inflation. Tuition covers only 60 percent of what it costs to educate a student, and ordinarily the remainder comes from what college receives in endowments, grants, and gifts. Now, the remainder keeps being swallowed by the cruel costs—higher every year—of just opening the doors. Heating oil is up. Insurance is up. Postage is up. Health-premium costs are up. Everything is up. Deficits are up. We are witnessing in American the creation of a brotherhood of paupers—colleges, parents, and students, joined by the common bond of debt.

Today it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part time at college and full time during the summer, to accrue $5,000 in loans after four years—loans that he must start to repay within one year after graduation. Exhorted at commencement to go forth into the world, he is already behind as he goes forth. How could he not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? I have used “he,” incidentally, only for brevity. Women at Yale are under no less pressure to justify their expensive education to themselves, their parents, and society. In fact, they are probably under more pressure. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society has not yet caught up with this fact.

Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined.

I see many students taking pre-medical courses with joyless tenacity. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know tem in other corners of their life as cheerful people.

“Do you want to medical school?” I asked them.

“I guess so,” they say, without conviction, or “Not really.”

“Then why are you going?”

“Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They are paying all this money and …”

Poor students, poor parents, they are caught in one of the oldest webs of love and duty and guilt. The parents mean will; they are trying to steer their sons and draughts toward a secure future. But the sons and daughter want to major in history or classics or philosophy—subjects with no “practical” value. Where’s the payoff on the humanities? It’s not easy to persuade such loving parents that the humanities do indeed pay off. The intellectual faculties developed by studying subjects like history and classics—an ability to synthesize and relate, to weigh cause and effect, to see events in perspective—are just the faculties that make creative leaders in business or almost any general field. Still, many fathers would rather put their money on courses that point toward specific profession—courses that are pre-law, pre-medical, pre-business, or, as I sometimes heard it put, “pre-rich.”

But the pressure on students is severe. They are truly torn. One part of them feels obliged to fulfill their parents’ expectations; after all, their parents are older and presumably wiser. Another part tells them that the expectations that are right for their parents are not right for them.

I know a student who wants to be an artist. She is very obviously an artist and will be a good one—she has already had several modest local exhibits. Meanwhile she is growing as a well-round person and taking humanistic subjects that will enrich the inner resources out of which her art will grow. But her father is strongly opposed. He thinks that an artist is a “dumb” thing to be. The student vacillates and tries to please everybody. She keeps up with her art somewhat furtively and takes some of the “dumb” courses her father wants her to take—at least they are dumb courses for her. She is a free spirit on a campus of tense students—no small achievement in it—and she deserves to follow her muse.

Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they begin almost at the beginning of freshman year.

“I had a freshman student I’ll call Linda,” one dean told me, “who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I could not tell her that Barbara had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda.”

The story is almost funny—except that it is not. It is symptomatic of all the pressure put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight. I wish they would sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the clacking of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due: “Will I get everything done?”

Probably they won’t. They will get blocked. They will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out.

Part of the problem is that they are expected to do. A professor will assign five page papers. Several students will start writing ten page papers to impress him. Then more students will write ten page papers, and a few will raise the ante to fifteen. Pity the poor student who is still just doing the assignment.

“Once you have twenty or thirty percent of the student population deliberately overexerting,” one dean points out, “It’s bad for everybody. When a teacher gets more and more effort from his class, the student who is doing normal work can be perceived as not doing well. The tactic work, psychologically.”

Why cannot the professor just cut back and not accept longer papers? He can, and he probably will. But by then the term will be half over and the damage done. Grade fever is highly contagious and not easily reversed. Besides, the professor’s main concern is with his course. He knows his students only in relation to the course and does not know that they are also overexerting in their other courses. Nor is it really his business. He did not sign up for dealing with the student as a whole person and with all the emotional baggage the student brought along from home. That’s what deans, masters, chaplains, and psychiatrists are for.

