高中英语写作万能模板(实用20篇)

Since ancient times first, laba is used to worship our ancestors and gods (including the goalkeeper, door god, house, kitchen, JingShen) sacrifice ceremony, praying for harvest and good luck., according to the si ji jiao, features "records, la is the" age of December, and get together to share everything without cable also."Dynasty called LaRi jia ping, shang dynasty to the qing si ", the zhou dynasty as the "big wax";Because the held in December said the month for the twelfth month, called the Greek festival this day LaRi.LaRi of pre-qin period after the winter solstice of the third day of the Buddhism was introduced later, at home in order to expand the influence by lines of traditional culture on the laba festival as the Buddha into way.Buddhism prevailed, followed the Buddha into day and LaRi fusion, known as a magic weapon "festival" in the field of Buddhism.Northern and southern dynasties began to fixed in the day.

According to the load: "three xu-gou after the winter solstice day god Greek festival."Visible, the third xu-gou days after the winter solstice was LaRi.Since Buddhism after intervention, LaRi change on December 8, since xiangyan into the vulgar.

自先上古起，腊八是用来祭祀祖先和神灵(包括门神、户神、宅神、灶神、井神)的祭祀仪式，祈求丰收和吉祥。据《祀记·郊特牲》记载，腊祭是“岁十二月，合聚万物而索飨之也。”夏代称腊日为“嘉平”，商代为“清祀”，周代为“大蜡”;因在十二月举行，故称该月为腊月，称腊祭这一天为腊日。先秦的腊日在冬至后的第三个戌日，后来佛教传入，为了扩大在本土的影响力逐附会传统文化把腊八节定为佛成道日。后随佛教盛行，佛祖成道日与腊日融合，在佛教领域被称为“法宝节”。南北朝开始才固定在腊月初八。

《说文》载：“冬至后三戌日腊祭百神。”可见，冬至后第三个戌日曾是腊日。后由于佛教介入，腊日改在十二月初八，自此相沿成俗。

John has lived in London for afew years, but he isnt so familiar with that city, because he seldom goes out.One foggy morning, he had to go somewhere to attend an important meeting.

Because of the heavy fog, he was unable to get the right way.

Although he askedmany people for the direction, no one paid attention to him, for they were allin a hurry.

He looked so anxious. At this very moment, a woman came out of thefog and said, “Let me help you, Sir.

Please go with me." John followed thewoman, and then she led him to the right place.

It took them about half anhour. John owed his great thanks to her. However, to his great surprise, hefound that the woman was blind.

“How can you take me here?" John asked. “Ihave been living in London since I was born, so Im very familiar with everystreet in this city." the woman answered.

约翰在伦敦住了几年，但他对那个城市并不是很熟悉，因为他很少出门。

在一个有雾的早晨，他要去参加一个重要会议。由于雾太大，他无法找到正确的方向。虽然他向很多人问方向，没有人注意到他，因为他们都在赶时间。

他看上去很着急。在这个非常时刻，一个女人从大雾中走出来对他说，“先生，我来帮助你吧。请跟我走吧。”

约翰跟着她，之后她带他带到正确的地方。他们大约花了半个小时。约翰非常感谢她。

然而，令他吃惊的是，他发现那个女人是盲人。“你是怎么能带我到这里来？”约翰问。“我从出生开始就一直生活在伦敦，所以我非常熟悉这个城市的每一条街道。”女人回答说。

[高中英语作文：走出迷雾

读后感是议论文中最常见的文体之一，也是初高中学生必须掌握的一种文体。小编收集了高中写作技巧：如何写好读后感，欢迎阅读。

一、引——围绕感点，引述材料。

读后感重在“感”，而这个“感”是由特定的“读”生发的，“引”是“感”的落脚点，所谓“引”就是围绕感点，有的放矢的引用原文：材料精短的，可全文引述;材料长的，或摘录“引”发“感”的关键词、句，或概述引发“感”的要点。不管采用哪种方式引述，“引”都要简练、准确，有针对性。

二、议——分析材料，提练感点。

在引出“读”的内容后，要对“读”进行一番评析。既可就事论事对所“引”的内容作一番分析;也可以由现象到本质，由个别到一般的作一番挖掘;对寓意深的材料更要作一番分析，然后水到渠成地“亮”出自己的感点。

三、联——联系实际，纵横拓展。

写读后感最忌的是就事论事和泛泛而谈。就事论事撒不开，感不能深入，文章就过于肤浅。泛泛而谈，往往使读后感缺乏针对性，不能给人以震撼。联，就是要紧密联系实际，既可以由此及彼地联系现实生活中相类似的现象，也可以由古及今联系现实生活中的相反的种种问题。既可以从大处着眼，也可以从小处入手。当然在联系实际分析论证时，还要注意时时回扣或呼应“引”部，使“联”与“引”“藕”断而“丝”连。

四、结——总结全文，升华感点。

总结既可以回应前文，强调感点;也可以提出希望，发出号召。不管采用哪种方式结尾，都必须与前文贯通，浑然一体。读后感始终要受“读”的约束，开头要引“读”，中间还要不时地回扣“读”的内容，结尾也要恰当回扣“读”的内容不放松。

当然要写好读后感，关键还要读透材料，抓准感点。怎样读透材料?一般说，如果是记叙文，就要抓住人物最突出的某种品质，最有价值的语言行动或事件所包含的深刻意义;如果是议论文，就要把握中心论点;如果是寓言或哲理性的散文，就要领会其深刻的寓意。当然，读一篇文章，感可能是多方面的，要在分析、思考的基础上，选择最值得发表，感受最深，见解新颖独到，最有针对性和现实感的感受来写，一篇读后感只能容纳一个感点，其他感点无论多么好，都要忍痛割爱。明智之举是抓住一点，不及其余，并围绕一个感点，联系实际，谈深谈透。

读后感，就是读了一本书或一篇文章，或读了一段话，或读了几句名言后，把具体感受和得到的启示写成的文章。所谓“感”，可以是从书中领悟出来的道理或精湛的思想，可以是受书中的内容启发而引起的思考与联想，可以是因读书而激发的决心和理想，也可以是因读书而引起的对社会上某些丑恶现象的抨击。

