浅谈如何提高英语写作能力(经典20篇)

以下是短文写作中使用率最高、覆盖面最广的基本句式，每组句式的功能相同或相似，考可根据自己的情况选择其中的个，做到能够熟练正确地仿写或套用。

1．表示原因

1）There are three reasons for this

2）The reasons for this are as follows

3）The reason for this is obvious

4）The reason for this is not far to seek

5）The reason for this is that

6）We have good reason to believe that

例如：

There are three reasons for the changes that have taken place in our life

．Firstly，people’s living standard has been greatly improved．Secondly，most people are well paid，and they can afford what they need or like．Last but not least，more and more people prefer to enjoy modern life．

注：

如考生写第一个句子没有把握，

可将其改写成两个句子。

如：

Great changes have taken place in our life．

There are three reasons for this．这样写可以避免套用中的表达失误。

2．表示好处

1）It has the following advantages

2）It does us a lot of good

3）It benefits us quite a lot

4）It is beneficial to us

5）It is of great benefit to us

例如：

Books are like friends．

They can help us know the world better，and they can open our minds

and widen our horizons．Therefore reading extensively is of great benefit to us

3．表示坏处

1）It has more disadvantages than advantages

2）It does us much harm

3）It is harmful to us

例如：

However，everything divides into two．

Television can also be harmful to us．It can do harm to our health and make us lazy if we spend too much time watching television.

4．表示重要、必要、困难、方便、可能

1）It is important（necessary，difficult，convenient, possible）for sb．to do sth．

2）We think it necessary to do sth．

3）It plays an important role in our life．

例如：

Computers are now being used everywhere，whether in the government，in schools or in business．

Soon, computers will be found in every home，too．

We have good reason to say that computers are playing an increasingly important role in our life and we have stepped into the Computer Age．

5．表示措施

1)We should take some effective measures．

2）We should try our best to overcome（conquer）the difficulties．

3）We should do our utmost in doing sth．

4）We should solve the problems that we are confronted（faced）with．

例如：

The housing problem that we are confronted with Is becoming more and more serious．Therefore，we must take some effective measures to solve it．

6 ．表示变化

1）Some changes have taken place in the past five years．

2)A great change will certainly be produced in the world’s communications．

3）The computer has brought about many changes in education．

例如：

Some changes have taken place in people’s diet in the past five years．The major reasons for these changes are not far to seek．Nowadays，more and more people are switching from grain to

meat for protein，and from fruit and vegetable to milk for vitamins．

7．表示事实、现状

1）We cannot ignore the fact that．．．

2）No one can deny the fact that．．．

3）There is no denying the fact that．．．

4）This is a phenomenon that many people are interested in．

5）However，that’s not the case．

例如：

We cannot ignore the fact that industrialization brings with it the problems of pollution．To solve these problems，

we can start by educating the public about the hazards of pollution．

The government on its part should also design stricter laws to promote a cleaner environment．

8．表示比较

1）Compared with A，B．．．

2）I prefer to read rather than watch TV．

3）There is a striking contrast between them．

例如：

Compared with cars ,bicycles have several advantages besides being affordable．Firstly，they do not consume natural resources of petroleum．Secondly，they do not cause the pollution problem．Last but not least，they contribute to people’s health by giving them due physical exercise．

9．表示数量

1）It has increased（decreased）from．．．to．．．

2）The population in this city has now increased （decreased）to 800，000．

3）The output of July in this factory increased by 15％compared with that of January．

例如：

With the improvement of the living standard,the proportion of people’s in some spent on food has decreased while that spent on education has increased．

再如：From the graph listed above,it can be seen that student use of computers has increased from an average of less than two hours per week in 1990 to 20 hours in 2000．

10．表示看法

1）People have（take，adopt，assume)different attitudes towards sth．

2）People have different opinions on this problem．

3）People take different views of（on）the question．

4）Some people believe that．．．

Others argue that．．．

例如：

People have different attitudes towards failure．Some believe that failure leads to success．

Every failure they experience translates into a greater chance of success at their renewed endeavor．However ,others are easily discouraged by failures and put themselves into the category of losers．

再如：

Do“lucky numbers really bring good luck？

Different people have different views on it（注：

一个段落有时很适宜以问句开始，考生应掌握这一写作方法。）

11．表示结论

1）In short，it can be said that ．．．

2）It may be briefly summed up as follows．

3）From what has been mentioned above,we can come to the conclusion that ．．

例如：

From what has been mentioned above，we can come to the conclusion that examination is necessary，however，its method should be improved．

12．套语

1）It’s well known to us that ．．．

2）As is known to us．．．

3）This is a topic that is being widely talked about．

4）From the graph

（table，chart）listed above，it can be seen that ．．．

5）As a proverb says，“Where there is a will，there is a way．

例如：

As is well known to us，it is important for the students to know the world outside campus．

The reason for this is obvious．Nowadays,the society is changing and developing rapidly，and

the campus is no longer an“ivory tower.As college students，

we must get in touch with the world outside the campus．

Only in this way can we adapt ourselves to the society quickly after

we graduate.

小学阶段不同年级的作文有不同要求和写作技巧小学英语写作指导小学英语写作指导。

对于小学3年级的学生，在他们已经掌握好了如颜色(colour)、衣服(clothes)、数字(number)、星期(day of the week)、月份(month)、宠物(pet)、情感(feeling)、身体部位(body)、文具(school things)的基础上进行文章的填空，如果学生能够按照文章的要求写进相关的信息，那就已经很不错了。下面是一个自我介绍的简单例子：

Myself

Hello，my name is_____. I am_____years old.My favourite colour is_____，_____， and_____.My favourite pet is______，_____ and______. My favourite food is_____，______and______.My favourite day is______. My favourite school thing is______and______.My favourite number is and______.I am______today.

上面的这个例子，如果学生能够依次能吧自己的姓名、年龄、喜欢的颜色、喜欢的宠物、喜欢的食物、喜欢的日子、喜欢的文具、喜欢的数字和今天的心情准确无误地写出来，那么就已经能够完成了3年级阶段的作文要求。

对于4年级的学生，可以写一篇介绍自己课室或者自己卧室的文章。下面是一篇4年级学生的介绍课室范文。

My classroom

I am studying at Tongji primary school.I am in Class Two, Grade Four. (介绍自己所在的学校和所在的年级) There is a blackboard in front of the classroom. There are twenty-five desks in our classroom, they are brown. There are many books on the desk. There are fifty students, thirty boys and twenty girls. There is a picture on the wall. There are two fans on the wall. (用there+be句型把班里和摆设和班上的人数都表达出来了) It is tidy and clean.I like my classroom very much.(最后是作者的总结)

对于5年级的学生，作文的要求也提高了很多，很多学生在介绍别人或者是写自己喜欢的小动物的时候很容易忘了第三人称单数动词要加ses，如：He get up at 7 o’clock(get忘了加s)，在用到现在进行的时候动词很容易忘了加ing(如I am play the piano，play就忘记了加ing)，介词和介词短语也占了很重要的位置如介词in，on，at，of。介词短语如dream of(区分dream that)和be afraid of都是很重要的介词短语，很多学生忘记了介词后面要加动词小学英语写作指导少儿基础英语。

对于6年级的学生，作文考查的是英语的综合应用能力，而且出的题目大部分都是看图作文，这就在一定程度上增加了写作的难度，它也是综合了3年级的分类词汇，4年级的句型，方位介词，5年级的重点介词短语和时态，不过我相信只要平时多点积累单词和句型、多点动笔、多注意语法上的问题、多看作文书，那么就能写出流畅、有深度的文章。

想要在写作上取得高分，需要掌握一些写作的技巧！下面是小编为大家整理的提高写作的技巧，欢迎阅读！

阅读优秀的作品：这是显而易见的，但立竿见影的方法。如果你不读更多的好作品，你就不知道如何写出更好的作品。优秀的作家都是从阅读别人的佳作开始，接着开始模仿，最后超越他们，形成自己的风格。尽可能的多读名著，在看内容的时候，更要留意文章的问题和写作的技巧。

尽可能多的写：每天都写，如果可能话，每天写几次。你写得多了，也就写得好了。学习如何写作和其他的学问道理是一样的，熟能生巧。写写你自己，写写博客，向出版社投稿。只是写，全情投入的写，练得越多，你的写作水平就提升得越快。

随时随地记下你的灵感：随身带一本小笔记本，当你对你构思的小说，文章，或是小说里的人物有什么灵感的时候，马上记下来。当你听别人谈话时的只言片语而所有顿悟时，或看到一段散文诗或是一句歌词让你很感动时，都可以马上当他们记下来。灵感总是转瞬即逝，你及时的记录下来，便可以成为你写作的素材。我的习惯是，为我的博客要写的文章列一个清单，不断的补充它。

专门的写作时间：每天找一个没有任何打扰的时间段作为专门的写作时间，让这成为习惯。对我而言，清晨的时间是最佳的，午饭，傍晚，或者深夜的那段时间也可以。无论你是做什么工作的，把写作当作每天必须完成的任务去做。每天至少写半个小时，当然有一个小时更好。若你同我一样，是一个全职的作家，那么你需要写更多的小时，请你不要担心，这只会让你写得更好。

随便涂鸦：面对整张的白纸，整版的白屏，无从开始，肯定恐怖。你会想：我还是看看邮件或是小憩一会了吧！先生，千万别这样。马上开始写，马上打字，你写什么没有关系，只是让我听到你敲键盘的声音吧。只要你开始写了，什么都好办了。像我的话，我喜欢先敲上我的名字和文章的标题，这应该不难吧，然后再慢慢的展开情节，全身心地融入进去…关键是：开始可以随便写写，随便涂鸦，但是尽快开始写正文。

集中精神：写作是一件一心一意的事情，在嘈杂的环境或是同时干着别的事情，是不可能写好的。写作需要一个安静的环境，需要一点点柔和的背景音乐。即使是最低要求，你也需要在全屏的条件下，使用WriteRoom， DarkRoom，Writer这些写作软件，不受打扰的写作。关掉邮箱，关点MSN和Gtalk，关掉电话和手机，关掉电视，清理掉书桌上无用的东西。清除与写作无关的一切杂念，现在就是写作的时间，好像把自己放进一个盒子里，在没有任何打扰下进入写作状态。

先计划，再写： 这好像和“随便涂鸦”有些矛盾，实际上不是这样。在坐下来正式写之前，先做个计划或是脑子里先预演一下，这是非常管用的办法。每天跑步的时候想想要写的东西，或是散步的时间来个头脑风暴；然后把想到的记下来，做一个扼要的提纲；等真正准备好开始写了，可以很快的展开，因为思路和想法都有了。这里，有一个构思小说的三部曲，可以参考这个：Snowflake Method.

创新： 你需要模仿名家，这并不意味你要跟他们写得一模一样。你可以试试新的写法，从这里学一点，从那里学一点。渐渐地，你就会有了自己的风格，自己的文体，自己的思路。试试一些不一样的表达，或创造一些与众不同的表达方式，每一方法你都可以尝试，看看它到底怎么样，不好就不用呗。

修改： 你开始构思你的文字，然后试着写，让故事情节展开，最后你需要回过头再看看你都写了什么。这点很重要，很多写手一旦写好就不想修改，已经费时费力地写好了，还要再花时间修改，实在是一件吃力不讨好的活。但如果你想写得更好，你就要学会如何修改。好的作品是经过反复的推敲和修改而成的，这会让你的作品从平庸中脱颖而出。看看你写的东东，不仅仅是那些拼写和语法错误，还有那些无意义的词，混乱的结构，和让人搞不懂的句子。修改的目标是：更清晰，更直接，更鲜活。

简明扼要： 这是你在修改的过程中，最重要的一件事情。一句句，一段段的修改，把无关主题的统统都删掉。一个短句比一段冗长的废话更具说服力，大白话比晦涩的专业术语更受欢迎。记得：简单就是力量。

富于感染力的句子：在短句中使用富有感染力的动词，当然，并没有要求每一句都是这样，你需要变化。但是，多试试能够吸引人的句子。而且，你没有必要等到你要修改的时候再用，你刚开始写的时候就要考虑这个问题。

获取别人的反馈： 闭门造车不会有任何进步，让别人读读你的文章给你回馈，最好有经验的作家和编辑。他们见多识广，会给你很中肯和有见地的建议。认真的听，即使是一些批评，也接受它，忠言逆耳，这样只会让你写得更好。

是骡子还是马，拉出来溜溜：就你而言，你需要让别人读到你的作品。你的作品不是你想谁看谁就看的，让所有的人都读到你的文章。你就要出版自己的书，发表自己的短篇小说和诗歌，给出版社供稿。如果你已经开始写博客了，恭喜你，这是一个好的开始。若现在还没有人浏览过，你就需要把它放到流量更大的博客服务网站上去，让读者给你留言，给你提出建议。所有的人都会看你写东西，也许刚开始时会是件伤脑筋的事情，但这是每一位作家成长的必由之路，马上发表你的文字吧。

采用对话式的文体： 很多人的写作都很正式，但是我发现像我们说话一样写作会使文章更流畅。这样一来，读者看起来会更舒服。刚开始这么写并不容易，你需要坚持这么做。也许，会带来另一个问题，为了读起来更口语化，你需要打破一些语法规则。因为如果生搬硬套语法，会让你的文章看起来很不自然。若没有其他原因，就不要破坏语法规则。你需要知道你在做什么和为什么这样做。

好开头和结尾： 开头和结尾是文章的重点。特别是开头。如果你不能在故事的开始就吸引读者，那他们就很难有耐心把整篇文章读完。所以投入更多的时间去考虑怎么写好开头，读者一旦对你开头感兴趣，他们会想知道得更多...写好开头后，再弄一个精彩的结尾，这会让读者更加期待你的下一篇佳作。

写作是英语的第二大重头戏，仅次于阅读。但是这部分又经常被考生忽略，考前不动手，依赖临考模板，很难写出高分作文。下面是小编为大家整理的大学基础英语写作诀窍，欢迎阅读。

1、灵活改变句子开头

在通常情况下，英语句子的排列方式为“主语+谓语+宾语”，即主语位于句子开头。但若根据情况适当改变句子的开头方式，比如使用倒状语或以状语开头等，会使文章增强表现力。

- You can do it well only in this way.→ Only in this way can you do it well.