To some extent this is nothing new: a certain number of professors have always been self-contained islands of scholarship and shyness, more comfortable with books than with people. But the new pauperism has widened the gap still further, for professors who actually like to spend time with students do not have as much time to spend. They are also overexerting. If they are young, they are busy trying to publish in order not to perish, hanging by their figure nails onto a shrinking profession.

If they are old and tenured, they are buried under the duties of administering departments—as departmental chairmen or members of committees—that have been thinned out by the budgetary axe.

Ultimately it will be the students’ own business to break the circles in which they are trapped. They are too young to be prisoners of their parents’ dreams and their classmates’ fears. They must be jolted into believing into themselves as unique men and women who have the power to shape their own future.

“Violence is being done to the undergraduate experience,” says Carlos Hortas. “College should be open-ended: at the end it should open many, many roads. Instead, students are choosing their goal in advance, and their choices narrow as they go along. It’s almost as if they think that the country has been codified in the type of jobs that exist-that they’ve got to fit into certain slots. Therefore, fit into the best paying slot.”

“They ought to take chances. Not taking chances will lead to life of colorless mediocrity. They’ll be comfortable. But something in the spirit will be missing.”

I have painted too drab a portrait of today’s students, making them seem a solemn lot. That is only half of their story; if they were so dreary I wouldn’t so thoroughly enjoy their company. The other half is that they are easy to like. They are quick to laugh and to offer friendship. They are not introverts. They are usually kind and are more considerate of one another than any student generation I have known.

Nor are they so obsessed with their studies that they avoid sports and extracurricular activities. On the contrary, they juggle their crowded hours to play on a variety of teams, perform with musical and dramatic groups, and write for campus publications. But this in turn is one more cause of anxiety. There are too many choices. Academically, they have 1,300 courses to select from; outside class they have to decide how much spare time they can spare and how to spend it.

This means that they engage in fewer extracurricular pursuits than their predecessors did. If they want to row on the crew and play in the symphony they will eliminate one; in the ‘60s they would have done both. They also tend to choose activities that are self-limiting. Drama, for instance, is flourishing in all twelve of Yale’s residential colleges, as it never has before. Students hurl themselves into these productions—as actors, directors, carpenters, and technicians—with a dedication to create the best possible play, knowing that the day will come when the run will end and they can get back to their studies.

They also cannot afford to be the willing slave of organizations like the Yale Daily News. Last spring at the one-hundredth anniversary banquet of that paper—who’s past chairmen include such once and future kings as Potter Stewart, Kingman Brewster, and William F. Buckley, Jr.—much was made of the fact that the editorial staff used to be small and totally committed and that “newsies” routinely worked fifty hours a week. In effect they belonged to a club; Newsies is how they defined themselves at Yale. Today’s students will one or two articles a week, when he can, and he defines himself as a student. I’ve never heard the word Newsie except at the banquet.

If I have described the modern undergraduate primarily as a driven creature who is largely ignoring the blithe spirit inside who keeps trying to come out and play, it’s because that’s where the crunch is, not only at Yale but throughout American education. It’s why I think we should all be worried about the values that are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age.

I tell students that there is no one “right” way to get ahead—that each of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination. I tell neither them that change is a tonic and that all the slots are not codified nor the frontiers closed. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk informally with my students during the year. They are heads of companies or ad agencies, editors of magazines, politicians, public officials, television magnates, labor leaders, business executives, Broadway products, artists, writers, economists, photographers, scientists, historians—a mixed bag of achievers.

I asked them to say a few words about how they got started. The students assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was what they wanted to do. Luckily for me, most of them got into their field by a circuitous route, to their surprise, after many detours. The students are startled. They can hardly conceive of a career that was not pre-planned. They can hardly imagine allowing the hand of God or chance to nudge them down some unforeseen trail.

11. To Err Is Wrong

In the summer of 1979, Boston Red Sox first baseman Carl Yastrzemski became the fifteenth player in baseball history to reach the three thousand hit plateaus. This event drew a lot of media attention, and for about a week prior to the attainment of this goal, hundreds of reports covered Yaz’s every more. Finally, one reporter asked, “Hey Yaz, aren’t you afraid all of this attention will go to your head?” Yastrzemski replied, “I look at this way: in my career I’ve been up to bat over ten thousand times. That means I’ve been unsuccessful at the plate over seven thousand times. That fact alone keeps me from getting a swollen head.”?