读后感的表达方式灵活多样，基本属于议论范畴，但写法不同于一般议论文，因为它必须是在读后的基础上发感想。要写好有体验、有见解、有感情、有新意的读后感，必须注意以下几点：

首先，要读好原文。“读后感”的“感”是因“读”而引起的。“读”是“感”的基础。走马观花地读，可能连原作讲的什么都没有掌握，哪能有“感”?读得肤浅，当然也感得不深。只有读得认真，才能有所感，并感得深刻。如果要读的是议论文，要弄清它的论点(见解和主张)，或者批判了什么错误观点，想一想你受到哪些启发，还要弄清论据和结论是什么。如果是记叙文，就要弄清它的主要情节，有几个人物，他们之间是什么关系，以及故事发生在哪年哪月。作品涉及的社会背景，还要弄清楚作品通过记人叙事，揭示了人物什么样的精神品质，反映了什么样的社会现象，表达了作者什么思想感情，作品的哪些章节使人受感动，为什么这样感动等等。

其次，排好感点。只要认真读好原作，一篇文章可以写成读后感的方面很多。如对原文中心感受得深可以写成读后感，对原作其他内容感受得深也可以写成读后感，对个别句子有感受也可以写成读后感。总之，只要是原作品的内容，只要你对它有感受，都可以写成读后感。

第三，选准感点。一篇文章，可以排出许多感点，但在一篇读后感里只能论述一个中心，切不可面面俱到，所以紧接着便是对这些众多的感点进行筛选比较，找出自己感受最深、角度最新，现实针对性最强、自己写来又觉得顺畅的一个感点，作为读后感的中心，然后加以论证成文。

第四，叙述要简。既然读后感是由读产生感，那么在文章里就要叙述引起“感”的那些事实，有时还要叙述自己联想到的一些事例。一句话，读后感中少不了“叙”。但是它不同于记叙文中“叙”的要求。记叙文中的“叙”讲究具体、形象、生动，而读后感中的“叙”却讲究简单扼要，它不要求“感人”，只要求能引出事理。初学写读后感引述原文，一般毛病是叙述不简要，实际上变成复述了。这主要是因为作者还不能把握所要引述部分的精神、要点，所以才简明不了。简明，不是文字越少越好，简还要明。

第五，联想要注意形式。联想的形式有相同联想(联想的事物之间具有相同性)、相反联想(联想的事物之间具有相反性)、相关联想(联想的事物之间具有相关性)、相承联想(联想的事物之间具有相承性)、相似联想(联想的事物之间具有相似性)等多种。写读后感尤其要注意相同联想与相似联想这两种联想形式的运用。

读书笔记：以读促写三类型

读书笔记作为促进读写能力提高的有效途径，越来越受到重视。读书笔记在能力层次上可以划分为三种类型：

一、理解——复述型

这一类型的读书笔记是把对作品的理解用自己的语言复述下来。它有利于提高学生的概括能力、叙述能力和逻辑思维能力。那么如何复述呢?主要有提纲法。提纲法是指阅读作品后，经过综合分析，把作品的内容按照自然段或者意义段提纲挚领地分条列出，针对不同的文体和个人阅读的需要，编写各种类型的提纲。最为常见的是内容提纲，还有把握文章结构脉络的结构提纲和把握故事情节的情节提纲等。关键是条理清晰，使人看了能一下子总揽全局，理清头绪。

例如下面一篇读书笔记就是对高尔基的《童年》做的内容提纲：

“《童年》与其续篇《在人问》《我的大学》共同构成了高尔基自传体小说三部曲，《童年》是首篇。在这部小说中，描写的是作者10岁以前的童年时代的生活。记叙了主人公成长、生活的历程，描写了那令人窒息的、充满可怕景象的狭小天地。阿廖沙四岁时，父亲就死了，于是跟着外祖父、外祖母过着贫寒、艰苦的生活。外祖父有着矛盾复杂的性格，他的内心有善良的一面，但贪婪金钱腐蚀了他的灵魂。在这冷冰冰的世界里，只有外祖母庇护、关心着他，给予他无限的温情和钟爱，并对他进行了有益的教导。

整篇《童年》中所描绘的是一种浓厚的、色彩斑斓的、离奇的难以形容的生活。那段生活，仿佛是由一个善良而且极端诚实的天才美妙的天才讲出来一个悲惨的童话。但尽管作品中描写了那么多目不忍睹的惨事与丑事，整部作品仍然像阳光透过云层一样放射出了乐观主义的思想光辉。主人公阿廖沙没有被艰辛、痛苦和屈辱的生活所压倒，他满怀信心，奋斗拼搏，冲破种种障碍与不幸，不断探索新生活，这种乐观主义精神使作品在思想内容上带上了积极的色彩。”

这一提纲从背景介绍入手，然后概括了作品的大致内容，在第二段中又用概括的语言进行概貌似的总结，让人们从整体上了解这部作品的思想内容和风格，条理清晰，语言凝练，抓住了理解——复述型读书笔记的写作要点。

如何写好高中话题作文，话题作文的基本要求：要审题，所写内容必须在话题范围之内。“立意自定”，关键要读懂话题关键词的意旨，若给出导语提示，还应划出导语中包含归结的关键语词。一般初学者，首先要注意让这些关键词贯穿在自己作文的始终，统帅自己的文意。今天小编给大家分享如何写好高中话题作文。

一、文章形式的革命——夹叙夹议

尽快脱离初中只重记叙，笼统归结的写法。高中的作文记叙只向最高水平开一条缝，你得复杂记叙，融情思与哲理于一炉，有最动人的细节和最精美的表达，巧妙蕴含深刻的思辨和无穷的回味，这不是一般人能做到的，更不是学不会议论抒情的同学的避难所。所以，比自己多练议论，远比固守初中记叙的窠臼要有前途。高中的记叙必须简约，只提炼能说明自己观点的内核，而尽量舍弃叙述的完整过程与细节。叙，惜墨如金;而起始学写议，应力求具体多点分析阐述。

二、文章立意的升华——深入浅出

叙完笼统归结是初中模式作文的又一通病，常常文章的结尾具有宽泛的普适性，而缺乏对文章应有之义作具体针对性的挖掘阐发，常常文章的“穿鞋戴帽”大到可以套在无数篇文章上，却没什么真正的思考。高中作文倘使还用夹叙夹议，也要对叙的材料反复推敲，找出几例可以统一在一个观点里的材料，就材料的不同侧面来评析议论，最后上升归结出恰当切题、言之有物的中心。