只有这样你才能把它做好。

- A young woman sat by the window.→ By the window sat a young woman.

窗户边坐着一个年轻妇女

2、避免重复使用词语

为了使表达更生动，更富表现力，同学们在写作时应尽量避免重复使用同一词语来表示同一意思，尤其是一些老生常谈的词语。如有的同学一看到“喜欢”二字，就会立刻想起like，事实上，英语中表示类似意思的词和短语很多，如 love, enjoy, prefer, appreciate, be fond of, care for等。

- I like reading while my brother likes watching television.→ I like reading while my   brother enjoys watching television.

我喜欢看书，而我的兄弟却喜欢看电视。

3、合理使用省略句

合理恰当地使用省略句，不仅可以使文章精练、简洁，而且会使文章更具文采和可读性。

- He may be busy. If he’s busy, I’ll call later. If he is not busy, can I see him now?→ He may be busy. If so, I’ll call later. If not, can I see him now?

他可能很忙，要是这样，我以后再来拜访。要    是不忙，我现在可以见他吗?

- If the weather is fine, we’ll go. If it is not fine, we’ll not go.→ If the weather is fine, we’ll go. If not, not.

如果天气好，我们就去；如果天气不好，我们就不去了。

- She could have applied for that job, but she didn’t do so.→ She could have applied for that job, but she didn’t.

她本可申请这份工作的，但她没有。

4、运用非谓语结构

非谓语结构通常被认为是一种高级结构，适当运用非谓语结构，会给人一种熟练驾驭语言的印象。

- When he heard the news, they all jumped for joy.→ Hearing the news, they all jumped for joy.

听了这消息他们都高兴得跳了起来。

- As I didn’t know her address, I wasn’t able to get in touch with her.→ Not knowing her address, I wasn’t able to get in touch with her.

由于不知道她的地址，我没法和她联系。

5、结合使用长、短句

在英语写作中，过多地使用长句或过多地使用短句都不好。正确的做法是，根据实际情况在文章中交替使用长句与短语，使文章显得错落有致，这样不仅使文章在形式上增加美感，而且使文章读起来铿锵有力。

-At noon we had a picnic lunch in the sunshine. Then we had a short rest. Then we began to play happily. We sang and danced. Some told stories. Some played chess.→ At noon we had a picnic lunch in the sunshine. After a short rest, we had great fun singing and dancing, telling jokes and playing chess.

中午我们晒着太阳吃野餐。休息一会儿后，我们唱的唱歌，跳的跳舞，还有的讲笑话、下棋，大家玩得很开心。

6、使用短语代替单词

使用短语代替单词。

- He has decided to be a teacher when he grows up.→ He has made up his mind to be a teacher when he grows up.

他已决定长大了当老师。

- He doesnt like music.→ He doesnt care much for music.

他不大喜欢音乐。

- He told me that the question was now under discussion.→ He told me that the question was now being discussed.

他告诉我问题现正正在讨论中。

7、套用某些固定表达

套用某些固定表达

- He was very tired. He couldn’t walk any farther.→ He was too tired to walk any farther.

他太累了，不能再往前走了。

- The film was very interesting. Both the teachers and the students liked it.→ The film was so interesting that both the teachers and the students liked it.

这电影很有趣，学生和老师都很喜欢。

- Your son is old. He can look after himself now.→ Your son is old enough to look after himself now.你的儿子已经长大，可以自己照顾自己了。

8、使用地道英语

使用地道英语

- Dont worry. Be bold and try it, and youll learn it soon.→Dont worry. Just go for it, and youll get it soon.

别担心，大胆试一试，你很快就会学会的。

-Thank you for playing with us.→Thank you for sharing the time with us.

谢谢你陪我玩。

9、综合使用“高级”结构

综合使用“高级”结构

- We had to stand there to catch the offender.→ What we had to do was (to) stand there, trying to catch the offender.

我们所能做的只是站在那儿，设法抓住违章者。

- If her pronunciation is not better than her teacher’s, it is at least as good as her teacher’s.→ Her pronunciation is as good as, if not better than, her teacher’s.

如果她的语音不比她的老师好的话，至少也不会比她老师的差。

10、引用名言警句点缀

在写作时根据实际情况恰当地用上一两句名言警句来点缀文章，不仅使文章显得有深度、有智慧，而且会让文章在评分中上一个“得分档次”。

- As the proverb says, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” Though you fail this time, you needn’t lose heart. As long as you work hard and stick to your dream, you will succeed one day.- There is a proverb goes like this “Life isn’t a bed of roses.” It is ture that it is likely for everyone to meet problems and difficulties in life.- In the modern world, more and more people live alone, which is not so good for our life. It is better for us to make more friends and enjoy friendship. Just as a proverb says, “A near friend is better than a far-dwelling kinsman.”

不管做什么是，找对技巧很重要。下面语文迷网整理了英语六级的写作技巧，供大家阅读参考。

一、 长短句原则。

工作还得一张一弛呢，老让读者读长句，累死人!写一个短小精辟的句子，相反，却可以起到画龙点睛的作用。而且如果我们把短句放在段首或者段末，也可以揭示主题：As a creature, I eat; as a man, I read. Although one action is to meet the primary need of my body and the other is to satisfy the intellectual need of mind, they are in a way quite similar. 如此可见，长短句结合，抑扬顿挫，岂不爽哉?牢记!

强烈建议：在文章第一段(开头)用一长一短，且先长后短;在文章主体部分，要先用一个短句解释主要意思，然后在阐述几个要点的时候采用先短后长的句群形式，定会让主体部分妙笔生辉!文章结尾一般用一长一短就可以了。

二、 主题句原则。

国有其君，家有其主，文章也要有其主。否则会给人造成“群龙无首”之感!相信各位读过一些破烂文学，故意把主体隐藏在文章之内，结果造成我们稀里糊涂!不知所云!所以奉劝各位一定要写一个主题句，放在文章的开头(保险型)或者结尾，让读者一目了然，必会平安无事!

特别提示：隐藏主体句可是要冒险的!To begin with, you must work hard at your lessons and be fully prepared before the exam(主题句). Without sufficient preparation, you can hardly expect to answer all the questions correctly.

三、 一 二 三原则。

领导讲话总是第一部分、第一点、第二点、第三点、第二部分、第一点… 如此罗嗦。可毕竟还是条理清楚。考官们看文章也必然要通过这些关键性的“标签”来判定你的文章是否结构清楚，条理自然。破解方法很简单，只要把下面任何一组的词汇加入到你的几个要点前就清楚了。

1)first, second, third, last(不推荐，原因：俗)

2)firstly, secondly, thirdly, finally(不推荐，原因：俗)

3)the first, the second, the third, the last(不推荐，原因：俗)

4)in the first place, in the second place, in the third place, lastly(不推荐，原因：俗)

5)to begin with, then, furthermore, finally(强烈推荐)

6)to start with, next, in addition, finally(强烈推荐)

7)first and foremost, besides, last but not least(强烈推荐)

8)most important of all, moreover, finally

9)on the one hand, on the other hand(适用于两点的情况)

10)for one thing, for another thing(适用于两点的情况)

建议：不仅仅在写作中注意，平时说话的时候也应该条理清楚!

四、短语优先原则。

写作时，尤其是在考试时，如果使用短语，有两个好处：其一、用短语会使文章增加亮点，如果老师们看到你的文章太简单，看不到一个自己不认识的短语，必然会看你低一等。相反，如果发现亮点—精彩的短语，那么你的文章定会得高分了。

其二、关键时刻思维短路，只有凑字数，怎么办?用短语是一个办法!比如：I cannot bear it. 可以用短语表达：I cannot put up with it. I want it. 可以用短语表达：I am looking forward to it. 这样字数明显增加，表达也更准确。

五、多实少虚原则

原因很简单，写文章还是应该写一些实际的东西，不要空话连篇。这就要求一定要多用实词，少用虚词。我这里所说的虚词就是指那些比较大的词。

比如我们说一个很好的时候，不应该之说nice这样空洞的词，应该使用一些诸如generous, humorous, interesting, smart, gentle, warm-hearted, hospitable 之类的形象词。

再比如： 走出房间，general的词是：walk out of the room 但是小偷走出房间应该说：slip out of the room 小姐走出房间应该说：sail out of the room 小孩走出房间应该说：dance out of the room 老人走出房间应该说：stagger out of the room 所以多用实词，少用虚词，文章将会大放异彩!

六、 多变句式原则。

1)加法(串联)都希望写下很长的句子，像个老外似的，可就是怕写错，怎么办，最保险的写长句的方法就是这些，可以在任何句子之间加and, 但最好是前后的句子又先后关系或者并列关系。比如说：I enjoy music and he is fond of playing guitar. 如果是二者并列的，我们可以用一个超级句式：Not only the fur coat is soft, but it is also warm. 其它的短语可以用：besides, furthermore, likewise, moreover

2)转折(拐弯抹角)批评某人缺点的时候，我们总习惯先拐弯抹角说说他的优点，然后转入正题，再说缺点，这种方式虽然阴险了点，可毕竟还比较容易让人接受。所以呢，我们说话的时候，只要在要点之前先来点废话，注意二者之间用个专这次就够了。The car was quite old, yet it was in excellent condition. The coat was thin, but it was warm. 更多的短语：despite that, still, however, nevertheless, in spite of, despite, notwithstanding

3)因果(so, so, so)昨天在街上我看到了一个女孩，然后我主动搭讪，然后我们去咖啡厅，然后我们认识了，然后我们成为了朋友…可见，讲故事的时候我们总要追求先后顺序，先什么，后什么，所以然后这个词就变得很常见了。其实这个词表示的是先后或因果关系!The snow began to fall, so we went home. 更多短语：then, therefore, consequently, accordingly, hence, as a result, for this reason, so that

4)失衡句(头重脚轻，或者头轻脚重)有些人脑袋大，身体小，或者有些人脑袋小，身体大，虽然我们不希望长成这个样子，可如果真的是这样了，也就必然会吸引别人的注意力。文章中如果出现这样的句子，就更会让考官看到你的句子与众不同。其实就是主语从句，表语从句，宾语从句的变形。举例：This is what I can do. Whether he can go with us or not is not sure. 同样主语、宾语、表语可以改成如下的复杂成分：When to go, Why he goes away…

5)附加(多此一举)如果有了老婆，总会遇到这样的情况，当你再讲某个人的时候，她会插一句说，我昨天见过他;或者说，就是某某某，如果把老婆的话插入到我们的话里面，那就是定语从句和同位语从句或者是插入语。The man whom you met yesterday is a friend of mine. I don’t enjoy that book you are reading. Mr liu, our oral English teacher, is easy-going. 其实很简单，同位语--要解释的东西删除后不影响整个句子的构成;定语从句—借用之前的关键词并且用其重新组成一个句子插入其中，但是whom or that 关键词必须要紧跟在先行词之前。

6)排比(排山倒海句)文学作品中最吸引人的地方莫过于此，如果非要让你的文章更加精彩的话，那么我希望你引用一个个的排比句，一个个得对偶句，一个个的不定式，一个个地词，一个个的短语，如此表达将会使文章有排山倒海之势!Whether your tastes are modern or traditional, sophisticated or simple, there is plenty in London for you. Nowadays, energy can be obtained through various sources such as oil, coal, natural gas, solar heat, the wind and ocean tides. We have got to study hard, to enlarge our scope of knowledge, to realize our potentials and to pay for our life. (气势恢宏) 要想写出如此气势恢宏的句子非用排比不可!

