初中英语作文写作思路（20篇）

Summer holiday is coming. How excited! I havemade a plan for my summer holiday. First of all, I will go to Hong Kong tovisit my aunt. And then I will stay with her for a while. As Hong Kong is the shoppingparadise, of course, I will ask my aunt to go shopping with me . I will also eatthe delicious food there. And then I will go home. I know that study comesfirst. So I will finish my homework first. After that I will go out play withmy friends. And then I will take a good rest to prepare for my coming back toschool.

暑假即将来临。多么的兴奋啊！我已经为我的暑假制定了计划。首先，我会去香港拜访我的婶婶。之后我会和她呆一段时间。因为香港是购物天堂，当然我会叫我婶婶陪我一起去购物。我还要吃那里美味的食物。然后我就会回家。我知道学习是最重要的。所以回去之后我会先完成我的暑假作业。之后我就会和我的朋友出去玩。再之后我就会好好的休息来为回校做好准备。

People always say in one life, they can’t be sailing plainly, it means

people will meet all kinds of difficulties and they are easy to feel frustrated,

the one who gets over frustration, the one who becomes successful. When we meet

difficulties, we must learn to face it in the optimistic way, so we can see the

hope and have the faith to move on. The difficult moment is just the small

interlude of our lives. As the saying that failure is the mother of success, so

we need to learn lessons from failure and then when the time comes, we will get

successful. Facing frustration is unavoidable, if we can handle it well, we will

win.

There are various kinds of jobs in the world, but different people are

attracted by different jobs because everyone has his own interest and

destination. Many people consider an ideal job as a means of making more money

and living more comfortably. It may sound reasonable because money is the

foundation of life.

As far as my ideal job is concerned, I think I want to be a psychologist, I

have made up my mind to do what I really want to so that I can realize my ideal,

I believe interest is of the utmost importance in choosing a job, I have been

interested in psychology for a long time, so I want to be a psychologist in the

future, I think being a psychologist can help lots of people lead a happier

life.

However, it isnt easy for me to become a qualified psychologist and many

people around me think that its unrealistic to me. NevertheLess, Ill make

every effort to gain much more knowLedge, patience, methods, etc. to live up to

the name of a qualified psychologist. I believe my dream will come true

someday.

In people’s life, they will face many difficulties, most people can conquer those hard times and keep moving on. Making mistake is the difficulty that everyone will have to face, no one is perfect, how to treat the mistake is very important.

Some people will choose to ignore their mistakes and tell lies, because they are afraid of being condemned.

While some people will choose to face their mistakes and learn to fix the mistakes.

I appreciate the latter people, they are honest and take the right attitude towards making mistakes. Making mistake is not horrible, people can learn from those mistakes and become mature, after all, it will take some price to grow up.

在人们的生活中，他们会面临很多困难，大部分人能够克服这些困难的时光，继续向前进。犯错误是每个人都会面临的困难，没有人是完美的，如何对待错误是很重要的。一些人会选择忽视他们的错误，然后 撒谎，因为他们害怕受到谴责。然而一些人选择面对他们的错误，学着去改正错误。我欣赏后者，他们诚实，正确面对犯错误。犯错误并不可怕，人们可以从这些错误中学习，变得成熟，毕竟，成长是需要代价的。

[初中英语作文：犯错误

what should we thank?

the thankful great universe provides the environment of existence for us and give us sunlight, air, water and everything in keeping with we existence of space, bring storm to let us accept to toughen for us, bring to us mysterious let us look for.

the thankful parents give us the life, make us feel the merriment of the human life, feel the genuine feeling of the human life, feel the comity of the human life, feel happiness of the human life, also feel hardships and pain and sufferings of the human life!

the thankful teacher works with diligence and without fatigue everyday of teach, give us knowledge ability, put on the wing which flies toward the ideal for us.

the thankful classmate and friend grows up road of, let i no longer standing alone in the itinerary of life; the with gratitude is frustrated and let us become in a time the failure stronger.

