高中英语记叙文写作技巧【热门20篇】

英语写作和汉语写作一样，要写出好文章除了要有好的内容外还少不了好的结构，而句子的好坏又取决于选词造句。小编收集了关于英语作文的写作技巧，欢迎阅读。

一、措辞

1、选择生动准确的词

词是语言的基本单位，人们要表达思想，就要选择适当的词语，这是写作的基本要求。

词可分为一般概念的词(general words)和具体概念的词(specific words)。表示一般概念的词含义模糊;表示具体概念的词含义明确，表达准确，生动形象。写作时合理地使用具体概念的词能够使句子表达的意思准确，内容生动，更富有感染力。试比较下面各组句子：

(l) A few houses were destroyed yesterday (general)

Five houses burnt down yesterday (specific)

(2)His relatives gave him two gifts(general)

His aunt and uncle gave hima watch and a Pen as the birthday gifts。(specific)

(3) Jack went to the window and looked at the crowd outside(general)

Jack tiptoed to the window and peeped into the room(specific)

上面各组句中，第一个句子抽象概括，给人以空泛的感觉：第二个句子用词具体，有个件，使人感到意思确切，生动逼真。

2、使用英语成语和习语

人们在长期使用语言的过程中，积累了大量的习惯表达法。这些成语、习语内涵丰富，语言生动活泼。文章中适当地使用这类短语，可避免语言的单调贫乏，使句子生动而富于内涵。如：

(l)George has lost his social position since his business failed.

可改为：George has come down in the world since his business failed

(2).Maybe you have time to go to the cinema,but I have more importavt businessto attend to.

可改为：Maybe you have time to go to the cinema,but I have other fish to fry.

3、用词的宽度

用词的宽度可以反映出写作者所掌握的词汇量。如果一个人掌握的词汇量大，那么当表达同一概念有不同的表达方法时，则可以换一种说法。如：

The teachers maintained that the students should give up love for the sake ofleaming Students,however,hold that fordidding love among college students is nogood.

这两句话里，谓语分别用了maintain和hold。如果将它们换为think，所表达的意思相同，但用词宽度则不如原文。这两句话中for the sake of，give uP,is no good等都是用词宽度的表现。

所以在英语写作中有意识地适当增加用词宽度既能体现学以致用的原则又能使文章取得良好效果。

二、句子的多样化

英语中，同一思想用不同句式表达，其效果会大不相同。要想写出好的文章，就要不断地变化句子的结构形式。

l、长短句交替使用

句子的长短是为表达思想服务的。英语短句结构简单，意思明白具有生动活泼而又干脆利索的表达效果，而长句结构复杂，信息丰富，能表达成熟的思想与复杂的概念。一味地使用长句或短句会使文章显得单调，乏味，从而影响文章的总体效果。科学地交替使用长短句使句子结构变化多样，不仅给文章带来顿挫起伏的语言美感，而且可以受到理想的修辞效果。请看下面的这段话：

She returned to her office.There was a note under the door. It was from Mr May.He said he was waiting for her in the coffee room.And he bad not found her sister.Hewas sorry to have missed her.

这段话用了一连串的短句，读起来单调呆板，平淡无味。为使文字更加生动，意思更加明确可改为：

When she returned to her office，the found a note from Mr May under the door.He said he was waiting for her in the coffee room and hadnt found her sister yet.Headded that he was sorry to have missed her.

修改后三个句子长短不一，读起来就给人以不同的感觉。

又如《大学英语》第一册第十课 Going Home，当汽车驶至 Brunsnick，车上的年轻人看见黄手帕时，出现了以下这两行文字：

Then，suddenly，all of the young people were up out of thelr seats，screamlng andshouting and cryin, doing small dances of joy.All except Vlngo.这两句话一长(23个词)一短(3个词)，彼此衬托互为凸现。第一句的两个and和四个-ing词，把热闹、喧哗的气氛喧染极至，长句之后，蜂回路转，一个仅三个词的短句扑入读者的双目几乎沸腾的场面顿时凝固但其余音未绝，此时外表虽冷漠，内心却炙热难当。

2、句子开头的多样化

“主-谓-宾”、“主-系-表”是英语的基本句型，主语领先句也是用得最多的句型。写作中为避免形式单一，当句子可以用主语开头，同时又可以其它结构开头时，不妨变换一下。如：

(1)Defeated in the minor exchanges,I now play my queen of trumps.(分词短语做状语开头)

(2)There are two ways in which one can own a book.( there be句型开头)

(3)Equally important is a good habit of reading(表语开头)

以上各句都可以用主语开句，但在篇章中通过改变句子开头，文章就会疏落有致，语言形式丰富多采。

3、句子结构的多样化

写作中可以通过句型结构的变化来增添文采，强化表现力。如：

(l) The love of the liberty is the love of the others;the love of power ls thelove of ourselves.

(平行结构.这类结构整齐、紧凑;句子生动、鲜明，语义贯通、语势强劲有力。)

(2)The days when we suffered from oppression and exploitation are gone.(这样表达文字通顺，但语意不很突出。)

改为：Gone are the days when we suffered fron oppression andexploitation.

(采用倒装句结构后，充分体现出受剥削受压迫的人民解放后扬眉吐气的心情。)

三、观点切题结构合理

这是写作中最重要的要求之一它要求写作开门见山直入主题。如写一篇谈“健康重要性”的文章，提示是1、健康的重要性;2、保持健康的方法;3、我的看法。按要求文章应按三个自然段来写，而每段开头都必须是提示的内容，因此，三段可以这么开头：

l.Good health is important to everyone of us.

2.There are many ways which can help build up our health.

3.As for me，I like running as well as playing basketball and football.