三、文章表达的提高——点睛生花

好的文笔追求更高效率、更多意蕴。描述中就渗透情思与评析，这是较高水平的表达。一般的叙议分段，也应注意所叙材料紧贴自己的议论，议论应采取逐层推进，前后分界，避免相互缠绕。但又必须前后连贯，形成一个整体。在文章中一定写好精心组织的关键议论，努力使文章多处呈现运用一定修辞的文采。

话题作文训练举隅

话题作文的基本要求：话题作文还是要审题，所写内容必须在话题范围之内。“立意自定”，关键要读懂话题关键词的意旨，若给出导语提示，还应划出导语中包含归结的关键语词。一般初学者，首先要注意让这些关键词贯穿在自己作文的始终，统帅自己的文意。

规定“题目自拟”，一定不要用话题作标题。1、标题范围尽量要小，不要太大太泛;要合理出新，不落俗套。2、标题不能过长，可以采用副标题的方式对主标题加以限制。3、标题要含蓄，把思维蕴涵于形象的标题之中。

2005年英语考纲有重大变化，其中之一就是作文考查的变化。新增加一篇小作文，使作文考查由一篇变为两篇，而原来的大作文的字数也由“不少于200字”调整为“150至200字”，满分20分。新增的作文是一篇100字左右的应用性短文，文体包括有信件、便笺、备忘录等，满分10分。既然是新增题型，就不会太难，但不好预测文体，这就要求考生复习时力求面面俱到，掌握写作规律及注意事项，尤其是对常见的应用文体如书信等

大作文的写作一般会给考生写作提纲，或图表，图画，或图文并茂。命题方式虽然多样，但题目涉及面往往是考生比较熟悉的内容，目的是测定考生语言的实际应用能力。要求表达清楚，文字连贯，中心突出，内容丰富，句式多变，句子结构和用词正确。

语言的应用能力不可能一蹴而就，必须厚积薄发，必须经过长期的实践锻炼。在提高英语写作能力方面，我觉得：一是要背大量的优秀范文，整段整篇地背，并转换为自己的语言，写作时自己能随心所欲支配。考试时避免套用以前死记硬背的几个范文，把一些不达意的词堆积在一起，没有统一性，无法很好地表现主题；二是要多动手。包括对背过的文章进行词语替换，句式转换，句子重组等，以及对某一主题展开写作。多动手才能提高笔下功夫，才能保证在考场上顺利写作。可以说背诵范文是培养语感，积累素材，掌握写作方法，动手写作是实践，是最终目的，这两者结合起来，就是“理论联系了实际”。另外，背诵范文应有针对性，写作训练也是一样，在训练中要掌握每一类型作文的写作规律，根据其每一类作文的写作特点——如提纲式作文就要求考生根据提纲提示的思路和规定的要点展开段落——全面训练，但不要带有押题的心理，靠背几篇范文就能应付考试的心态是不可取的。

下面说一下英语写作过程中的注意事项

一、认真审题

作文第一步是仔细审题，考生要仔细阅读试题要求及相关信息，如图表，图画，数字等，准确把握出题者意图。考研作文忌信手掂来，提笔就写，根本不审题，想到哪儿就写到哪儿，或完全凭自己想象编故事，置考试要求于不顾， “下笔千言，离题万里”。比如1998是一幅卡通画，老母鸡申明外加一首打油诗，讽刺一些企业把该尽职之事作为推销产品的承诺。如果考生说老母鸡很可爱，但爱自夸，然后说自己某个同学也爱自夸，这就偏离主题。2000年的作文“A Brief Histiry of World Commercial Fishing ”.它给出了两张图，从1900年的渔船和鱼量之比到1995年的渔船和鱼量之比的变化谈如何保护渔业资源，应从商业性滥捕鱼这一主题展开话题，有的考生却大谈环境污染。这就偏离了主题，因为题中自始自终都没有谈到环境污染问题。

有的同学没有审题习惯，或担心时间不够草草审题，最后发现文不对题，草草收场，这就影响了英语成绩，同时也会影响后两门考试的考试心情。

二、列出提纲

考试规定的时间是很有限的，所以不能花太多时间准备一个详细的提纲，但关键词提纲或粗略提纲还是非常有必要的。对原始材料分析归纳后要形成一个基本的框架。文章打算分几段写，每段大概怎样写，自数控制在多少，开头段落是道破主题，点名要旨，引人入胜还是先给出主题一般的背景情况和对主题进行浓缩的陈述呢，中间段落和结尾有怎样写呢。这些都要心中有数。有的考生习惯用汉语构思文章，逐句翻译提纲，当碰到某个词卡住时就翻译不下去，僵在那里。要注意列提纲是为了更好更全面的表达主题。主题的表达可有多种形式，不一定非要寻找一个特定的词或句子。考试时考生要充分调动大脑，灵活运用以前所学知识。

三、开始写作

一篇文章往往由四部分组成，标题(title)，首段(opening paragraph),主体(body paragraph),结尾段( concluding paragraph)。标题要新颖，能引起读者兴趣，首段的内容根据文章的体裁而变化，比如议论文可以从一种现象，一种观点出发引出作者的观点。记叙文往往交代人物和故事背景。主体是文章的主要部分，通过合适的语篇模式表达一定的观点，考生要围绕中心按一定顺序分层次有重点的展开叙述，描写，议论。结尾段是对全文的总结，论点上要与前面的叙述一致和统一。写作时要注意以下几点。

1、要统一，连贯。

选择那些最能体现中心思想最具代表性的材料，这些材料要共同表达一致的信息。选材时切忌胡子眉毛一把抓。词语堆积，不伦不类。前后及段落之间在逻辑关系上要紧密衔接，不能把没有任何逻辑关系的词放在一起。可以用恰当的关联词把思想连贯的表达出来。

2、用词准确，语法正确

考试时要特别注意语法，此语，语气，标点符号等，为了避免太多单词拼写错误，语法错误，不要为了追求词语的华丽而堆积一些自己也没把握的单词，不要刻意追求长句而写一些自己不知对错的有多个从句组成的长句。考试时最好选择自己最有把握的词汇，短语，句式。