七、挑战极限原则。

既然十挑战极限，必然是比较难的，但是并非不可攀!原理：在学生的文章中，很少发现诸如独立主格的句子，其实也很简单，只要花上5分钟的时间看看就可以领会，它就是分词的一种特殊形式，分词要求主语一致，而独立主格则不然。比如：The weather being fine, a large number of people went to climb the Western Hills. Africa is the second largest continent, its size being about three times that of China. 如果你可以写出这样的句子，不得高分才怪!

考研英语写作：应用文写作之感谢信

大纲对应用文写作的评价目标是：考生应能根据所设情景，写出不同类型的应用文，包括私人和公务信函、备忘录、摘要、报告等。写作时。考生应能：

1） 做到语法、拼写、标点正确、用词恰当；

2）遵循文章的特定问题格式；

3）合理组织文章结构，使其内容统一、连贯；

4）根据写作目的和特定读者，选用恰当语域。

应用文写作不需要华丽的辞藻和多变的句式，只需要能够用简洁概括的语言将事情叙述清楚就能够取得不错的成绩。应用文写作作为考研英语中性价比比较高的题目，考生必须重视对其复习。应用文写作可以充分借鉴模板，以达到更好的复习效果。下面，就为考生介绍一下感谢信的基本写作方法。

感谢信的目的是感激对方为自己的付出，感激之情要传达得真挚自然，不要刻意夸大。感谢信所涉及的内容多种多样，比如可以感谢对方替自己做了一件事情，在自己痛苦时安慰了自己，出席了自己的宴会等等。其内容包括：1)表达感激之情2)回顾事情的经过 3)肯定对方帮助的价值以及对自己的影响，表达自己回报的愿望。

常用套语有：

1表达感激之情：

Thanks so much for…;Abundant thanks to … for…

Im writing to express my heartfelt thanks for …

On behalf of my whole family, I wish to extend our heartfelt thanks for all the trouble you had taken in …I must write to thank you for inviting me to…

2肯定对方帮助的价值及影响：

You will never know how much we appreciated your kind and practical help. Your …meant more than I can express in words. Nothing can be more precious for me than your…

3表达回报的愿望：

I hope I can return the favor someday … Do call on me if I can ever return the favor. 感谢信中比较特殊是求职者面试后给面试官写的信。

此类感谢信的内容不只是感谢，而是一般感谢信和求职信的结合。其主要内容包括：(1)感谢对方给你面谈的机会，并注明你面试的时间和所求的职位;(2) 说明你对该公司、该职位的兴趣，强调你的知识与技能符合公司的需要，表示自己能为公司的发展做出贡献。也可以补充说明或澄清在面谈中忽略或没有讲明的问题 (3)重申你对该职位的兴趣，主动提供更多的材料，表示期待他们的消息。

Directions: You have just attended an interview in Apfel Incorporated for the position of marketing analyst. Write a letter of appreciation to the interviewer Mr. David Wayne. Your letter should include the following points:

1) express your appreciation for the interview

2) tell about your job-related skills and experience

实例：

Dear Mr. Wayne，

Thank you very much for taking the time from your busy schedule last Friday to interview me for the marketing analyst position at Apfel Incorporated. After our meeting, I am convinced that your company is an excellent place for my career.

I am extremely excited about the position and believe that my skills are a good match for the company. As you may remember, I completed a project that is similar in nature to the work I

would be doing at your company. I believe that I could make an immediate contribution to Apfel Incorporated.

Please let me know if I can provide you with any additional information about my background or goals. My email address is LiMing@yahoo.com, and my phone number is 12345678. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Sincerely,

Li Ming

一：用介词短语替代从句，例：

原句：While they were playing tennis， she started an argument that lasted all morning.

修改后：During tennis she started an argument that lasted all morning.

原句：When you come to the second traffic light， turn right.

修改后：At the second traffic light turn left.

二：删除诸如"who is"或"that is"之类的关系代词，变从句为短语，例：

句：The novel， which is written in three parts， told a story that took place in the Middle Ages.

修改后：The three-part novel told a story set in the Middle Ages.

注：把句中的"three parts"改用形容词来表达，节省了四个不必要的单词"which is written in"。我们经常可以将关系代词如"that"去掉，这只会引起最少的变动。

三：剔除你不需要的单词，例：

Two joint partners will present their views over a long-distance telephone call. 写完这样的句子后，你自己再读一遍，挑出单词"joint"和"telephone"，注意删去不必要的词。

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

一、了解高分作文的特点

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

1、书写工整，书面整洁，很少有涂改痕迹。

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

3、要点齐全，不缺要点。

4、首尾呼应，自然成一体。

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

6、开头言简意赅，不啰嗦，不偏题，迅速引入主题。

7、段与段之间，自然过渡。有合适的连接词。

8、句与句之间，有恰当的连接词，使之自然成一体。

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

10、能够恰当使用谚语、格言等给文章添彩。

二、勤积累，巧准备

要想作文得高分，除了了解以上的特点外，还要在平时的学习中注意一下方面：

1、牢记课标词汇是基础

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

2、掌握课标词汇和短语的用法

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

3、高度重视同一个意思的多种表达方式

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

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

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

很显然，使用高级一点的更好。

4、加强练习，积累经验

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

5、充分利用作文范文

很多资料书上都有作文范文。诚然，他们有很多值得借鉴的地方。

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

另外，背一些范文也是很有必要的。

6、背诵一些谚语和警句

作文中如果出现恰当的谚语和警句，会有锦上添花的效果。

三、精心审题，沉着写初稿

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

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

审题主要要做一下事情：

1、审人称、时态、体裁等

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

2、明确必须表达的要点

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

3、罗列出可能会用到的短语、句型，确定好使用哪个?

4、确定好如何分段

就是要确定好，将哪些要点放在一个自然段里面，首段、尾段打算写哪些?

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

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。

在英语教学中，培养学生听、说、读、写的能力是相辅相成的。经常练习写作，可以巩固和发展听说能力 ，还可以促进阅读能力的提高。写作能促使学生勤复习、多思考。通过对一词一句反复推敲，有助于提高使用 语言的准确性。学习用英语写作是培养英语思维能力的重要途径之一，有了一定的英语思维能力，英语学习就 能产生一个相应的飞跃。因此，在高中阶段指导、培养学生写英语作文是不容等闲视之的。

用英语解释生词，为学生打好写作基础。教师应创造语言环境，通过耳濡目染、潜移默化，培养用英语思 维的习惯。在教每课的单词和词组时，要尽量用学生学过的单词、词组进行解释。刚开始时，可由教师用英语 解释生词，后来可让学生根据汉语释意，用自己学过的单词、词组解释。这样，经过一段时间的训练，学生的 英语思维能力就会有所提高，为英语写作打下较好的基础。在作文时，如果不知道某个东西的英语表达方式而 又无词典可查，这时学生就会用其释义来代替，如用“a person who nakes clothes”来代替“atailor”， 这虽不完全符合英语语言习惯，但对初学写作的高中生来说还是值得鼓励的。

通过缩写和改写课文，培养学生的英语概括能力。缩写课文会激励学生去认真钻研课文内容，有助于加深 学生对课文的理解，提高学生归纳总结和进行简要表达的能力。缩写课文允许改动原意，不允许删去主要内容 。缩写课文一般应该用自己的话来写，不能只停留在拼凑原文的词句上，也不要逐句、逐段照原文去改写。这 些均通过示例让学生明白和掌握，并在实践中让他们仔细加以体会。改写课文可以培养学生举一反三的语言表 达能力，熟练掌握英语表达方法，促使学生去钻研、去思考，调动学习的积极性，学生把学过的知识运用到实 际中去，这对于提高英语水平大有裨益。改写，除了我们通常所说的句子、段落的释义之外，还包括用其他体 裁改写整篇课文。如高中英语第一册第三课短剧“The Lost Necklace”可改写为记叙文。有的课文，如高中英 语第一册“The Blind Men And The Elephant”和第十课“At A Tailors Shop”等，就可以让学生改写成短 剧，并让他们在班上表演。有的课文故事是第三人称叙述的，如“The Footprint”，就可以让学生用第一人称 加以改写，使他们身临其境，自由发挥。这样可创造情景，促使他们“下笔如有神”。

以多题材、多形式的自由作文训练，加强意念功能的培养。经过一段时间的缩写和改写的笔头训练之后， 学生对写作有了一定的基础和兴趣，就可以放手让他们进行多种题材的自由作文训练，使学生在自由表达思想 和内心感受中，加强意念功能培养。(1) 练习写周记日记是培养学生英语自由写作能力的第一步。写周记日记 ，学生不受内容和经验的限制，可就熟悉的题材，充分发挥自己的想象力，自由表达。(2) 看图作文新颖活泼 ，能激发学生英语写作的积极性。可以用流传较广的传说、故事作图，让学生写记叙文。比如画几幅老鼠商议 给猫挂铃铛的图，让学生以“The cat and the bell”作文。也可画一幅漫画，让学生写简易议论文。如画一 幅之人向三个方向划一条小船，让学生写出情景加以评论，并命题。(3) 作文可由教师统一命题，也可由学生 自由命题。命题作文要注意先易后难，开始让学生写一些自己熟悉、易于表达的题材。如：“Our School”、 “My Family”、“A Letter To Somebody”、“ARepectable Teacher”、“Life In Summer Vacation”等。 在此基础上，提高一步，写一些较难的题目。如:My Idea, Money And Happiness等。刚开始练习命题作文写作 时，可让学生课外完成，规定交作文日期即可。经过一段时间后，可要求他们在课堂上完成，借以培养他们的 思考能力，提高快速写作的能力。

通过讲评帮助学生逐步掌握写作要领。作文批阅应与课堂讲评相结合，一方面在班上朗诵优秀作文，说明 其好在哪里。另一方面要分析各种典型错误，尤其是汉式英语，务必通过讲译，使学生进一步了解错误产生的 原因，以及如何纠正。为了加深印象，避免讲评中烦琐指点，最好对各种错误进行分类整理，教师应注意分类 的合理性和系统性。

以下是小编整理的2015中考英语写作素材:名言警句类，希望能帮的到您。

01. Practice makes perfect.

熟能生巧.

02. Time is money.

时间就是金钱

03. Easier said than done.

说来容易做来难

04. Where there is a will, there is a way.

有志者事竟成.

05. Look before you leap.

三思而后行.

06. Knowledge is power.

知识就是力量

07. God helps those who help themselves.

自助者天助.

08. Nothing is impossible to a willing heart.

心之所愿，无事不成

09. It’s never too old to learn.

活到老，学到老

10. No pains, no gains.

不劳无获

11. Once in a blue moon.

千载难逢

12. To make the impossible possible.

将不可能变为可能

13. Failure is the mother of success.

失败乃成功之母

14. A friend in need is a friend indeed.

患难见真情

15. First things first.

先做重要之事

16. Great minds think alike.

英雄所见略同

17. Rome was not built in a day.

成功并非一朝一夕的事

18. All that glitters is not gold.

闪光的未必都是金子

19. East or west, home is the best.

金窝银窝不如自家草窝

20. Time and tide wait for no man.

时间不等人

21. There is but a secret to success—Never give up!

成功只有一个秘诀—永不放弃!

22. Where there is life, there is hope.

有生命必有希望

23. Beauty will buy no beef.

漂亮不能当饭吃

24. Better late than never.

迟做总比不做好

25. Every little helps.

点滴都有用;积少成多

26. The shortest answer is doing.

最简短的回答就是行动

27. No news is good news.

没消息，就是好消息

28. Well begun, half done.

好的开始是成功的一半

29. All for one, one for all.

人人为我，我为人人

30. One false step will make a great difference.

失之毫厘，谬以千里

31. Facts speak louder than words.

事实胜于雄辩

32. As the tree, so the fruit.

种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆

33. To live is to learn; to learn is to better live.

活着为了学习，学习为了更好的活着

34. Like and like make good friends.

趣味相投

35. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

只学习不玩耍聪明的孩子也变傻.