除了开门见山以外，论述的内容必须与提示保持一致，否则文章的语言再好，也只能算是失败之作。一般来说，这类文章的每个自然段都由三部分组成，即主题句，论述句和结论句。主题句由提示给出，论述句提供观点来论证主题句，结论句则是总结、归纳、概括主提句的观点。

总之，要写出一篇好的英语作文不是一朝一夕就能做到的。除了借助以上方法之外，还需从平时入手，勤写多练，以提高自己的写作水平和语言表达能力。

Dear ______ ,

①I have learned with delight that you ______(祝贺事由). ②I would like to extend to you my utmost congratulations on ______. ③You must be ______. ④And I feel very happy for you.

⑤ ______(所取得的成绩)is quite exciting news! ⑥I know this is surely owing to ______(被祝贺人过去的努力).⑦It is a reward you richly deserve for your ______(被祝贺人的优点).

⑧Kindly let me know when you ______(咨询对方何时有空).⑨I hope ______(表达自己的愿望). ⑩My best wishes for your further success.

Yours sincerely,

Li Ming

Dear Maria,

Im very happy that you are interested in Chinese culture,especially the festivals.Now let me tell you something about the Dragon Boat Festival.The Dragon Boat Festival,also called the Duanwu Festival ,is celebrated on the fifth day of the fifth month according to the Chinese calendar.People always eat rice dumplings and watch dragon boat races to celebrate it.

The festival is best known for its dragon-boat races,especially in the southern places where there are many rivers and lakes. It’s very popular.

The rice dumpling is made of glutinous rice,meat and so on. You can eat different kinds of rice dumplings.They are very delicious.

And Dragon Boat Festival is for Qu Yuan. He is an honest minister who is said to have committed suicide by drowning himself in a river.

Overall, the Dragon Boat Festival is very interesting!

Your friend

Li Hua

we are supposed to expresour gratitude to otheron thanksgiving day. however, we should feel gratitude everday.

god hatwo dwellings, one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart. be grateful to otheria wato show your love. in our daillife, we often receive help from our parents, friends, colleagueand strangers. perhapit ia little thing, pick up the pen you drop, lift a heavbox for you or offer you a seat in the bus. we should be thankful to them for whatever thehave done. the more love you give, the more love you receive.

The Lunar New Year

The Lunar New Year occasion to the Chinese people. It lasts about the first four days of the year, during which people do not work except for the workers on duty. Students do not go to school, and shops are closed.

Several days before the new year, people begin to prepare. Farmers kill pigs, sheep, cocks and hens. City dwellers buy meat fish and vegetables. Houses are cleaned; couplets are posted on the doors. Colourful lanterns are hung at the gate.

On the eve of the new year, each family has its members gatherd together and eats a family reunion dinner. After the meal they watch TV until the clock strickes twelve. Then every family sets off long strings of small firecrackers and other fireworks to welcome the new year. On the first day of the new year, almost everyone is dressed in his or her best. Whenpeople meet on the way, they say to each other "Happy New Year". Friends and relatives pay new year calls and gives presents to each other. Children indulge themselves in games.

春节

农历新年对中国人来说是个很重要的节日。它大约要持续4天，在这期间，除了值班人员外，人们都放假了。工人不开工，学生上不学，商店关门。

新年前几天人们就开始准备。农民们宰杀猪、鸡、羊。城市居民买肉、鱼、蔬菜。人们打扫房子，贴对联，挂彩灯。

新年除夕，各家各户围坐在一起吃团圆饭。饭后，人们看电视，到了午夜12点，在这辞旧迎新的时刻，人们燃放各种烟花炮竹来庆祝。新年第一天，即正月初一，所有的人都穿着最漂亮的衣服，路上相遇，互相道“新年好”，亲戚朋友拜年互赠礼物，孩子们尽情地玩耍。

一、写提示议论文应考虑的几点

1、文章开头，能依据提示确立主题句(topic)阐明观点或看法。

2、会使用连接词分层次说明理由、缘由(supportingsentences)。

3、归纳总结，首尾呼应。

二、看图作文应考虑的几点

1、看懂图片，把图片展示的人物、地点、时间、事件等有机地串联起来，使之成为内容连贯的句子。

2、确定短文须用的时态和该用的人称。

3、确定体裁(说明文还是记叙文)，接着用简洁的语句描述图片或图表大意。

4、根据图片或图表大意议论。

Before Teachers Day, we were thinking what gift we would give our liuxue86.com English teacher on that day. Wang Ming said, "Our English teacher is tired and shirsty after class. Lets give her a bottle of water. " "Thats a good idea,"we agreed."

On Teachers Day, as soon as the teacher came into the classroom, we all stood up and shouted "Happy Teachers Day!" Our monitor went to the from and gave her a card and a bottle of water with our best wishes. Our teacher dran.

【提要】英语四六级四级信息 : 20176月英语四级写作高分黄金句式【1】

▌列举法

列举法是四级写作中常用的方法，一般用first, second等一系列标志词引出原因或者可能的影响等。列举法常用的素材有：

引出列举

1. There may be a combination of factors which contribute to/are responsible for/can explain ______. 也许有一些因素造成/可以解释______。

2. There are probably three/many/several/a variety of reasons for this dramatic/significant increase/decline in ______.引起______显著增长/下降的原因有三个/许多/几个/很多。

3. Some reasons can explain this trend. 一些原因可以解释这一趋势。

4. Why ______ ?为什么______?

5. The causes of ______ are varied. They include______ , perhaps the main cause is ______. 造成______的原因有很多，包括______,主要原因可能是______。

6. The reason for this is not far to seek. 这一问题的原因不难发现。

7. It is no easy task to identify the reasons for this phenomenon which involves several complicated factors. 要找出这一现象的原因并非易事，因为它涉及若干复杂的因素。