3、足够字数，卷面整洁

绝对不能字数不够，即使一句话颠来倒去说也要凑够字数。字数不够，即使写的非常精彩，也不能拿高分。

四、修改

英语写作时考生由于仓促，紧张等原因，很容易犯一些简单的，一眼就能发现的错误。所以考生一定要留出几分钟时间用于修改。不要大幅度进行修改，更不要因为修改破坏卷面整洁，影响阅卷老师心情。修改时可以从以下几点进行

1、语法

包括时态是否一致，主谓是否一致，名词单复数是否对应，被动主动语态是否错用等

2、词汇

包括连接上下句或段落的关联词，习惯用语，固定搭配，词类混淆，误用及物不及物动词等。

3、拼写和标点符号

1. It goes without saying that 。..不用说……

It goes without saying that it pays to keep early hours. 不用说， 早睡早起是值得的。

2. There is no denying the fact that 。..不可否认这个事实……=No one can deny 。..谁也不可否认……

There is no denying that successful business lies in a healthy body and mind. 不可否认， 成功的关键在于健康的身心。

3. I am greatly convinced (that)。..=I am greatly assured (that)。..我深信……

I am greatly convinced that prevention is better than cure. 我深信预防胜于治疗。

4. Among various kinds of 。..=Of all the 。..在各种……之中， ……

Among various kinds of sports， I like jogging in particular. 在各种运动中， 我尤其喜欢慢跑。

5. In my opinion 。..=As far as I am concerned ，。..在我看来， ……

In my opinion， playing computer games not only takes up much time but also is harmful to our health. 在我看来， 打电脑游戏既花费也有害健康。

6. According to my personal experience = Based on my personal experience根据我个人经验

According to my personal experience， smile has done me a lot of good. 根据我个人的经验， 微笑带给我很多好处

7. Of all the people I know， perhaps none deserves my respect more than 。..在我认识的人当中， 也许没有一个人比……更值得我尊敬。

Of all the people I know， perhaps none deserves my respect more than Miss Zhang， my English teacher. 在我认识的人当中， 也许没有一个人比我的英语老师张老师更值得我尊敬。

8. In the course of my schooling， I will never forget 。..在我的求学过程中， 我忘不了……

In the course of my schooling， I will never forget the great difficulty I encountered in learning English. 在我求学的过程中， 我忘不了学习英语的巨大困难。

9. With the increase/growth of the population， 。..随着人口的增加， ……

With the advance of science and technology， 。..随着科技的进步， ……

With the rapid development of our economy ，。..随着我国经济的快速发展， ……

10. In the age of information and communication， 。..plays an important role. 在这信息年代， ……扮演重要的角色。

【提要】英语四六级四级信息 : 20176月英语四级写作高分黄金句式【1】

▌列举法

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

引出列举

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

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

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

4. Why ______ ?为什么______?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

分条列举

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

▌对比法

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

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

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

Dear ______ ,

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

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

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

Yours sincerely,

Li Ming

1) 弯路是一种哲学。懂得生活的人会想尽一切办法跨过弯路，也只有这样，才能将弯路转化为平坦的金光大道，开创属于自己的精彩人生。

2) 生活给了我们智慧，教会了我们如何学习，如何成长，用多彩的世界来点缀我们周围的一切，用它神奇的力量给我们智慧，把我们从无意识的个体推向了智慧生命的顶峰，使我们从幼稚到学识渊博。

3) 微笑着，去唱生活的歌谣，不要埋怨生活给予了太多的磨难，不必抱怨生命中有太多的曲折。大海如果失去了巨浪的翻滚，就会失去雄浑;沙漠如果失去了飞沙的狂舞，就会失去壮观。人生如果仅去求得两点一线的一帆风顺，生命也就失去了存在的意义。

4) 黄河九曲，留给人荡气回肠的感慨;山路十八弯，带给人缠绵悱恻的思念。即便是弯路，也有着动人心魄的美感，在生活中亦是如此：流年若水，晴续锦年，在漫长而又短暂的人生旅途中，没有什么是顺利如初的。在弯路面前，是不敌退却还是迎难直上?这个答案决定着你今后的成败。

5) 人生就如同一条弯弯的路，每个人都是这条路上的步行者。出生时这条路是直的，每个人可以毫无顾忌地走着，成年后每个人面前会有无数条路，只有两种选择，要么坐以待毙，要么选择一条路走下去，大多数人会选择走下去。每一条路都有其曲折的部分，这就要考验每个人的意志了，胆小的人看见弯路就马上往回走，只有一部分敢于挑战自己的人勇敢走下去。

6) 瞬息间，水从我的指缝间滑过，略带留恋与倾诉，贴近而真切。转瞬间从我的身边划过，略带怀恋与忧伤，回味而伤感。无论怎样留恋，却终归只能如流水，不能留下。

7) 没有谁的一生是一帆风顺的，在人生中难免会走一些弯路，它是人生的一部分，如果没有它，我们就无法体会到人生的意义，就不会懂得珍惜人生。只有经历了，才会悟出人生的真理，才会懂得珍惜。

8) 别在树下徘徊，别在雨中沉思，别在黑暗中落泪。向前看，不要回头，只要你勇于面对抬起头来，就会发现，分数的阴霾不过是短暂的雨季。向前看，还有一片明亮的天，不会使人感到彷徨。

9) 有只瓶子一启封便清香四溢，那美妙的气息，我们称之为爱情。那叫人痴迷，止不住心旌摇荡，怎么也抑制不住脚步的景色，就是爱情。那魔幻般的吸引力，就来自爱情。或许，你还没有涉足的意念，那撩人的彩蝶已翩舞于眼前。

10) 预言凝聚着人类的智慧，闪烁着道义的光华，有聚瑰宝撒珠玑之美，揽天地含宇宙之妙，能给人以顿悟般的针砭与启迪。预言无需装饰，一如珍珠无需雕琢鲜花无需涂色。

11) 当爱像明媚的阳光一样照彻寒冷的心房时，我们会发现，爱的本身就是一波震颤的弦音，一种花香的弥散，持久，热烈，而又延己及人。从一双手到另一双手，从一个人到另一个人。这是从施爱者灵魂深处飘散出来的温暖，它苏醒着精神世界中一行疲惫的足迹、一颗受了冷漠的心灵，然后，得了爱的人会在自己的心田擦亮火柴般地用一份温暖。去照耀另一颗心，尽管有时是那么微弱。