[感恩节英语作文写作

游记，是中学生感到最难写的一类作文，因为随着游程的行进，耳闻目睹的情景不胜枚举，很难将材料组织得当，往往写成流水账。如何将自己的游程清清楚楚、有详有略的记叙？如何避免将游记写成景点介绍？这些都是我们今天要谈的问题。

国庆长假你是否游历了祖国的名山大川？是否踏访了华夏的文明古迹？是否流连于桂林的山水中？是否沉醉在丽江的灯影里……旅游，丰富了我们的生活，增长了我们的见识。当我们结束愉快的旅程后，烦恼接踵而来。父母和老师往往不会让我们“白”游一场，写篇作文当作“总结”与“汇报”常常成了旅游的“附件”。

最让大家头疼的是旅游涉及的时间长，景点多，如何才能写得不像流水账，又有自己的特点呢？

首先是“舍”。只有学会舍弃，才能有重点的描写。景点太多，一一赘述很难做到详细、具体。只有突出最有特色的地方才能写出特点，写清游历的情况。例如，你到云南旅游，一路走来，昆明的石林、大理的洱海、丽江的古城，还有玉龙雪山，处处皆景。你必须忍痛割爱，选择其中的一个作为写作的重点，其他最多用一两句话带过。只有这样你才能把游历的情况说清楚。

其次是“短”。这个“短”，不是指的篇幅短，而是指文章涉及的时间跨度要短。不要从出发开始写，一直写到全天的游程结束。这样无端生出的枝节会很多，烦扰了自己的思路。就从你到达这个景点写起，写到景点游览结束。时间的集中会有助于你更好地组织材料，突出景点的特色。

再次是“真”。这一点是同学们最容易忽略，也是最能体现写作水平的。很多人以为写游记就是把景点的情况告诉别人。其实不然。游记，就是游历的记录，更强调了自己独特的游览感受。游览同一个地方，大人和孩子的感受会不同，男生和女生游览的感觉也有差异。怎样将自己的独特感受表达出来呢？那就是将自己游览过程中的“发现”写出来。这些发现可以是“摸一摸”“闻一闻”“听一听”“找一找”，甚至是“猜一猜”，也就是把你游览时的所见、所做、所闻、所思写下来。游记最忌讳的就是通篇景物描写，有了自己的活动出现在游览的过程中那才是属于你自己的游览经历。

最后是“趣”。旅游之所以能吸引人，首先就是有趣味。那么，你的游记也要把你在游历过程中感受到的趣味表达出来。这种“趣味”的内涵很广：可以是放肆的玩耍，可以是悠闲的漫步，可以是滑稽的场面，亦可以是别样的风俗……只要是觉得有意思的就不妨多写两笔，把自己的快乐和大家分享！

掌握了以上“四字”要诀，估计再提笔写游记你就有了一些头绪了吧？

最后还有一个很重要的事情要交代：任何游记，对于景点的环境描写是必不可少的部分，这里可要写得细致生动哦。

The quick and easy access to the Internet hasbrought much comfort and convenience to ourdaily life, and a growing number of people today prefer to do their purchase on line rather thanleave for the real shops.

Despite its obvious advantages, online shopping can also be a recipe for “troubles”. In thefirst place, you can never have a real contact with the stuff you want to buy while shoppingonline as you do in a real shop. Thus, occasions are not rare when buy something that doesnot really fit you or suit you. What’s more, if you are not lucky enough, you are likely to betrusted into the hands of some dishonest sellers, bringing home fake goods.

In my perspective, we should first develop a better sense of judgment while doing onlineshopping, and at the same time, more supervision systems are supposed to be built to ensurea more reliable and pleasant online shopping environment.

My friend and I are good friends.she is shy and I am outgoing.she likes studying English but I like studying math.she has long straight black hair and I have short curly blackhair.she likes playing football but Ilike playingbasketball.we are still friends.