想成为下一个海明威吗?或许只是想在校刊有自己的豆腐块，让自己的博客富有动人文字?那么，你需要先把自己的文笔犀利起来。而且成为一位优秀的作家并不是一件容易的事情。下面是小编收集的15条提高写作水平的技巧，欢迎阅读。

阅读优秀的作品：这是显而易见的，但立竿见影的方法。如果你不读更多的好作品，你就不知道如何写出更好的作品。优秀的作家都是从阅读别人的佳作开始，接着开始模仿，最后超越他们，形成自己的风格。尽可能的多读名著，在看内容的时候，更要留意文章的问题和写作的技巧。

尽可能多的写：每天都写，如果可能话，每天写几次。你写得多了，也就写得好了。学习如何写作和其他的学问道理是一样的，熟能生巧。写写你自己，写写博客，向出版社投稿。只是写，全情投入的写，练得越多，你的写作水平就提升得越快。

随时随地记下你的灵感：随身带一本小笔记本(纳博科夫身上装满了小卡片)，当你对你构思的小说，文章，或是小说里的人物有什么灵感的时候，马上记下来。当你听别人谈话时的只言片语而所有顿悟时，或看到一段散文诗或是一句歌词让你很感动时，都可以马上当他们记下来。灵感总是转瞬即逝，你及时的记录下来，便可以成为你写作的素材。我的习惯是，为我的博客要写的文章列一个清单，不断的补充它。

专门的写作时间：每天找一个没有任何打扰的时间段作为专门的写作时间，让这成为习惯。对我而言，清晨的时间是最佳的，午饭，傍晚，或者深夜的那段时间也可以。无论你是做什么工作的，把写作当作每天必须完成的任务去做。每天至少写半个小时，当然有一个小时更好。若你同我一样，是一个全职的作家，那么你需要写更多的小时，请你不要担心，这只会让你写得更好。

随便涂鸦：面对整张的白纸，整版的白屏，无从开始，肯定恐怖。你会想：我还是看看邮件或是小憩一会了吧!先生，千万别这样。马上开始写，马上打字，你写什么没有关系，只是让我听到你敲键盘的声音吧。只要你开始写了，什么都好办了。像我的话，我喜欢先敲上我的名字和文章的标题，这应该不难吧，然后再慢慢的展开情节，全身心地融入进去…关键是：开始可以随便写写，随便涂鸦，但是尽快开始写正文。

集中精神：写作是一件一心一意的事情，在嘈杂的环境或是同时干着别的事情，是不可能写好的。写作需要一个安静的环境，需要一点点柔和的背景音乐。即使是最低要求，你也需要在全屏(没有其他软件得干扰)的条件下，使用WriteRoom， DarkRoom，Writer这些写作软件，不受打扰的写作。关掉邮箱，关点MSN和Gtalk，关掉电话和手机，关掉电视，清理掉书桌上无用的东西。清除与写作无关的一切杂念，现在就是写作的时间，好像把自己放进一个盒子里，在没有任何打扰下进入写作状态。

先计划，再写： 这好像和“随便涂鸦”有些矛盾，实际上不是这样。在坐下来正式写之前，先做个计划或是脑子里先预演一下，这是非常管用的办法。每天跑步的时候想想要写的东西，或是散步的时间来个头脑风暴;然后把想到的记下来，做一个扼要的提纲;等真正准备好开始写了，可以很快的展开，因为思路和想法都有了。这里，有一个构思小说的三部曲，可以参考这个：Snowflake Method.

创新： 你需要模仿名家，这并不意味你要跟他们写得一模一样。你可以试试新的写法，从这里学一点，从那里学一点。渐渐地，你就会有了自己的风格，自己的文体，自己的思路。试试一些不一样的表达，或创造一些与众不同的表达方式，每一方法你都可以尝试，看看它到底怎么样，不好就不用呗。

修改： 你开始构思你的文字，然后试着写，让故事情节展开，最后你需要回过头再看看你都写了什么。这点很重要，很多写手一旦写好就不想修改，已经费时费力地写好了，还要再花时间修改，实在是一件吃力不讨好的活。但如果你想写得更好，你就要学会如何修改。好的作品是经过反复的推敲和修改而成的，这会让你的作品从平庸中脱颖而出。看看你写的东东，不仅仅是那些拼写和语法错误，还有那些无意义的词，混乱的结构，和让人搞不懂的句子。修改的目标是：更清晰，更直接，更鲜活。

简明扼要： 这是你在修改的过程中，最重要的一件事情。一句句，一段段的修改，把无关主题的统统都删掉。一个短句比一段冗长的废话更具说服力，大白话比晦涩的专业术语更受欢迎。记得：简单就是力量。

富于感染力的句子：在短句中使用富有感染力的动词，当然，并没有要求每一句都是这样，你需要变化。但是，多试试能够吸引人的句子。而且，你没有必要等到你要修改的时候再用，你刚开始写的时候就要考虑这个问题。

获取别人的反馈： 闭门造车不会有任何进步，让别人读读你的文章给你回馈，最好有经验的作家和编辑。他们见多识广，会给你很中肯和有见地的建议。认真的听，即使是一些批评，也接受它，忠言逆耳，这样只会让你写得更好。

是骡子还是马，拉出来溜溜：就你而言，你需要让别人读到你的作品。你的作品不是你想谁看谁就看的，让所有的人都读到你的文章。你就要出版自己的书，发表自己的短篇小说和诗歌，给出版社供稿。如果你已经开始写博客了，恭喜你，这是一个好的开始。若现在还没有人浏览过，你就需要把它放到流量更大的博客服务网站上去，让读者给你留言，给你提出建议。所有的人都会看你写东西，也许刚开始时会是件伤脑筋的事情，但这是每一位作家成长的必由之路，马上发表你的文字吧。

采用对话式的文体： 很多人的写作都很正式，但是我发现像我们说话一样写作会使文章更流畅(没有叹生词)。这样一来，读者看起来会更舒服。刚开始这么写并不容易，你需要坚持这么做。也许，会带来另一个问题，为了读起来更口语化，你需要打破一些语法规则(就像我的前一句那样)。因为如果生搬硬套语法，会让你的文章看起来很不自然。若没有其他原因，就不要破坏语法规则。你需要知道你在做什么和为什么这样做。

好开头和结尾： 开头和结尾是文章的重点。特别是开头。如果你不能在故事的开始就吸引读者，那他们就很难有耐心把整篇文章读完。所以投入更多的时间去考虑怎么写好开头，读者一旦对你开头感兴趣，他们会想知道得更多...写好开头后，再弄一个精彩的结尾，这会让读者更加期待你的下一篇佳作。

导语：很多同学谈英语作文而色变，大家似乎都特别怕写作。其实要把英语作文写成高分不外乎就是多背，多看，多练，多积累，多仿。趁着还有时间，建议考生要抓紧复习提升，下面是高分作文写作的方法，17年的考生认真看看。

一、了解意图，抓住精髓

近年来的大作文非常玄妙，值得细品。首先，很可能大作文正在经历由时事向哲理过渡的重大变革，这在2001年、2002年、2004年、2007年、2009和2010年真题上表现得最为明显。其次，出题人将尽量用图画来表达意图，而不借助或少借助图中或图旁的文字，这样意义表达的会更深刻，对考生的思考力和判断力的要求也就更高。第三，图画的含义深刻，可以接受的解释也较多，但要想取得高分，必须紧扣图画，把握住其中的精髓，最深刻地表达其核心的意义。

二、扣紧主题

写大作文时切记要扣紧主题，切不可离题太远，导致最后回不来或时间不够写不完。另外，各部分之间的比例应适当，第一段不要太长。与主题相关的关键词语一定要用对，否则会影响分数。

三、看清要求

有的同学一看到写“网络”，就立即联想到这方面最火爆的话题“网络成瘾”，将主题确定为此。有的同学干脆将之转变为自己看到过的文章——“网络的利与弊”。这些都是不正确的做法。写大作文时，首先要减少语言的错误，提高语言的准确性。语言错误有许多种，有的是小错误，甚至可以忽略不计，而有些是大错误，是让老师看到后不得不扣分的错误。另一方面就是增加闪光点，除了结构清晰外，闪光点主要指好的词、词组或句型，一是使用恰当，二是要有变换。上述这两点都不容易，而结合起来就更难了。如果文章分为三段，那么起始段、结尾段和中间段落的开始部分是非常关键的。对于背诵的好词、词组和句型，一定要和具体的行文联系起来，融入到文章中去，不仅要用对，还要用好，避免给人突兀的感觉。

四、避免投机取巧

近年来，有些考生有投机的心理，结果却很惨烈。有的考生准备了万能模板，直接往上套，这样的效果并不好。正如有的较为激进的阅卷老师所说，这些考生是想通过不诚实的手段得到不属于他的东西，这样的人应该得到惩罚。实际上这些考生中有的水平还不错，如果坚持依靠自己，咬紧牙关奋力拼搏的话，结果会是不错的。

综上所述，对于作文这一部分来说，大家应该首先了解不同文章的特点和规律，而后用心地学习范文并进行模仿，然后练习全文写作并请老师批改再细细揣摩。相信通过这样的过程，大家的写作一定会有长足的进步。

well-known 众所周知 important 重要的 pollution 污染

focus 面对 benefit 益处 development 发展

society 社会 knowledge 知识 necessary 必要的

opinion 观点 harm 危害 exception 例外

advantage 优点 disadvantage 缺点 serious严峻的

measures 措施 solve 解决 overcome 克服

increase 增加 decrease减少 deny 否认

prefer 喜欢 example 例子 addicted 沉迷

useful 有用的

play an important role in our life在生活中扮演重要角色

with the development of our society 随着社会的发展

bring a lot of benefits 带来很多益处

everything has two sides 任何事物都具有两面性

Become more and more serious 变得越来越严峻

on the contrary 相反 take measures 采取措施

solve this problem 解决这个问题

the best way to 最好的方法

overcome the difficulties 克服困难

be faced with 面对

No one can deny the fact that 没有人能够否认这个事实。。。

in favour of 赞同 支持 For example 例如

become addicted to the Internet 沉迷于网络 All in all 总之

come to the conclusion 得出结论

As far as I am concerned that 就我而言

There is no doubt that 毫无疑问

in a right way 正确的方法

waste a lot of time 浪费时间

A man was going to the house of some rich person. As he went along the road, he saw a box of good apples at the side of the road. He said, "I do not want to eat those apples; for the rich man will give me much food; he will give me very nice food to eat." Then he took the apples and threw them away into the dust.

He went on and came to a river. The river had become very big; so he could not go over it. He waited for some time; then he said, "I cannot go to the rich mans house today, for I cannot get over the river."

He began to go home. He had eaten no food that day. He began to want food. He came to the apples, and he was glad to take them out of the dust and eat them.

Do not throw good things away; you may be glad to have them at some other time.