8. There are numerous reasons why ______, and I would explore only a few of the most important ones here. ______的原因有很多，这里我只想探讨其中几个最重要的原因。

9. There are many reasons responsible for this phenomenon, and the following are the typical ones. 导致这种现象的原因有很多，以下是其中比较有代表性的。

10. There are many reasons explaining this case. As for me, I regard the following as the typical ones. 有很多原因可以解释该问题。就我而言，我认为以下原因比较典型。

11. A number of factors could account for/contribute to/lead to/result in the change of ______. 引起______变化的因素有很多。

分条列举

1. In the first place, ______. In the second place______ .首先，______。其次，______。

2. First,______ . Second, ______ . 首先，______。其次，______。

3. To begin with, ______. Secondly, ______. Last but not least, ______.首先，______。其次，______。最后但并不是最不重要的，______。

4. The first reason is that ______. The second one is ______. The third is ______. 第一个原因是______。第二个原因是______。第三个原因是______。

5. First of all, ______. Secondly,______ . Furthermore,______ .首先，______。其次，______。另外，______。

6. For one thing, ______. For another, ______.一方面,______。另一方面，______。

7. Firstly, ______. Secondly, ______. Thirdly, ______.首先，______。其次，______。再次，______。

8. Another reason why I disagree with the above statements is that I believe______.我不同意上述观点的另一个原因是我认为______。

▌对比法

对比法是指通过对比两种截然不同的观点来陈述其中的利弊，从而得出自己的结论。对比法常用的素材有：

1. The advantages gained in ______ outweigh/are much g

马云曾经说过：“梦想还是需要有的，万一实现了呢？”

出生在美国的爱苏华侨的乔治，从小就期待着要当上空军，飞翔蓝天。因此，从小就期待着，但事与愿违，就在他当选上空飞行员后爸爸不幸出了车祸去世了。18岁的他不得不放弃参军，回家经营着所在的超市。年复一年的过去。乔治每天总会坐在院子里望一会儿天空，望着不远处机场。看着那些自由的飞机。

有一天他突发奇想，买来了好多的氢气球，充足的食物和水，实施他疯狂大胆的计划，借助气球飞上蓝天。

他成功了，借助浮力成功的飞上了蓝天，它用无线电与塔台联盖，按照指示飞越村庄飞临城市，许多孩子惊叹：“看，那人在飞。“

他的这次飞行，震惊了许多人，也感动了许多人。事后，记者采访他：”飞那么的远，你不怕么？“他只说了一句：”怕，但我更怕从小期待和我一同进了坟墓。“在他感动的人群中，有一个编剧，于是这位编剧写出了《飞屋环游记》的剧本。

梦想的力量是无穷的，试想，如果没有这份梦想，乔治怎么可能做到这一切？

再放眼前如今的社会，有多少人是过且过没有梦想，没有对未来的一份期待，一些富家子弟，终日挥霍无度.........倘若人人都有期待，就不会有那么多碌碌无为的青年，不会有终日的虚度年华的人

做一个有梦想的人，有丝期待，因此居里夫人才会发现了新元素；郎朗才会在这世界级殿堂里展现中国人的精彩；姚贝娜才会留下她那天籁之音。因为有了梦想，才有史家之绝唱，无韵之离骚的《史记》才使人们从“日心说”的愚昧种解脱出来，中华民族的百年飞天梦才得以实现。

总有一种期待，叫梦想，把梦想的草籽随身携带，一路播种，一路开放，走在这香花弥漫的路途上，即使踏着荆棘也不觉得痛。带着梦想出发，痛苦也是快乐；带着梦想出发，疲惫也是动力；带着梦想出发，失败也是成功，总有一种期待，伴你前行，伴你成长，伴你成功。

it was the first day of our summer holiday.all of us were very happy. why? because we have two months to do things we love to do.we are free.although we have some homework.but we can finish them in several days.and the rest time we can make good use of.my god! we have been very tired after hard studying.in summer holidays,i want to have full sleep and eat good food in order to replenish myself. last but not the least,i will have a good rest.

这是我们暑假的第一天，我们都很高兴。为什么？因为我们有两个月的时间去做我们喜欢做的事情了。我们自由了。尽管我们有很多家庭作业。但是我们几天就可以完成，剩余的时间我们可以自由支配.上帝啊，在努力的学习之后我们很累。在暑假，我想睡好吃好为了放松我自己。最后，我将可以好好休息。

[高中生暑假英语日记

“天街小雨润如酥，草色遥看近却无”这是人们吟唱至今的诗词文化。“角生旦丑”，这是优美的戏剧文化;“摇滚，电音”是如今流行音乐文化声音有这个色的文化才能组成我们如今缤纷的世界。

今日超女李宇春在北大百年讲堂指音唱了一首歌，说了十几句话就让就让现场极度混乱，因此引起广大人民群众的热议，我认为：大学讲堂不是正式的金銮殿，娱乐文化也可以登上讲台。文化不分贵贱，文化应是多姿多彩的。

随着人们生活水平的不断提高互联网等新科技的飞速发展，促使人们更方便的接触到更多，丰富的信息，安安静静，规规矩矩地坐在课堂上听教师传授知识，也似乎成为了一个牢笼，那颗向往自由的心，如果此时能有一个小小的娱乐节目吸引人们的目光。，那会他们走丢的思绪让枯燥无味的课堂，天真许多，生气，让学生集中精神更主动的尝试礼物知识这不是一箭双雕吗?文化应是多姿多彩的，两种不同文化的融合也可迸发惊人的力量。

超女总冠军李宇春是一位流行音乐歌手，歌手与讲堂两者似乎没有什么必然的联系，但既然这位流行歌手被邀请到北大讲堂上演讲，这固然与歌手本身有着千丝万缕的联系。我们不能因为他的一首歌一句话引起的温暖而否定他的才华，否定她上讲堂的本意。因此我认为娱乐节目也能登上讲堂，文化不分贵贱文化，本是多姿多彩的。

想必开讲了这档综艺节目大家一定并不陌生，这是由央视主持人撒贝宁主持的一档大型青少年励志节目。在这个节目上邀请了各行各业优秀的人物走上讲堂，在这个讲台上，被邀请的人能够自由的演讲，讲述自身的经历故事，以自己的视角为学生代表解决问题。我想北大的初心大概也如这一挡节目一样，想让一位大家熟知的人去讲授一些有用励志的知识，帮助学生解答一些学习生活中的问题，让学生更深刻的记忆，更深入的思考，并因此受到启发。既然如此，讲堂《开讲了》走上娱乐节目，那娱乐节目为什么不能能因李宇春引领而走入课堂呢?