Most people consider success and failure as opposites, but they are actually both products of the same process. As Yaz suggest, an activity that produces a hit may also produce a miss. It is the same with creative thinking; the same energy that generates good creative ideas also produces errors.

Many people, however, are not comfortable with errors. Our educational system, based on “the right answer” belief, cultivates our thinking in another, more conservative way. From an early age, we are taught that right answers are good and incorrect answers are bad. This value is deeply embedded in the incentive system used in most schools:

Right over 90% of the time = “A”

Right over 80% of the time = “B~”

Right over 70% of the time = “C~” Right over 60% of the time = “D~” Less than 60% correct, you fail.

From this we learn to be right as often as possible and to keep our mistakes to a minimum. We learn, in other words, that “to err is wrong.

Playing It Safe

With this kind of attitude, you aren’t going to be taking too many chances. If you learn that failing even a litter penalizes you (e.g., being wrong only 15% of the time garners you only a “B” performance), you learn not to make mistakes. And more important, you learn not to put yourself to situation where you might fall. This leads to conservative thought pattern designed to avoid the stigma our society puts on “failure”.

I have a friend who recently graduated from college with a Master’s degree in Journalism. For the last six month, she has been trying to find a job, but to no avail. I talked with her about situation, and realized that her problem is that she doesn’t know how to fail. She went through eighteen years of schooling to try any approaches where she might fail. She has been conditioned to believe that failure is bad in and of itself, rather than a potential stepping-stone to new ideas.

Look around. How many middle managers, housewives, administrators, teachers, and other people do you see who are to try anything new because of this failure? Most of us have learned not to make mistakes in public. As a result, we remove ourselves from many learning experience except for those occurring in the most private of circumstances.

Different Logic

From a practical point of view, “to err is wrong” makes sense. Our survival in the everyday world requires us to perform thousand of small tasks without failure. Think about it: you wouldn’t last very long if you were to step out in front of traffic or stick your hand a pot of boiling water. In addition, engineers whose bridges collapse, stock brokers who lose money for their clients, and copywriters whose ad campaigns decrease sales won’t keep their jobs very long.

Nevertheless, too great an adherence to the belief “to err is wrong” can greatly undermine your attempts to generate new ideas. If you are more concerned with producing right answers than generating original ideas, you’ll probably make uncritical use of the rules, formulae, and procedures used to obtain these right answers. By doing this, you’ll by-pass the germinal phase of the creative process, and thus spend litter time testing assumptions, challenging the rules, asking what-if questions, or just playing around with the problem. All of these techniques will produce some incorrect answers, but in the germinal phase errors are viewed as a necessary by-product of creative thinking. As Yaz would put it, “if you want the hits, be prepared for the misses.” That’s the way the game of life goes.

Errors as Stepping Stones

Whenever an error pops up, the usual response is “Jeez, another screw up, what went wrong this time?” the creative thinker, on the other hand, will realize the potential value of errors, and perhaps say something like, “Would you look at that! Where can it lead our thinking?” and then he or she will go on to use the error as a stepping stone to a new idea. As a matter of fact, the whole history of discovery is filed with people who used erroneous assumptions and failed ideas as stepping-stones to new ideas. Columbus thought he was finding a shorter route to India. Johannes Kepler stumbled on to the idea of interplanetary gravity because of assumptions that were right for the wrong reasons. And, Thomas Edison knew 1800 ways not to build a light bulb.

The following story about the automotive genius Charles Kettering exemplifies the spirit of working through erroneous assumptions to good ideas. In 1912, when the automobile industry was just beginning to grow, Kettering was interested in improving gasoline engine efficiency. The problem he faced was“knockthe phenomenon in which gasoline takes too long to burn in the cylinder-thereby reducing efficiency.