【译文】

一个人正朝着一个富人的房子走去，当他沿着路走时，在路的一边他发现一箱好苹果，他说：“我不打算吃那些苹果，因为富人会给我更多的食物，他会给我很好吃的东西。”然后他拿起苹果，一把扔到土里去。

他继续走，来到河边，河涨水了，因此，他到不了河对岸，他等了一会儿，然后他说：“今天我去不了富人家了，因为我不能渡过河。”

他开始回家，那天他没有吃东西。他就开始去找吃的，他找到苹果，很高兴地把它们从尘土中翻出来吃了。

不要把好东西扔掉，换个时候你会觉得它们大有用处。

随时随地记下你的灵感：随身带一本小笔记本（纳博科夫身上装满了小卡片），当你对你构思的小说，文章，或是小说里的人物有什么灵感的时候，马上记下来。当你听别人谈话时的只言片语而所有顿悟时，或看到一段散文诗或是一句歌词让你很感动时，都可以马上当他们记下来。灵感总是转瞬即逝，你及时的记录下来，便可以成为你写作的素材。我的习惯是，为我的博客要写的文章列一个清单，不断的补充它。

阅读优秀的作品：这是显而易见的，但立竿见影的方法。如果你不读更多的好作品，你就不知道如何写出更好的作品。优秀的作家都是从阅读别人的佳作开始，接着开始模仿，最后超越他们，形成自己的风格。尽可能的多读名著，在看内容的时候，更要留意文章的问题和写作的技巧。

尽可能多的写：每天都写，如果可能话，每天写几次。你写得多了，也就写得好了。学习如何写作和其他的学问道理是一样的，熟能生巧。写写你自己，写写博客，向出版社投稿。只是写，全情投入的写，练得越多，你的写作水平就提升得越快。

随便涂鸦：面对整张的白纸，整版的白屏，无从开始，肯定恐怖。你会想：我还是看看邮件或是小憩一会了吧！先生，千万别这样。马上开始写，马上打字，你写什么没有关系，只是让我听到你敲键盘的声音吧。只要你开始写了，什么都好办了。像我的话，我喜欢先敲上我的名字和文章的标题，这应该不难吧，然后再慢慢的展开情节，全身心地融入进去…关键是：开始可以随便写写，随便涂鸦，但是尽快开始写正文。

专门的写作时间：每天找一个没有任何打扰的时间段作为专门的写作时间，让这成为习惯。对我而言，清晨的时间是最佳的，午饭，傍晚，或者深夜的那段时间也可以。无论你是做什么工作的，把写作当作每天必须完成的任务去做。每天至少写半个小时，当然有一个小时更好。若你同我一样，是一个全职的作家，那么你需要写更多的小时，请你不要担心，这只会让你写得更好。

采用对话式的文体： 很多人的写作都很正式，但是我发现像我们说话一样写作会使文章更流畅（没有叹生词）。这样一来，读者看起来会更舒服。刚开始这么写并不容易，你需要坚持这么做。也许，会带来另一个问题，为了读起来更口语化，你需要打破一些语法规则（就像我的前一句那样）。因为如果生搬硬套语法，会让你的文章看起来很不自然。若没有其他原因，就不要破坏语法规则。你需要知道你在做什么和为什么这样做。

集中精神：写作是一件一心一意的事情，在嘈杂的环境或是同时干着别的事情，是不可能写好的。写作需要一个安静的环境，需要一点点柔和的背景音乐。即使是最低要求，你也需要在全屏（没有其他软件得干扰）的条件下，使用WriteRoom， DarkRoom，Writer这些写作软件，不受打扰的写作。关掉邮箱，关点MSN和Gtalk，关掉电话和手机，关掉电视，清理掉书桌上无用的东西。清除与写作无关的一切杂念，现在就是写作的时间，好像把自己放进一个盒子里，在没有任何打扰下进入写作状态。

先计划，再写： 这好像和“随便涂鸦”有些矛盾，实际上不是这样。在坐下来正式写之前，先做个计划或是脑子里先预演一下，这是非常管用的办法。每天跑步的时候想想要写的东西，或是散步的时间来个头脑风暴；然后把想到的记下来，做一个扼要的提纲；等真正准备好开始写了，可以很快的展开，因为思路和想法都有了。这里，有一个构思小说的三部曲，可以参考这个：Snowflake Method.

修改： 你开始构思你的文字，然后试着写，让故事情节展开，最后你需要回过头再看看你都写了什么。这点很重要，很多写手一旦写好就不想修改，已经费时费力地写好了，还要再花时间修改，实在是一件吃力不讨好的活。但如果你想写得更好，你就要学会如何修改。好的作品是经过反复的推敲和修改而成的，这会让你的作品从平庸中脱颖而出。看看你写的东东，不仅仅是那些拼写和语法错误，还有那些无意义的词，混乱的结构，和让人搞不懂的句子。修改的目标是：更清晰，更直接，更鲜活。

创新： 你需要模仿名家，这并不意味你要跟他们写得一模一样。你可以试试新的写法，从这里学一点，从那里学一点。渐渐地，你就会有了自己的风格，自己的文体，自己的思路。试试一些不一样的表达，或创造一些与众不同的表达方式，每一方法你都可以尝试，看看它到底怎么样，不好就不用呗。

简明扼要： 这是你在修改的过程中，最重要的一件事情。一句句，一段段的修改，把无关主题的统统都删掉。一个短句比一段冗长的废话更具说服力，大白话比晦涩的专业术语更受欢迎。记得：简单就是力量。

富于感染力的句子：在短句中使用富有感染力的动词，当然，并没有要求每一句都是这样，你需要变化。但是，多试试能够吸引人的句子。而且，你没有必要等到你要修改的时候再用，你刚开始写的时候就要考虑这个问题。

获取别人的反馈： 闭门造车不会有任何进步，让别人读读你的文章给你回馈，最好有经验的作家和编辑。他们见多识广，会给你很中肯和有见地的建议。认真的听，即使是一些批评，也接受它，忠言逆耳，这样只会让你写得更好。

是骡子还是马，拉出来溜溜：就你而言，你需要让别人读到你的作品。你的作品不是你想谁看谁就看的，让所有的人都读到你的文章。你就要出版自己的书，发表自己的短篇小说和诗歌，给出版社供稿。如果你已经开始写博客了，恭喜你，这是一个好的开始。若现在还没有人浏览过，你就需要把它放到流量更大的博客服务网站上去，让读者给你留言，给你提出建议。所有的人都会看你写东西，也许刚开始时会是件伤脑筋的事情，但这是每一位作家成长的必由之路，马上发表你的文字吧。

好开头和结尾： 开头和结尾是文章的重点。特别是开头。如果你不能在故事的开始就吸引读者，那他们就很难有耐心把整篇文章读完。所以投入更多的时间去考虑怎么写好开头，读者一旦对你开头感兴趣，他们会想知道得更多…写好开头后，再弄一个精彩的结尾，这会让读者更加期待你的下一篇佳作。

以下是由语文迷网精心为大家整理提供的关于教育的英语名言，欢迎大家参考选择。

Education has for its object the formation of character.

教育的目的在于品德的培育。——斯宾塞

He can ill be master that never was scholar.

没当过学生的人成不了一个好先生。

Teaching others teaches youself.

教学相长。

Better untaught than ill taught.

宁可不受教育也强于受坏的教育。

Instruction knows no cladistinction.

有教无类——《论语》

The best bred have the best portion.

最好的教养是最好的嫁妆。

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. (H.B.Adams, American historian)

教师的影响是永恒的;无法估计他的影响会有多深远。(美国历史学家 亚当斯 H B)

Better be unboun than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune. (Plato, Ancient Greek phiosopher)

与其不受教育，不知不生，因为无知是不幸的根源。(古希腊哲学家 柏拉图)

Dancing in all its forms cannot be excluded from the curriculum of all noble education: dancing with the feet, with ideas, with works, and ,need I add that one must also be able to dance with the pen? (Friedrich W.Nietzsche, German philosopher)

所有高尚教育的课程表里都不能没有各种形式的跳舞：用脚跳舞，用思想跳舞，用言语跳舞，不用说，还需用笔跳舞。(德国哲学家 尼采 F W)

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within the hearsay of children tends towards the formation of character. (Hosea Ballou British cducator)

教育始于母亲膝下，孩童耳听一言一语，均影响其性格的形成。(英国教育家 巴卢 H)

Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance. (Durant, American historian)

教育是一个逐步发现自己无知的过程。(美国历史学家 杜兰特)

Educaton does not mean teaching people to kow what they do not know ; it means teachng them to behave as they do not behave. (John Ruskin, British art critic)

教育不在于使人知其所未知，而在于按其所未行而行。(英国艺术评论家 园斯金 J)

Education is a admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught. (Oscar Wilde, British dramatist)

教育是令人羡慕的东西，但是要不时地记住：凡是值得知道的，没有一个是能够教会的。(英国剧作家 王尔得 O)

Example is always more efficacious than precept. (Samuel Johnson, British writer and critic)

身教胜于言教。(英国作家、批评家 约翰逊 S)

Histories make men wise ; poems witty; the mathematics subtle; natural philosophy deep ; moral grave ; logic and rhetoric able to contend.(Francis Bacon , British philosopher )

历史使人明智;诗词使人灵秀;数学使人周密;自然哲学使人深刻;伦理使人庄重;逻辑修辞学使人善辨。( 英国哲学家 培根. F.)

If you dont learn to think when you are young , you may never learn .(Thomas Edison , American inventor )

如果你年轻时就没有学会思考，那么就永远学不会思考。(美国发明家 爱迪生 . T.)

Natural abilities are like natural plants that need pruning by study.

(Francis Bacon , British philosopher )

天生的才干如同天生的植物一样，需要靠学习来修剪。(英国哲学家 培根 . F.)

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops. (H.B.Adams, American historian)

教师的影响是永恒的;无法估计他的影响会有多深远。(美国历史学家 亚当斯 H B)

And gladly would learn, and gladly teach. (Chaucer, British poet)

勤于学习的人才能乐意施教。(英国诗人 乔叟)

Better be unboun than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune. (Plato, Ancient Greek phiosopher)

与其不受教育，不知不生，因为无知是不幸的根源。(古希腊哲学家 柏拉图)

Education commences at the mothers knee, and every word spoken within the hearsay of children tends towards the formation of character. (Hosea Ballou British cducator)

教育始于母亲膝下，孩童耳听一言一语，均影响其性格的形成。(英国教育家 巴卢 H)

Educaton does not mean teaching people to kow what they do not know ; it means teachng them to behave as they do not behave. (John Ruskin, British art critic)

教育不在于使人知其所未知，而在于按其所未行而行。(英国艺术评论家 园斯金 J)

Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance. (Durant, American historian)

教育是一个逐步发现自己无知的过程。(美国历史学家 杜兰特)

For a cultivated man to be ignorant of foreign languages is a great inconveniece. (Anton P.Chekhrv, Russian dramatist)

一个受过教育的人，不懂外语是极不方便的。(俄国剧作家 契克夫 A P)

作文，是中考语文科目中重要的组成部分，也是考生最能灵活掌握、自由发挥的一部分内容。一旦作文跑题，考生的中考成绩会受到很大影响。在此，有关专家建议考生，想要中考作文不跑题，重点在于抓住关键词，结构前后呼应，首尾注意点题。

北京十一学校语文高级教师张洪旗说，中考写作文选择体裁时，考生最好选记叙文，因为这是考生在初中阶段练习最多的文体，写起来比较容易把握。作文要想不跑题，重点在于抓住关键词，寻找好素材。考生要认真审题，明白题目设置的要求。现在大多数作文题都是话题型，考生要先找出题目中的关键词，再寻找自己记忆库中最好的、最适合题目的素材使用。动笔之前，考生可先打腹稿，理清思路，想明白将写作重点放在哪一部分更为合适。如果有时间，考生还可列出一个提纲，将开头怎样写、中间分几段、结尾怎样收题等都事先考虑清楚。

怎样才能抓住题目关键词?北京教育学院丰台分院教师金传富说，考生在写作时要中心明确，文中所说的每一句话都要围绕中心来阐述、发挥。写作中，考生可以使用各种写作技巧，但这些技巧都要为充分阐释、支持文章的中心思想服务。无论文章总体上分几个层次，都要或多或少、或松或紧地围绕中心来写。这种方法无论在任何文体中都适用。

写作文不但选材要紧扣题目，组织结构上更要注意点题。一般情况下，开头点题、文中扣题、结尾收题，这3次呼应环环相扣。关注开头、结尾与中心的联系，便于评卷老师理解文章的中心思想。议论文写作也是同理，考生要先找好要写的中心论点，再围绕这一论点使用各种方法进行论证。这样即使选材上有些欠缺，也能够保证文章收回到中心上来，避免跑题。

下面的材料旨在丰富学生在是非问题写作方面的思想和语言，考生在复习时可以先分类阅读这些篇章，然后尝试写相关方面的作文题。

对于素材中用黑体字的部分，特别建议你熟读，背诵，因为它们在语言和观点上都值得吸收。学习语言的人应该明白，表达能力和思想深度都靠日积月累，潜移默化。从某种意义上说，提高英语写作能力无捷径可走，你必须大段背诵英语文章才能逐渐形成语感和用英语进行表达的能力。这一关，没有任何人能代替你过。

因此，建议你下点苦功夫，把背单词的精神拿出来背诵文章。何况，并不是要求你背了之后永远牢记在心：你可以这个星期背，下个星期忘。这没有关系，相信你的大脑具有神奇的能力。背了工具箱里的文章后，你会惊讶的发现：I can think in English now！

1.?????? Proverbs

1. A graduation ceremony is an event where the commencement speaker tells thousands of students dressed in identical caps and gowns that individuality is the key to success.

2. The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one’s mind a pleasant place in which to spend one’s time.

3. Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.

4. The classroom--not the trench--is the frontier of freedom now and forevermore.

5. Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

6. It is the purpose of education to help us become autonomous, creative, inquiring people who have the will and intelligence to create our own destiny.

7. You see, real ongoing, lifelong education doesn’t answer questions; it provokes them.

8. People will pay more to be entertained than educated.

9.the most important function of education at any level is to develop the personality of the individual and the significance of his life to himself and to others. This is the basic architecture of a life; the rest is ornamentation and decoration of the structure.