12) 听，是谁的琴声，如此凄凉，低调的音，缓慢的节奏，仿佛正诉说着什么。音低调得略微有些抖动，听起来似乎心也有些抖动，我感觉到一种压抑的沉闷气息，是否已凝结在这空气中……

13) 夏天，隐藏了太多太多的迷茫，也怒放了太多太多的浓艳。就像雨后黄昏的天空，大片大片的珠黄、玫红、山蓝、艳紫的云朵翻涌其中，仿佛突兀的胭脂涂抹在冷郁的脸庞上，有着凄凉的美丽。

14) 不管鸟的翅膀多么完美，如果不凭借空气，鸟就永远飞不到高空。想象力是翅膀，客观实际是空气，只有两方面紧密结合，才能取得显著成绩。

15) 天空像是被飓风吹了整整一夜，干净得没有一朵云。只剩下彻底的纯粹的蓝色，张狂地渲染在头顶上面。像不经意间，随手打翻了蓝色的墨水瓶。

16) 珍惜每一次转弯吧，黄河因为弯曲而滋润着更广袤的土地;勘探队因路途弯曲而得以深入钻探;那么，我有理由坚信人们也将因为珍惜每一次转弯而将人生的路走得更好。

17) 世上本没有路，走的人多了，也便成了路。人生与路形影不离。世上路有千万条，有直有弯。直路固然可以直达远方，弯路亦别有一番情趣。当然，人生更多的是弯路，直路不过是陪衬。

18) 成功没有捷径，抵达光明的前景，必须穿越一段 灰暗的里程。 莎士比亚也曾经说过：金字塔是由一块块石头堆砌上去的。干什么事都没有捷径，最好的办法还是一步一个脚印，脚踏实地往前走，不管道路如何，待你蹒跚一段路以后，向后眺望的将是一片美丽的彩虹。

19) 人生路注定是枯燥无味的，可同时又充满了精彩。这个世上没有什么是绝对的，那人生路上数之不尽的弯路，与弯路后未知的天地，不正是对勇士最好的馈赠吗?

20) 弯路与捷径的目的是一样的——成功，但方式却不一样，当捷径不通的情况下，选择弯路的成功率是最大的。青年们，我们是否更应该脚踏实地，通过弯路，来得到属于自己的一片彩虹呢。

The Value Of Time

I always think there is not enough time. For example， I have just taken a three-day holiday. But when I look back， I just feel that it‘s only one day. There goes a proverb， “Time is money”。 Now I want to say， time is more precious than money， because when money is spent， we can earn some more again. However， when time is gone or lost， never will it return.

Time goes without being noticed. The time for our study and work is usually limited. So I think we must make full use of our time. But it‘s a pity that I am always not aware of the importance of time until it’s too late.

So I think， I should get into the good habit of saving time because wasting time is equal to wasting one‘s life. Do not put off what can be done today till tomorrow!

[高中英语作文:时间的价值

"I now declare the rules of the game: a man hides a few things, and a few others go and hide them," said the town. We drew a lot and finally decided to hide three coke bottle caps from our cousin. The cousin pushed us out of the room and hid things by herself... After a while, the cousin came out with a smile and said, "hide it, you cant find it!" We swarmed in, and I thought: the easiest place to hide is probably the most secluded place. So, I will seriously every corner to find it again, did not, in the look at the kid sister, drill under the bed, their tails on the outside, groping hands in it, no, she just want to stand up, "alas!" The little sister cried, and she cried, and she stood up under the bed and hit the bed.

So she stopped the game. Ah! One less opponent, but the cousin is also difficult to deal with, see her in the closet to each piece of clothing to turn over, wow! Not yet! But where exactly? I glanced around, and then I noticed a shiny object behind the curtain.

I pulled the curtain aside. Coke bottle caps! I was happy to jump three feet high, my cousin saw, a look of unconvinced. But shes picking up speed. Look for it here. I made haste, and under the bed and then watch out of the reach of little younger sister, and I found a coke bottle caps, my heart even more excited to get up, then I have found in a book under the last bottle. "Shout! It took me a lot of work! I sighed and said, my cousin, my cousin and my sister are all happy for me. The cousin said, "you are very observant!" I heard it, I was very happy.

健康对于我们每个人来说是非常重要的，但你的父母天天忙于工作而忽略了这个问题，你很为他们担忧。请你以此为话题，并结合提示给他们写一封信。

提示：1.要走路去上班，而不是开车或坐车;

2.每周至少去体育馆锻炼一次，或打球、或游泳;

3.饮食要健康;

4.不要工作太晚，要早休息。

要求：1.短文结构完整，意思连贯，语言流畅，语法准确，符合逻辑;

2.80—100词左右;

3.开头和结尾部分已给出，不计入总词数。

Dear Dad(Mum),

You’re so busy every day that you don’t pay much attention to your health. I’m worried about your health all the time. I’d like to give you some suggestions. I hear walking is the best sport. Your company isn’t far from home, is it? Why not walk to the office? You’d better take exercise at least once a week, such as playing tennis in the gym. Going to swim is also a nice choice, too. What’s more, it’s necessary to have healthy food. Try not to stay up too late. Having enough sleep can help your brain work better.

Dad, please accept my advice. I really wish you healthy!

Your loving son (daughter)

Tom (Mary)

亲爱的爸爸(妈妈)，

你每天这么忙，你不重视你的健康。我对你的健康担心所有的时间。我想给你一些建议。我听到走路是最好的运动。您的公司没有远离家乡，是吗?为什么不步行到办公室吗?你最好锻炼，每周至少一次，如在健身房打网球。去游泳也是一个不错的选择了。更重要的是，它需要有健康的食物。尽量不要熬夜太晚。有足够的睡眠可以让你的大脑工作得更好。

爸爸，请接受我的意见。我真的希望你健康!