Kettering began searching for ways to eliminate the “knock.” He thought to him, “How can I get the gasoline to combust in the cylinder at an earlier time?” the key concept here is “early”. Searching for analogous situations, he looked around for models of “things that happen early.” He thought of historical models, physical models, and biological models. Finally, he remembered a particular plant, the trailing arbutus, which “happens early,” i.e., it blooms in the snow (“earlier” than other plants). One of this plant’s chief characteristics is its’ red leaves, which help the plant retain light at certain wavelengths. Kettering figured that it must be the red color, which made the trailing arbutus bloom earlier.

Now came the critical step in Kettering’s chain of thought. He asked himself, “How can I make the gasoline red?” perhaps I’ll put red dye in the gasoline—maybe that’ll make it combust earlier.” He looked around his workshop, and found that he didn’t have any red dye. But he did happen to have some iodine—perhaps that would do. He added the iodine to the gasoline and, lo and behold, the engine didn’t “knock”.

[英语作文写作的需要背诵的部分

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。

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.

Grasp all, lose all. 贪多必失.

Whats lost is lost. 失者不可复得。

Waste not, want not. 不浪费,不会穷.

Tomorrow never comes. 切莫依赖明天. / 我生待明日,万事成蹉跎.

No man is infallible. 没有人不犯错误。

Alms never make poor. 施舍穷不了人.

Love will find a way. 爱心所至,金石为开.

Manners make the man. 举止见人品。

Patience is a virtue. 忍耐是一种美德.

Pity is akin to love. 怜悯生爱.

Call a spade a spade. 是啥说啥，难听不怕。

Delays are dangerous. 因循出危险.

Diamond cuts diamond. 强中自有强中手.

Counsel is no command. 劝告不是命令.

Poverty tries friends. 贫穷考验朋友.

Once bitten,twice shy. 吃一次亏,学一次乖.

Pain past is pleasure. 痛苦过去即欢乐.

Leal heart lied never. 心诚无谎言。

Hot love is soon cold. 过热的爱情冷得快.

As good lost as found. 有得必有失. /得失同喜.

Every dog has his day. 瓦块也有翻身日，人人都有运来时。

Wise fear begets care. 懂得担心,就会小心.

"Never”is a long word. 不要轻易说“决不”。

After wind comes rain. 风是雨的头。

Nurture passes nature. 教养胜过天性.

Time tries all things. 时间检验一切.

Boys will be boys. 男孩子总是男孩子.

No song, no supper. 不出力,不得食.

The truth will out. 真相总会大白.

Time works wonders. 时间能创造奇迹.

To think is to see. 思考就是明白.

Truth will prevail. 真理必胜

A lie begets a lie. 谎言生谎言。

Years bring wisdom. 年岁带来智慧.

In love is no lack. 爱情不会感到缺乏.

Easy come, easy go. 来得容易去得 . /悖入悖出.

Every little helps. 点滴都有用.

Forgive and forget. 恢弘大度，勿念旧恶。

Manners maketh man. 举止造人品.

Laugh and grow fat. 心宽体胖 。

Knowledge is power. 知识就是力量.

Let the world slide. 人世沧桑,听其自然.

Love me,love my dog. 爱屋及乌.

Life means struggle. 生活就是斗争.

Fair plays a jewel. 比赛风格好,胜过珠宝.

Early sow,early mow. 种得早,收得早.

说明文是阐述事物的特征、本质、性能、结构、用途或科学原理的一种文体。其说明的对象可以是具体的，如：自然环境，仪表设备等；也可以是抽象的，如概念定律等。

说明文的写作相对于论说文来说，有一定的套路可循，因此不是十分复杂。说明科技方面的内容常用定义法、比较对比法、分类法、因果法等；说明自然环境方面的内容常用时间次序法、分类法等。当然，随着对象的不同，具体应该采用的方法也会有所不同。

说明文的写作应该注意的事项有下面几点：

1.语言简明扼要，通俗易懂，避免夸张华丽的辞藻，要把真实的一面展现在读者面前。

2.说明时一定要把握一个中心主题。说明文中细枝末节较多，但不能喧宾夺主。

3.说明的次序非常重要。合理的次序会使文章条理清楚，脉络明晰。因此，练习时可以尝试不同的次序进行写作，找出最合理的一种。

4.由于说明文写实性较强，有时难免会让人感到没有生气。因此，可以适当使用一些比喻、拟人等修辞手段，来增加文章的色彩。

用介词短语替代从句，例：

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

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

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

修改后：At the second traffic light turn left.

