高考英语写作高分攻略（汇总20篇）

The Dragon Boat Festival is one of the most popular traditional festivals

celebrated in China, which is on the fifth of the fifth lunar month, also known

as Duanwu Festival. It’s said that it is to commemorate the death of a Chinese

patriotic poet, Qu Yuan, who was snared by corrupt officials in ancient China

and finally committed suicide by drowning himself in the Miluo River to protest

against them.

The traditions and customs held on this festival differ from place to

place, but there are some common in them. First, the most famous and great

tradition is holding Dragon Boat races, which are held by fishermen’s attempt to

protect Qu Yuan’s body against attacking by fishes and other animals in the

river by beating drums and row the dragon shaped boat. Nowadays dragon boat

races have been an annual popular sport activity among people. In addition,

making and eating Zongzi—a dumpling made of glutinous rice and wrapped in bamboo

or reed leaves—is also a popular custom during this day. It can be made by many

kinds of stuffing. What’s more, hanging herbs on the front door, drinking

realgar wine and pasting up picture of Zhongkui—a mythic guardian figure in

ancient china—are also popular during the festival, which are mean to protect

people from evil and disease.

These customs and traditions have been changed a little in recent years,

but they still make contribution to the spread and inheritance of Chinese

culture.

导语：我的家里每天都有欢笑声，下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的优秀作文，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

In my big family, there are six members. They are my grandfather, my grandmother, my father, my mother, my little brother and I. We live together happily.

My grandfather and grandmother are in their seventies. My grandfather has something wrong with his heart, while my grandmother is in good health. Last summer, I taught her to play chess. She was so intrested in it that I had to play with her all day on weekends!

My father is a doctor and my mother is a middle school teacher. They are all very busy and hard-working. Although sometimes they disagree with each other, they respect each other.

My little brother is only two years old. He is very lovely. He has a round face and two big black eyes. There are two dimples on his cheeks when he smiles just like me. I often can’t help kissing him. Sometimes he is very naughty. When I don’t want to get up in the morning, he comes to pinch my ear to wake me, and runs away quickly when I open my eyes angrily.

What a harmonious family we have! I love my family forever!

【参考译文】

在我的大家庭里，有六个成员。他们是我的爷爷，奶奶，爸爸，妈妈，弟弟和我。

我爷爷和奶奶七十多岁了。我爷爷的心脏有点问题，而我的祖母身体很好。去年夏天，我教她下棋。她很感兴趣，我只好跟她玩一整天在周末!

我父亲是医生，我母亲是中学教师。他们都很忙，工作很努力。虽然有时他们意见不一致，但他们彼此尊重。

我的弟弟只有2岁。他非常可爱。他有一张圆圆的脸和两只大大的黑眼睛。他的脸上有两个酒窝，他笑得跟我一样。我常常忍不住吻他。有时他很调皮。当我早上不想起床时，他会来抓我的耳朵叫醒我，当我愤怒地睁开眼睛时，我很快就跑开了。

我们的家庭和睦和睦!我永远爱我的家人!

导语：绵羊下海经商，开理发店却把刺猬的刺烫卷了，开洗染店又把乌鸦的黑色羽毛染成白色，开饮食店竟给狐狸送上炒青菜。下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的作文素材，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

材料作文题：阅读下面的材料，根据要求写一篇不少于800字的文章。

绵羊下海经商。开理发店，把刺猬的刺烫卷了，刺猬大哭;开洗染店，又把乌鸦的黑色羽毛染白了，乌鸦很生气;开饮食店，竟给狐狸送上炒青菜，狐狸砸了它的店牌。

要求全面理解材料，但可以选择一个侧面、一个角度构思作文。自主确定立意，确定文体，确定标题;不要脱离材料的含意作文，不要套作，不得抄袭。

写作点拨

(1)从绵羊一厢情愿地把自己的意愿强加在别人的身上可以得出结论：已之所欲，勿施于人。或切莫“以己律人”。

(2)白发卷发和青菜是绵羊的专利，虽适合自己，却是对刺猬的污辱，对乌鸦的讽刺，对狐狸的愚弄，因为任何事物都有区别于其他事物的特殊性，办任何事都要从实际出发，探求并尊重事物发展的规律性。

(3)从战胜困难的角度得出迎难而上，奋力拼搏才能获取成功的喜悦这一观点。

范文示例：心灵换位―请多站在别人的立场想想

绵羊下海经商，开理发店却把刺猬的刺烫卷了，开洗染店又把乌鸦的黑色羽毛染成白色，开饮食店竟给狐狸送上炒青菜。这自然闹出了不少的摩擦与笑话。追根到底，造成这种结局的原因是绵羊没有站在别人的立场上为别人着想。作为万物之灵长的人类，更应该适当的进行心灵换位，多站在别人的立场想想。