文化不分贵贱，文化本应是多姿多彩的。娱乐节目走进讲堂也不失为一种文化创新的方式。

记叙文在高考作文中越来越受到青睐是大家有目共睹的，相对于议论文来说，记叙文有其自身的优势，因为考生受思维能力和阅历的限制，很难在有限的时间内写出有真知灼见的文章的；而记叙文则不同，只要把事情说清楚或者把人写活就可以了。

虽然任何一种文体本身没有优劣之分，只是相对于特定年龄阶段的高中生来说，散文是最好写的，因为现在高考的文体不限，导致很多学生不分文体，而散文形式 自由，是融记叙、议论、抒情、说明和描写等于一体的。并且散文题材广泛，凡是日常生活中的所见所闻所感所思均可入题。因此，我们认为，记叙文写作可以散文 化，由于它取材广泛，摇曳多姿，艺术表现形式丰富多样，如同五彩斑斓的风景画，让人陶醉，让人喜爱。

在记叙文写作时，应防止犯以下的错误：

一、记叙文容易写成流水账。

很多学生在写记叙文时不能把握好哪里该详写哪里该略写，哪里需要浓墨重泼哪里需要惜金如墨，因此没有轻重主次之分，把事情原原本本的写下来。又因为受字数的限制（800多字），本身有没有细节描写的意识，所以写出的记叙文往往只有结果而无过程。

二、记叙文容易犯叙事低幼化的毛病。

由于受生活阅历的限制，学生一写作文就无话可说，在抓耳挠腮之余，不得不求助于珍藏在记忆深处的童年时代或小学生活。当然不是不可以写童年或小 学，而是需要注意叙述角度和口吻的把握，很多同学在叙述的时候完全变成了一个七八岁或十几岁的孩子了，所思所感幼稚的很。要记住，有些事情以儿童 的眼光来看可能很有趣，可能是刻骨铭心的，但现在所写的文章是给成年人来看的（阅卷老师），因此此类文章得分很低。

三、记叙文一旦追求写出波澜容易走上不合理虚构的歧途。

现实生活很平淡，少有惊天动地的事情可写。而作为考场作文，平铺直叙的文章是不可能得到阅卷老师的青睐的；而学生为了叙述的引人入胜，为了结果的 出人意料，往往会无中生有，编造故事。由于生活阅历的缺乏，生活常识的匮乏，所编的故事常常破绽百出、捉襟见肘。因此记叙文写作就陷入两难的地步：不 虚构吧，情节平淡，不能引人入胜；虚构吧，生活经验不足，细节不真实，也难以引人入胜。

记叙文散文化的优点：

一、散文表达方式的多样化，不至于写出被人贬为文体不分的四不像的文章。

由于话题作文的不限制文体，导致了很多学生文体不分。在写作时没有问题意识，写出的文章就四不像。而散文则不同，她可以记叙，可以抒情，可以议论， 可以描写，可以说明。如果以叙事为主，就是叙事散文；如果以抒情为主，就是抒情散文；如果以说理为主，就是说理散文。不至于被阅卷人评为记叙文不像记叙 文，议论文不像议论文而得分不高。

二、散文的特点是形散而神不散，因此记叙文可以围绕一个话题，方便考场构思。

考场时间有限，环境特殊，一般很难进行缜密的思维，更不用说写出令人拍案叫绝的文章了。但是散文可以凭借文体自身的优势，进行发散思维，只要事物有那么 一点联系都可以被写进文章，只要适当的点一下题，就不会被人贬为跑题。并且，如果思维能够全方位发散，说不定还被认为是有创造、有新意的一类文呢。

三、在记事、抒情和议论中，可以阐发一点小感悟和小哲理，容易写出自我独特感受。

文章关键是写出个性。如果写记叙文，学生年龄相仿、阅历相当，所经历的事情相似，很难写出新意来；如果写议论文，高中生分析能力受认识水平、生活阅历限 制，往往是观点加材料，罗列事例，缺少分析，尤其缺少辩证分析，这样的议论文平淡无奇，很容易让阅卷老师产生厌烦感。因此，散文则可以根据自己的所思所 感，写出一点小感想，抒发一点小哲理，个性的表达自己的看法，写出个性，写出新意。

例如下面一段文字，就是记叙文散文化的佳作：

我曾站在故乡坍圮了半壁的城墙上，望着披着袅袅晨雾的日出，听着黛绿色树影中呼啸而过的火车声响，独自彷徨，忽然看见稻田里那绰绰弯曲的背影，想起不远 处耕种的爹娘，手心的汗浸透了这薄薄却很沉重的几张素宣，心中悄悄旋起一股小小的龙卷风。无论我所向往的地方，是绝域萧条的山川大江，还是细雨潺潺梦境跌 落的山冈，是铁血班驳的断章还是沉默的寂亡，是逶迤的一马平川还是弯曲踞蹐的千沟万壑，是波涛汹涌惊涛骇浪，还是像我以前那样徒增马齿一如既往的凭依栏 杆，一任阶前点滴到天亮。

