有关兴趣爱好的英语写作素材优秀20篇

1、“人生永没有终点。”只有等到你瞑目的那一刻，才能说你走完了人生路，在此之前，新的第一次始终有，新的挑战依然在，新的感悟不断涌现……

2、当第一缕阳光照耀大地的时候，我们便和千千万万的中学生一样，开始了漫长的求学之路。走进教室，再也找不见小时候踏入这里的欣喜，取而代之的竟是无比的压抑。看着那一张张陌生的脸，心中又升起点点惆怅。昔日那熟悉的脸庞，如今早已不知去向。

3、昏暗的台灯下，我凝视着这一杯茶，沸水一次又一次的冲击，让我感到了茶的清香。那苦涩中略微含着的一点甘甜，也被我贪婪的嘴给霸占了，眼的朦胧，勾勒出朦胧的记忆，可记忆却已不再朦胧。

4、每晚，车床的隆隆声都在我的耳畔回响，我不再感觉这是噪音，我不再因此而难以入眠，这声音比妈妈轻柔的摇篮曲更优美，我就在这声音的怀抱中枕着父爱入眠。

5、母爱是一种无私的感情，母爱像温暖的阳光，洒落在我们心田，虽然悄声无息，但它让一棵棵生命的幼苗感受到了雨后的温暖。

6、那一次，我笑了，笑得好开心，傍晚的太阳仿佛也笑了，看，它的笑靥映红了半边天……

7、你是润物的细雨，你是醉人的春风，你是厚重的抚摸、深情的凝望，你是雾海中的航标灯，你是捉不到的阳光，你是看不见的空气……啊，亲情，你在哪里?

8、女儿抬起头望着远方延伸的长路，轻扬着僵硬的嘴角，又望着身边的老母亲，幸福满足的继续挪移着脚步，我应该感到那步子是坚定而轻盈的。

9、朋友，你读懂亲情了吗?亲情是寒冷时父亲为你披上的一件外套，是深夜里母亲为你冲的一杯牛奶;亲情是孩子柔嫩的小手为父亲擦去额上的汗珠，是母亲疲惫时递上茶水时的体贴。

10、其实，人生的道路从来都不平坦，谁都会遭遇各种各样的坎。要像刘翔那样勇往直前，你就能飞跃一道又一道坎，你的人生就充满灿烂和喜悦。

11、其实成长，就是一颗美味的糖果，那唇齿留香的滋味回味我们无穷无尽的遐想。可是如果不加以节制，我们便尝不到那最初的那份甜蜜，取而代之的必定将是阵阵疼痛。所以成长中的我要学会排解烦恼，保护好我们的“牙齿”。只有这样，我们才会品味到更多的甜蜜与快乐!

12、亲情不仅是孟郊的“慈母手中线，游子身上衣”的长长牵挂，它也是王维“独在异乡为异客，每逢佳节倍思亲”的深沉感叹，是苏轼“但愿人长久，千里共婵娟”的美好祝愿，是辛弃疾“最喜小儿无赖，溪头卧剥莲蓬”的天伦之乐……

13、亲情能点燃生活的希望，为我们撑起心灵的蓝天;它是一种沾了点汗、湿了点泪、带了点痛的，是一种平凡而伟大的美丽。

14、亲情能照亮人的生命，使前行道路铺满鲜花;它是一种坚定的信念，一种执着的本能，即使身无分文，亲情依然存在。

15、亲情能滋润人的心田，使生命之舟洒满阳光;它是一种隐藏在每个人内心深处的一种而深厚的情感，它可以冲破时间空间的阻碍，让两颗心紧紧相拥。

16、让那些孤独的孩子和我们一样茁壮成长吧，他们是祖国的花朵，是初升的太阳，祖国未来的宏图也有属于他们构造的一部分。

17、人生的路途漫长又曲折，在前行的路上我们也许会迷失了方向，也许会沉迷于路景，很多的迷雾和错误的路标会误导我们，让我们无法前行甚至使我们朝相反的方向前进，此时，我们只有找到自己的位置，才能一步步地接近目标，接近成功。

18、人生就像一杯浓浓的茶，需要你细细去品味，一个新字概括了它的全部，不同的时候能品出不同的味道，唯有这样，才能算得上是一背好茶，是一个完美的人生。

19、若成长是一篇着作，那么烦恼便是藏在段落深处的错字;如果成长是一张白纸，那么烦恼便是附在背面的一个瑕疵。

20、他们用自己的所有精力和人生去实现他们追求的。他们用自己的亲身经历告诉我们能够将一件事做好，其实已经实现了自己的价值。而我们现在所应该做的，就是做好一件小事，在小事中认真，才能去完成那些关乎一生的大事。

21、踏进屋内，再也没有了以往的欢声笑语。只有那夏夜会鸣叫的虫子，怕我一个人寂寞，正在为我唱起了《欢乐颂》。与之前还有所不同的是，生长在青苔石上的茉莉开了。清香的气息布满了整个屋内。

22、恬静的午后，坐在窗前，沏一杯暖茶，静静地浏览网页，或是倾听敲击键盘的那种轻脆的声音。然后累了，就赏一赏窗外的风景，看树叶轻轻摇摆，看鸟儿自由翱翔。任时间一点点轻擦，拂过心灵，温暖心头。

23、我踩着你的足迹迈在人生的征途，你是我生命中一道美丽的风景，有着花一样的馨香，雨露一样的甘甜，阳光一样的温暖。

24、我很感谢我的生命里有你，穿越时空的隧道，依然可见夕阳西下彩蝶翩然而去带走一串银铃样的欢笑，水风车流转的故事就象耐人寻味的童话。

25、我来了，一株开得最盛的茉莉望着天上的白云朵朵，风儿正在轻轻的歌唱，仿佛一切都是那么的静寂，祥和。

26、我们感动，我们的感动是灵动的右手;我们学会感动，我们学会感动的过程是理性的左手。当左手右手相遇，合适地交融，生命便真正的被激活了。

27、我所渴望的，是一种宽容的品质，友善地对待身边的人，无论生活亦或学习，将他们给予我的温暖以同等的方式回报给需要它的人。

28、我走在你风景如画的长廊，呼吸着一种甜蜜清新的空气。你不知道，你宛如一束带露的鲜花，在我心的庭院里洒落一地温馨。我看到自己的天空里飘着七色的彩霞，闪耀着灵动的美。

29、小鸟在枝头愉快地歌唱，小草在晚风中点头微笑，河水泛着细细的涟漪……田野里，山冈上，小河中处处充满着春天的气息。

30、要找准自己的位置需要我们不断地反省，了解社会的需要，认清自己的长处和短处，然后根据社会的需要，扬长避短，去发展自己的事业，去努力拼搏，打造自己辉煌的人生。

题目：请以“My Class Teacher”为题，写一篇不少于60个单词的作文。

My Class Teacher我的班主任

My class teacher is Mr. Wang. He is strict but kind. He has taught us Chinese for two years.我的班主任是王老师，他是一个要求严格而亲切的老师。他已经教了我们两年语文。

He always tells us to study hard but not all the time. Sometimes he plays with us. He says, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." I think he is a good class teacher.他总是告诉我们要好好学习，但不是时时刻刻学习。有时他会和我们一起玩。他说：“只会用功不玩耍，聪明孩子也变傻。” 我觉得他是个很好的班主任。

点评：这篇文章取材的是身边熟悉的人，作者也有东西可写，更具有可读性。另外，写人时把主语稍作调整，读起来轻松多了。

I am a 15-year-old girl. My name is [ename]Cherry[/ename]. Now I am studying in the middle school. I want to be an actress because I think it is a funny and exciting job...