She is always studies home but I always study at school because it is very interesting.I like watching action moves but she likes watching the TV show she has big eyes and she likes wearing jeans but I like wearing shirt.she usually helps me in my study

My Dream

I’m longing for a weekend. It’s happy and it’s free. This is my dream.

At this weekend, I don’t have to play the violin; I don’t have to draw pictures; Olympic Maths is far away from me; Handwriting doesn’t bother me.

I can play and I can sing; I can do everything interesting. No one can stop me.

Oh, what a happy weekend! But, it’s only my dream. I hope it will come true.

[初中英语我得梦想介绍作文

怎样才能写好初中语文的作文呢?下面是小编网络整理的初中语文作文的写作方法以供大家学习。

初中语文作文的写作方法(一)

立意就是确定文章的主题。主题是文章要集中表达的思想和观点，是文章的灵魂和统帅，也是作者写作意图的集体现。因此，要写好文章，必须要确定好主题。只有 确定了主题，才能围绕要表达的主题去选择和组织材料，也才能根据表达主题的需要去安排结构，遣词造句。立意要做到正确、集中、深刻、新颖。

一篇文章只能有一个主题，不能多中心、分散、杂乱。对于学生来说，除了要考虑以上因素外，还应注意下面两点：

(1)要确定主观上有见解的主题。学生的生活经历、知识范围和思想认识水平都还有限。如果所确定的主题自己还说不清楚，把握不好，就不可能写得深刻。

(2)要考虑时间的因素。确定在限定的时间、篇幅内能充分展开论述或表现的主题。学生作文有时间上的限制，字数也不可能太多。因此，选择的主题不能过大。如果太大，在一定的时间、篇幅内难以展开，文章就会写得空洞、抽象。

文章的主题确定之后，要从全文的各个方面来加以表现。在文中可以用一句话或一个段落来加以说明，也可以用格言、警句之类的话来表现中心思想。

只有围绕着主题来写，写起作文来才能得心应手，才能写出好作文。

初中语文作文的写作方法(二)

看图作文，在原先看来是小学生才做的事情，但近几年来，高考、中考也多次出现看图作文题。怎样才能写好一篇看图作文呢?

盯住画面细观察。看画面上是人物、景物还是动物，是单幅还是多幅。不仅要把握图的全貌，而且要观察到每个部分的每一细节。审准题目，确定写什么和由哪入手。

认真分析抓重点。根据观察的结果，深入分析、判断，确定文章的中心和重点。进一步考虑哪些地方详写，哪些地方略写或不写。

展开想象巧构思。在观察分析的基础上，紧扣画面，充分利用自己生活、学习中的积累和体验，展开想象。把画面上的人、景、物的关系与人物的语言、行动、心理以及故事的前因后果构想出来。再通过具体、细致、生动的叙述和描写，把自己意图充分表达清楚。

完成初稿再回顾。初稿完成后，在时间许可的情况下，认真回过头来，把图和文结合起来看一看：一看对画面的观察、分析有无遗漏或失误;二看对人、景、物关系的判断和联系是否合理;三看重点是否突出，详略是否得当;四看叙述和描写是否恰如其分。在“四看”的基础上，进一步修改或增删。当然，也可根据自己的平时做法和考试时间，边看边改。

有关初中语文学习方法推荐：

(一)寻找最适合自己的成功路径

我曾试图总结出语文学习过程中的一些所谓的规律来，但常常失望。因为我渐渐感觉到，每个人都是一个不同的个体，即便面对相同的事物、实现相同的目标、经历同样的过程，他的感受和体验也往往与别人有所区别。

