提高英语写作的建议英语作文汇总20篇

英语写作过程中我们经常会用到一些短语，下面请看语文迷整理的高级英语短语，希望对你有帮助。

1. feel frustrated (挫折的)/ discouraged

2. a precious (宝贵的) experience

3. raise / arouse the awareness of …

4. acquire knowledge and skills学习知识和技能

5. a growing /increasing tendency

6. have a desire for sth / to do sth

7. put sth into practice

8. be closely related to…与…息息相关

9. be essential to sb 对某人来说必不可少

10. in a society with more competitions and challenges / in a competitive society

11. be keen on… 热衷于…

12. broaden one’s horizons开阔眼界

13. a large variety of / a wide range of …

14. make one’s dream come true

15. lay a solid/firm/stable foundation for/in…为…/在…方面打下坚实的基础

16. listen to teachers attentively

17. make a practical plan

18. motivate sb to do sth

19. bury oneself into study埋头学习

20. our determination and efforts

21. express my gratitude to her sincerely

22. be strict with sb in sth

23. achieve the final victory

24. encounter/face some difficulties

25. neglect the disadvantages

26. With the great efforts we’ve made, …

27. enhance/improve his ability of singing

28. be optimistic about

29. hold the strong belief that…

30. I’m confident / I’m convinced that…

31. with iron will and perseverance

32. pursue one’s dream 追逐梦想

33. arouse one’s passion for…唤起对…的热情

34. resist the temptation of good food

35. change one’s original mind

36. spare no effort to do sth 不遗余力做…

37. redouble one’s effort 加倍努力

38. leave a deep impression on sb

39. turn to sb for help / advice

40. relieve/lessen/reduce/ease one’s burden

41. with time going by=as time goes by

42. cherish/treasure/value our lives

43. vary from person to person

44. a boarding school 寄宿制学校

45. What surprised me most was that…

46. cause severe consequences(后果)

47. pay their tuition/school fees/schooling

48. physically and mentally

49. Some in favor of it think that…., while others are against it, holding the opinion that…

50. Success stems from hard work as it can help us accomplish the goal we’re striving for.

51. establish a special fund to help the poor

52. its negative aspect/impact is also obvious.

想要在20xx年英语四级考试中作文拿高分，遵循以下技巧就行。

20xx年英语四级考试作文技巧一：

总体原则：六个字：先结构后表达。

总体做法：三步法

1. 审题：两项内容：1)英文标题+2)汉语提纲 (如果汉语提纲不是三条，则将其转化为三条提纲)

2. 将三个汉语提纲转化为一个英文表达，充当该段主题句。(首尾段可无主题句，但中间段落最好有)

3. 将主题句扩展成一个英文段落。(方法：举例、数据、对比、列举、补充说明、因果法等)

20xx年英语四级考试作文技巧二：实例及具体时间分配

第1、2步为准备工作 时间控制在三分钟以内：

(注：建议考生带上手表，以便掌握写作时间分配，超过三分钟按照已经列出的关键词的内容展开文章的开头部分)

如一道六级的写作考题为：

directions: for this part, you are allowed thirty minutes to write a composition on the topic college students" part-time jobs. you should write at least 150 words, and base your composition on the outline (given in chinese) below:

1. 有些人赞成大学生做兼职, 有人反对

2. 我的看法

审题：1. 题目：college students" part-time jobs

2. 提纲：1. 有些人赞成大学生做兼职, 有人反对;2. 我的看法

题目关键词为: part-time jobs

3. 提纲转化为三条：

1. 有些人持相反意见

2. 有些人赞成大学生做兼职

3. 我的看法 (无需写出)

20xx年英语四级考试作文技巧三：先结构：

联想课堂所讲：三段或四段式结构，且每段只写一项内容。

以“三段式”为例：

后表达：(三方面：句、词、衔接)关键词罗列

1. 联想开篇句式：when it comes to …, people" opinions differ/vary. 或者it is a common phenomenon for … to do sth, 或者 it can be noticed that an increasing number of …

将这些表达以关键词的形式列出：如： when… 或者 it is …

2. 转化主题句：

1) 有些人持反对意见- others hold the opposite view.