写人的常见句式如：

This is my friend, Mary.

She is... years old.

She is a teacher/ an artist/ a singer...

She/ He gets up at 6/5... / early/ late.

She/ He has sports at school.

She/ He likes...

She/ He is strong/ fat/ slim/ kind/ thin/...

She/ He looks like...

She/ He is good at English/ maths/ Chinese/ physics...

我们的写作过程中怎么少的了素材呢，下面是语文迷网整理提供的高考写作万能素材，希望对你有帮助。

一、鱼儿不会说话

美国联邦议会批准了在小田纳西河上修建一座用于发电的水库，先后投入了一亿多美元。当大坝工程即将完工的时候，生物学家们发现大坝底有一种叫蜗牛鱼的珍稀鱼类，如果大坝最终建成的话，将影响这种鱼生活的环境而导致这种鱼的灭绝。于是环保组织向法院提出了诉讼，要求大坝停工并放弃修建水库的计划，但在第一次诉讼中，他们失败了：初审法院认为大坝已经接近完工，浪费纳税人一亿多美元的钱去保护一个鱼种是不明智的，拒绝判决大坝停工。环保组织又上诉到最高法院。

终于，这些小鱼儿在最高法院赢得了它们的权利，依据是联邦1973年颁布的《濒危物种法案》。这些小鱼儿可以在它们的家园自由地栖息，而它们身边是那被永久废弃的价值一亿多美元的大坝。

二、将军和驴子

古罗马皇帝哈德良曾经碰到过这样一个问题。

皇帝手下的一位将军，觉得他应该得到提升，便在皇帝面前提到这件事，以他的长久服役为理由。“我应该升更重要的领导岗位”，他报告，“因为，我的经验丰富，参加过10次重要战役。”

哈德良皇帝是一个对人及才华有着高明判断力的人，他不认为这位将军有能力担任更高的职务，于是他随意指着绑在周围的战驴说：

“亲爱的将军，好好看这些驴子，它们至少参加过20次战役，可他们仍然是驴子。”

三、马蝇效应

1860年美国总统大选结束后，林肯当选为总统。他任命参议员萨蒙?蔡斯为财政部长。

有许多人反对这一任命。因为蔡斯虽然能干，但十分狂妄自大，他本想入主白宫，却输给了林肯，他认为自己比林肯要强得多，对林肯也非常不满，并且一如既往地追求总统职位。

林肯对关心他的朋友讲了这样一个故事：

“在农村长大的朋友们一定知道什么是马蝇了。有一次，我和我的兄弟在肯塔基老家的一个农场犁玉米地，我吆马，他扶犁。这匹马很懒，但有一段时间它却在地里跑得飞快，连我这双长腿都差点跟不上。到了地头，我发现有一只很大的马蝇叮在它身上，我随手就把马蝇打落了。我兄弟问我为什么要打落它，我说我不忍心看着这匹马那样被咬。我兄弟说：“唉呀，正是这家伙才使马跑得快嘛。”

然后，林肯说：“如果现在有一只叫‘总统欲’的马蝇正叮着蔡斯先生，那么只要它能使蔡斯和他的那个部不停地跑，我就不想去打落它。”

四、大错误与小错误

日本松下公司的创始人松下幸之助以经营技巧高超，管理方法先进，被誉为“经营之神。”

后滕清一原是三洋电机公司的副董事长，后来投奔松下公司，在担任厂长时，工厂失火烧掉了。后滕清一心中十分惶恐;以为不被革职也要降级。不料松下接到报告后，只对他说了四个字：

“好好干吧!”

松下这样做，并不是姑息部下的过错。以往，即使只是打电话的方式不当，后滕也会受到松下严厉的斥责。这种作风可以说是松下管人的秘决。由于这次火灾发生后没有受到惩罚，后滕自然会心怀愧疚，对松下也会更加忠心效命，并以加倍的工作来回报。

松下的这种做法，巧妙地抓住了人类的心理。在犯小错误时，本人多半并不在意，因此需要严加斥责，以引起他的注意;相反犯下大错误时，傻子也知道自省，因此就不必要再去给予严厉的批评了。

五、大火烧出的奇迹

1933年，正当经济危机在美国蔓延的时候，哈理逊纺织公司因一场大火化为灰烬。3000名员工悲观地回到家里，等待着董事长宣布公司破产和失业风暴的来临。在无望而又漫长的等待中，他们终于接到了董事会的一封信：向全公司员工继续支薪1个月。

在全国上下一片萧条的时候，能有这样的消息传来，员工们深感意外。他们惊喜万分，纷纷打电话或写信向董事长亚伦?傅斯表示感谢。

1个月后，正当他们为下个月的生活发愁时，他们又接到公司的第二封信，董事长宣布，再支付全体员工薪酬1个月。3000名员工接到信后，不再是意外和惊喜，而是热泪盈眶。在失业席卷全国、人人生计无着的时候，能得到如此照顾，谁不会感激万分呢?第二天，他们纷纷拥向公司，自发地清理废墟、擦洗机器，还有一些人主动去南方一些州联络被中断的货源。3个月后，哈理逊公司重新转了起来。对这一奇迹，当时的《基督教科学箴言报》是这样描述的：员工们使出浑身的解数，日夜不懈地卖力工作，恨不得一天干25小时，曾劝董事长傅斯领取保险公款一走了之和批评他感情用事、缺乏商业精神的人开始服输。

现在，哈理逊公司已成为美国最大的纺织品公司，分公司遍布五大洲50多个国家。

六、发泄

一天，陆军部长斯坦顿来到林肯那里，气呼呼地对他说一位少将用侮辱的话指责他偏袒一些人。林肯建议斯坦顿写一封内容尖刻的信回敬那家伙。

“可以狠狠地骂他一顿。”林肯说。

斯坦顿立刻写了一封措辞强烈的信，然后拿给总统看。

“对了，对了。”林肯高声叫好，“要的就是这个!好好训他一顿，真写绝了，斯坦顿。”

但是当斯坦顿把信叠好装进信封里时，林肯却叫住他，问道：“你要干什么?”

“寄出去呀。”斯坦顿有些摸不着头脑了。

“不要胡闹。”林肯大声说，“这封信不能发，快把它扔到炉子里去。凡是生气时写的信，我都是这么处理的。这封信写得好，写的时候你己经解了气，现在感觉好多了吧，那么就请你把它烧掉，再写第二封信吧。”