10. The essence of our efforts to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each as equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different-to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind, and spirit he or she possesses.

11. A great teacher never strives to explain his vision-he simply invites you to stand beside him and see for yourself.

12. If you can read and don’, you are an illiterate by choice.

2. Damaging Research

A study by National Parent-Teacher Organization revealed that in the average American school, eighteen negatives are identified for every positive that is pointed out. The Wisconsin study revealed that when children enter the first grade, 80 percent of them feel pretty good themselves, but by the time they get to the sixth grade, only 10 percent of them have good self-images.

3. Education and Citizenship

An important aspect of education in the United States is the relationship between education and citizenship. Throughout its history this nation has emphasized public education as a means of transmitting democratic values, creating equality of opportunity, and preparing new generations of citizens to function in society. In addition, the schools have been expected to help shape society itself. During the 1950s, for example, efforts to combat racial segregation focused on the schools. Later, when the Soviet Union launched the first orbiting satellite, American schools and colleges came under intense pressure and were offered many incentives to improve their science and mathematics programs so that the nations would not fall behind the Soviet Union in scientific and technological capabilities.

Education is often viewed as a tool for solving social problems, especially social inequality. The schools, t is thought, can transform young people from vastly different backgrounds into competent, upwardly mobile adults. Yet these goals seem almost impossible to attain. In recent years, in fact, public education has been at the center of numerous controversies arising from the gap between the ideal and the reality. Part of the problem is that different groups in society have different have different expectations. Some feel that children should be taught basic job-related skills; still others believe education should not only prepare children to compete in society but also help them maintain their cultural identity (and, in the case of Hispanic children, their language). On the other hand, policymakers concerned with education emphasize the need to increase the level of student achievement and to improve parents in their children’s education.

Some reformers and critics have called attention to the need to link formal schooling with programs designed to address social problems. Sociologist Charles Moscos, for example, is a leader in the movement to expand programs like the Peace Corps, Vista, and Outward Bound into a system of voluntary national service. National service, as Moscos defines it, would entail “the full-time undertaking of public duties by young people whether as citizen soldiers or civilian servers-who are paid subsistence wages” and serve for at least one year. In return for this period of service, the volunteers would receive assistance in paying for college or other educational expenses.

Advocates of national service and school-to-work programs believe that education does not have to be confined to formal schooling. In devising strategies to provide opportunities for young people to serve their society, they emphasize the educational value of citizenship experiences gained outside the classroom. At this writing there is little indication that national service will become a new educational institution in the United States, although the concept is steadily gaining support among educators and social critics.

4. The Teacher’s Role

Given the undeniable importance of classroom experience, sociologists have done a considerable amount of research on what goes on in the classroom. Often they start from the premise that, along with the influence of peers, students’ experiences in the classroom are of central importance to their later development. One study examined the impact of a single first-grade teacher on her students’ subsequent adult status. The surprising results of this study have important implications. It is evident that good teachers can make a big difference in children’s lives, a fact that gives increased urgency to the need to improve the quality of primary-school teaching. The reforms carried out by educational leaders like James Comer suggest that when good teaching is combined with high levels of parental involvement the results can be even more dramatic.

Because the role of the teacher is to change the learner in some way, the teacher-student relationship is an important part of education. Sociologists have pointed out that this relationship is asymmetrical or unbalanced, with the teacher being in a position of authority and the student having little choice but to passively absorb the information provided by the teacher. In other words, in conventional classrooms there is little opportunity for the students to become actively involved in the learning process. On the other hand, students often develop strategies for undercutting the teacher’s authority: mentally withdrawing, interrupting, and the like. Hence, much current research assumes that students and teachers influence each other instead of assuming that the influence is always in a single direction.

5. Education Philosophy

For the past fifty years our schools have operated on the theories of John Dewey (1859-1953), an American educator and writer. Dewey believed hat the school’s job was to enhance the natural development of the growing child, rather than to pour information, for which the child had no context, into him or her. In the Dewey system, the child becomes the active agent in his own education, rather than a passive receptacle for facts.

Consequently, American schools are very enthusiastic about teaching “life skills” –logical thinking, analysis, creative problem--solving. The actual content of the lessons is secondary to the process, which is supposed to train the child to be able to handle whatever life may present, including all the unknowns of the future. Students and teachers both regard pure memorization as an uncreative and somewhat vulgar.

In addition to “life skills”, schools are assigned to solve the ever growing stoke of social problems. Racism, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, drug use, reckless driving, and are just a few of the modern problems that have appeared on the school curriculum.

This all contributes to a high degree of social awareness in American youngsters.

6. Student Life

To the students, the most notable difference between elementary school and the higher levels is that in junior high they start “changing classes”. This means that rather than spending the day in one classroom, they switch classrooms to meet their different teachers. This gives them three or four minutes between classes in the hallways, where a great deal of the important social action of high school traditionally takes place. Students have lockers in these hallways, around which thy congregate.

Society in general does not take the business of studying very seriously. Schoolchildren have a great deal of free time, which they are encouraged to fill with extracurricular activities—sports, clubs, cheerleading, scouts—supposed to inculcate such qualities as leadership, sportsmanship, ability to organize, etc. those who don’t become engaged in such activities or have afterschool jobs have plenty of opportunity to “hang out”, listen to teenager music, and watch television.

Compared to other nations, American students do not have much homework. Studies also show that American parents have lower expectations for their children’s success in school than other nationalities do. (Historically, there has not been much correlation between American school success and success in later life.) “He’s just not a scholar”, the American parents might say, content that their son is on the swim team and doesn’t take drugs. (Some of the young do choose to study hard, for reason of their own, such as determining that the road to riches lies through Harvard Business School.)

What American schools do effectively teach is the competitive method. In innumerable ways children are pitted against each other—whether in classroom discussion, spelling bees, reading groups, or tests. Every classroom is expected to produce a scattering of A’s and F’s (teachers often grade A=excellent; B=good; C=average; D=poor; and F=failed). A teacher who gives all A’s looks too soft—so students are aware that they are competing for the limited number of top marks.

Foreign students sometimes don’t understand that copying from other people’s papers or from books is considered wrong and taken seriously. Here, it is important to show that you have done your own work and are displaying your own knowledge. It is more important than helping your friends to pass, whom we think do not deserve to pass unless they can provide their own answers. Group effort goes against the competitive grain, and American students do not study together as many Asians do. Many Asians in this country consider their group study habits a large contributor to their school success.

7. Adult Education

After complaining about many aspects of American life, a 40-year-old woman from Hong Kong concluded, “But where else could someone my age go back to school and get a degree in social work? Here you can change your whole life, start a new business, do what you really want to do.”

So at least to this person, school requirements weren’t inhibiting. And to millions of others, adult education is the path to a new career, or if not to a new career, to a new outlook. Schools generally encourage the older person who wants to start anew, and besides regular classes, schedule evening classes in special programs. Today there are so many people of retirement age in college that it is no longer remarkable.

8. Moral Relativism in American

Improving American education requires not doing new things but doing (and remembering) some good old things. At the time of our nation’s founding, Thomas Jefferson listed the requirements for a sound education in the Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia. In this landmark statement on American education, Jefferson wrote of the importance of education and writing, and of reading history, and geography. But he also emphasized the need “to instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests, and duties, as men and citizens.” Jefferson believed education should aim at the improvement of both one’s “morals” and “faculties”. That has been the dominant view of the aims of American education for over two centuries. But a number of changes, most of them unsound, have diverted schools from these great pursuits. And the story of the loss of the school’s original moral mission explains a great deal.

Starting in the early seventies, “values clarification” programs started turning up in schools all over America. According to this philosophy, the schools were not to take part in their time-honored task of transmitting sound moral values; rather, they were to allow the child to “clarify” his own values (which adults, including parents, had no “rights” to criticize). The “values clarification” movement didn’t clarify values; it clarified wants and desires. This form of moral relativism said, in effect, that no set of values was right or wrong; everybody had an equal right to his own values; and all values were subjective, relative, and personal. This destructive view took hold with a vengeance.

In 1985 The York Times published an article quoting New York area educators, in slavish devotion to this new view, proclaiming, “They deliberately avoid trying to tell students what is ethically right and wrong.” The article told of one counseling session involving fifteen high school juniors and seniors. In the course of that session a student concluded that a fellow student had been foolish to return one thousand dollars she found in a purse at school. According to the article, when the youngsters asked the counselor’s opinion, “He told them he believed the girl had done the right thing, but that, of course, he would not try to force his values on them. ‘If I come from the position of what is wrong,’ he explained, ‘then I’m not their counselor.’”

Once upon a time, a counselor offered counselor, and he knew that an adult does not form character in the young by taking a stance of neutrality toward questions of right and wrong or by merely offering “choices” or “options”.

In response to the belief that adults and educators should teach children sound morals, one can expect from some quarters indignant objections (I’ve heard one version of it expressed countless times over the years): “Who are you to say what’s important?” or “Whose standards and judgments do we use?”

The correct response, it seems to me, is, is we ready to do away with standards and judgments? Is anyone going to argue seriously that a life of cheating and swindling is as worthy as a life of honest, hard work? Is anyone (with the exception of some literature professors at our elite universities) going to argue seriously the intellectual corollary, that a Marvel comic book is as good as Macbeth? Unless we are willing to embrace some pretty silly position, we’ve got to admit the need for moral and intellectual standards. The problem is that some people tend to regard anyone who would pronounce a definitive judgment as an unsophisticated Philistine or a closed-minded “elitist” trying to impose his view on everybody else.

The truth of the real world is that without standards and judgments, there can be no progress. Unless we are prepared to say irrational things—that nothing can be proven more valuable than anything else or that everything is equally worthless—we must ask the normative question. It may come, as a surprise to those who fell that to be “progressive” is to be value-neutral. But as Matthew Amold said, “the world is forwarded by having its attention fixed on the best things” and if the world can’t decide what the best things are, at least to some degree, then it follows that progress, and character, is in trouble. We shouldn’t be reluctant to declare that some things, some lives, books, ideas, and values are better than others. It is the responsibility of the schools to teach these better things.

At one time, we weren’t so reluctant to teach them. In the mid-nineteenth century, a diverse, widespread group of crusaders began to work for the public support of what was then called the “common school”, the forerunner of the public school. They were to be charged with the mission of school felt that the nation could fulfill its destiny only if every new generation was taught these values together in a common institution.

The leaders of the common school movement were mainly citizens who were prominent in their communities—businessmen, ministers, local civic and government officials. These people saw the schools as upholders of standards of individual morality and small incubators of civic and personal virtue; the founders of the public schools had faith that public education could teach good moral and civic character from a common ground of American values.

But in the past quarter century or so, some of the so-called experts became experts of value neutrality, and moral education was increasingly left in their hands. The commonsense view of parents and the publicthat schools should reinforce rather than undermine the values of home, family, and country, was increasingly rejected.

There are those today still that claim we are now too diverse a nation, that we consist of too many competing convictions and interests to instill common values. They are wrong. Of course we are a diverse people. We have always been a diverse people. And as Madison wrote in FederalistNo.10, the competing, balancing interests of a diverse people can help ensure the survival of liberty. But there are values that all American citizens share and that we should want all American students to know and to make their own: honesty, fairness, self-discipline, fidelity to task, friends, and family, personal responsibility, love of country, and belief in the principles of liberty, equality, and the freedom to practice one’s faith. The explicit teaching of these values is the legacy of the common schools, and it is a legacy to which we must return.

9. Schools Should Teach Values

People often said, “Yes, we should teach these values, but how do we teach them?” this question deserves a candid response, one that isn’t given often enough. It is by exposing our children to good character and inviting its imitation that we will transmit to them a moral foundation. This happens when teachers and principals, by their words and actions, embody sound convictions. As Oxford’s Mary Warnock has written, “You cannot teach morality without being committed to morality yourself; and you cannot be committed to morality yourself without holding that some things are right and others wrong.” The theologian Martin Buber wrote that the educator is distinguished from all other influences “by his will to take part in the stamping of character and by his consciousness that he represents in the eyes of the growing person a certain selection of what is, the selection of what is ‘right’, of what should be.” It is in this will, Buber says, in this clear standing for something, that the “vocation as an educator finds its fundamental expression.”

There is no escaping the fact that young people need as example principals and teachers who know the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, and who themselves exemplify high moral purpose.

As Education Secretary, I visited a class at Waterbury Elementary School in Waterbury, Vermont, and asked the students, “Is this a good school?” They answered, “Yes, this is a good school.” I asked them, “Why?” Among other things, one eight-year-old said, “The principal Mr. Riegel, makes good rules and everybody obeys them.” So I said, “Give me an example.” And another answered, “You can’t climb on the pipes in the bathroom. We don’t climb on the pipes and the principal doesn’t either.”