正因如此，我不得不说，别人身上成功的学习方法未必能成为你成功的学习方法，你可以参考，但未必可以拿来直接应用。

(二)刨根问底得益多

语文学习，首先要做到上课专注和认真，抓住每一分每一秒，记下知识要点和重点内容。最关键的是，不懂时，就要善于“问”，而且要刨根问底，追根溯源。

例如，在《桃花源记》的预习中，我对“渔人甚异之”中“异”的解释产生了疑问，我问班中一个优秀的同学，她说这个字解释为“感到奇怪”;上课时，老师说这个字解释为“以……为异，认为……是奇怪的”。我觉得这两种解释都有合理处，但也有“不同”，我问老师，老师说这个词是意动用法，翻译整个句子时可以用那个同学的解释，但单字解释时则需要用老师的解释。我还是有些疑问，于是下课又追到老师办公室问“意动用法”的内容。由于是“一对一”的传授，老师较为详尽地给我介绍了意动用法的原理、解释的技巧、如何翻译等问题，我“豁然开朗”，对这个内容有了深入的了解。

刨根问底的想法使我获益良多，这种方式使我对语文学习保持着充足的动力，让我觉得追究也是一种快乐的体验。

(三)温故而知新

温故而知新，课后的复习，我认为是十分重要的。记得刚接触文言文时，我只是上课时“听过算过”，课后很少去主动复习。结果，文言文的成绩总不理想。经过几次“教训”后，我才意识到了是自己课后缺少复习。方法改变后，文言文成绩果然有了显著的提高。又如，我认为，现代文阅读题目不必做太多，对于那些命题优秀、答题思路特别讲究、考点全面的题目，做过了还要经常拿出来看看，品思路，悟答法，会带给我们更多的收益。

作文也要温故知新。其方式和益处表现在这样几个方面：相同的题材可以多写几次，相同的结构可以多用几次，相同的语言表达也可以多练几次。相同的题材多写几次，可以使你对这个题材的各个方面有充分的把握，可以使你对这个题材的内涵有深刻的理解，甚至不断滋生出许多新意来。相同的结构多用几次，可以使你对这样的结构有更深刻的体悟，可以对这个结构的多种变化都有较多的理解，从而可以在运用的时候选择良多，得心应手。相同的语言表达多练几次，会增加你对文字的“感情”，使你觉得某些精彩的表达很亲切，很贴近自己的心灵，而且，即便是从“最简单”的收益来说，这样做会提高我们炼字炼句的本领，提高自己的文字素养。

【摘要】考研英语作文的评分，首先关注的就是单词、句子、格式的正确性。因此，在作文的复习中，不能只关注高端句型，正确的格式也是不容忽视的。

写作格式错误主要包括题目的写法、文章的格式、大小写以及标点符号等四个方面。

题目的写法

题目是首先映入读者眼帘的，所以要注意题目的书写位置。一定要在试卷作文纸上的上方中间位置书写。同时还应在话题和正文之间留出一定的距离，即比正文行距稍宽一些。

其次，要注意题目的大小写，实词的首字母一定要大写。其它虚词如冠词、连词（但如连词的字母多于5个时则大写)和介词首字母不需要大写。比如：

跳动的心（例子）

误：Attitudes Toward Money

正：Attitudes toward Money

文章的格式

1、四边留空：卷面的四边一定要留出适当的空白。这样的文章才能整齐、美观，给人以清晰、明快的感觉。

2、空格：文章的每段的首行一定要有统一的空格（一般缩进4-6个字节）。

大小写方面的错误

在考研文章的评改过程中，有关大小写方面的错误层出不穷，这是考生的一个弱点。一般来说，大写规则有以下几条：

1、大写每句话的第一个字母和直接引语的第一字母

如：He said,He is going to Shanghai next week.