您的爱子(女)

汤姆(玛丽)

[给父母的一封信高中英语满分作文

The happiest memory in my childhood was making snowman with my friends. As

I was a little boy, I always went out with my friends to make snowmen and play

with snow when it snowed heavily. We divided ourselves into several groups, two

or three people in each group. Then, we began to make our own snowman. We used

buttons to be snowmans eyes and carrots for its nose. After making our snowman,

we compared ours with others’ to decide whose snowman is the best. Sometimes, we

wrapped our scarfs around snowmen or put our caps on their head, so as to make

our snowman more beautiful. The last time I making a snowman was when I was in

university. But it snowed rarely these years. Thus, making snowman has become

the long-lost fun for me. How I hope it would be snowy this winter!

1) As for me, I am on the latter part of the argument. The reasons are as follows. 至于我，我支持争论的后半部分。原因如下：

2) From my point of view, it is more reasonable to support the first opinion rather than the second. 在我看来，支持第一种观点比支持第二种观点更有道理。

3) The following reasons can account for my inclination. 如下的原因可解释我的倾向。

4) To make myself as plain as I can, I should give my standards for … 为使我的观点更加清楚，添加原文链接我给出我关于…的标准。

5) I disbelieve, and therefore strongly resent, the claim that … 我不相信，因此强烈反对，这一主张，即…

6) My final and perhaps my best reason for not doing something is … 我不做某事最终的，或许最好的理由是…

7) For the same reason, it matters to me that … 同样原因，我很在乎…

8) For these reason, I recommend that … 出于这些原因，我推荐/建议… （recommend做建议讲时，接从句要用虚拟，即谓语用(should)+动词原形）

9) My answer is that …. I have several reasons, and they’re good ones. The first is the one that … 我的回答是…。我有几个理由而且它们是很充分的理由。第一个是…

10) My view is that … 我的观点是…

11) Like almost everybody else, I believe that … 正如几乎所有人一样，我相信…

12) I just don’t get excited over the idea of … 我对…主张并不感到激动。

13) Im not entirely convinced of … 我并不完全信服…

14) I cannot entirely agree with the idea that … 我无法完全同意这一观点…

15) I’m not suggesting that … 我并不是建议… （该句中suggest做建议讲要用虚拟，即(should)+动词原形）

16) I do not choose to … merely because I feel that … 我没有选择…知识因为我觉得…

17) I have nothing against something. But … 我并不反对某事，但…

18) I think its time we put a stop to something. 我认为是我们停止某事的时候了。(it’s time (that) 后的从句要用虚拟，既(should)+动词原形)

19) I find the statement of … to be too narrow. 我觉得…的观点过于狭隘。

20) I can tell you from experience that … 凭我的经验可以告诉你…

[英语四级考试作文万能句和万能模版

作文的标题、开头和结尾是阅卷老师阅读的重要位置,是第一印象,因而很重要.

一、怎样拟好标题(龙眼级)

文章的标题就象龙的眼睛.眼睛有神龙会飞,标题有神文添彩.

拟好标题的要求是简洁、新颖、生动、切合文意,能使人一看到标题就有读文欲.那么,拟好标题方法有那些呢?

1、运用修辞.如《忠诚:沟通友谊的桥梁》用比喻;《我与自信签约》用拟人;《榜上无名,脚下有路》用对偶;《减负还是加负》用反问;《少年壮志不言愁》引用诗歌;《自考之路通罗马》用借代(罗马借代成功)等.

2、用数学式.如《减负≠减副》、《8-1>8》、《真诚+守信=真正的友谊》、《学校生活ABC》等.

3、直言事理.如《上网,让我欢喜让我忧》、《诚信抛弃不得》等.

4、反常求异.如《我想当个差生》.

在话题作文中,可用原题,也可另拟,只要所写内容在话题范围内即可.若原题太大,可拟小些的题目.如话题作文“以人为本”,可拟成“致富以人为本”等.

二、怎样写好文章的开头(凤头级)

文章的开头就象凤的头.凤头美好招人看,文头亮丽引人读.

文章的开头要简洁,入题要快,语言要有文彩,能使人一看开头就有想往下读的欲望.方法有那些呢?

1、引用诗词歌词开头.如“‘只要人人献出一点爱,世界将要变成美好的人间……’一听到这首《爱的奉献》,几天前在放学路上看到的那动人的一幕,就会浮现在我的眼前.(《爱心》)又如“无可奈何花落去,似曾相识燕归来”每当我想起这句诗,眼前就不禁会浮现出那圆的脸,那笔下流动的圆,耳边又想起钱氏英语.(《良师》)

2、设置悬念开头.如“挂钟不慌不忙,有节奏的走着,滴嗒,滴嗒……都快要4点了,妈怎么还没回来?”(《担心》)

3、写景状物开头.如“朝阳出来了,湖水为它梳妆;新月上来了,群星为它做伴;春花开了,绿叶为它映衬;鸟儿鸣唱,蟋蟀为它拉琴……天地万物都在向我们讲述着关爱的故事.”(《关爱永远》)

三、怎样写好文章的结尾(豹尾级)

文章的结尾应象老虎的尾巴那样,结实,有力.方法有:

1、卒章显志法,即末尾点明文章的中心.可用抒情议论句直接点出来.如“人们,请选择好你的染缸,点染好你的生活!”(《生活如染缸》)或引用诗词句点题.如一篇文章的结尾“人有悲欢离合,月有阴晴圆缺,此事古难全.”表达了师生间的依依惜别之情.或借用人物语言点题.如“不过,通过这次不平常的考试,我感到:一个人应该在别人困难时伸出援助之手.”(《一次不平常的考试》)又如“我要向您说一句:‘感谢您,老师!’”(《感谢您,老师》)

2、首尾呼应法.如“那天,阳光好暖,好暖……”(《那天,阳光好暖》)与开头的“一缕金黄色的阳光从窗口斜射在桌子上,照在信封上,那天阳光好暖啊……”呼应.

3、描景写事法.如上例便是描景结尾法.又如一篇题为《心结》的结尾“我走向了他……”,以写事法结尾,点出了事情的结局.

one day on my way home from school, i saw an old woman standing by the roadside①, with a heavy bag on her back. she seemed very worried. i went up to ask her what the matter was. the granny② told me that she had just come from the countryside to see her son, who worked in the steel works. as she had never been here before, she did not know the way to the factory. so i took her there. there was really a lot of difficulty in finding her son＇s place. the granny and her son were very thankful to me.

i got home very late, tired and hungry, but i felt happy, for i had done a good deed for the people.