无论怎样，我都不想再对未来的天堂多做幻想，我也想许下亘古不变的诺言，我也想抛开一切荒芜与苍凉，我也想 象惊寒的大雁一样摆个大大的人字，兀傲的让眼皮下庸碌的万物抬头仰望。可是谁来告诉我，谁能？谁允许？连时间都会不屑的讥讽我，休想。嘴角蜷缩着一丝苍凉 的苦笑，我何尝不是那些昂着头仰望的庸碌中的一颗沙砾。突然想起张爱玲《倾城之恋》中白流苏对范柳原说的一段话，你们外归的人好，初次瞧见这里的人事， 再坏些，再脏些，是你外面的人，外面的东西。你若是混在那里头长大了，你怎么分的清，哪一部分是他们，哪一部分是你。

记事型作文，写不好就成了流水账，正在学写作文的小朋友要学会使用以下七个技巧，一起来看看吧。

1.要交代清楚时间、地点、人物、事件。

让读者明白文章写的是什么人，在什么时候，什么地方发生了怎样的事。

2.找出事件闪光点。

如果根据题目的要求选定了某件事，你就要对这件事进行认真的回忆，并仔细琢磨，反复思考，挖掘出这件事中含有的生活道理，或找出它闪光的地方。

3.必须把事情发生的环境写清楚。

因为任何事情总是在一定的环境中发生、发展的。环境写好了，写出特点来，还能渲染气氛，表达感情，使文章更生动。

4.一般要按事情发展顺序写。

把一件事的起因、经过、结果写清楚，不能颠三倒四，还应把事情的前因后果，来龙去脉写清楚。

5.记事中要围绕中心，抓住重点，不要面面俱到。

重点部分（一般指事情发展高潮处）要详写，写具体，写详尽，给读者以深刻的印象。

6.写事不能离不开写人。

同此在记事过程中，一定要把人物的语言、神态、动作、心理活动等写细致，写逼真，这样才能表达出人物的思想品质，才能更好地表达这件事所包含的意义，即文章的中心思想。

7.必须把事情发生的环境写清楚。

因为任何事情总是在一定的环境中发生、发展的。环境写好了，写出特点来，还能渲染气氛，表达感情，使文章更生动。

将游玩时看到的景物，所听到的声音，所产生的联想，所获得的感受，按照一定的顺序，有重点、有感情地记录下来，就是一篇游记作文了。下面是小编分享的小学游记作文写作技巧，一起来看一下吧。

一、 按游览的顺序描写景物。

写作时，要在认真观察和记忆游览的景物的基础上，按照见到景物的次序，来写所看到的景物。这样才能做到条理清楚、自然、明白，不致于杂乱。观察景物，通常有两种方法。一种就是定点观察。如站在公园某一角，对公园进行由远及近的观察。又如我们登上塔顶，从东南西北四个方向对塔下景物进行观察。二就是移动观察，它又叫移步换位法。就是随着脚步的移动变换位置，一处一处地进行观察。选好了观察点，就是确定好了写作的顺序。

二、 抓住游览重点，详写过程。

一次参观游览活动，看到的景物很多，我们不能记流水帐。要把看到的景物中印象较深的写下来，其余地可以写得简略些。我们要一边参观游览，一边要抓住景物的特点，进行仔细观察。比方说，我们要写游览看到的景物为主的记叙文，写作的重点就是把看到的景物重点写下来。对于我们看到的特别好的景物，我们要进行具体地描写，突出重点。对于重点的景物，要注意详细描写出它们的位置、大小、动态、静态、颜色等。如我们写菊花，颜色就有红的如枫叶、白的如冰霜、黄的如麦穗等等，菊花的形状就有像小姑娘的卷发，毛茸茸的小鸡，绣球等等。我们要把过程写详细、具体，做到主次分明，详略得当，写出来的文章才能突出重点，清楚明白，才能写出游览的意义，才有教育意义。

三、略写前后，情、理、景相结合。

我们在写游记时，应把开头和结尾写得简略些，作文指导《小学生游记作文范文写作技巧》。开头要交待清楚时间、地点和人物。如《游善卷洞》的开头我的故乡江苏宜兴有一处著名的游览胜地——善卷洞。结尾应用议论或抒情的方式写下自己的感受。如《天然动物园漫游记》的结尾写道‘哈哈……’我们在欢笑声中结束了这次愉快的野游。朱库米天然动物园行的乐趣是无穷的，无怪乎世界各地前去游览的人络绎不绝。这样，写的文章有头有尾，读起来给人一个完整的印象。我们要把感情融化于景物中，写出真意。写作时，我们要倾注自己的思想感情。还有，我们在写景的同时，或探索人生真谛，或谈论思想问题，治学精神，使读者在领略自然风景的同时，受到启迪和教育。

切忌：

一、游记作文不要写成旅游路线图;

二、针对你游览的某一地留下深刻印象的景点来作文;

三、必须考虑游记的顺序，空间，时间，角度(远到近);

四、描写不必面面俱到，要懂得删减枝叶;

五、选着留有深刻印象的点来做发挥，其中一定要有详略，那几个略写哪几个详写要想清楚;

六、注意历史事物和历史事件，传说的巧妙结合，更能凸显出游览的意义和文章的深度;

七、借景抒情的手法应该运用;

八、人文景观的描写中，环境烘托是必要的，选着恰当的景色进行烘托;