理由：1. main task- academic study, 2. society complex- cheated

2) 有些人赞成大学生做兼职- hold the positive view

理由：1. ease financial burden 2. enrich experience

3) 我的看法- both right …….

3. 扩展成文

最后，请检查基本语音错误：1， 单词拼写 2， 时态， 3， 单复数，4，关联词

I am not fond of basketball,let alone to play it.But I have seen a

wonderful basketball game between my class and postgraduate class.It is so

wonderful that I cannt help asking myself "Is it real".The answer is pretty

yes.I also learn a lot from the game.

First ,teamwork is very important.You are sure to fail if you play by

yourself.So five members must play together and well orgnized.Second ,you should

have a aim.In order to reach it,you should try your best.

Last,never give up whatever have happened.Even if you get low scores,you

shouldnt give up.If there is a will,there is a way.If there is a will ,there is

also a opportunity.And you can make failure into success.Believe yourself and

believe your team.You are the best one.

一、充分准备，打好基础。

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

二、认真审题，明确要求

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

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

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

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

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。

有时想写点东西,动手时才发现自己打不开思路,写不出东西来？那小学生如何提高写作水平呢？下面是小编分享的方法，一起来看一下吧。

一、学会观察。

生活是写作材料的源泉，观察是写作的门径，一切外部信息要通过观察才能进入大脑。材料来自平时的生活实践，不能靠临时的观察体验。只有热爱生活，并且善于观察的人才能从生活中发现许多可写的素材，并产生强烈的写作愿望。还要教给学生基本的观察方法，以此来观察奇妙无穷、色彩斑斓的大自然，多姿多彩的社会生活。小学生的思维以形象思维为主，他们的情感总是在一定的情境中产生的。为了提高作文水平，还必须有意识的为学生创设语言环境，做到“有话可说，有话要说”，激发学生的写作情感。

(一)从玩中观察。

玩是孩子的天性，让学生从玩中观察自己喜欢的事物，他们观察的会更加仔细，记忆更加深刻。如：这次我们学校组织学生到三亚组织旅游，我便让学生在玩的过程中观察，回来要把观察到的写下来。接下来就要在作文课上“说”，让学生把自己把观察到的说出来，如果介绍不够准确、详细，大家还可以互相补充。最后要求学生把自己所说的写在作文本上。观察比较后，学生自然会“有话可说，有话要说”。教师还可以设置更多的让学生在玩中观察的情境，以利于提高作文水平。

(二)在活动中观察。

小学生非常好动，所以教师可以组织学生多进行一些活动，如“朗读比赛”，“篮球比赛”，“辩论赛”等。通过这些活动，可以让每个学生都亲身体验，仔细观察，只有这样才能把自己想写的表达出来。这样也激发了学生对生活的热爱，激起了浓厚的写作兴趣。

二、重视阅读积累。

《语文课程标准》在“阅读目标”中十分强调语言的积累，并对此进行了量化的规定。从课标对阅读积累的具体要求可以看出，积累对于引导学生学习、写作文起着十分重要的作用。

(一)课内阅读，是加强阅读积累的主渠道。在阅读教学中，我们要引导学生用心去品读、理解、感悟每一篇作品。要充分调动学生学习的积极性，给予学生足够的阅读时间，让学生边读边思考，边读边画，自读自悟。然后再与同学们交流、探讨，从而理解词句，体会文章的思想感情，还可以学习里面的精彩语句和片段。

(二)课外阅读，也是加强阅读积累的渠道。学生应有选择地阅读，要读一些知识健康的，对学习有帮助的，在读中记一些好词、好句、名言警句、名人轶事等，分类整理在笔记本上，为写好作文做好铺垫，还要借鉴文中的表现形式和写作技巧，把这些融汇在自己的作文里面，作文水平也会相应提高。

诚然，作文水平要提高，应引导他们尽可能提高阅读水平、尽可能提高阅读面。有了足够的阅读积累，才有源头活水，写作文时才能文思泉涌，否则，即使搜肠刮肚也是难以成文的，文章就会写的更精彩生动，更有说服力，也就更有吸引力。