1、完成工作的方法是爱惜每一分钟。——达尔文

2、合理安排时间，就等于节约时间。——培根

3、过于求速是做事的最大危险之一。——培根

4、应当仔细地观察，为的是理解;应当努力地理解，为的是行动。——罗曼·罗兰

5、每一点滴的进展都是缓慢而艰巨的，一个人一次只能着手解决一项有限的目标。——贝弗里奇

6、人寿几何?逝如朝霜。时无重至，华不再阳。——晋·陆机

7、盛年不重来，一日难再晨;及时当勉励，岁月不待人。──陶渊明

8、皇皇三十载，书剑两无成。——唐·孟浩然

9、时间就是生命，时间就是速度，时间就是气力。——郭沫若

10、最严重的浪费就是时间的浪费。——布封

11、时间，天天得到的都是二十四小时，可是一天的时间给勤勉的人带来聪明和气力，给懒散的人只留下一片悔恨。——鲁迅

12、世界上最快而又最慢，最长而又最短，最平凡而又最珍贵，最轻易被人忽视，而又最令人后悔的就是时间。关于生命的名言警句。——高尔基

13、时间就是生命，无故的空耗别人的时间，实在无异于谋财害命的。——鲁迅

14、你热爱生命吗?那幺别浪费时间，由于时间是组成生命的材料。——富兰克林

15、把活着的每一天看作生命的最后一天。——海伦·凯勒

16、落日无边江不尽，此身此日更须忙。——陈师道

17、在今天和明天之间，有一段很长的时间;趁你还有精神的时候，学习迅速办事。——歌德

18、莫轻易，白了少年头，空悲切。英语名言警句。——岳飞

19、岁往弦吐箭。——孟效

20、盛年不重来，一日难再晨。及时宜自勉，岁月不待人。—陶渊明

21、一年之计在于春，你看关于学习的名言警句。一日之计在于晨。——萧绎

22、欢娱不惜时光逝。——英国

23、时间比理性创造出更多的皈依者。——汤姆·潘恩

24、“年”教给我们很多“日”不懂的东西。——爱献生

25、时间是审查一切罪犯的最老练的法官。——莎士比亚

26、时间是衡量事业的标准。——培根

27、时间能使隐躲的事物显露，也能使灿烂夺目的东西黯然无光。——意大利

28、时间伟大的作者，她能写出未来的结局。——英国

29、与时间抗争者面对的是一个刀枪不进的敌手。——塞·约翰逊

30、时间是最好的医生。——英国

31、时间能缓解极度的悲痛。——英国

32、时间会使钢铁生锈。——匈牙利

33、时间是最伟大、公正的裁判。——俄罗斯

34、时间能揭露万事。——英国

35、天波易谢，寸暑难留。——唐·王勃

36、年难留，时易损。——南北朝·谢惠连

37、时间是无声的脚步，不会由于我们有很多事情需要处理而稍停片刻。——欧洲

38、时间是一条金河，莫让它轻轻地在你的指尖溜过。——拉丁美洲

39、光阴潮汐不等人。——缅甸

40、光阴有脚当珍惜，书田无税应勤耕。——佚名

41、时间最不偏私，给任何人都是二十四小时;时间也最偏私，给任何人都不是二十四小时。——赫胥黎

42、时间待人是同等的，而时间在每个人手里的价值却不同。——佚名

43、谁对时间越吝啬，时间对谁就越慷慨。——佚名

44、勤奋的人是时间的主人，懒惰的人是时间的奴隶。——朝鲜

45、时间就象海绵里的水一样，只要你愿挤，总还是有的。——鲁迅

46、钉子是敲进往的，时间是挤出来的。——佚名

47、大豆不挤出油，时间不挤白会溜。——佚名

48、善于利用时间的人，永远找得到充裕的时间。——佚名

49、用“分”来计算时间的人，比用“时来计算时间的人，时间多五十九倍。——雷巴柯夫

50、时间是由分秒积成的，善于利用零星时间的人，才会做出更大的成绩来。——华罗庚

51、利用寸阴是任何种类的战斗中博得胜利的秘诀。——美国

52、勤勉的人，每周七个全天;懒惰的人，每周七个早晨。——英国

53、起早外出的跛子追不上。——日本

54、辛勤的蜜蜂永远没有时间的悲哀。——布莱克

55、时间就是生命。

56、时间就像海绵里的水只要愿挤总还是有的——鲁迅

57、一年之计在于春，一日之计在于晨。

58、在所有的批评家中，最伟大、最正确、最天才的是时间。——别林斯基

59、世界上最快而又最慢，最长而又最短，最平凡而又最珍贵，最容易被忽视而又最令人后悔的就是时间。——高尔基

60、必须记住我们学习的时间是有限的。时间有限，不只是由于人生短促，更由于人事纷繁。我们应该力求把我们所有的时间用去做最有益的事情。——斯宾塞

61、一个人越知道时间的价值，越倍觉失时的痛苦呀!——但丁

导语：在关键的时刻，我们应该把自己带到人生的悬崖边上，在看似深渊的边缘，才有可能获得另一片蓝天。下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的相关高考素材，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

有一个人捡到一只小鸟，就将这只小鸟带回家里，给他的孩子玩耍，孩子将小鸟与小鸡一块饲养。慢慢地，小鸟长大了，人们才发现，这只小鸟原来是一只鹰。虽然这只鹰和鸡群相处得很好，但总有人家里丢鸡，人们就怀疑是这只鹰吃了鸡，强烈要求主人将这只鹰处死。这家主人舍不得，但迫于大家的压力，他决定放生这只鹰。但是，不管主人将它放到什么地方，它总能回到村里来。有一个人说他有办法，将鹰带到了一个悬崖边上。他将鹰向深渊里扔去，那只鹰一开始，就像是一块石头掉下悬崖，直直地向下坠落，眼看就要到崖底了，鹰突然展开了翅膀，竟然奇迹般地飞了起来，而且越飞越高，越飞越远，再也没有回来。

鹰本来是有翅膀的。能飞很高很远，但是，在一群鸡的世界里，它已经被同化了。没有经过锻炼，又贪恋温暖舒适的鸡窝，渐渐地，也就失去了翱翔蓝天的勇气和信心。要是没有人将它扔下悬崖，它永远不可能飞上蓝天，寻找属于自己的世界。

很多时候，我们都不敢面对这样的悬崖。

美国有一个作曲家乔治·格什温。他从来没有写过交响曲，而当时美国最著名的斯坎德爵士乐团的著名指挥家，却对他十分赏识，邀请他为交响乐团写一部交响曲。但是，固执的格什温声称自己对交响乐一窍不通，不肯从命。这位指挥家竟然在报纸上刊登了一则广告，说20天后，音乐厅将上演格什温的交响乐《蓝色狂想曲》。格什温看到广告，大惊失色，质问指挥家为何令他出丑，指挥家微笑着说，反正，全城人都知道了，你看着办吧。格什温没办法，只好将自己关在屋子里，硬是用两周的时间，完成了这部作品。谁知首场演出竟大获成功，格什温的名气也迅速传遍美国。

有些时候，我们确实需要紧逼的力量。使自己获得重生，让生命之树开出更加绚烂的花。

人总是对现有的东西不忍放弃，对舒适平稳的生活恋恋不舍。但是，一个人要想让自己的人生有所突破，就必须明白，在关键的时刻，应该把自己带到人生的悬崖边上，在看似深渊的边缘，才有可能获得另一片蓝天。

​

​导语：要想写好英语作文，我们平时就得多练习，下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的优秀英语作文，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

1、On thecontrary, there are some people in favor of ___.At the same time, they say____.

相反，有一些人赞成……，他们相信……，而且，他们认为……。

2、People may havedifferent opinions on taking exercise is closely related to health.

人们对…可能会有不同的见解。

3、Attitudes towards(drugs) vary from person to person.

人们对待吸毒的态度因人而异。

4、There are differentopinions among people as to…

关于…。 人们的观点大不相同。

5、Different peoplehold different attitudes toward (failure).

对(失败)人们的态度各不相同。

6、A lot of peopleseem to think that…

很多人似乎认为…

7、It is commonlybelieved that… / It is a common belief that…

人们一般认为…

8、Many peopleinsist that…

很多人坚持认为…

9、I think / Idont think that …我认为，…… / 我认为……不

I wonder whether … 我想知道是否……

He doesnt think I should stop him joining theclub. 他认为我不应该阻止他参加这个俱乐部。

10、so …that … 如此 …，以至于…

At that moment, I was so upset that I wantedto give up.