2、大写专有名词，或用作专有名词的部分普通名词，通常是缩略形式

如：DrG .G . East

3、大写缩写字母

如：MPA ,MBA ,BBC

4、文章标题要大写

5、头衔在专有名词前要大写，在专有名词后就小写

例如：Captain SmithSmith, the captain；Uncle GeorgeGeorge ,my uncle

标点符号

考生在写文章时，一定要注意正确使用标点符号，切忌从头到尾只用逗号的现象。一定要熟练掌握常用标点符号的基本用法，尤其要正确使用逗号和分号。

三段式作文注意事项

1、作文卷面要保持整洁，不要连笔，不要涂改，这是获取印象分的重点。很多考生由于在考场过于紧张导致作文的单词老是写错，这是致命伤啊，会直接让你越写越没感觉就越没信心了，所以平常要加强练笔！

2、全文的第一句和各段的第一句必须是文章的中心句，最好能用复杂句表达。这是因为阅卷老师一般没有那么多的时间去看作文，所以只能大概浏览下各段的首句，这是获得高分的关键。

3、全文结构布局：全文分为三段，第一段3句，第二段5句，第三段4句，可根据具体情况调整。段落中，第一句是topic ，第二三句是detail ，第三句是conclusion 。

另外为了方便大家学习，提高复习的效率。小编为广大学子整理了考研技巧和考试大纲，更有历年真题提供测试等等。针对每一个科目进行深度的探讨和技巧挖掘。欢迎各位考研的同学进行了解和资讯。考研的痛苦是难免的,不要丧失信心,坚信苦尽甘来。预祝各位学子取得成功！

[考研英语作文常见的四个写作格式错误

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

The summer holiday is coming. I’m going to have a good rest and learn to

relax myself. I will read more useful books because reading more books is not

only interesting but also helps me learn more knowledge. I will try to spend

more time in chatting with my parents and help them to do some housework. I am

going to take part in the social activities so that I can know more about the

society. If possible, I’d like to make a trip to Xiamen. I’m sure I’ll have an

interesting and meaningful summer holiday. I am looking forward to it..

How is it, you do not believe it? Look, she has left her footprints everywhere.

The air is so fresh, the weather is so blurred. The sun is warmer. Her million gold happy kiss all things, so gentle, so comfortable.

Its time to fall!

Section just after the autumnal equinox, they feel a bit cool. Gradually yellow leaves can not withstand the wind and rain to destroy the destruction of a piece of leaf leaves falling in the high and low roof, falling on the road in large and small, falling in criss-crossing the river.

Autumn rain is light blue, crystal clear. 10 million silver, rippling in the air, fans of the veil, draped over the dark faint fields. The rain fell in the water, like a thrown into the crystal jade plate, splashed grain pearls; rain fell on the tree, like to branches with soft hair; rain fell to the ground rolled up a burst of smoke, the land seems Blooming out of a laughing dimple.

The autumn of autumn, grooming the mountains, nourishing the earth. The puddle of water on the ground is full of water. They slowly flow to the big ditch, brought together this years affection and hope of the coming year. This autumn is as if it is sweet wine, dedicated to the breeding of all things of the land, dedicated to the harvest full of joy ... ...

Autumn is not annoying. Behind the misty rain curtain is a sweet smile. It is to celebrate the birthday of the motherland smile; that is the fruit of the mountains and plains of the red face. "Autumn autumn rain sad people" era, in the golden autumn of the motherland, has long gone.

I look up at the blue sky, think the sky is more sunny, the sun is more brilliant, a blossoming light like white clouds, like to the blue sky embroidered with white flowers. This view makes the breathtaking.

Autumn rain is not only wonderful, but also full of new hope.

Ah! Autumn rain - intoxicating autumn rain.

My grandma likes gardening very much. she is over sixty,but she is still busy with her work.She grows all sorts of flowers and plants in her small garden.Its interesting that all the flowers and plants in her garden grow well.

No matter when you come to visit her garden you can always find beautiful flowers there.My grandmother doesnt just work hard in the garden. she sometimes sits in the middle and listens to music.

She says music helps the plants grow well. maybe that’s true.

My grandma is really a clever lady.

Hi! Peter,

I’m glad to know you are having a good time in Chengdu.

TheSpring Festival is the most important festival in China. It is a custom to give lucky money to children. I get lucky money every year. I will put most of it in the bank, and spend the rest on some books. This year is no exception(也不例外) and I also got lucky money.With it, I bought some school things for several poor students in Ningxia，hoping the things can bring some happiness to them.