三、想象。

《语文课程标准》提出了“激发学生展开想象和幻想，鼓励写想象中的事物”。而且想象已经被人们形容到“人类没有想象如同鸟儿失去了翅膀”，因此写作过程中学生应运用想象和幻想。只要运用一定材料通过构思，注入自己的情感，根据所设情境，运用想象与幻想让他们设身于情境中，心往神驰，灵感一来再运用适当的修饰语加以整理，就可以完成一篇作文。

我在教学中就曾经上过这样的作文课，第一节课完全是学生说，第二节课是写作课。第一节课，同学们积极发言，说出了二十年后他们的理想和愿望都已经实现。如：有的说自己的理想是当大老板，二十年后，自己拥有了汽车、别墅，还有很多很多的钱，他又回到了母校，为学校捐出了五十万元，重建一个美丽的校园，让学生能在宽敞明亮的教室里上课。还要拿出一部分钱捐给希望工程，让那些没有钱上学的孩子重返校园，将来为祖国贡献力量，成为国家的栋梁之材。还有的学生说二十年后自己发明了一种玻璃鞋，这鞋用途特广泛，还可以随着主人的需要去变化。

在作文教学中，培养学生的想象力可以拓宽学生的写作空间，提高写作水平，提高创造性思维水平。

四、学会修改作文。

修改作文对每一个学生来说都是一个大难题，有的学生根本不改，有的学生即使去改，也仅仅是修改几个错别字而已，对于语句是否通顺，内容是否完整，不知怎样去改。为此，我针对以上情况谈一下修改作文的方法。

(一)看中学改。教师可把典型作文用投影显示，当众讨论修改，让学生通过看来学习修改。

(二)相互评改，博采众长。每一名学生无论他的学习成绩好坏，他的作文都有值得别人学习的地方。成绩好的学生能在成绩差的学生作文中找出优点，成绩差的能在成绩好的作文中学到写作文的方法及好词好句。这样，他就可以互通有无，取长补短，把优点用到自己的作文中去。

(三)让学生学会倾听别人的建议，自改作文，要让学生学会“听别人的建议，领会要点，把不理解的地方向对方请教，就不同意见与人商讨”。这不是由其他学生将作文改好，而是提出建议，让学生根据建议修改自己的作文，这样，作文既能保持自己的特点，又能融入别人的优点，让每个人的作文水平和修改能力都能提高。

总之，提高小学生的作文水平是多方面的，教师应采取灵活多样的教育教学方法，充分激发学生的想象力和积极性。在提高小学生作文水平的同时，让广大学生既学会做人，又学会写作文。

People will make a lot of friends during their lifetime, the more friends

they make, the more capable they are. Some young people are proud of having many

friends, but only the true friends deserve us to care about. The person we make

must be positive to life. He will set the good example to you and help you to be

a better man. The bad friends will make you perverted, especially for the

teenagers, they can’t make the right judgement and are easy to follow others, so

the friends are very important part of their lives. Once they make the wrong

friends, they will do the bad thing. So we don’t need more friends, just the

right one.

When I watch the TV series, there always present the rich familys life,

but I dont feel envious about the rich life. It is obvious that though these

people live the better life, the cost is that their parents spend less time to

play with them. The time to stay with our parents is really important, while the

rich parents have much work to do, so they dont have much private hours. I was

born in an ordinary family. My parents will never miss the moment when I need

them. I am so thankful to life, because I have my parents love. Whats more, I

have made many good friends. We share our interest and have a lot in common.

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

We can see such signs as “No Smoking” in some public places, which is a

kind of measure taken to ban smoking in public places. However, concerning about

this measures, different people hold divergent opinions. The smokers protest

against that it is a kind of action to deprive of their free right, while the

non-smokers are in favor of banning smoking in public places.

In my opinion, I am inclined to support the latter one—smoking should be

banned in public places. There are reasons accounting for my point. For one

thing, people will be harmed by the second-hand smoking if someone smokes in

public places, especially the infants and children. For another, banning smoking

in public places is also beneficial to the smokers. If they are banned to smoke

in public places, they will restrain themselves from smoking and smoke less. In

the meantime, it is a contribution to reduce the air pollution.

Therefore, I advocate that smoking in public places should be banned so

that we can breathe the fresh air and suffer less from the second-hand smoking.