小升初英语写作技巧之一：用介词短语替代从句，例：

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

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

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

修改后：At the second traffic light turn left.

小升初英语写作技巧之二：删除诸如"who is”或"that is"之类的关系代词，变从句为短语，例：

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

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

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

小升初英语写作技巧之三：剔除你不需要的单词，例：

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

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

1. To cherish the enviroment is to love ourselves.

爱护环境就是爱护我们自己。

2.Water is the source of ourlives

水是生命之源。

3.I make an urgent appeal that measures should be taken to cope with the situation

我急切呼吁应该采取措施改变现状。

4.Our government is doing its best to take measures to fight against pollution.

我们政府正努力制定措施与污染作斗争。

5.We are sure that well win the battle.

我们坚信我们能赢得战斗。

6.Its high time that we should protect our enviroment from being polluted.

是时候我们应该防止环境污染了。

7. Keep our mountains green，the wate clean，and the sky blue.

使我们山更绿，水更清，天更蓝。

8.However，natural resources are not inexhaustible.some reserves are already on the brink of exhaustion.

然而自然资源并不是无穷无尽的，一些储量已经到了穷尽的边缘。

9.If we do something with no thought for the furture . The later generation would be in danger.

如果我们不为将来考虑，后代就会受到威胁。

10.Our earths days are numbered without urgent help.

没有及时的帮助我们的地球就屈指可数了。

11(Sth.)are bound to generate severe consequences if we keep turning a blink eye to them.

如果我们继续睁一只眼闭一只眼的话，……一定会有恶劣的后果。

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,

英语一考生要在三十分钟内写出160-200个词汇的文章，英语二的考生需要完成150个词汇左右的文章。写作时要求主题突出、结构清晰、文字通顺、连贯性好，祛除语法错误。在考试过程中，考生能在有限时间内详细解读考题设问要求，并匠心独运的构想、拟题、列提纲，最后完成一篇考场佳作，这需要前期十分认真的备考。

在写作中，考生要特别注意文章的中心思想是否切题，论据是否足够充分，如不充分则要对论据详细展开。句语句、段与段连接要自然，逻辑关系清晰明晰，切忌不要出现与主题无关的句子。人称、时态等细节处要保持一致，单词拼写、大小写以及标点也要注意到位。

由于近些年图画作文较热，是考研英语写作中出现频率最高的一类文体，我们来重点学习一下这种文体的写作方法。

图画作文通常是给出一幅或多幅漫画或图片，所给图画多反映当前的热点社会现象或热点社会现实。这类作文难度较大，要求考生首先仔细剖析图画内容，并通过文字形式将图中所包罗的思想内容准确无误地表达出来。大家可将此类作文转化为三段或四段式的提纲作文写作。

1、认真审题

在审题时，考生要在认真剖析图画所反映的内容以及出题者出题意图的前提下，通过表层含义剖析图画真正想要说明的问题是什么，深入研究图画的表层含义和深层含义，从而挖掘出其深层含义以确定文章的中心思想。

2、确定写作重点

认真审题后，考生就要确定写作重点了，根据剖析和研究的结果列出提纲并安排段落。确定每一个段落的主题和写作重点，考生要根据题目要求对选材进行筛选。

3、确定写作提纲

如何列提纲，即考生对题设材料的剖析得出结论后形成的基本框架结构，漫画标的主题、directions中的要求包罗了哪些内容，文章段落应该如何组织，基本提纲确定了的基础上，才能思路清晰、行文流通。

不管做什么是，找对技巧很重要。下面语文迷网整理了英语六级的写作技巧，供大家阅读参考。

一、 长短句原则。

工作还得一张一弛呢，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。

二、 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.