当时，我非常伤心，最后都想放弃了。

导语：美，时刻伴随着我们;美，在我们中间!下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的写作素材，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

在过去、现在和将来都永远是美好的东西，那便是真理。(托尔斯泰《五月的塞瓦斯托波尔》)

真理是喜欢公开交易的。——莎士比亚《亨利八世》

真理和正义有多种形式，它们和人的种族一样繁多，和时代、气候一样变化无常但它们的本质到处都是一样的;在翻天覆地的情况下，我需要抓住的正是这个不可摧毁的一致点。幸福的规律在一切人之间有它的共同之点，对于每个人来说，是他们道德发展的最高规律。这种发展经常变化，但规律是不变的。——《罗曼?罗兰回忆录》

如果你想独占真理，真理就是要嘲笑你了。——罗曼?罗兰《哥拉?布勒尼翁》

最伟大的真理是最平凡的真理。——托尔斯泰《世界名言录》

拳头是打不倒真理的。——高尔基《母亲》

真理就像劳动汗水一样，总是有一股强烈的气味。——高尔基《意大利童话》

真理的一边是自由，另一边却是限制。——《泰戈尔评传》

如果你不等待着要说出完全的真理，那末把真话说出来是很容易的。——泰戈尔《飞鸟集》

如果你把所有的错误都关在门外，真理也要被关在外面了。——泰戈尔《飞鸟集》

真理若是穿多了衣服，它反而显得俗不可耐了。——泰戈尔《春之循环》

无言纯洁的天真，往往比说话更能打动人心。——莎士比亚《冬天的故事》

不管是多么值得尊敬的人，我也决不会为他而颠倒黑白，把好说成坏。——泰戈尔《一个女人的信》

恶往往是昙花一现的，都要和作恶者一同灭亡;而善，则永世长存。(狄更斯《我们共同的朋友》)

大量的善和大量的恶，总是混合在一起，交互错综着的。——狄更斯《游美札记》

与善人行善会使其更善，与恶人行善会使其更恶。——罗曼?罗兰《弥盖朗琪罗传》

所有的人好象总是带有两重性的。在他们的胸腔里仿佛有一副天平，他们的心就好像天平的指针，在称善的和恶的重量时，指针一会儿倾向这一边，一会儿倾向那一边。——高尔基《三人》

1、Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality inthe hall, the genial flame ofcharity in the heart。Washington Irving

2、Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want andadults pay for it. Deficits arewhen adults tell the government whatthey want - and their kids pay for it。Richard Lamm

3、Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. Tocherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to havethe real spirit of Christmas。Calvin Coolidge

4、Christmas is the day that holds all time together。Alexander Smith

5、Christmas is, of course, the time to be home - in heart as wellas body。Garry Moore

6、Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacityfor wonder has been calledour most pregnant human faculty, for init are born our art, our science, our religion。Ralph W. Sockman

7、The spirit of Christmas is-and hopefully always will be-aboutgoodwill and generosity toothers and peace on earth。Nick Rahall

8、There are some people who want to throw their arms round you justbecause it’s Christmas,there are other people who want to strangleyou just because its Christmas。Robert Lynd

9、Tis blessed to bestow, and yet, Could we bestow the gifts weget, And keep the ones we giveaway, How happy were our Christmasday!Carolyn Wells

10、We consider Christmas as the encounter, the great encounter, thehistorical encounter, thedecisive encounter, between God andmankind. He who has faith knows this truly; let himrejoice。Pope Paul VI

11、When we were children we were grateful to those who filled ourstockings at Christmas time. Why are we not grateful to God forfilling our stockings with legs?Gilbert K. Chesterton

12、According to an ancient Sardinian legend, the bodies of those whoare born on Christmas Eve will never dissolve into dust but arepreserved until the end of time。Grazia Deledda

13、That’s the true spiritof Christmas; people being helped by people other than me。Jerry Seinfeld

14、The earth has grown old with its burden of care But at Christmasit always is young, The heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fairAnd its soul full of music breaks the air, When the song of angelsis sung。Phillips Brooks

15、The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in theblackness of space. As wegot farther and farther away it diminishedin size. Finally it shrank to the size of amarble, the mostbeautiful marble you can imagine。James Irwin

16、The endangered species list has grown this year to include bothreligious and secular symbols cherished by Americans including the nativity, Santa Claus, Christmas trees, candycanes, and Christmas carols。John Doolittle

17、Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travelhopefully is better than to arrive。Stephen Fry

18、Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold,everything is softer and morebeautiful。Norman Vincent Peale

19、Christmas, my child, is love in action. Every time we love, every time we give, its Christmas.Dale Evans

20、Christmas... is not an eternal event at all, but a piece of one’shome that one carries inone’s heart。Freya Stark

21、Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions ofour childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of hisyouth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside andquiet home!Charles Dickens

22、I dont think Christmas is necessarily about things. Its about being good to one another, its about the Christian ethic, its about kindness.!Carrie Fisher

我们都知道，想在小升初英语写作拿高分，就要摸透老师的喜好，引起“读者”的注意。而在写作中句子偏长恰恰会适得其反，很容易让人漏听一、两个单词，影响对整个句子的理解，所以我们要教大家一些化繁为简的技巧——

1、巧用单个词：即用一个单词代替一组意义相同的单词。比如：

用forget(忘记)代替do not remember(没有记住)

用ignore(忽视)代替do not pay attention to(不注意)

用now(现在)代替at this point in time(此时此刻)

用because(由于)代替due to the fact that(鉴于下列事实)

2、省略同义词或近义词。比如在下面例句中，形容词important(重要的)和significant(有重要意义的)，就是两个同义词(也可以说是近义词)，我们可以省略important，只保留significant。

The government project is important and significant.(这项政府计划是重要的，有重要意义。)

The government project is significant.(这项政府计划有重要意义。)

3、在不改变句子含义的前提下，省略所有可以省略的单词。比如在下面例句中，the cover of the book(书的封面)可以省略成the book cover，is red in color(是红色的)可以省略成is red。

The cover of the book is red in color.(书的封面是红色的)

The book cover is red.(书的封面是红色的)

现在我们把这三种方法结合起来，将一个冗长、绕嘴的句子，改写成一个简短、易懂的句子。

University malls must be accessible and free from congestion in order that students, faculty and employees may have unobstructed passage through those areas of the campus.(校内道路必须是便于通行的，不拥堵的，以便让学生、教师和职员能够无阻碍地通过，到达校园的各处。)

University malls must be free enough from congestion to allow people to walk through easily.(校内道路不应当拥堵，以便人们顺利通行。)

4、用介词短语替代从句。比如：

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.

5、删除诸如"who is”或"that is"之类的关系代词，变从句为短语。比如：

原句：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。

导语：中国文化博大精深，英语也是很有趣的哦，下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的优秀英语作文素材，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

1. all year round 一年到头、终年

例句： We’ve made certain arrangements so that there can be flowers of different colors all year round.

我们已做了精心的安排，以使一年四季都有不同颜色的花朵开放。

2. the seven year itch 七年之痒

例句：Is there so-called the seven year itch between two friends?

朋友之间有没有所谓的“七年之痒”呢?

3. put years on 使某人觉得(显得)老些

例句：Being tired and unhappy put years on him.

由于劳累和心情不好，他苍老了很多。

4. be light years away from something 遥不可及，或指两个事物截然不同、差别很大

例句：Righteous punishment is a thousand light years away from revenge.

公正的惩罚跟报复可差得十万八千里。

5. getting on in years 上了年纪

例句：He is a person who is getting on in years.