九、自然景观的描写中，修辞手法应该运用，但是不要落俗套，好好自己去用心感受，最好有些贴切的修辞创新。

many senior school students (高中生) are faced with the headache choice between big universities and small ones。 apart from different requirements， each has advantages and disadvantages。

if you ask me what my preference is， my answer is that i would like to go to a big university。 a big university attracts me for sound reasons。 more qualified teaching staff， higher aims and better conditions are helpful to students studying there。 what is more， various lectures organized by more colleges (大学里的学院) and departments make students in different majors form all round opinions on things。 and diverse activities enrich students life after school。 additionally， a big garden campus provides a satisfying environment for studying and living for four or more years。

though more students might mean more competitions， though i might be a small fish in a big pond， i will be motivated to work harder。 in a big university， i believe， my visions will be broadened， and my college life will be a more fruitful and colourful one。 in word， i am inclined (倾向于) to study in a big university。

[高中生怎样选择大学英语作文

my daddy was not happy because he thought it was not good for my study.Sometimes I felt I was not a free boy when my daddy was so strict with me,so I tried to talk to my daddy,and he said he was happy because I talked to him,and now he let me play games if I study well.From this,I understand a friendly talk can help people get along well.

提高小朋友的写作技巧，这好象是一个老大难问题，一直以来都困扰着众多的同学、老师和家长。大家都觉得，要提高写作的能力是一件很不容易的事。

国外的小朋友一样有这方面的困扰，不少小朋友也苦于不会写作。针对这个问题，教育专家詹妮弗-李提出了一些建议供大家参考。

给小朋友准备一个恬静、亲切的环境，作为写作的专用区域。当然这里面要具备一些必要的设备：书桌、字典、笔、一些纸，假如可能的话还可以准备一台电脑。这些准备不只是必要的，同时还可以由此告诉你的小朋友，你认为写作是一件有意义的、特别的活动。

小朋友需要机会去尝试写各种各样类型的文章，而不是只盯着一种文体来练习。

你可以让小朋友给他的好朋友写一封友好的信，给玩具公司写一封信提出自身的一点要求，或写一封邀请亲戚来吃饭的信。这样小朋友可以看到自身写作真的取得了效果，就会对写作发生好感。

另外一个鼓励小朋友写作的好方法，就是让他写日记。这种方法可以协助小朋友形成写作的个人风格。但你和小朋友要约定好，别的家庭成员是否可以读他的日记。假如你答应小朋友不看他的日记，那么就一定要维护他的隐私。

还有一个可以协助提高小朋友写作技巧的方法——电脑软件。现在有很多出色的软件，里面提供故事的开头、想象画以和段落结构的建议等内容，这些都可以激发小朋友自身写作的愿望和灵感。

许多小朋友都经历过写作的瓶颈状态——即脑子里一片空白，不知道写什么好的情况。比方小朋友被要求写一个有发明性的故事，但他不能想出有什么有趣的东西可写。这时家长就可以协助小朋友了。可以给小朋友一本笔记本，记下平时突然发生的奇特想法，家人开的玩笑，或者是描述一幅以前的具有纪念价值的相片。也可以让小朋友从杂志中获得有用的点子。

一旦小朋友决定了一个文章的主题，就应该让小朋友先写一下草稿或是打一下腹稿。这样可以保证所有要写的重要细节都包括到文章里去了，并且可以调整文章的结构，你还可以就草稿跟小朋友一起谈论，寻找最好的写法。在学校里，老师也用各种方法，协助小朋友在开始写文章之前，先组织好要写的内容。

家长还可以和小朋友一起朗读不同文体的好作品，比方诗歌、小说、新闻故事甚至是一封有趣的信，只要是小朋友会感兴趣的东西都可以。无论是大人还是小朋友，在阅读了大量的好的作品之后，都会在写作上学到很多东西。

通过阅读，家长可以问小朋友：“你喜欢什么样的作品？不喜欢什么样的作品？”“文章的作者能抓住读者的注意力吗？”“你觉得这个题目有意思吗？”这样可以提高小朋友的兴趣。鼓励小朋友认识到写作是一个不时发展的过程，写作水平也不是一成不变的，而是可以通过努力不时提高的。告诉小朋友可以从对已有作品的改写、缩写、扩写中，开始自身的写作。

小朋友需要在完成自身文章之后的一、两天，甚至更长时间以后，再回头看看。这样做可以让小朋友用一种全新的眼光来看待自身的作品，发现其中的错误和被遗漏的细节。

一个作家在写作时要考虑，自身写的内容是否切题？所有的细节都包括进去了吗？描写太多会不会显得罗嗦？小朋友虽然不是专业作家，但这些问题也需要想一想。

让小朋友把自身完成的文章大声地读一遍，假如他自身不能发现其中的明显错误，那么就需要有人为他再读一遍，好让他自身意识到错在哪里。还要注意小朋友在文章中有没有错别字。

爸爸妈妈还要为坚持小朋友的写作积极性做一些努力。比方在小朋友犯错误的时候给他一些口头上的批评，但注意重点在为小朋友指出错误，而不是教训他。还可以把小朋友的好作品贴在墙上，让每一个来家里的人都能看见，这对小朋友是一种奖励。这样小朋友很快就可以体会到写作的重要和乐趣了。那么他的写作水平就自然会提高。

导语：我们都知道思想离不开生活，一切皆从生活中来，一切也皆将回归生活，话题作文中的话题也更是如此，它们有的是对世界本质的反思，有的是要表达人们的一种愿望或想象，在课改教材中，这一部分内容也倍受重视，更有对人生经历、生命内涵的体悟。下面是小编给大家整理的高中话题作文写作方法与技巧内容，希望能给你带来帮助!