This example is probably too simple to please a lot of people who want to make the topic of moral education difficult, but there is something profound in the answer of those children, something education should pay more attention to. You can’t expect children to take messages about rules or morality seriously unless they see adults taking those rules seriously in their day-to-day affairs. Certain must be said, certain limits lay down, and certain examples set. There is no other way.

We should also do a better job at curriculum selection. The research shows that most “values education” exercises and separate courses in “moral reasoning” tend not to affect children’s behavior; if anything, they may leave children morally adrift. Where to turn? I believe our literature and our history are a rich quarry of moral literacy. We should mine that quarry. Children should have at their disposal a stock of examples illustrating what we believe to be right and wrong, good and bad—examples illustrating what are morally right and wrong can indeed be known and that there is a difference.

What kind of stories, historical events, and famous lives am I talking about? If we want our children to know about honesty, we should teach them about Abe Lincoln walking three miles to return six cents and conversely, about Aesop’s shepherd boy who cried wolf if we want them to know about courage, we should teach them about Joan of Arc, Horatius at the bridge, and Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. If we want them to know about persistence in the face of adversity, they should know about the voyages of Columbus and the character of Washington during the Civil War. And our youngest should be told about the Little Engine That Could. If we want them to know about respect for the law, they should understand why Socrates told Crito: “No, I must submit to the decree of Athens.” If we want our children to respect the rights of others, they should read the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’ “Letter from Birmingham jail.” From the Bible they should know about Ruth’s loyalty to Naomi, Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers, Jonathan’s friendship with David, the Good Samaritan’s kindness toward a stranger, and David’s cleverness and courage in facing Goliath.

These are only a few of the hundreds of examples we can call on. And we need not get into issues like nuclear war, abortion, creationism, or euthanasia. This may come as a disappointment to some people, but the fact is that the formation of character in young people is educationally a task different from, and prior to, the discussion of the great, difficult controversies of the day. First things come first. We should teach values the same way we teach other things: one step at a time. We should not use the fact that there are many difficult and controversial moral questions as an argument against basic instruction in the subject.

After all, we do not argue against teaching physics because laser physics is difficult, against teaching American history because there are heated disputes about the Founders’ intent. Every field has its complexities and its controversies. And every field has its basics, its fundamentals. So they are too with forming character and achieving moral literacy. As any parent knows, teaching character is a difficult task. But it is a crucial task, because we want our children to be healthy, happy, and successful but decent, strong, and good. None of this happens automatically; there is no genetic transmission of virtue. It takes the conscious, committed efforts of adults. It takes careful attention.

10. College Pressures

Mainly I try to remind that the road ahead is a long one and that it will have more unexpected turns than they think. There will be plenty of time to change jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They don not want to hear such liberating news. They want a map—right now – that they can follow unswervingly to career security, financial security, Social Security and, presumably, a prepaid grave.

What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy grip of the future. I wish them a chance to savor each segment of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive as victory and is not the end of the world.

My wish, of course, is na?ve. One of the national gods venerated in our media—the million-dollar athlete, the wealthy executive—and glorified in our praise of possessions. In the presence of such a potent state religion, the young are growing up old.

I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It is easy to look around for villains—to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too far, and the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no villains: only victims.

“In the late 1960s.” one dean told me. “The typical question that I got from students was ‘Why is there so much suffering in the world’ or ‘how I can make a contribution?’ Today it’s ‘Do you think it would look better for getting into law school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just majored in one of them?’” many other deans confirmed this pattern. One said: “They are trying to find an edge—the intangible something that will look better on paper if two students are about equal.”

Note the emphasis on looking better. The transcript has become a sacred document, the passport to security. How one appears on paper is more important than how one appears in person. A is for Admirable and B is for Borderline, even though, in Yale’s official system of grading, A means “excellent” and B means “very good.” Today, looking very good is no longer good enough, especially for students who hope to go on to law school or medical school. They know that entrance into the better schools will be an entrance into the better law firms and better medical practices where they will make a lot of money. They also know that the odds are harsh. Yale Law School, for instance, matriculates 170students from an applicant pool of 3,700; Harvard enrolls 550 from a pool of 7,000.

It’s all very well for those of us who write letters of recommendation for our students to stress the qualities of humanity that will make them good lawyers or doctors. And it’s nice to think that admission officers are ready reading our letters and looking for the extra dimension of commitment or concern. Still, it would be hard for a student not to visualize these officers shuffling so many transcripts studded with As that they regard a B as positively shameful.

The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and get a job. Long gone are the days of the “gentleman’s C.” when students journeyed through college with a certain relaxation, sampling a wide variety of courses-music, art, philosophy, classics, anthropology, poetry, religion—that would send them out as liberally educated men and women. If I were an employer I would rather employ graduates who have this range and curiosity than those who narrowly pursued safe subjects and high grades. I know countless students whose inquiring minds exhilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I do not know if they are getting As or Cs, and I do not care. I also like them as people. The country needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to relax. They cannot.

Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room, and board at most private colleges now come to at least $7,000, not counting books and fees. This might seem to suggest that the colleges are getting rich. But they are equally battered by inflation. Tuition covers only 60 percent of what it costs to educate a student, and ordinarily the remainder comes from what college receives in endowments, grants, and gifts. Now, the remainder keeps being swallowed by the cruel costs—higher every year—of just opening the doors. Heating oil is up. Insurance is up. Postage is up. Health-premium costs are up. Everything is up. Deficits are up. We are witnessing in American the creation of a brotherhood of paupers—colleges, parents, and students, joined by the common bond of debt.

Today it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part time at college and full time during the summer, to accrue $5,000 in loans after four years—loans that he must start to repay within one year after graduation. Exhorted at commencement to go forth into the world, he is already behind as he goes forth. How could he not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day of reckoning? I have used “he,” incidentally, only for brevity. Women at Yale are under no less pressure to justify their expensive education to themselves, their parents, and society. In fact, they are probably under more pressure. For although they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally male jobs, society has not yet caught up with this fact.

Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are deeply intertwined.

I see many students taking pre-medical courses with joyless tenacity. They go off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know tem in other corners of their life as cheerful people.

“Do you want to medical school?” I asked them.

“I guess so,” they say, without conviction, or “Not really.”

“Then why are you going?”

“Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They are paying all this money and …”

Poor students, poor parents, they are caught in one of the oldest webs of love and duty and guilt. The parents mean will; they are trying to steer their sons and draughts toward a secure future. But the sons and daughter want to major in history or classics or philosophy—subjects with no “practical” value. Where’s the payoff on the humanities? It’s not easy to persuade such loving parents that the humanities do indeed pay off. The intellectual faculties developed by studying subjects like history and classics—an ability to synthesize and relate, to weigh cause and effect, to see events in perspective—are just the faculties that make creative leaders in business or almost any general field. Still, many fathers would rather put their money on courses that point toward specific profession—courses that are pre-law, pre-medical, pre-business, or, as I sometimes heard it put, “pre-rich.”

But the pressure on students is severe. They are truly torn. One part of them feels obliged to fulfill their parents’ expectations; after all, their parents are older and presumably wiser. Another part tells them that the expectations that are right for their parents are not right for them.

I know a student who wants to be an artist. She is very obviously an artist and will be a good one—she has already had several modest local exhibits. Meanwhile she is growing as a well-round person and taking humanistic subjects that will enrich the inner resources out of which her art will grow. But her father is strongly opposed. He thinks that an artist is a “dumb” thing to be. The student vacillates and tries to please everybody. She keeps up with her art somewhat furtively and takes some of the “dumb” courses her father wants her to take—at least they are dumb courses for her. She is a free spirit on a campus of tense students—no small achievement in it—and she deserves to follow her muse.

Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they begin almost at the beginning of freshman year.

“I had a freshman student I’ll call Linda,” one dean told me, “who came in and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was much brighter and studied all the time. I could not tell her that Barbara had come in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda.”

The story is almost funny—except that it is not. It is symptomatic of all the pressure put together. When every student thinks every other student is working harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at midnight. I wish they would sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie. I hear the clacking of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due: “Will I get everything done?”

Probably they won’t. They will get blocked. They will sleep. They will oversleep. They will bug out.

Part of the problem is that they are expected to do. A professor will assign five page papers. Several students will start writing ten page papers to impress him. Then more students will write ten page papers, and a few will raise the ante to fifteen. Pity the poor student who is still just doing the assignment.

“Once you have twenty or thirty percent of the student population deliberately overexerting,” one dean points out, “It’s bad for everybody. When a teacher gets more and more effort from his class, the student who is doing normal work can be perceived as not doing well. The tactic work, psychologically.”

Why cannot the professor just cut back and not accept longer papers? He can, and he probably will. But by then the term will be half over and the damage done. Grade fever is highly contagious and not easily reversed. Besides, the professor’s main concern is with his course. He knows his students only in relation to the course and does not know that they are also overexerting in their other courses. Nor is it really his business. He did not sign up for dealing with the student as a whole person and with all the emotional baggage the student brought along from home. That’s what deans, masters, chaplains, and psychiatrists are for.

To some extent this is nothing new: a certain number of professors have always been self-contained islands of scholarship and shyness, more comfortable with books than with people. But the new pauperism has widened the gap still further, for professors who actually like to spend time with students do not have as much time to spend. They are also overexerting. If they are young, they are busy trying to publish in order not to perish, hanging by their figure nails onto a shrinking profession.

If they are old and tenured, they are buried under the duties of administering departments—as departmental chairmen or members of committees—that have been thinned out by the budgetary axe.

Ultimately it will be the students’ own business to break the circles in which they are trapped. They are too young to be prisoners of their parents’ dreams and their classmates’ fears. They must be jolted into believing into themselves as unique men and women who have the power to shape their own future.

“Violence is being done to the undergraduate experience,” says Carlos Hortas. “College should be open-ended: at the end it should open many, many roads. Instead, students are choosing their goal in advance, and their choices narrow as they go along. It’s almost as if they think that the country has been codified in the type of jobs that exist-that they’ve got to fit into certain slots. Therefore, fit into the best paying slot.”

“They ought to take chances. Not taking chances will lead to life of colorless mediocrity. They’ll be comfortable. But something in the spirit will be missing.”

I have painted too drab a portrait of today’s students, making them seem a solemn lot. That is only half of their story; if they were so dreary I wouldn’t so thoroughly enjoy their company. The other half is that they are easy to like. They are quick to laugh and to offer friendship. They are not introverts. They are usually kind and are more considerate of one another than any student generation I have known.

Nor are they so obsessed with their studies that they avoid sports and extracurricular activities. On the contrary, they juggle their crowded hours to play on a variety of teams, perform with musical and dramatic groups, and write for campus publications. But this in turn is one more cause of anxiety. There are too many choices. Academically, they have 1,300 courses to select from; outside class they have to decide how much spare time they can spare and how to spend it.

This means that they engage in fewer extracurricular pursuits than their predecessors did. If they want to row on the crew and play in the symphony they will eliminate one; in the ‘60s they would have done both. They also tend to choose activities that are self-limiting. Drama, for instance, is flourishing in all twelve of Yale’s residential colleges, as it never has before. Students hurl themselves into these productions—as actors, directors, carpenters, and technicians—with a dedication to create the best possible play, knowing that the day will come when the run will end and they can get back to their studies.

They also cannot afford to be the willing slave of organizations like the Yale Daily News. Last spring at the one-hundredth anniversary banquet of that paper—who’s past chairmen include such once and future kings as Potter Stewart, Kingman Brewster, and William F. Buckley, Jr.—much was made of the fact that the editorial staff used to be small and totally committed and that “newsies” routinely worked fifty hours a week. In effect they belonged to a club; Newsies is how they defined themselves at Yale. Today’s students will one or two articles a week, when he can, and he defines himself as a student. I’ve never heard the word Newsie except at the banquet.

If I have described the modern undergraduate primarily as a driven creature who is largely ignoring the blithe spirit inside who keeps trying to come out and play, it’s because that’s where the crunch is, not only at Yale but throughout American education. It’s why I think we should all be worried about the values that are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early age.

I tell students that there is no one “right” way to get ahead—that each of them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different destination. I tell neither them that change is a tonic and that all the slots are not codified nor the frontiers closed. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk informally with my students during the year. They are heads of companies or ad agencies, editors of magazines, politicians, public officials, television magnates, labor leaders, business executives, Broadway products, artists, writers, economists, photographers, scientists, historians—a mixed bag of achievers.