一、句式多变，词汇丰富。

鉴于这部分的写作要求和难度，不论是写书信还是编故事，由于100词的字数要求，考生必须要学会用具体的，多样化的语句来描写某样东西或某件事情。有的学生从头至尾都用"Thereis"的句式，而且重复多遍，看来单调乏味，很难得高分。我们不妨用主动和被动句式、各种不同的从句、动词不定式、强调句、虚拟语气等等，当然我们要写的句式必须是自己熟悉的，有把握的。

词汇量的大小影响写作成绩。试想你形容餐馆good，食品good，氛围good，那也太无聊了，我们平时就积累一些词汇，比如餐馆cleanandtidy，食品niceandtasty，氛围friendlyandpleasant等等，而不至于到考试时言之无物。

二、问题都答，加上连词。

如果第二单元你要给笔友写一份回信，信中有这么一个问题Haveyougotafavoriterestaurant?Tellmeaboutthefoodandwhatyoulikeabouttherestaurant。这个问题看似非常简单，但如果你就回答一句Ihavegotmyfavoriterestaurant.可以，但如果你不学会怎么扩展这个话题，那一封信中根本就写不了上百个单词。因此，学会拓展话题这一点在这部分中尤为重要，如你可以写餐馆的名字、位置、特色等等。

如果你选择编故事也很好。我们PET考生大多是青少年，正是想象力非常丰富的时候，很适合去编故事。但在书写的过程中，一定要注意尽量用自己有把握的语言来表达和描述。此外，既然是故事，就应该把事情发生的时间、地点、人物、过程以及结果都完整地表述出来。因此，我们在平时就把日常生活中所发生的有意义的小事儿用英文记录下来，日积月累你会发现，你的书写素材会越来越多，这种考试对你来说，将会是"apieceofcake"。

另外注意适当使用一些关联词，如and,but,so,if，使行文更加流畅。

三、平时勤练，克服畏惧。

因为该部分要求比较高，建议考生平时可以多做这样的书写练习。在学而思PET，我们会练习四五篇大作文，希望同学们平时就认真对待，描写到位，在老师的指导下，逐步明白自己的弱项在哪里，进而逐渐消除无话可写的心理恐惧，并提高写作水平。

开头部分:

How nice to hear from you again. Let me tell you something about the activity. I’m glad to have received your letter of Apr. 9th. I’m pleased to hear that you’re coming to China for a visit. I’m writing to thank you for your help during my stay in America.

结尾部分：

With best wishes. I’m looking forward to your reply. I’d appreciate it if you could reply earlier.

高考作文是高考的半壁江山，但高考作文的备考工作确实让人犯难。学生在经过高中三年的写作训练之后，对各种文体的写作都有了整体的感知。但在具体写作时，常常内容单薄，空洞无物，或者是不知如何选材表达怎样的主题。

其主要原因还是在于平时缺少甚至没有积累相关的素材，能够有力地表现和说明中心的材料太少，或是所选的材料不够典型、新颖，素材贫乏，缺乏积累与运用。高考作文的实质，关键是立足在考场作文上实现“两个转化”：

第一，由“物”到“意”的转化;第二，由“意”到“文”的转化。由“物”到“意”的转化，就是怎样从积累的生活素材、知识素材中提炼出作者的思想，作为文章的立意;由“意”到“文”的转化，就是把自己的思考、思想和文章的立意用文字表达出来。所以说，考场作文的写作过程，就是用最好的文字把最好的思想表达出来的过程。

最好的思想表达，来自对知识素材的积累，来自对生活素材的内化。因此，我们在高考作文备考之中，一方面要指导学生如何积累作文素材;另一方面就要训练学生在作文写作当中灵活运用素材的能力，其基本策略是：积累——内化——运用(表达)——反思比照。

一、积累归纳

首先要指导学生重读在必修、选修教材中的经典文段，着重在于指点学生从以下几个方面进行积累，并思考这些素材可以应用到作文的哪些方面。

下面以教材中王安石的《游褒禅山记》为例，谈谈重读文本，积累作文素材有哪几方面：

(一)积累作者文章的观点或文章的中心(以文章中的第3段为例)

如：“古人之观於天地、山川、草木、虫鱼、鸟兽，往往有得，以其求思之深，而无不在也。”

——知微见著，很多大道理往往存在于细微的事物之中，要善于发现和思考。

“而世之奇伟、瑰怪、非常之观，常在於险远，而人之所罕至焉，故非有志者不能至也。”

——世间美好的风景常在路途险远、人迹罕至之处，只有不畏惧艰辛的人才能看到最美丽的景色。

(二)积累课文中出现过的哲理故事或文章表述的事例

如在《游褒禅山记》一文中的主题是什么?可以进行归纳整理并复习：本文记叙了王安石和几位同伴游褒祥山的经过，并借此生发议论，提出了做人和做学问的道理。

(三)积累作者生平的轶事

根据课文提供的作者生平经历或写作背景作为线索，查找相关的资料，积累作者的1—2个小故事，在作文中可以充当有效的事实论据。

(四)积累文章中优美的语句段落、旬式或古诗文中的经典名句

王安石的名句积累：不畏浮云遮望眼，只缘身在最高层。(《登飞来峰》)

(五)积累文章结构的写法

【积累写法】本文在记游的基础上说理，记叙和议论相结合，前后照应。

二、理解内化

在积累的基础上，第二步要做的就是，引导学生进一步加深对课文素材的理解，尝试将一些显浅的话题勾连起来，发散思维，看看从课内积累的素材实际上可以怎样用。

这个阶段，我们可以创设一些情景，让学生将类似的人物，或者类似的经历，进行梳理，给出一些拓展学生思维的练习，让学生对素材的使用有个总体概念。

如以下的“思维热身”活动：

根据课前预习完成的作文素材积累表格中的课文事迹、作者事例和名言警句，试从以下十个素材中任选三个连成一段有明确中心论点的话：

司马迁;袁隆平与“野稗”;贝多芬《命运交响曲》;谢坤山《在画布里搏斗的人生》;杜甫“安得广厦千万问，大庇寒士俱欢颜!风雨不动安如山，呜呼!吾庐独破受冻死亦足”;鲁迅;文天祥“留取丹心照汗青”;“布衣总统”孙中山;曹操“山不厌高，水不厌深”;比尔盖茨。