Let’s work together to create and sustain out green and fresh environment.

It is widely accepted that to work independently has the obvious advantage

that it can prove one’s ability. However, I believe that teamwork is more

important in the modern society and teamwork sprit has become a required quality

by more and more companies.

In the first place, we are situated in a complicated society and we often

encounter tough problems that are beyond our ability. It is especially at this

moment that teamwork proves to be exceedingly important. With the help of the

team, these problems can be solved easily and quickly, which could improve work

efficiency.

In the second place, teamwork provides a chance to cooperate with workmate,

it will make a friendly and enjoyable work environment, which is an important

factor influencing employees’ belief in the company as a good workplace.

Finally, teamwork contributes to the prosperity of the companies. With all

workmates’ knowledge combined, the companies possess high work efficiency and an

ability to deal with whatever problems. As a result, the companies can make more

profits and develop more quickly.

In sum, teamwork is very important, no one could live individually, they

must rely on others in some way. Hence, work together could make life

easier.

1918年11月11日，延续4年之久的第一次世界大战以英、美、法等国的胜利和德、奥等国的失败而告结束。1919年1月，获胜的协约国在巴黎凡尔赛宫召开和平会议。中华民国作为战胜国参加会议。中华民国代表在会上提出废除外国在华特权，取消二十一条等正当要求，均遭拒绝。会议竟决定日本接管德国在华的各种特权。对这丧权辱国的条约，中华民国代表居然准备签字承认。消息传来，举国震怒，群情激愤。以学生为先导的五四爱国运动就如火山爆发般地开始了。

In November 11, 1918, the first World War lasted for 4 years in Britain, America, France and other countries and the victory of Germany, Austria and other countries come to an end in failure. 1919 January, winning xiediguo held in the Palace of Versailles in Paris peace conference. The Republic of China as a victorious nation to attend the meeting. The representative of China at the proposed abolition of privileges in China and foreign countries, cancel twenty-one legitimate demands were rejected. Japan has decided to take over the meeting in Germanys privileges in china. To humiliate the country and forfeit its sovereignty of this treaty, the representative of the Republic of China was prepared to recognize the signature. When the news came out, the country burning, burning with indignation. The student led five four patriotic movement like a volcano began.

5月4日下午，北京3000多名学生在天安门前集会游行，他们高呼：“还我青岛”“收回山东权利”、“拒绝在巴黎和会上签字”、“废除二十一条”、“抵制日货”、“宁肯玉碎，勿为瓦全”、“外争国权，内惩国贼”等口号，并且要求惩办交通总长曹汝霖、币制局总裁陆宗舆、驻日公使章宗祥，呼吁各界人士行动起来，反对帝国主义的侵略行径，保卫中国的领土和主权。这一运动得到的工人和各阶层人士的声援和支持，上海、南京等地的工人纷纷举行罢工或示威。在全国人民的压力下，北洋政府被迫释放被捕学生，罢免曹汝霖等人的职务，并指令巴黎参加会议的代表拒绝在和约上签字。

The afternoon of May 4th, more than 3000 students in Beijing shouting at them in front of the Tiananmen demonstrations,: "I also Qingdao" "Shandong," refused to withdraw the right "in Paris and will sign", "the abolition of the twenty-one", "boycott Japanese goods," "would rather die, not for your guns", "defend our sovereignty, punish traitor" and other slogans, and for the punishment of traffic chief Cao Rulin, President of monetary Bureau Lu Zongyu, Minister Zhang Zongxiang, calls for action, fight against imperialist aggression, defend the territorial integrity and sovereignty Chinese. This campaign workers and all sectors of the solidarity and support, Shanghai, Nanjing and other places of the workers have held strikes and demonstrations. In the country under the pressure of the people, the government was forced to release the arrested students, and others recall Cao Rulins position, and ordered the Paris representatives attending the meeting refused to sign the peace treaty.

为了继承和发扬“五四”运动以来中国青年光荣的革命传统，1939年，陕甘宁边区的西北青年救国联合会规定5月4日为青年节。1949年12月，中央人民政府政务院正式宣布这一规定。

In order to inherit and carry forward the "five four" youth movement Chinese glorious revolutionary tradition, in 1939, the Shaanxi Gansu Ningxia border region of the Northwest China Youth Federation provides for the May 4th Youth day. In 1949 December, the Central Peoples government officially announced the provisions.