For you, I think it’s a good idea to buy a gift with the lucky money for your hostfamily before you leave China. You can also buy some Chinese gifts for your parents and friends in England. Or, just keep it as good memories.

I hope what I said can help you.

Yours,

Li Hua

攻克英语写作：滴水穿石，积累成章

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

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

一、欲速则不达，步步行进

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

作文这种慢火候才能提高的题更是如此，一步一个脚印才是写作稳步提高的策略。

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

二、在研读中背记

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

三、每周一练，积累成章

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

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

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

6月是毕业季，以下是小编整理的关于初中毕业典礼英语作文，欢迎阅读。

Good morning,my dear teachers and schoolmates,

It’s a great honor for me to make a speech on behalf of the graduating classes.

How time flies! Our junior high school lives will come to an end.

In the past three years, we’ve had a beautiful school and it provides us with a good study place. Teachers are our friends. They’ve given us interesting lessons and we all love them.

We’ve learned a lot from them, not only knowledge but also the way to solve problems in life. Thanks for our teachers’ training, parents’ support and the help from classmates. Without them, we couldn’t have so much wonderful time.

At last, we hope our school will become better, our teachers will be healthy for ever and all our dreams will come true.

Thank you .

【译文】

早上好，我亲爱的老师和同学们，

能代表毕业班作演讲，我感到非常荣幸。

时间过得真快!我们的初中生活就要结束了。

在过去的三年中，我们有一所美丽的学校，它为我们提供了一个学习的好地方。老师是我们的朋友。他们给我们上了有趣的课，我们都很喜欢。

我们从中学到了很多东西，不仅是知识，而且是解决生活中问题的方法。感谢老师的培训、家长的支持和同学们的帮助。没有他们，我们就不会有那么多美好的时光。

最后，我们希望我们的学校会变得更好，我们的老师将永远健康，我们所有的梦想都会成真。

谢谢。

A Present For Mother’s Birthday.

Everyone should give his mother a present when his mother’s birthday is

coming. It is 25th May Sunday. Today is Han Mei’s mother’s birthday. So she

wanted to give her mother a special present. What present should she give? Maybe

a bunch of flowers a birthday card are the best presents. A card is cheaper. But

it is bad for trees. The more I buy cards, the more trees will be cut by people.

So what another present should she give? Let me tell you this present.

It was five o’clock. It was time to surprise her mother. When Han Mei’s

mother came home, Han Mei said Happy Birthday to her mother. Then she cleaned

her mother’s feet. As you can see, her mother was very surprise.

Why do you think it was a good present?

Keeping a diary in English does a great deal of good to my English study. Keeping a diary can help you review all the English knowledge you have learned. For example， you must know the correct spelling of each word needed in the diary； you must use the phrases correctly and choose the suitable sentence patterns， meanwhile， it is also necessary to use you knowledge of grammar in a correct way.Keeping a diary can help you not only to console your knowledge of English， but to form the habit of thinking in English. Practice makes perfect. By and by， your English writing will be greatly improved.

[谈写英语日记的好处英文写作

I had a dog called a gray, because it was a long gray hair, and it was long with a pair of round eyes, and its eyes looked around and seemed to find something. It is always short ears always bowed, I looked like incredibly.

Its temper can be weird, and if it is happy to put the tail up in the barking applause, as if "master owner, today I am very happy, can take me out to play?" This can rely on its mood, if it is Unhappy, no matter how good it is, it is not heard. Remember that once out to play, where the dog will be fast ran over, as if there is very familiar with it, playing a long time, it ran back to me, I took him home.

The dog is very fond of eating meat, it is often the first to eat meat and then eat. He was very cute, once I test it, put the meat under the meal, but it smelled out, in the bark called "master you good or bad ah." I have a dog so that a friend is particularly happy.