三、 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)

建议：不仅仅在写作中注意，平时说话的时候也应该条理清楚!

四、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。

五、多实少虚原则

原因很简单，写文章还是应该写一些实际的东西，不要空话连篇。这就要求一定要多用实词，少用虚词。我这里所说的虚词就是指那些比较大的词。

比如我们说一个很好的时候，不应该之说nice这样空洞的词，应该使用一些诸如generous, humorous, interesting, smart, gentle, warm-hearted, hospitable 之类的形象词。

再比如： 走出房间，general的词是：walk out of the room 但是小偷走出房间应该说：slip out of the room 小姐走出房间应该说：sail out of the room 小孩走出房间应该说：dance out of the room 老人走出房间应该说：stagger out of the room 所以多用实词，少用虚词，文章将会大放异彩!

六、 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 enjoy 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。

6)排比(排山倒海句)文学作品中最吸引人的地方莫过于此，如果非要让你的文章更加精彩的话，那么我希望你引用一个个的排比句，一个个得对偶句，一个个的不定式，一个个地词，一个个的短语，如此表达将会使文章有排山倒海之势!Whether your tastes are modern or traditional, sophisticated or simple, there is plenty in London for you. Nowadays, energy can be obtained through various sources such as oil, coal, natural gas, solar heat, the wind and ocean tides. We have got to study hard, to enlarge our scope of knowledge, to realize our potentials and to pay for our life. (气势恢宏) 要想写出如此气势恢宏的句子非用排比不可!

七、挑战极限原则。

既然十挑战极限，必然是比较难的，但是并非不可攀!原理：在学生的文章中，很少发现诸如独立主格的句子，其实也很简单，只要花上5分钟的时间看看就可以领会，它就是分词的一种特殊形式，分词要求主语一致，而独立主格则不然。比如：The weather being fine, a large number of people went to climb the Western Hills. Africa is the second largest continent, its size being about three times that of China. 如果你可以写出这样的句子，不得高分才怪!

一、积累词汇

初中学生在阅读理解方面最大的障碍就是词汇量的缺乏，而扩大词汇量绝非死记硬背就能做到。最有效的方法就是大量接触各种不同体裁的英语文章，利用“在句中记，在文中记”的方法来积累词汇。因此我们指导学生依据英语报刊的特点，按栏目、话题、题材、体裁归类收集常用词，将出现频率较高的常用词汇积累到单词本子上，查字典写例句，初步学会这些单词的运用，放在身边，利用零散时间反复记忆，加强印象。还要求学生给出与单词有关的同义、近义、反义和词形相似的词，使词汇量得到最大限度的复现。如：反义词appear/disappear， crowded/uncrowded，polite/impolite/rude.词形相似的词except/expect，chance/change/challenge.这样，通过大量的词汇练习不仅仅能有效地积累词汇，还为组句打下了基础，同时还能训练学生的发散性思维和总结、归纳、比较的能力，为学生正确使用词句奠定了良好的基础。

二、活用词句

当学生有了一定的词汇量的时候，教师在教学中可以采用先易后难的方法，让学生用简单的词组成句子，再以句子的构成作为学生进行写作训练的起点，引导学生从对单个句型的掌握，逐渐过渡到多种句型的混用，直到学生能连贯自如地表达思想。一句多译，句型转换，是书面表达能力的关键。总的来说，教师在平时的教学中要将日常生活中经常出现的词、句作为材料让学生训练，使学生乐于接受，轻松完成，享受成功感。

例如：以study为中心组成句子。

I study in No.3 Middle School.I study very hard.My sister studies in the same school.But she studies harder than me.等等。

三、创设情景

例如，学生举行运动会，开“生日聚会”，以“A sports meeting”和“My birthday party”为语境，让学生在活动中仔细观察，亲身体验，然后试着用自己所学的语言知识，表达“A sports meeting”和“My birthday party”这些话题。在我们新教材的每个单元中，都设有写作训练题，它们用英语设置语境，用英语提示内容，这些写的练习，与我们平时用汉语给语境、用英语完成段落的方式相比，更为理想。当然，教师在设立语境话题时要与学生的水平和能力相适应，应从简到难，从浅到深进行。否则，学生会无从下笔，久而久之，他们会失去信心。