I asked them to say a few words about how they got started. The students assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was what they wanted to do. Luckily for me, most of them got into their field by a circuitous route, to their surprise, after many detours. The students are startled. They can hardly conceive of a career that was not pre-planned. They can hardly imagine allowing the hand of God or chance to nudge them down some unforeseen trail.

11. To Err Is Wrong

In the summer of 1979, Boston Red Sox first baseman Carl Yastrzemski became the fifteenth player in baseball history to reach the three thousand hit plateaus. This event drew a lot of media attention, and for about a week prior to the attainment of this goal, hundreds of reports covered Yaz’s every more. Finally, one reporter asked, “Hey Yaz, aren’t you afraid all of this attention will go to your head?” Yastrzemski replied, “I look at this way: in my career I’ve been up to bat over ten thousand times. That means I’ve been unsuccessful at the plate over seven thousand times. That fact alone keeps me from getting a swollen head.”?

Most people consider success and failure as opposites, but they are actually both products of the same process. As Yaz suggest, an activity that produces a hit may also produce a miss. It is the same with creative thinking; the same energy that generates good creative ideas also produces errors.

Many people, however, are not comfortable with errors. Our educational system, based on “the right answer” belief, cultivates our thinking in another, more conservative way. From an early age, we are taught that right answers are good and incorrect answers are bad. This value is deeply embedded in the incentive system used in most schools:

Right over 90% of the time = “A”

Right over 80% of the time = “B~”

Right over 70% of the time = “C~” Right over 60% of the time = “D~” Less than 60% correct, you fail.

From this we learn to be right as often as possible and to keep our mistakes to a minimum. We learn, in other words, that “to err is wrong.

Playing It Safe

With this kind of attitude, you aren’t going to be taking too many chances. If you learn that failing even a litter penalizes you (e.g., being wrong only 15% of the time garners you only a “B” performance), you learn not to make mistakes. And more important, you learn not to put yourself to situation where you might fall. This leads to conservative thought pattern designed to avoid the stigma our society puts on “failure”.

I have a friend who recently graduated from college with a Master’s degree in Journalism. For the last six month, she has been trying to find a job, but to no avail. I talked with her about situation, and realized that her problem is that she doesn’t know how to fail. She went through eighteen years of schooling to try any approaches where she might fail. She has been conditioned to believe that failure is bad in and of itself, rather than a potential stepping-stone to new ideas.

Look around. How many middle managers, housewives, administrators, teachers, and other people do you see who are to try anything new because of this failure? Most of us have learned not to make mistakes in public. As a result, we remove ourselves from many learning experience except for those occurring in the most private of circumstances.

Different Logic

From a practical point of view, “to err is wrong” makes sense. Our survival in the everyday world requires us to perform thousand of small tasks without failure. Think about it: you wouldn’t last very long if you were to step out in front of traffic or stick your hand a pot of boiling water. In addition, engineers whose bridges collapse, stock brokers who lose money for their clients, and copywriters whose ad campaigns decrease sales won’t keep their jobs very long.

Nevertheless, too great an adherence to the belief “to err is wrong” can greatly undermine your attempts to generate new ideas. If you are more concerned with producing right answers than generating original ideas, you’ll probably make uncritical use of the rules, formulae, and procedures used to obtain these right answers. By doing this, you’ll by-pass the germinal phase of the creative process, and thus spend litter time testing assumptions, challenging the rules, asking what-if questions, or just playing around with the problem. All of these techniques will produce some incorrect answers, but in the germinal phase errors are viewed as a necessary by-product of creative thinking. As Yaz would put it, “if you want the hits, be prepared for the misses.” That’s the way the game of life goes.

Errors as Stepping Stones

Whenever an error pops up, the usual response is “Jeez, another screw up, what went wrong this time?” the creative thinker, on the other hand, will realize the potential value of errors, and perhaps say something like, “Would you look at that! Where can it lead our thinking?” and then he or she will go on to use the error as a stepping stone to a new idea. As a matter of fact, the whole history of discovery is filed with people who used erroneous assumptions and failed ideas as stepping-stones to new ideas. Columbus thought he was finding a shorter route to India. Johannes Kepler stumbled on to the idea of interplanetary gravity because of assumptions that were right for the wrong reasons. And, Thomas Edison knew 1800 ways not to build a light bulb.

The following story about the automotive genius Charles Kettering exemplifies the spirit of working through erroneous assumptions to good ideas. In 1912, when the automobile industry was just beginning to grow, Kettering was interested in improving gasoline engine efficiency. The problem he faced was“knockthe phenomenon in which gasoline takes too long to burn in the cylinder-thereby reducing efficiency.

Kettering began searching for ways to eliminate the “knock.” He thought to him, “How can I get the gasoline to combust in the cylinder at an earlier time?” the key concept here is “early”. Searching for analogous situations, he looked around for models of “things that happen early.” He thought of historical models, physical models, and biological models. Finally, he remembered a particular plant, the trailing arbutus, which “happens early,” i.e., it blooms in the snow (“earlier” than other plants). One of this plant’s chief characteristics is its’ red leaves, which help the plant retain light at certain wavelengths. Kettering figured that it must be the red color, which made the trailing arbutus bloom earlier.

Now came the critical step in Kettering’s chain of thought. He asked himself, “How can I make the gasoline red?” perhaps I’ll put red dye in the gasoline—maybe that’ll make it combust earlier.” He looked around his workshop, and found that he didn’t have any red dye. But he did happen to have some iodine—perhaps that would do. He added the iodine to the gasoline and, lo and behold, the engine didn’t “knock”.

[英语作文写作的需要背诵的部分

提高孩子的写作技巧，这好象是一个老大难问题，一直以来都困扰着众多的学生、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。

国外的孩子一样有这方面的困扰，不少孩子也苦于不会写作。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。

给孩子准备一个安静、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，如果可能的话还可以准备一台电脑。这些准备不仅是必要的，同时还可以由此告诉你的孩子，你认为写作是一件有意义的、特别的活动。

孩子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。

你可以让孩子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己的一点要求，或写一封邀请亲戚来吃饭的信。这样孩子可以看到自己写作真的取得了成果，就会对写作产生好感。

另外一个鼓励孩子写作的好办法，就是让他写日记。这种方法可以帮助孩子形成写作的个人风格。但你和孩子要约定好，别的家庭成员是否可以读他的日记。如果你答应孩子不看他的日记，那么就一定要保护他的隐私。

还有一个可以帮助提高孩子写作技巧的办法——电脑软件。现在有很多出色的软件，里面提供故事的开头、想象画以及段落结构的建议等内容，这些都可以激发孩子自己写作的愿望和灵感。

许多孩子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。比如孩子被要求写一个有创造性的故事，但他不能想出有什么有趣的东西可写。这时父母就可以帮助孩子了。可以给孩子一本笔记本，记下平时突然产生的奇特想法，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。也可以让孩子从杂志中获得有用的点子。

一旦孩子决定了一个文章的主题，就应该让孩子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，你还可以就草稿跟孩子一起谈论，寻找最好的写法。在学校里，老师也用各种办法，帮助孩子在开始写文章之前，先组织好要写的内容。

家长还可以和孩子一起朗读不同文体的好作品，比如诗歌、小说、新闻故事甚至是一封有趣的信，只要是孩子会感兴趣的东西都可以。无论是大人还是孩子，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，家长可以问孩子：“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?”这样可以提高孩子的兴趣。鼓励孩子认识到写作是一个不断发展的过程，写作水平也不是一成不变的，而是可以通过努力不断提高的。告诉孩子可以从对已有作品的改写、缩写、扩写中，开始自己的写作。

孩子需要在完成自己文章之后的一、两天，甚至更长时间以后，再回头看看。这样做可以让孩子用一种全新的眼光来看待自己的作品，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，自己写的内容是否切题?所有的细节都包括进去了吗?描写太多会不会显得罗嗦?孩子虽然不是专业作家，但这些问题也需要想一想。

让孩子把自己完成的文章大声地读一遍，如果他自己不能发现其中的明显错误，那么就需要有人为他再读一遍，好让他自己意识到错在哪里。还要注意孩子在文章中有没有错别字。

爸爸妈妈还要为保持孩子的写作积极性做一些努力。比如在孩子犯错误的时候给他一些口头上的批评，但注意重点在为孩子指出错误，而不是教训他。还可以把孩子的好作品贴在墙上，让每一个来家里的人都能看见，这对孩子是一种奖励。这样孩子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。

在语文教学中，对教师而言，最难教给学生的是作文，而学生最难掌握和最难写的也是作文。很多学生怕写作文，写作文时，无从下手、无话可说。这就要求教师有针对性提高学生的写作能力，从学生的心理特点出发，指导学生要善于观察和体验生活，说真话、讲真情，激发学生的写作兴趣，使孩子爱上作文，乐于写作。

一、指导学生观察体验生活。

陶行知先生曾指出：“作文是生活的一部分，它离不开生活。”因此，我们要指导学生善于从生活中汲取写作素材，观察和体验生活是写作的基本功。要写好作文，就必须获得写作素材，写作素材就是文章的内容，这些素材来源于生活。

生活是写作的源泉，对于小学生而言他们的生活是丰富多彩的，可是在作文时却感到无话可说、无事可写。究其原因就在于平时没有养成留心观察生活的习惯，没有积累写作必须的材料。必要把学生从狭窄的校园空间引入到自然环境，从课内走向课外。引导学生勤于观察，让学生留心观察周围的事物，做到心灵相触，情感相融。激发其产生丰富的联想，构思出具体生动的情节，达到丰富表达的效果。学生有了身临其境的感受，写起作文就会有话可说、言之有物，才会得心应手，笔下的人物也就会栩栩如生。此举既丰富了学生的写作素材，也为这类文章的写作提供了真实的个性体验过程，避免了学生无内容可写、无法下笔的现象的发生。

二、指导学生写好日记。

写日记是一种比较简便的提高写作能力的方法，尤其适用于年龄较小的学生。通过写日记，可从小培养学生的观察、思维和书面语言表达能力。观察是写作的基础，苏霍姆林斯基说过:“观察是智慧的主要能源。”学生学会了观察，在观察中积累素材，写作文就不会觉得无话可说。教师要教会学生什么叫日记、日记的格式、如何选择内容等，指导学生写简短的日记，帮助学生养成良好的写日记的习惯，这样学生就能经常仔细地观察周围的事物，认真地分析、判断自己的所见所闻，然后将自己所观察、思考的写成日记，从而不断地积累素材，提高自己的表达能力。

三、增加课外阅读，积累写作素材。

小学生写作靠凭空想像是写不出好作文来的。古人云：“读书破万卷，下笔如有神”阅读是写作的基础，只有占有大量的感性材料,学生在写作的过程中才能有内容可写,有话可说,才能做到文思泉涌，左右逢源。积极引导他们积累写作素材。认真建立自己的“材料库”。在教学过程中，要根据不同年级学生的特点，有针对性地推荐一些有益的课外书籍让学生利用课余时间去阅读。教育学生随身准备一个记录本，遇到好的名言、佳句、好的片断，就摘录下来，增加词汇量。总结文章的段落结构和开头、结尾的方法。随时积累写作素材。并指导学生结合实际勤写读书笔记，为习作时灵活运用优美词句、生动段落提供素材保证，这样写起作文才会得心应手。

四、让学生说真话、吐真情。

作文说的就是真人真事，写的就是真情实感，但平时学生的写作中，有时为了完成任务胡编乱造，或抄袭他人，或无病呻吟，作文成了很多学生的一纸谎言。在学生的笔下同学都是拾金不昧的，老师都是抱病工作的，邻居都是乐于助人的，家乡都是美丽富饶的。内容千编一律的，缺少新意。

教师在指导学生习作时，注意培养学生在练中要养成说真话，写真事的习惯。真实的情感最能打动人心，真实的感受是学生写作的第一手材料，既丰富了学生的内心体验，又提高了学生的认知水平，能使学生把自己的想象力和创造力尽情地释放出来。要充分展示学生自己的个性。要鼓励他们说真话，说心理话。如写“难忘的一件事”，可以从“为什么难忘”入手，引导学生回忆童年到少年，从校内到校外。说说生活中曾经有过的“有趣的、有意义的、受教训的、后悔的、令人伤心的、令人高兴的、令人气愤的、打击最大的”一件事。在生活、回忆中选取印象最深的一件真事来写，这可以写出真情实感。教师对于写“真”的作文，给予高分鼓励，肯定表扬。

总之，作文教学不是件容易的事，教师必须在教学理论中不断探索，在教学不断总结经验，有计划、有目的、有步骤地对学生进行写作训练。学生的作文能力才能提高。