从生活体验、增加阅读量、思想角度、表达能力和文章结构等方面阐述了如何写好命题作文的方法和技巧。围绕命题作文的趋势和特点，对高中生如何写好命题作文提供了很好的参考方向。

关键词：命题作文；感悟；阅读个性；表达能力

近些年话题作文一直是高考的作文主流，可以说是称霸“考坛”，因此，是平时作文训练的重点。笔者认为，话题作文大大增强了对学生语言表达能力、分析概括能力以及个性思维能力的要求。只有敏锐的洞察力、较高的概括与表达能力以及真正属于自己的思想与体悟，才能较好地具体操作一个话题，因此，对处于对人生理解还在起步阶段的中学生来说，如何写好话题作文是一个很有研究价值的课题，在此笔者简单提供以下几点写作方法与技巧以供参考。

一、体味生活，感悟人生

我们都知道思想离不开生活，一切皆从生活中来，一切也皆将回归生活，话题作文中的话题也更是如此，它们有的是对世界本质的反思，有的是要表达人们的一种愿望或想象，在课改教材中，这一部分内容也倍受重视，更有对人生经历、生命内涵的体悟。

话题作文是要求学生对身边的一切都有敏锐的感悟力的一种作文形式，虽然它看似没有任何硬性要求，但学生的分数这些年来却呈下降趋势，这说明话题文比人们想象中的要难得多，中学生还处在人生旅程的起始阶段，必须培养自己在这个人生阶段的独特视角与感悟力。每个人只要细心观察，都可以轻易地从中领会出自己的真谛。因此，想写出一篇出彩的话题文，就必须善于观察生活、分析生活、总结生活。

二、认真阅读教材，同时尽量增加课外阅读量，从而积累词汇与语言，善于调遣各种知识储备

积累词汇的方法有许多种，当然最主要同时也是最重要的途径莫过于阅读书籍。书籍是人类的精神食粮，是千百年来人类圣哲思想的经典总汇，因此，要尽量增加自己的课外阅读量，多读些经典名著，陶冶自己的情操，认识这个世界。

有的学生课业繁重，对于课外阅读恐怕是有心无力，这也不要紧，每个学生身边都有一份非常好的阅读资料，那就是人手必备的语文教材。教材可以说是无数教育学家按照学生心理年龄与认知水平而打造出的完全符合其自身智力与能力发展的呕心之作，因此，只要能够有效地利用好自己的教材，调动多年学校学到的知识，那么成为一个有思想且能够出口成章的儒林学士则不成问题。

三、要有质疑与批判精神，只要思想积极，就要忠于自己的情感与体悟，勇敢、尽情地表达自己对世界、社会、历史、人生以及未来等的见解

这一点可以说是话题作文的本质所在，它没有固定的要求，却有最佳的选择角度，那就是理智、积极、个性、真实，而这所有的种种却又都取决于真实，如果你敢于把自己真实的想法付于笔纸，那么“文情并茂”中的“情”就可以轻易地表达了，而一篇优秀的文章也会“接近”完成。

但要注意的是个性并不等于不同，批判也并不是叛逆，两者不可混淆，不能一味地用“异于常人”作为个性的最佳代言，也切忌用叛逆来代替批判精神，这样很容易步入阅读与写作的误区。对理解文意毫无帮助，也最终会导致思维的一种批判模式，一旦这种模式在其心中根深蒂固，那么不仅会影响其阅读写作，其一生也终将活在吹毛求疵的误区中。

四、发挥自己形象思维的特长，经常练笔，挖掘自身的述说能力，从而写出真正符合自己特点的话题作文

在现实的作文写作中经常有这样一种怪现象，有很多学生在进行写作时，心中明明已满载乾坤，等到真正落笔时却词不达意，文章显得苍白无力，这种表达能力的缺乏必须经过“艰苦”的练笔来克服。我们现在的学生一般在小学阶段就开始接触作文，而所写的作文一般都是具有强烈叙事色彩的记叙文，因此，对于一个学生来说形象思维能力在小学阶段就得到了一定的锻炼，相对于议论思辨等能力来说具有更多的优势，因此，学生只要有意识地练习写作或诵读片段式记叙文（或称作叙事散文）、微型小说、故事、童话、寓言以及抒情散文等，就能够比较轻松地增强自己的表达能力，从而达到“我手写我口”的境界。

五、掌握最基本的一种话题作文结构，即“三段式”结构

在初中阶段学生在尽量提升作文布局的同时，必须掌握话题文，也同样适用于议论文与记叙文的一种基本结构形式，那就是

“总—分—总”结构，也可以说是“凤头、猪肚、豹尾”结构。初中语文教材上的课文范文，70%以上都是这种三段式结构，熟练地掌握这种文章结构，不但可以作为写文章的基本保证，而且当学生随着年龄的增长，认知能力进一步发展，对文章的理解达到更高一层的境界时，自然就会举一反三，以此为基础写出更多优异结构的美文了。

总的来说，提高话题作文的写作能力，只有教师平时多关注社会动态，感悟生活，再综合多方面的方法和技巧，方能写出精彩，写出创新！

要想写好中考作文，在我看来，无非有以下几点：

1.严谨的布局：

正所谓万事开头难，不过只要开了个好头，这篇作文就会很好写了。

凤头：是文章的首段，是阅卷老师首先入眼的地方，一定要做好整篇文章的中心把握，要做到下文与首段上下连贯，紧密结合，要通过开头使下文有可写之处，开头要达到让阅卷老师耳目一新的效果。例如，巧用排比，比喻，拟人等修辞手法，并且通过这些修辞手法，而统领全文主旨。

猪肚：在一篇上好的文章中，分段都会恰到好处，而当文章中只有一大段或两三段时，这篇文章即使文采再出众，也不会有太高的分数，因为阅卷老师在中考判卷时，每三分钟就要判出一份作文，工作量相当大，如果不善于分段，阅卷老师可能失去耐心，从而看不完，就会草草的给出分数。所以，在我看来，一篇文章至少要分6-8个段，但不是一行或几行一段，而是要看起来像豆腐块，一块块整齐的排列在一起，使文章紧中有松，松弛有度。要看上去整篇文章是一个整体，而不是零散的。