四、注重听、说和阅读的培养

在英语写作中听、说、读、写应同步发展。写作是一种语言输出形式，只有语言输入大于语言输出，语言输出才有可能。英语写作训练作为英语综合能力训练之一，是与英语的听说读不可分割的，它们是相互影响、相互作用的有机统一体，必须注重听、说、读、写能力的同步发展。

比如笔者实施多年的“五分钟课前演讲”：在上正课前五分钟里，要学生用英语讲述一个故事(积累素材);或者课前朗读一篇短小精 的文章，让大家课后模仿;或者就大家平时关心的话题写一个发言稿或演讲稿进行课前发言;或者让学生自立主题，围绕自己喜欢的主题写一段话。这种课前训练取得了很好的效果。

五、写英文日记

要养成记英语日记勤练笔的习惯。经常用英语记日记等于天天在练笔，这无疑是提高英语写作行之有效的好办法。在记日记时，不要总是用简单句，要有意识地用一些好的词组、句型和复合句等，使文句更优美生动。对一些所给情景写的文章，写好后要对照一些范文，找出差距，然后再去练习，不仅能促使学生及时巩固所学的知识，还能锻炼他们的恒心和学习毅力，同时对提高英语作文也是很有帮助的。只有这样，学生才能通过多练习提高英语写作水平。

总之，学生英语写作水平的提高不是一朝一夕的事，英语写作能力培养的训练方法也是多方面的，因此需要我们英语教师在教学工作中不断探索、不断研究，总结出一些更富有创新活力的英语写作方法。鼓励学生平时要多积累语素材，要求他们坚持长期写作训练，做到善于思考、勤于训练、勇于探究，充分发挥学生的潜力。久而久之，学生的写作水平就会有大幅度的提高。

教学课件是辅助教学的多媒体教具，是现代教育技术发展的产物，具有很强的时代特点，也是教育现代化的标志之一。下面是小编整理的英语写作基础教程课件，希望对你有帮助。

一、课程教学目标

本课程为高等学校英语专业课程体系中一门英语专业知识课程，属专业必修课性质。通过本课程的教学，使学生能正确理解和掌握英语写作的基础知识和技巧，例如词汇的恰当用法、英语成分与各类型结构的多样化运用等，并能按照不同要求正确书写便条、信函和通知等应用文，缩写课文内容，组织提纲并根据提纲书写短文（150单词左右），正确使用标点符号。

二、先修课的要求

本课程面向英语专业一年级学生，学生应具备基本英语写作能力，达到英语专业入学时的各项要求。

三、教学环节、内容及学时分配

Unit 1:正确用词

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

通过举例及练习提升学生对词汇的敏感度，学会如何正确运用词汇；写便条。

【本章重点及难点】

辨析词汇不同侧面的意义，如：denotative & connotative meanings; affective & collocative meanings.

【教学内容】

1. Denotation and connotation

2. Attitude and collocation

3. False friends

4. Subject-verb agreement

5. Note-writing

5. Follow-up exercises

Unit 2:恰当用词

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

学会鉴别不同文体，即正式、常用、口语和俚语，并根据不同文体使用恰当的词汇；写较为正式的便条。

【本章重点及难点】

避免中式英语

【教学内容】

1.Various styles in English

2. Chinglish

3. Writing notes to older people, strangers and business clients

5. Follow-up exercises

Unit 3:简洁精确用词

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

纠正学生习作中常见的冗余用词，帮助学生建立分类记忆词汇的习惯从而精确用词；写正式通知。

【本章重点及难点】

提高学生对词汇细微差别的敏感度，尤其是名、动、形容词，培养良好的词汇学习的习惯。

【教学内容】

1. Conciseness

2. Preciseness

3. Effectiveness

4. Modifiers and related problems

5. Informal notice

Unit 4：基本句型

【学时】 3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

通过例句比较，使学生理解并学会选择恰当的词汇作主语，避免动词的名词化倾向；明确主语通常的位置及主语后置时的影响；总结何种情况下使用主动语态或被动语态的原则；归纳一般现在时的较特殊用法及单句中时态的匹配；掌握虚拟语气的常见用法；学写正式通知。