Volunteers are the pulse of the city and the beautiful scenery of the city.

They are composed of a group of enthusiastic young people who love public

welfare and support the public welfare undertakings of the society.

In the volunteer organization, every volunteer is equal, everyone is equal

in personality and status, everyone has come together for a common goal, it can

be said that they are the most intimate brothers and sisters without blood!

A team is composed of people, and there must be a certain division of labor

according to peoples abilities. Some people are suitable for leadership, some

people are suitable for publicity, and some people are happy to be ordinary

volunteers working on the front line.

The so-called people do their best.

Only make the best use of it! Only such a group can flourish and thrive! If

you just divide the volunteers into three, six or nine classes based on their

abilities, identities, and statuses, it will hurt not only a persons emotional

problems, but also the longevity. , the affinity and cohesion of the team will

be greatly reduced! If the composition of the volunteers are all dignitaries,

then the transparency of the volunteers will have to be doubted by the

world.

Although it is said that if you are poor, you will be alone, and if you are

good, you will help the world, but it does not rule out that there will be some

people who are not rich and not very capable, but are willing to do their best

to join this organization. I think we should also. Accept them with a tolerant

heart, because our organization is voluntary, fair, and equal!

志愿者是城市跳动的脉搏，是都市亮丽的风景，由一群热爱公益的热血青年组成，撑起了社会的公益事业。

在志愿者组织中，每一位志愿者都是平等的，大家在人格上，地位上都是平等的，大家为了一个共同的目标走到了一起，可以说是最为亲密的，没有血缘的兄妹!

一个团队，由人组成，根据人的能力必然有了一定的.分工，有的人适合做领导，有的人适合做宣传，而有的人乐于做一个普通的义工工作在第一线。

所谓人尽其才。

才尽其用!这样的团体才能蓬勃发展，蒸蒸日上!若硬是把志愿者依据能力、身份、地位的不同，分出个三六九等，所伤及的怕不只是一个人的情感问题，天长日久，团队的亲和力、凝聚力怕是要大打折扣!倘若志愿者的组成都是些达官显贵，那么志愿者的透明程度，就不得不让世人怀疑了。

虽说有穷则独善其身，达则兼济天下一说，可也并不排除会有一些并不富裕，能力不是很强，却愿意尽自己绵薄之力的人愿意加入这个组织，我想我们也要以一个宽容的心来接纳他们，因为我们的组织是宗旨是志愿、公平、平等!

Today is Dragon Boat Festival. My mother let me watch the origin of the Dragon Boat Festival from the computer. In fact, it was a memorial to Qu Yuan. Qu Yuan was a patriot. He wanted to make his country strong and often give advice to the king, but the king did not like to listen and he drove him out of the country.

Once the Qin state came to the state of Chu, the state of Chu was quickly defeated, the country was soon lost, and Qu Yuan was more sad. In the early May of this year, five, he moved a big stone and threw himself into the river. People know, very sad, in order not to let the fish eat Qu Yuan, put the dumplings inside the bamboo tube, throw it into the river, hope that the fish will not eat Qu Yuan, the dumplings are like this.

This story tells us to love our country. I also know, now eat dumplings, but is bamboo, replaced by a kind of broad leaves. Eating zongzi is also a memorial to Qu Yuan.

Nowadays, most children, who are the only child in the family, are given

too much love by their parents. It is because that they are protected from

hardship and difficulties, they become less independent. However, a spoiled

child will have a hard job to live in this competitive society. We should know

the fact that no parents can keep a good company with their children for the

whole life. Thus, parents should encourage their children to do whatever they

can, so as to develop their abilities of independence.

Today, I am very happy! Because its the Dragon Boat Festival today! No matter where you go, you can ask for a smell of zongzi. The streets, everywhere to buy dumplings: a small meat meat, meat, egg yolk, meat dumplings, dumplings red dates......