豹尾：在文章的最后处，应当让主题更突出鲜明，升华主题思想，使豹尾抽起来！或让人感到峰回路转，柳暗花明或更进一步的特殊效果。在文章末尾，应当再次点题，紧扣中心思想，让贯穿始终的中心思想继续延伸，引人深思。特别是要在结尾处，与开头形成呼应，对比，递进等等，来引发阅读老师的共鸣！

2.细腻的文笔：不管是记叙，议论还是散文；不管是写人写事还是写景。都要用细腻的文笔呈现出来，使文章中点更突出，让阅卷老师在看试卷的过程中，有深思，放慢阅读速度和重复阅读的情况出现，让阅卷老师身临其境，从而使文章更具灵性。

3.贯穿始终的思想感情：在一篇布局格式上很得当，错落有致的文章上，还必须要有一条贯穿始终的思想路线，这条线就像鱼的脊椎一样重要，这条线一定要清晰，明确，千万不可含混不清。

把握好这几点，一篇好的中考作文已经大致成型，不过要想在中考中脱颖而出，这仅仅是开始。

2015中考将至,目前距2015 中考仅有几个月，因此现在是复习的关键时刻，在此YJBYS为了让考生们了解更多的中考试题，以为今年的中考取得更好的成绩。YJBYS的小编为考生们收集了2015年中考(精选)英语作文高分技巧分享，具体内容请各位考生及时查看如下，尽请关注!

一、了解高分作文的特点

要想作文获得高分，必须了解高分作文具有的特点，才有助于我们朝之而努力。高分作文一般具有以下特点：

1、书写工整，书面整洁，很少有涂改痕迹。

2、分段合理。全文分段一般不止一个自然段，让阅卷老师很容易就能找到作文所要求写的要点和重要句子。

3、要点齐全，不缺要点。

4、首尾呼应，自然成一体。

5、使用了大量的高级词汇和句型。阅卷老师一看就知道这个同学的功底非不一般，自然就给打高分了。

6、开头言简意赅，不啰嗦，不偏题，迅速引入主题。

7、段与段之间，自然过渡。有合适的连接词。

8、句与句之间，有恰当的连接词，使之自然成一体。

9、全文中同一个意思，基本没有重复使用某一个词、短语或者句型等，说明这个同学的词汇量不同寻常。老师自然就对该作文有好感了。

10、能够恰当使用谚语、格言等给文章添彩。

二、勤积累，巧准备

要想作文得高分，除了了解以上的特点外，还要在平时的学习中注意一下方面：

1、牢记课标词汇是基础

一篇作文多数是由积极词汇写出来的，这些词汇主要来源于课标。因此，牢记课标词汇是写好作文的基础。

2、掌握课标词汇和短语的用法

要想作文不扣分或者少扣分，有个要求是作文的语病少。怎么能够减少语病呢?这就要求我们在平时的学习过程中反复通过练习，掌握课标词汇和短语等的用法。例如，对于as soon as 、stop some body from doing something 、other 、another等的用法很多学生就经常出错。

3、高度重视同一个意思的多种表达方式

高分作文有个特点是：让老师发现你拥有丰富的词汇量，你的水平高人一筹。这由何而来?靠我们在平时学习过程中，逐步积累起来的。比如：今年的中考作文，谈的就是帮助他人的问题。同一个意思“帮助”，假如你就用一个动词“help”，岂不显得你词汇贫乏?假如你在作文中不断地变换方式，用help、give somebody a hand、 give a hand to somebody 、be in need of 等以表达“帮助”同一个意思，岂不更好呢?

像这样的例子很多，比如：大家都觉得很简单又很基础的“表示姓名的方式”就有：my name is jim. i’m jim. i’m called/named jim. i’m a boy called /named /with the name of jim. 等等。

表达年龄的方式有：she is 12. she is 12 years old. she is aged 12. she is a girl of 12(years old) 。 she is a girl aged 12.等等。

很显然，使用高级一点的更好。

4、加强练习，积累经验

学习语言最好的方法是运用，作文也不例外。我们要想作文得高分，必须经常练习，才能提高水平。

5、充分利用作文范文

很多资料书上都有作文范文。诚然，他们有很多值得借鉴的地方。

我们怎么利用它们呢?首先，我们先不要看文章，自己先思考一下：假如你来写，你会怎么去写，会用到哪些词或者句子等。然后去比较，勾出其中的好词佳句，并且把它摘录在专门的作文册子上。供写作时选用。

另外，背一些范文也是很有必要的。

6、背诵一些谚语和警句

作文中如果出现恰当的谚语和警句，会有锦上添花的效果。

三、精心审题，沉着写初稿

很多同学看到作文后，下笔就写。这是不对的。一则很容易写偏题、写出病句，涂改后书面又不整洁，影响得分。

其实，会写作文的同学都知道，审题非常的重要，可以防止很多毛病，提高得分。那么我们审题要做些什么呢?

审题主要要做一下事情：

1、审人称、时态、体裁等

审题时，要求我们要弄清楚这篇文章主要使用的人称是第几人称，什么时态、什么体裁。这些问题解决后至少不会犯很严重的错误：全文皆错。

2、明确必须表达的要点

高分作文有个特点是要点齐全。如果漏掉一个要点，则要扣分。因此我们必须认真细读其要求，把必须表达的要点勾出来。保证不漏掉任何一个要点。

3、罗列出可能会用到的短语、句型，确定好使用哪个?

4、确定好如何分段

就是要确定好，将哪些要点放在一个自然段里面，首段、尾段打算写哪些?

以上YJBYS的小编为考生们收集了2015年中考(精选)英语作文高分技巧分享试题

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”.

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