【本章重点难点】

构建最基本句子框架；句中词序的变化对语意重心的影响。

【教学内容】

1. Subject and its position

2. Active voice & passive voice

3. Tense and sequence of tenses

5. Mood

6. Extended notice

7. Follow-up exercises

Unit 5:基本句型的扩展（一）

【学时】 3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

使学生掌握扩展基本句型的方式之一：增添修饰成分，并会正确使用七种类型的修饰语；正确使用定语从句达到强调作用；为段落缩写。

【本章重点难点】

使用修饰语扩展句子，以及修饰语的顺序。

【教学内容】

1. Attributes

2. Relative clauses

3. Incomplete sentences

4. Word order

5. Precis for short paragragh

6. Follow-up exercises

Unit 6基本句型的扩展（二）

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

学会使用分词和独立主格结构来扩展句子；为较长篇章写缩写。

【本章重点难点】

复杂分词结构的使用；学会在两个或以上的动词中正确选择用作分词结构的动词；避免悬垂修饰语、连写句、连串句。

【教学内容】

1. Participles

2. Absolutes

3. Comma-split sentences

4. Fused sentences

5. Precis for longer articles

6. Follow-up exercises

Unit 7连接句子的方法之一：并列

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

了解并列在单词、词组、从句和句子这四个层面的使用；学会不同类型连接词的用法；掌握并列句的具体用法和功能，以及更为复杂的并列句的使用，例如并列词的重复或缺失、用分号连接的并列句和有插入结构的并列句。

【本章重点难点】

如何正确应用并列句；错误的并列。

【教学内容】

1. Coordinate structures

2. Coordination at the sentence level

3. Functions of coordinate sentences

4. Advanced usages of coordinate sentences

5. Lack of unity & faulty parallelism

6. Follow-up exercises

Unit 8连接句子的方法之二：从属

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

辨析并列句与从属句在表达语意上的区别；正确使用名词性从句，定语从句和状语从句；理解从属句的两大功能；学写提纲。

【本章重点难点】

从属句的有效使用；从属句与并列句的选用原则。

【教学内容】

1.Subordination vs.coordination

2.Types of subordination

3.Functions of subordination

4.Effective use of subordination

5.Misplaced modifiers

6.Basic format of a short composition

7.Follow-up exercises

Unit 9句子多样化

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

使学生理解句子多样化的重要性，并从句子长度、句子结构、语意重心和句子开头这四个方面达到句子多样化的目的；正确使用倒装，避免逐字翻译；学写短文开头。

【本章重点难点】

达到句子多样化的方法；如何通过重新排序和特殊结构达到强调的目的。

【教学内容】

1. Ways to achieve sentence variety

2. Inversion & word-for-word translation

3. Introduction of a short paragraph

4. Follow-up exercises

Unit 10标点符号

【学时】3

课堂讲授学时：2

其他教学学时：1

【教学目的和要求】

理解常用标点符号的功能和用法；学写短文结尾。

【本章重点难点】

标点的用法；插入语的三种不同标点组合的区别。

【教学内容】

1.Functions of punctuation

2. How to end a sentence

3. How to join sentences of equal weight

4. How to punctuate within a sentence

5. The conclusion of a short composition

四、教学策略与方法建议

本课程采用课堂讲授和写作实践相结合的教学方式。课堂讲授使用多媒体教学，由教师讲解写作技巧引导学生发现使用规律，结合小组活动和个人训练等各种形式提高学生的写作学习热情。在课外布置适量的写作任务，及时操练和巩固所学的写作知识和写作技巧，加强对语言的实际运用能力。

五、教材与学习资源

本课程教材为邹申主编的《写作教程（第一册）》，上海：上海外语教育出版社，2005。