他是个上了年岁的人。

6. ring in the new year 新年前夕喜迎新年

例句：We ring in the New Year with the church bells.

随着教堂的钟声，我们迎来了新年。

万能的造物主，造就了芸芸众生，也造就了千奇百怪的兴趣，这些兴趣的精灵们督促着每一个人为了梦想而上下求索。

渊博的学者说：“兴趣是人生最好的老师，只要有了兴趣，谁不怕一门学门研究不透。”在此言指导下，爱迪生为了光明而矢志不渝地踽踽独行；牛顿为了万有引力定律而孜孜不倦的引导定律；朱光亚为了核武器而不畏艰难地攻克难关。文学学者因为此言创建了“书中自有黄金屋，书中自有颜如玉”的生动比喻；创建了“我扑在书上，就像饥饿的人扑在面包上一样”的贴切比喻；创建了“无一日不读书”的佳话。

伟大的艺术家说：“兴趣是通往艺术殿堂的伟大途径。”贝多芬受此影响，沉醉于《命运交响曲》的.韵律中，不能自已；张择端受此言影响，陶醉于《清明上河图》的车水马龙，人头攒动的景象中，开怀大笑；齐白石老人受此影响，走进到虾的海洋，觉的自己似乎与其共舞。

勤奋的工人说：再漂亮的词话都难以形容产品做出时的痛快。“王进喜对于此言感受颇深，为了开通中国第一个油井的伟大兴趣爱好，高喊”北风当电扇，大雪是炒面，天南海北来会战，誓夺头号大油田。“干！干！干！”和“可少活二十年拼命也要拿下大油田！”因为兴趣，使其成为新中国响当当的头号“铁人”。

无论是勤劳的工人，伟大的艺术家，渊博的学者乃至三百六十行的各式各样的人们，都因为兴趣成就了不朽的人生，然而如今“兴趣”却在变味，甚至令人嗤之以鼻。

无数的家长们为了孩子们小升初，将一个个所谓命运强加给孩子们，原本喜爱图画的孩子，被迫学架子鼓钢琴等宠然大物，家长培养兴趣是对的，可是他们却与孩子们的愿望背道而驰，其结果只能是事倍功半。

俏把人生比作一辆崭新的汽车，而兴趣就是人生的马达，它鞭策着第一个人赶紧启动；俏把人生比作一股凶猛的海浪，而兴趣就是人生的地震，它不断促使着每一个人赶紧上前。无论是贝多芬，还是爱因斯坦，王进喜等都由兴趣成就了足民彪炳史册和功业。同样面对着如今卷帙浩繁的书籍，我们不应等山过来，而应“山不过来，我就过去。”主动请缨，用兴趣去学习每一科目吧！

我的爱好很多，但我最大的爱好是看书。

看书是我最大的兴趣，我尤其爱看关于科学方面的书，这些书，占了我家书架的二分之一还多。

在这些书中，《世界知识》最让我着迷。

记得在二年级时，爸爸去北京出差，无意间，在书店里发现了新出的《世界知识》。爸爸明白我爱看书，就买下了它。

一到家，爸爸把书给我，我如获至宝。我一翻开书，就被第一页上的精彩资料和图片深深地吸引住了。

从此，我与这本书结下了不解之缘，我每一天都要翻翻它，不看心里就像缺了点什么。

日复一日，年复一年，我如饥似渴地读书，从书中获得了丰富的知识。

去年科技节，学校在五年级开展了一次“科普知识竞赛”的活动，我义无反顾地参加了。当然，赛前我每一天都没少看《世界知识》。赛时，我用心动脑，搜索大脑中积存的知识，过五关，斩六将。决赛中，我又应答自如，一举拿下5分，为班级的胜出下汗马功劳。

之后，同学们一有空，就把我里三层，外三层地包得严严实实，听我讲历史和科学故事。这些可都得归功于我爱不释手的《世界知识》及其他课外书呀。书成了我的良师益友，我对书的兴趣也越来越浓厚，业余生活我除了买书就是借书。

从此，不管课堂和课外，只要一提到关于科学方面的东西，我总会滔滔不绝地说个没完，同学们还送我一个外号“小博士”。今年，六一，我还以全票透过，荣获校“书香少年”，激动之余，难以表达。

我爱书，爱看书。因为书让我获取知识、明白道理、收获成功。书伴我成长，我和书有不解之缘。

我要永远持续我的爱好，坚持每一天看书。

导语：现代人的生活喧嚣而忙碌，越来越多的人渐渐地变得只重视一件事情的最终结果，而往往忽视好好享受与体味人生那丰富的过程。下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的写作素材，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

半年前我乘巴士在法国乡间旅行。一次，汽车要在一个小镇上停留十分钟。闲着没事儿，我便走进了巴士附近的一家小餐馆。

餐馆十分的整洁，陈列台上有浓汤、各色沙拉以及咖啡和美酒。我想尝尝法式浓汤，便向老板点了一道。

“不卖汤。”

“什么?”我疑惑不解地问。

“请原谅。因为您是搭乘巴士的人，所以，我想您还是随便点个汉堡包或者三明治的好，不瞒您说，为了熬这汤，我花去了好几个小时，它的味道是全法国最棒的。面对这么好的美味，可您却只能有几分钟来喝它，太可惜了!我决不会让您糟蹋它的。”

我终于没能喝成这美味的法式浓汤。

但我却是完全能够理解小餐馆老板的。因为，在这位坚持不卖汤的老板看来，喝汤，是一件应该十分强调品尝过程的事情。汤中那丰富与细致的滋味，惟有你慢慢与细细地去品尝，才能充分地领略到。三明治算什么!人们吃它，要的不过只是尽快地填饱肚子这个结果罢了。

品味生活：现代人的生活喧嚣而忙碌，越来越多的人渐渐地变得只重视一件事情的最终结果，而往往忽视好好享受与体味人生那丰富的过程。他们的人生越来越像是一个被他们在匆忙中咽下的三明治，细细去品味美味浓汤的感觉，已经离他们很远很远。

导语：《平凡的世界》是中国著名作家路遥创作的一部百万字的长篇巨著;下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的作文素材，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

《平凡的世界》是路遥老师创作的一部百万字长篇巨著,在70~80年代的背景上,劳动与爱情、挫折与追求、痛苦与欢乐、日常生活与巨大社会冲突纷繁地交织在一起。

1991年3月份《平凡的世界》获中国第三届茅盾文学奖。第一版于1986年12月在文联出版社出版;第二版于2012年3月在北京十月文艺出版社正式发行。

路遥(1949—1992)，原名王卫国，中国当代农村作家。

1.生活不能等待别人来安排，要自己去争取和奋斗;而不论其结果是喜是悲，但可以慰藉的是，你总不枉在这世界上活了一场。有了这样的认识，你就会珍重生活，而不会玩世不恭;同时，也会给人自身注入一种强大的内在力量。

2.我认为，每个人都有一个觉醒期，但觉醒的早晚决定个人的命运。

3.你能痛苦，就说明你对生活还抱有希望!

4.幸福不仅仅是吃饱穿暖，而是勇敢地去战胜困难。

5.我不啼哭，不哀叹，不悔恨，金黄的落叶堆满心间，我已不再是青春少年。

6.生活包含着更广阔的意义，而不在于我们实际得到了什么;关键在于我们的心灵是否充实。

7.不懈的追求生活，又不敢奢望生活过多的报酬和宠爱，而是理智而清醒的面对着现实。

8.什么是人生?人生就是用不休止的奋斗!只有选定了目标并在奋斗中感到自己的努力没有虚掷，这样的生活才是充实的，精神也会永远年轻!