When asked about the fragrance of zongzi, I realized that I was hungry. "Dad! Give me a big meat!" I said. "I want it too, I want it, too!" My sister said. " Dad said, "OK!" Ok! One person, all right. " "Eee!" I said to my sister.

"Well, hmmm! This is delicious, this one is delicious! " I, mom and dad and sister repeatedly praised. Mom said, "now you eat too much, do you want to eat at noon?" I said, "hee - hee, see it at noon." "Its no way to take you!" Linda! Ha ha! " After eating, we went to play badminton.

How happy today it is! I like the Dragon Boat Festival! Oh Yeah!

The lucky baby first time declares a position MV Austria transported the

subject music " 2008 " the MV real-life scenery photography to the day before

yesterday evening officially in 81 factories open machine, this section of MV

first time used the lucky baby image in the image photography. "2008 " composes

music, the great light by the famous composer Artemisia stelleriana auspicious

light arranges the tune, combines " the classical fashion " by the Western happy

7 people the performance, MV New Years Day the bilingual party always directs

Luo by 2006 great directs and first time uses in this party, on December 31st

the evening in central 3 set,central 9 set, Yang regards the Spanish French

frequency channel first time meets with everywhere audiences.

According to directs Luo Wei introduces, entire MV except that " the

classical fashion " in the combination 7 individual performances images, other

parts all will use the three dimensional animation manufacture, the lucky baby

defer to Austria transport conduct the city the order, will fly in turn Athens

Wei Cheng, the ancient Egyptian pyramid, the French 埃菲尔 iron tower, Australias

Sydney opera house, the Japanese Mount Fuji, the American free goddess picture,

Russias Kremlin, finally will come to the Beijing Temple of Heaven. " Classical

fashion " when combination performance uses the cello, the violin, the flute and

so on 3 kind of musical instruments also all can " use " by the lucky baby.

Halloween

Halloween always falls on 31 October. It’s a holiday for children. On that day, children always wear fancy clothes and masks. And then, they go from house to house to say “Trick or Treat”, so that people will treat them with candies. If they don’t receive any candies, they’ll play a trick on people. But sometimes if the people are going out, when the children come, they’ll put the candies in a carved pumpkin lanterns. Children will take the candies themselves. All of the children enjoy this holiday very much.

万圣节总是在10月31日。这是一个属于孩子们的节日。在那天，孩子们总是穿奇装异服而且带上面具。然后，他们会挨家挨户地说“不招待就使坏”，所以人们都会用糖果招待他们。如果他们不接受糖果，他们就会对人们恶作剧。但有时，如果人们外出了，而孩子们来了，他们会把糖果放在雕刻好的南瓜灯笼里。孩子们会自己拿糖果。所有的孩子都很享受这个节日。

首先是多看，书报是基础，建议多看点诗词歌赋方面的;看社会百态方面的;看时事、政治、经济方面的;看文学小说，只要大量地看书，并摘录写得好的词句在一个本子里;然后是抄书，抄那些唐诗宋词赏析，抄报告文学，抄短篇小说，慢慢抄，慢慢品。最重要的就是品味字里行间的韵味，能看到把书里的东西变成自己的东西;多记：心记，笔记，摘抄。多问：了解来龙去脉，全过程。多写：有材料写，没有材料强迫自己去收集素材也写，一开始不管写的好不好，能写出来就是胜利。多模仿：天下文章一半抄。认为好的手法，不妨穿插于写作当中，习惯成自然。多征：征求别人的意见，不断修改完善，一篇东西不修改个十来遍不放手。走出去，感受自然，感受生活，很重要。如能这样做，就能慢慢提高自己的动笔能力，经过不断的努力，就可以提高文笔了，真正达到行云流水、下笔如有神的境界。

看书是很重要的一个环节，因为书里的故事可以丰富你的想象力，书里的词句可以扩大词汇量，甚至它的写作风格、写作手法等等，都会对你产生影响。请记住，我们在接受知识时都是潜移默化的。看书时千万不要抱有“我是为了提高写作水平”这样的心态，否则会产生不好的效果。一切都在循序渐进、渐渐地提高。或许你一下子感觉不到，但到某一天，当别人夸赞你的文章时你就知道了。