学生刚开始运用并不是太熟练，只能勉强地运用三个素材，在表述方面可能还不够准确，这个阶段教师要注重看学生用得对不对，三个类似的素材得出的观点是不是一致，是不是一个明确的中心论点。

这个活动，可以放在每一节课的前五分钟，如同是一个热身游戏，启发学生思维，激发学生兴趣。开始时可先由教师进行点评，训练一段时间之后，就可以换成由学生互相评点。这样则更有利于训练学生在考场作文上正确选材，富有针对性，从而使论据更丰富二

三、运用表达

在运用的过程中，如写议论文要引用到课内素材作为论据材料说明中心论点，那么具体还要注意以下几个原则：第一，议论文中事实材料运用的基本要求是准确到位、简洁流畅。第二，材科运用要紧扣话题提炼出来的中心论点，最好能够点出话题的关键词。第三，对

话题的思考辨析不能只是简单的观点加例子，还应有个性的思辩和分析。

在备考之中，这个环节是成败的关键。有效备考能够落实就看最岳这一步怎样引导学生从积累到内化之后的运用。

我们可以分为三个时期来强化训练：第一阶段着重在议论文的框架式练习;第二阶段着重在全文的架构，即准确审题立意后，选材写提纲;第三阶段着重是全文写作，高考作文的实战训练，提升语言和提高发展得分。

(一)第一阶段的操作

这个阶段主要是任意给出1个话题，让学生写出文中论据部分，要求引用课文事例、作者事迹或名言名句：(10分钟)

如：阅读下面材料，按要求作文一：

每一个人都不可能孤立地生活在这个世界上，作为国家、民族的一员，你必须承担责任;作为学校、家庭的一员，你也必须承担责任;对你自己，你更是 责无旁贷。

请以“承担责任”为话题，自定立意，自选文体，自拟标题，写一篇不少于800字的文章。所写内容必须在话题范围之内。(参考“四步十三句”格式)

————————————。立论点)

————————————。(摆论据)

————————————。(议道理)

这个阶段，主要训练学生运用课内素材的能力。启发学生从看到一个话题，经过审题和思考后，能够准确地选出一个阐明中心论点的素材进行论述。

训练时以片段练习为主，在片段写作中强化议论文的写作技巧，运用“四步十三句”的快速成文方法，夹叙夹议，有理有据，规范行文，防止一些学生无的放矢，乱写一通。

(二)第二阶段的操作

这个阶段可以给出1个高考话题作文，让学生在课堂上以即场研讨为基础，运用课本积累的相关素材进行写作。列写出提纲。请同学展示，并点评。(15分钟)

如：2006年高考作文江苏卷：

有人说，世上本无路，走的人多了，也便有了路。有人说，世上本有路，走的人多了，也便没了路。还有人说……请以“人与路”为题写一篇文章。

题目——

第一步——定题【用句：(1)】

第二步——开篇【用句：(2)一(3)】(点材料引入，确立全文论点)

第三步——论证[用句(4)—(11)]

列事例l.第一层(或正或反)【用句(4)—(7)】(立论点——摆论据——议道理)

2.第二层(或反或正)[用句(8)—11)](立论点——摆论据——议道理)

3.可填加事例或多角度排比论证

第四步——收篇[用句：(12)一(13)】(收拢全篇，总结议论)

这个阶段主要是训练学生对议论文整体结构的把握，通过审题、立意后精选素材活用到写作当中，给予他们一个写作的架构，可以帮助大部分畏惧写议论文或者不会写议论文的学生，让他们有据可依，抓住扶手慢慢一步步学写。

(三)第三阶段的操作

这个阶段主要是给予各种作文题目让学生强化练习。从选材构思到下笔实战，这个阶段着重是整体批改学生的作文，给予点拨指导建议。另一方面就是让一些已经熟练掌握这一技巧的学生尝试抛弃第二阶段的格式，让他们多从几个角度来思考，多元选材，锤炼语言，使作文的思路更开阔，行文更流畅，文采更优美。

四、反思比照

以积累课内素材活用为作文论据的复习方法，能够有效备考高考作文：一方面，主要是让学生通过重新阅读学过的课文梳理出有效的资讯;另一方面，能够让学生在短时间里复习高一高二学过的必修、选修课文。

通过复习、整理归纳出教材中的素材，可以打开写作思路，将课文所学内容灵活运用到平时和考场写作中，就能让作文更加丰满，论据更加充实，再不用畏惧字数不够，没话可写等等。

经过一段时间的训练，按照我设计的思路一步步地分专题给予学生定时定量的作文训练，学生提高的效果是比较明显的。主要体现在几次的段考以及全市的一模、二模，学生的作文成绩稳步提高，能够保持好成绩，发挥一直比较稳定，也为语文总分奠定了坚实的基础。

On Sunday morning, my parents took me to the zoo. We dint go there for a long time.

Last week, my classmates told me that the zoo added some funny entertainment facilities. I was very curious. So, I asked my parents to took me there and they promised to. We got there at 9 oclock. There were many people. Most of them were parents and children.

We first went to see the animal. I like parrots most. And then we saw the animal shows. Elephants, tigers, lions and monkeys did wonderful shows for us. People were happy, especially the children.

After that, we went to experienced the entertainment facilities. My mum was too scared to be with us. So, only my dad and I played. It was so exciting, but I was a little dizzy. However, I was very happy.

It was a great day.

星期天早上，我父母带我去动物园。我们很久没去那里了。

上周，我同学告诉我动物园新增了一些好玩的娱乐设施。我很好奇，所以我叫我妈妈带我去，而且她答应了。我们9点就到那了。那人很多，大部分是家长和孩子。

我们首先去观看动物。我最喜欢鹦鹉。接着我们看了动物表演。大象，老虎，狮子和猴子给我们表演了精彩的节目。人们都很高兴，特别是小孩子。

之后，我们去体验了娱乐设施。我妈妈很怕，不敢跟我们一起。所以，只有我和爸爸玩。它很刺激，但是我有一点点头晕。但是，我还是很开心。

这真是很棒的一天。

[去动物园高中英语作文