9.生活啊，生活!你有多少苦难，又有多少甘甜!天空不会永远阴暗，当乌云退尽的时候，蓝天上灿烂的阳光就会照亮大地。青草照样会鲜绿无比，花朵仍然会蓬勃开放。

10.当然，普通并不等于庸俗。他也许一辈子就是一个普通人，但他要做一个不平庸的人。在许许多多平平常常的事情中，应该表现出不平常的看法和做法来。

11.命运总是不如愿。但往往是在无数的痛苦中，在重重的矛盾和艰难中，才使人成熟起来，坚强起来;虽然这些东西在实际感受中给人带来的并不都是欢乐。

12.年轻是一个中性词，它代表着很多缺点：缺乏经验、少不更事、容易冲动。但是也有很多优点，其中之一就是有大把的时间去遗忘那些不该记住的事情。

13.生命里有着多少的无奈和惋惜，又有着怎样的愁苦和感伤?雨浸风蚀的落寞与苍楚一定是水，静静地流过青春奋斗的日子和触摸理想的岁月。

14.生命里有着多少的无奈和惋惜,又有着怎样的愁苦和感伤?雨浸风蚀的落寞与苍楚一定是水,静静地流过青春奋斗的日子和触摸理想的岁月。

15.在这个世界上，不是所有合理的和美好的都能按照自己的愿望存在或实现。

16.生活不能等待别人来安排，要自已去争取和奋斗;而不论其结果是喜是悲，但可以慰藉的是，你总不枉在这世界上活了一场。有了这样的认识，你就会珍重生活，而不会玩世不恭;同时，也会给人自身注入一种强大的内在力量。

17.人活着，接得随时准备经受磨难。他知道不论是普通人还是了不起的人，都要在自己的一生中经历许多磨难。 磨难使人坚强。通过一段血火般的洗礼，他相信，自己历尽千辛万苦而酿造的生活之蜜，肯定比轻而易举哪来的更有滋味!

18.人生啊，是这样不可预测，没有永恒的痛苦，也没有永恒的幸福，生活象流水一般，有时是那么平展，有时又是那么曲折。要知道，春天的道路依然充满泥泞!人的生命力，是在痛苦的煎熬中强大起来的。

19.细想过来，每个人的生活同样也是一个世界。即是最平凡的人，也得要为他那个世界的存在而战斗。从这个意义上说，在这些平凡的世界里，也没有一天是平静的。

20.其实我们每个人的生活都是一个世界，即使最平凡的人也要为他生活的那个世界而奋斗。

21.人们宁愿去关心一个蹩脚电影演员的吃喝拉撒和鸡毛蒜皮，而不愿了解一个普通人波涛汹涌的内心世界……

22.钱当然很重要，这我不是不知道;我一天何尝不为钱而受熬苦!可是，我又觉得，人活这一辈子，还应该有些另外的什么才对……

23.命运总是不如人愿。但往往是在无数的痛苦中，在重重的矛盾和艰辛中，才使人成熟起来。

24.生活包含着更广阔的意义，而不在于我们实际得到了什么;关键是我们的心灵是否充实。

25.人和社会，一切斗争的总结局也许都是中庸而已。与其认真，不如随便，采菊东篱下，悠然见南山。有钱就寻一醉，无钱就寻一睡，与过无争，随遇而安。

导语：国际企业家联合总会授予李晓华“最具世界影响力的中国企业领袖”称号。那么关于他背后的故事你了解多少呢?下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的中考作文素材，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

美国福布斯杂志曾连续五年评选他为中国最富有的企业家。人们关注最多的，是他在马来西亚辉煌的发迹史。只是很少有人知道，他的情义和传奇经历，源于44份带着一个普通人爱心的晚报——

1990年，一位喜欢冒险的中国青年来到马来西亚。来这之前，青年已经身家过亿。他打听到，这儿发现了一个大型油气田，准备修一条高级公路。如果这个项目成功，则会带来公路两边的土地大幅度升值。

经过仔细分析之后，青年做出了一生中最冒险的一个决定：利用所有资产担保向银行贷款，拿到公路两边土地的开发权。

4个多月过去了，油气田的立项依然没有结果。青年如坐针毡。这时候，他手间的盘缠已经所剩无几，住所由五星级酒店搬到四星级，再到三星级，最后连旅馆也住不起了。为了省钱，他打算租用旅馆的一个小仓库，每天只吃最便宜的盒饭，再找机会偷偷溜到旅馆的大厅里看当天的晚报。

仓库的管理员是一位老华侨，看到他的处境，非常同情，不仅免了他租仓库的钱，每天还将自己订的一份晚报带给他看。这样的日子一晃过了44天，青年的心也一天天走向绝望，连自杀的想法也有了。那天，青年意外地得知老华侨并不识字，这44份晚报是特意为他买的，顿时心里一热，仿佛看到一线温暖的光，将自己从死亡的边缘拉了回来。晚上，他认真地翻看着报纸，其中一条消息让他兴奋得差点没背过气去：油气田立项了!随后，在一周之内，青年所买的土地价格翻了一番，他的生活一下子由地狱又回到天堂。

暴富后的青年第一个想到的是老华侨，他准备了一只信封，里面是一套当地最高档别墅的钥匙。当他把信封交到老华侨手里的时候，老华侨摇摇头：“我只是给你买了44天的报纸，为什么值得你送这样的大礼呢?”青年说：“那44份晚报，是我一生中得到的最珍贵的帮助和关怀，就凭你的爱心，你有资格得到它。”老华侨依然摇摇头：“谢谢你的好意，我已经习惯了现在的生活，不想去住那种地方。真正值得你报答的，也不是我，而是帮助你的这个社会呀。”

这位青年，就是后来被誉为“情义商人”的李晓华，他成了中国最有名的企业家和慈善家之一。

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

My name is Qiou Ye. I am twelve.My favorite sport is ping-pong and swimming. I like basketbll and I like volletball. I can play the piano and draw, I can play them very well. This is Me.

Can you tell me about yourself ?

我的名字是丘叶。我十二岁，我最喜欢的运动是乒乓球和游泳。我喜欢篮球，我喜欢volletball。我可以弹钢琴和画画，我可以打得很好。这是我。

你能告诉我你自己吗?

导语：时光悄悄地溜去了，太阳则越发的红，悬挂在房顶与天的边缘间。一会儿，夕阳渐渐收敛了光芒，变得温和起来，只是红彤彤的一个圆球，像一个光焰柔和的大灯笼。语文迷小编为大家整理了优美段落摘抄，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

1.过了几分钟，太阳变红了，脸蛋像是涂了淡红的胭脂，轻轻的。啊，太阳也这么爱美!