有些人觉得没有东西可写，那是因为，他们大多都是窝在屋子里，以为书可以解决一切问题。那就错了，那样的结果就是，写出来的东西会给人“在那里见到过”的感觉。另外，书里的内容对于他有了一个思维定格，写出来的作品自然无法超脱。你可以在你的小区附近，坐在石凳上，很安静地，很用心地，去观察周围一切发生的事。一段时间后，你会看到一些印在你脑子里的事，那就是你的素材了，可以记下来，以日记的形式或者只是在记事簿上。那么积累得多了，用时自然得心应手。

大量的阅读、勤奋的思考是提高写作水平的必经之路。多看、多练、多记。有很多不同类型的文章，也有很多不同意义的故事，对提高写作能力很有帮助。语法，文理是基础，然后就是多读、多积累，可准备一个专用日记本，见到一些好言锦句，就把它抄下来。还有就是多写，最好能坚持每天写日记。坚持写日记是个好办法，根据自己的时间安排，不要求多但贵在坚持，还有就是多看一些好书，对于自己生活中的事情，有意思的可以写下来，只要有毅力有恒心有梦想，总有一天会出好作品的!

写作时还有一个要点，那就是要小不要大。往往很多人会将主题定得很宽很大，而结果则是内容浮浅而乏味。定个很小很小的主题，但一定要把它细化，即将你看到的每一个小细节都描写出来，再加上你的真实感受，那么读者就会被这些真实打动。比如你上面积累的例子，你可以作为例证来使用，同样也可以拿某件小事专门写一篇文章，好的文章即是由真、细、感组成的。

写作的根本是基础的积累：首先是材料的积累。材料是写作之源。写作材料主要来源于社会生活。在活生生的现实中有很多美的事物，要学会时时处处留心周围各种各样的事物，熟悉形形色色的社会现象，不断扩大自己的生活领域，捕捉生活热点，在生活中多留心多思考，有意识的捕捉有意义的事，有趣的人，并随手记下。这样，发现多了，积累也就多了。阅读和听取，则是获取写作材料的另一途径。对于生活范围较小，生活经历有限的人来说，从这一源头获取材料最为广泛。阅读书籍报刊，听取轶闻逸事，可以使自己获得许多无法亲身接触到的材料。可见，要养成勤于阅读的习惯。通过留心生活，精于阅读，材料积累多了，便不再会出现无话可说的状况，而是泼洒成文。

语言的积累。语言是文章这所房子的砖瓦，要有意识的积累语言，读书看报，碰到富有表现力的字词句;听广播看电视，甚至听别人说活，得到的美妙言语，都要记下来。平时碰到的成语、歇后语、名言警句等等，只要自认为生动美妙的，就积累。这样，积沙成塔，集腋成裘，从而逐步建立自己的语言词典。同时，生活中碰到的生字词，要查字典。经过积累，语言丰富了，写作文时自然左右逢源。

情感的积累。文章不是无情物，字字句句吐衷肠。写作只有将自己的情感体验，自己的真情、深情、纯情、至情(如对师长的敬爱，对同学的友爱，对弱者的同情，对坏人的憎恶等等)付诸写作对象，文章才能情深意切，字字动心。可见，写好作文，必须有情感的积淀。而事实上，情感积累丰富了，写作时人禀七情就能自然流淌，进入一种情不能已的境界，写出的文章生动感人。

写法的积累。“《文选》烂，秀才半”之说，形象道出了古人学习写作的经验。大凡优秀的作品，本身就告诉我们，文章该怎么写，不该怎么写。通过熟读、多读各大家的作品，达到心领神会的程度，自然学到作文的方法和技巧。阅读多了，积累多了，用于写作实践，必能提高写作水平。

实现写作的积累，要达到三个要求：一、量要大，量的保证，才能带来质的变化。要勤动笔，将自己发现的东西记在其专为写作积累而准备的本子上。二、范围要广。为了积累，生活视野阅读视野要宽，积极参加各种活动，以扩大自己的生活圈子;三、培养自己的兴趣，养成积累的习惯。

1)Some(people)argue/claim/believe/hold that……But others set(put)forth a different argument about/oppositive views on the matter in question.