2.渐渐地，太阳变得更红了，像一个快乐的孩童。歪着红扑扑的脸蛋，毫无倦态，从身上抖落下柔和的光。

3.漫步在家乡的红夕阳中，在夕阳的熠熠里，那一个个亲人的面孔以及印在心中的童年回忆令我难以忘怀。

4.霞光把小白猪变成了金灿灿的小金猪，小孩的脸也被霞光照地红彤彤的。总的来说，所有的东西被霞光照过后，颜色都不一样了。

5.夕阳射出一束束金光，照在大地上，照在家乡的一草一木上。一阵微风吹过，许多的树，许多的草轻轻舞动，那样子，就像是一个个美丽的姑娘脸上闪着灿烂的光芒。

6.今天不早了，黑云悄悄侵入天空太阳一定是急坏了，越发的红，拼命地往西下落，不一会儿就只留下了一个月牙似的边。黑云见太阳躲了便更加嚣张，霸占整个天空，丝毫不肯露一点。太阳则早已没了影子，只留下了一圈残留的金光。

7.一会儿，太阳更红了，像是一只又圆又红的大苹果高傲地悬在天边后面一朵朵黄澄澄的云衬着太阳，阳光透过云缝洒出来，一切都变得红红的，像着了火一般，沐浴在红艳艳的阳光中。

8.一抹殷红色的夕阳照在西山上，湛蓝湛蓝的天空浮动着大块大块的白色云朵，它们在夕阳的辉映下呈现出火焰一般的嫣红，倘若你仔细地看，你会看见那云絮在空中飘动，就像置身于轻纱般的美梦似的，会使你远离烦恼的困扰。

9.在霞光的照耀下，天空像是被火烧了一样。有时候霞光的颜色也变化多端，一会儿红彤彤的，一会儿金灿灿的，等，颜色可多了，还有些说不出名字的颜色。

10.夕阳的红颜色是那样的鲜艳，就像是被革命烈士的鲜血染红的一样。也像是天空中燃烧的一团火焰。纯白色的云点缀着那美丽的红夕阳。有的云被染成了粉色，有的云依然保持着原来的白色，就像是给夕阳妈妈戴上了一串彩色的珍珠项链。

11.夕阳西下，大地沐浴在余辉的彩霞中，人们三三两两地在街道上漫步，晚风徐徐地拂送来一阵阵花木夹杂的幽香，使人心旷神怡，更觉夕阳无限好。

12.天空，无云的地方，已是深蓝。转眼间，这圆东西从底部开始泛出微红，轻轻地，比天上的云丝还要淡。此时太阳的周围，被云霞披上了一层彩色的余晖。

13.一刹那间，夕阳快要跌入地面了，与地面贴得越来越近，越来越近……我知道，这迷人的夕阳很快就要和我们再见了，它即将要到地球的另一面去，为那里的人们带来一个美丽的黎明。

14.光越来越漂亮了，照耀着旁边的云彩，照亮着半个天空。那金黄色的光，沾到了隔壁的云彩姐姐，云彩姐姐穿上了橘黄色的衣服;照到了远处的云彩妹妹，云彩妹妹着上浅红色的新装。没有五彩斑斓，只有梦幻般的红橙黄留在了天空。云彩聚集起来，无暇的夕阳的光轻描淡画出那些美丽的晚霞，细细勾勒出那些丝丝的浮云，渲染出那水墨画般的天空……天空的脸仿佛浮起一丝丝红晕，给人一种奇幻的感觉……

15.太阳虽然快要落下来了，但放出的光还是那样的耀眼。我把手卷成一个小小的圆形，对着太阳看着，要沉下去的太阳像个红心鸡蛋，天空就是一个蓝蓝的锅，现在，鸡蛋快要煮熟了，要被倒到盘子里了，瞧哪!正在一点儿一点儿地往下滑呢!

16.过了一会儿，它像人一样姗姗而行，渐渐地靠近山。这时的太阳光不再刺眼了，它已经把这耀眼的光慢慢地收敛起来，只射出柔和光芒。

17.时光悄悄地溜去了，太阳则越发的红，悬挂在房顶与天的边缘间。一会儿，夕阳渐渐收敛了光芒，变得温和起来，只是红彤彤的一个圆球，像一个光焰柔和的大灯笼。

18.慢慢儿，太阳开始变红。这时，我仿佛看见了七种颜色在不停地变幻着，太阳似乎在转动似的，一会儿青，一会儿紫，一会儿红，五光十色，美丽极了。

19.金灿灿的太阳似乎累了，换上橘色的睡衣，虽不像清晨那样朝气蓬勃，但也是神气活现的，没有一点衰老的样子太阳把利剑似的光芒收住了，泻下柔柔的光，给柳树镀上一层华丽的金黄;每一处都跳跃着红润润的光，波光粼粼，像是一枚枚雀跃着的音符，又像是水里撒了一大把闪亮亮的碎金子，甭提那场面多美了!

20.一阵清爽的夜风扑面而来，仿佛一切烦恼与疲惫都置之度外了，身体的每一根紧张的神经也渐渐舒缓了;风儿吹皱的河面，泛起了层层涟漪，折射着殷红的霞光，像撒下一河红色的玛瑙，熠熠生辉;远处的小竹林闪着绿幽幽的光，在微风中轻轻摇响竹叶，风儿吹动树叶那飒飒作响的声音，像唱着一首动听的歌;高空的风，恣意地追逐着、戏弄着，撕扯着云朵。

新闻标题是新闻的题目，读者看新闻时首先看的就是标题。好的新闻标题能使读者在最短的时间内了解新闻的主要内容，小编收集了英语新闻标题写作技巧，欢迎阅读。

新闻标题是新闻的题目，读者看新闻时首先看的就是标题。好的新闻标题能使读者在最短的时间内了解新闻的主要内容，引起阅读兴趣。写作标题的原则，是要尽量用有限的语句将新闻的主要内容和意旨表达清楚。在英语(优习英语网)新闻标题的写作中，选取准确的动词及正确的时态、语态，是一项重要技巧。例如下面这几行标题，不管是硬新闻还是软新闻标题，都含有一个动词：

High tax levels “driving away foreign investors”

Bush acknowledges Viet Nam parallel

Nigerian plane crashes with over 100 aboard

Myles Quin likes to collect stuff-most of all good yarns

The City cultivates a thriving poetry corner out of The Waste Land

如果缺乏动词，新闻标题会显得单调、千篇一律，例如：

Bill Gates and the Microsoft

American views on China

这两则标题显得大而空泛，华而不实，没有提供关于新闻具体内容的实际信息，应该尽量避免这种写法。

动词的选择

动词使新闻标题变得活跃，但它本身必须是一个活跃的词，能最准确、生动地描述新闻事实，因为标题里没有多余的空间来容纳形容词，所有修饰性的内容，包括程度、颜色、感觉等，都必须依靠这个动词来体现。因此，要尽量避免使用“ask”这类平淡的动词和表达含糊的混合动词，例如“American government gives views on Mexican’s racism”，如果报道对象“American government”在谴责“Mexican’s racism”时用了很有力很明确的语句，那么就应该避免“gives views”这种含糊的写法。

此外，还应该尽量使用表达力强、有力的动词，尽量不使用较弱的助动词“be”、“have”作为新闻标题的主要动词。

时态的使用

一种观点认为新闻标题应使用现在时态，因为所报道的事件虽然已经过去，但它是新近发生的，对读者来说仍然是第一次了解该事件，现在时态能给他们一种事件正在发生的感觉，这对新闻报道来说很重要;另一种观点认为新闻标题不能用现在时，例如法庭报道，对于过去发生的事件，绝对不能用现在时态，避免产生歧义，例如应该写成：“Old retiree stole grocery loaves”，不能写成“Old retiree steals grocery loaves”，否则会使人误会此人一直在继续这种偷窃行为，引起争端。甚至认为任何含有过去的时间因素的标题都应使用过去时态。这一观点可能深受上世纪70年代以来美国新闻学者梅耶(Philip Meyer)的精确新闻报道理论的影响。

那么，究竟应该使用什么时态?考虑的重要依据是看使用现在时态会不会带来歧义，如果不会，则适宜使用现在时。英语新闻标题中不宜使用“yesterday”这个词，尤其是在早报的标题中，因为早报所报道的几乎所有事情都可以被认为是发生在“昨天”的。但如果报道的是将来要发生的事，则应尽量使用确切的时间，如：“Paper industry will strike tomorrow /next week/next month”。再如：“Beijing to fulfill promises for 2008 Olympics”，即使省略了“will”，意思仍很清楚。

有一种新闻标题采用“be+动词不定式”结构，助动词“be”通常省略：

Princess (is) to Visit Baffinaland in August.

Financier (is) killed by burglars.

Countries (are) to Spend More on Cancer Research.

使用将来时态报道即将和日后将会发生的事情是很常见的。

主动语态与被动语态

在英语新闻标题中，主动语态比被动语态的表达效果更好。试比较下面两则新闻标题：

France rejects EU Constitution

EU Constitution rejected by France

对比后，我们发现，使用被动语态的新闻标题，比主动语态标题长，单词数量多，这对有长度限制的标题来说是很不利的。同样长度的标题，主动语态所提供的信息内容更多，结构更生动，而且可以有更多的空间去阐述其他内容，例如“Boy found dead by teacher”如果改写成主动语态“Teacher found boy dead in lab”，不但阐述更加自然，包含的信息也更多。

例外的情况是当事件或动作的承受人比执行者更重要时，可以使用被动语态。

关于动词，还有一个问题需要注意。英语中有不少单词既能作名词，又能作动词，其词性是根据具体语法位置来决定的。写作标题时如果省略了一些前后辅助辨别的词汇，单词的词性就可能变得不确定和含糊，下面这些单词都属于此类：

tax, ban, plan, drive, move, probe, protest, bat, share, watch, cut, axe, ring, bank, rises, state, pay, pledge, talks, riot, attack, appeal, back, face, sign, jump, drug

英语新闻标题的动词应尽量使用一般现在时，但在遇到该动词兼有名词和动词两种词性的情况下，有时可以使用过去时态，以使这个动词的词性更加清楚，避免产生歧义。

作者：宋菡晓

对我来说，小提琴是我唯一的兴趣爱好。

小提琴的样子很可爱，头顶上有一个鼓起来的“大包”，两旁都有着四个黑色的“贴身侍卫”，往下有四条长长的线从头都尾直接贯穿。线的底下有一个长长的黑板，它的两旁是面积最大的“面孔”，从上到下，像个葫芦。优美的线条显得那么柔和，那么有魅力。下面就是黑色的东西，这个东西作用可大了，拉小提琴的时候，头都得挨着它，否则姿势不对。跟它搭配的就是弓子，弓子长长的，弓毛是白色的，一定要照顾好它，要不然，它可会断的。

每次上特色班的时候，我都是兴高采烈的，因为，我对小提琴非常感兴趣。在特色班里，我拿着琴，到小班去教，因为老师每次都会在大班找几个人去小班教学生，有时候经常叫我和温孜一去。在小班教他们的时候，我们也不耽误我们的学习。说实话，我拉的不是最好的，因为我也有困难的时候，就是拉《梁祝》，一会高音，一会低音，都分不清，也不会拉。更严重的就是因为这一首曲子我都不想学了。可是，那又能怎样呢，只能使劲的学，但是是我意想不到的是，我学会了。

回到家里，我先写作业，写完作业就拿起小提琴，在屋里拉，关住门和窗，在屋里兴高采烈的拉着。一会儿，我拉小提琴的声音传到了妈妈的耳朵里，妈妈把音乐录了下来，回放给我听，我觉得还行，但是，也有些难听。这说明我还不够好，还需要练。

小提琴就是我的唯一爱好。

孝道当竭力，忠勇表丹诚;兄弟互相助，慈悲无边境。

勿以恶小而为之，勿以善小而不为。

吾见世间无教而有爱，每不能然，饮食运为，恣其所欲，宜诫翻奖，应呵反笑，至有识知，谓法当尔。

吾家食宋禄三百余年，勿忘后裔不仕。

无瑕之玉，可以为国器;孝悌之子，可以为国瑞。

我今仅守读书业，汝勿轻捐少壮时。

维祖卓识图迁，艰难风雨肇云，世系移蕃，各省籍贯他州;欲报之德，昊天罔极焉。

提倡勤俭持家，节约光荣，浪费可耻。

书山有路勤为径，学海无边苦作舟。

少年不知勤学苦，老来方悔读书迟。

赡养父母是中华民族的传统美德，从我做起代代相传。

人遗子孙以财，我遗子孙以清白。

人生内无贤父兄，外无严师友，而能有成者少矣。

人皆因禄富，我独以官贫。所遗子孙，在于清白耳。

亲贤者远小人;重礼仪讲诚信。

刻薄成家骄奢淫逸，就是败家相。

见不义之财勿取，遇合理之事则从。

家家有本难念经，唯有开心念得通。

活到老学到老躺在棺材里不算巧。

黄金非宝书为宝，万事皆空善不空。

汉之袁氏累世忠节，吾心所尚，尔等宜以之为师，时时训诫自己。

广积聚者，遗子孙以祸害;多声色者，残性命以斤斧。

妇女奢淫者败;子弟骄怠者败;兄弟不和者败;侮师慢客者败。

奉先思孝，处下思恭;倾己勤劳，以行德义。

非淡泊无以明志，非宁静无以致远。

房氏后裔起名，班辈按一字居中，一字居后，不得紊乱。

凡是不 爱已的人，实在欠缺做父亲的资格。

儿童是创造产业的人，不是继承遗产的人。

儿孙自有儿孙福，莫为儿孙作马牛。

独立人格勤俭节约凡事忍耐不断学习为人正直用心做事。

读古书以训诂为本;作诗文以声调为本;养亲以得欢心为本;养生以少恼怒为本;立身以不妄语为本;治家以不晏起为本;居官以不要钱为本;行军以不扰民为本。

传家两字曰读与耕，兴家两字曰俭与勤。

成家子，烘如宝，败家子，钱如草。

常将有日思元日，莫待无时思有时。

不以已长望人，虽卑贱皆得尽所能。

不孝父母，敬神无益;兄弟不和，交友无益;存心不正，风水无益;行止不端，读书无益;心高气傲，博学无益;做事乖张，聪明无益;时运不济，妄救无益;妄取人财，布施无益;不惜元气，服药无益;淫恶肆意，阴陟无益。

做人要做老实(遵纪守法)诚实(表里如一)善良人，多做好事，终有好事。

族内子孙人等，妄作非为，有干名教者，不待鸣官，祠内先行整治。

粥一饭，当思来处不易;半丝半缕，恒念物力维艰。

重道德修养，严情操品性;扶正义，斥邪恶。

欲高门第须为善，要好儿孙必读书。

有百世之德者，必有百世之子孙保之;有十世之德者，就有十世的子孙保之;如果是斩焉无后者，那是德至薄也。

一粥一饭，当思来之不易;半丝半缕，恒念物力维艰。

一身能勤能敬，虽愚人亦有贤智风味。

一戒是(晚)起;二戒懒惰;三戒奢华;四戒骄傲。既守四戒，又须规以四宜：一宜勤读;二宜敬师;三宜爱众;四宜慎食。

学生要三勤：手勤脑勤读书勤。

休存猜忌之心，休听离间之语，休作生分之事，休专公共之利。

行军打仗，兵最怕骄，骄兵必败;儿女也最怕娇惯，一娇惯，那一定出现问题。

孝敬老人，严教子孙;尊老爱幼，亲穆存心。