(e.g. Some claim that setting off firecrackers is a good practice of celebrating the Spring Festival.……But others put forth opposite views on the problem.)

2)Some(people)advocate/endorse/favor/are for(或oppose/object to/are against)……Yet others stick to/hold on to/cling to the opposite views/argument/points.

(e.g. Some advocate changes intended to modernize the building code.……Yet others hold on to the opposite views.)

3)To some peoples mind/From some peoples point of view/In the eye(s)o f some people，the matter in question is/seems/should be/means……But to othersmind/from others point of view/in otherseyes，it is just/quite the other way around/contrary/opposite(或the opposite/reverse is the case/true.)

(e.g. To some peoples mind，reading should be done in a selective way.……But to others‘，it is just the other way around.)

4)Some(people)respond/react to……by……But others behave/act in the other direction/in the opposite way.

(e.g. Some people respond to failure by remaining inactive or avoiding it……But others behave in the opposite way.)

5)Some take the view that……And/But on the other hand，others argue for the opposite view that……

(e.g. Some are of the view that institutions mould characters.……And on the other hand，others argue for the opposite view that characters transform institutions.)

记叙文是记人叙事的文章，它主要是用于说明事件的时间、背景、起因、过程及结果，即我们通常所说的五个“ W ”( what, who, when, where, why )和一个“ H ”( how )。记叙文的重点在于“述说”和“描写”，因此一篇好的记叙文要叙述条理清楚，描写生动形象。下面就谈谈英语记叙文的特点和写好记叙文的基本要领。

一、记叙文的特点

1. 叙述的人称

英语的记叙文一般是以第一或第三人称的角度来叙述的。用第一称表示的是由叙述者亲眼所见、亲耳所闻的经历。它的优点在于能把故事的情节通过“我”来传达给读者，使人读后感到真实可信，如身临其境。如：

The other day, I was driving along the street. Suddenly, a car lost its control and ran directly towards me fast. I was so frightened that I quickly turned to the left side. But it was too late. The car hit my bike and I fell off it.

用第三人称叙述，优点在于叙述者不受“我”活动范围以内的人和事物的限制，而是通过作者与读者之外的第三者，直接把故事中的情节展现在读者面前，文章的客观性很强。如：

Little Tom was going to school with an umbrella, for it was raining hard. On the way, he saw an old woman walking in the rain with nothing to cover. Tom went up to the old woman and wanted to share the umbrella with her, but he was too short. What could he do? Then he had a good idea.

2. 动词的时态

在记叙文中，记和叙都离不开动词。所以动词出现率最高，且富于变化。记叙文中用得最多的是动词的过去的，这是英语记叙文区别于汉语记叙文的关键之处。英语写作的优美之处就在于这些动词时态的变化，正是这一点才使得所记、所叙有鲜活的动态感、鲜明的层次感和立体感。

3. 叙述的顺序

记叙一件事要有一定的顺序。无论是顺叙、倒叙、插叙还是补叙，都要让读者能弄清事情的来龙去脉。顺叙最容易操作，较容易给读者提供有关事情的空间和时间线索。但这种方法也容易使文章显得平铺直叙，读起来平淡乏味。倒叙、插叙、补叙等叙述方法能有效地提高文章的结构效果，让所叙之事跌宕起伏，使读者在阅读时思维产生较大的跳跃，从而为文章所吸引，深入其中。但这些方法如果使用不当，则容易弄巧成拙，使文章结构散乱，头绪不清，让读者不知所云。

4. 叙述的过渡

过渡在上下文中起着承上启下、融会贯通的作用。过渡往往用在地点转移或时间、事件转换以及由概括说明到具体叙述时。如：

In my summer holidays, I did a lot of things. Apart form doing my homework, reading an English novel, watching TV and doing some housework, I went on a trip to Qingdao. It is really a beautiful city. There are many places of interest to see. But what impressed me most was the sunrise.

The next morning I got up early. I was very happy because it was a fine day. By the time I got to the beach, the clouds on the horizon were turning red. In a little while, a small part of the sun was gradually appearing. The sun was very red, not shining. It rose slowly. At last it broke through the red clouds and jumped above the sea, just like a deep-red ball. At the same time the clouds and the sea water became red and bright.