心灵的换位，能化解不必要的矛盾，团结众人之力。大家对“负荆请罪”这个故事也许都耳熟能详了吧。老将廉颇自恃武艺高强，且屡建战功，于是不把别人放在眼里。但靠着能言善辩多次帮国家化险为夷的蔺相如却悄无声息的超过了他的头衔。廉颇当然无法忍受，竟扬言要羞辱蔺相如一番。话传到蔺相如耳中，他不仅不气愤，反而处处忍让，回避廉颇。最终他为国家着想的初衷也被廉颇所理解，两人从而团结一致，使赵国日趋强盛。试想，若不是蔺相如站在廉颇的立场上，了解廉颇争强好胜的个性，也了解他建功立业的壮志，那造成的结果不仅是两人关系的决裂，更严重的是国家前途的断丧。

心灵换位，多站在别人的立场想想，能使我们的社会更和谐发展。美国的对伊战争，造成的是千万无辜伊拉克人民的生灵涂炭。倘若美国人能够站在伊拉克人民的立场上为他国想想，那也许悲剧就不会发生。相反的，当印尼饱受海啸的侵袭时，国际友人站在印尼人民的生活安危上为他国着想，于是千千万万国际友人慷慨解囊援助，给印尼人民帮助，给印尼人民希望，这对于促进社会的和谐发展是多么重要。

但是要做到心灵换位，为别人着想确实不容易。

首先，我们必须摆脱以我为中心的观念。从小的方面讲，以我为中心造成的是个人的孤立与对他人的侵害;从大的方面讲，以我中心造成的会是两个国家之间的战火纷飞，造成的是社会的动荡不安。

其次，我们少把利益渗进人际交往中去。现实中许多人无法站在别人的立场上为之着想，很大程度上是因为自己对利益的迫切追求。我们不应把利益看得如此重要，人与人之间的和谐才是最重要的。

总而言之，无论做任何事，我们都应该适当进行心灵换位，多站在别人的立场想想，这样才能化解不必要的矛盾，才能构建美好和谐的社会。

导语：寂寞，让你能够听到更多的声音。而孤独，让你听到自己的内心。那一刻，意味着你已经告别了寂寞。下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的写作素材，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

把心迹写成随笔，写下的是寂寞;走过泥泞的道路，留下的是寂寞;哼着自编的歌曲，唱出的是寂寞;欣赏一篇好文章，品到的是寂寞;思索一件小事，想到的是寂寞;捧起晶亮的雨滴，留在心中的还是寂寞。

寂寞似酒，需品才能察觉它的内在。

寂寞如诗，需感才能发现它懂得内涵。

不管寂寞是酒还是诗，不管它是好还是坏，寂寞是一种灵感，一种妙不可言的美。

一直以来，寂寞就占据我的心怀，凭着一种共同的节拍，但是奇怪，我惟独不能感觉到它的存在，或者由于悲哀，抑或是习惯，对寂寞的到来，再也没有力量去关怀。

心境平和的海面，片刻的柔和，片刻的憔悴，片刻的寂寞，片刻波光弧影的微笑。

但，我想告别寂寞，虽然它是一份美，但我不能永远都沉睡再寂寞中，我会醒来的，只是时间问题而已。可是我还没有醒来，所以我依旧寂寞，正因为如此，我想告别寂寞。

法国哲学家帕斯卡说过："人的所有不快乐，都是因为他无法独自待在房间里"。

我想告别寂寞，却不知道迎来了孤独。

然而，当你年长一点，你会学懂去享受孤独，正如你学懂了寂寞。

寂寞，让你能够听到更多的声音。而孤独，让你听到自己的内心。那一刻，意味着你已经告别了寂寞。

我感觉到：寂寞正在慢慢消逝，成为往事，成为记忆，它闪耀不定的微笑，浮动在一层层的泪水里。

我感觉到：寂寞和孤独，隔着长长的一生，心和心，要经过多少岁月，才能告别寂寞而不迎来孤独。

夜色在身后合拢，寂寞走向星空，成为一个无解的谜，一颗冰凉的泪点，挂在永恒的脸上，躲在我残存的梦中。

寂寞是什么......

导语：柏拉图"背叛"先师，说:"吾爱吾师，吾尤爱真理。"布鲁塔斯在刺人凯撒最后一剑时说:"不是我爱凯撒少，而是我爱罗马多。"下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的作文素材，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

何谓"亲亲凹即关心你的亲人朋友，何谓"明理凹即通晓事物的真理。在古儒的经典里，君子的修养正是由此人手的。所谓"孝梯，仁之本也"、"格物致知"说的就是这个道理。然而在那则《韩非子》的寓言里，我们看到了二者之间矛盾的一面。

说的是宋国一富人，墙被大雨淋坏。儿子与邻家老翁都提醒他小心失窃。果然，富人晚上丢东西了，于是他觉得是邻居偷的，而又很以为儿子聪明。我想:倘若是两个毫不相识人提醒他，结果又会不一样吧。由此可知:感情的亲疏对人的判断，影响不可谓不大啊!

人非生而知之者，然而人生而有情。感情是构成人的重要元素。李密《陈情表》句句含情字字有泪，不仅当时打动了皇帝那颗威严而冷酷的心，而且也感动了无数后世读者。何以至此?不正是因为一个情字吗?"文为心声"，多少篇千古奇文，因其情真意切而流传后世啊，文学如此，艺术亦如此。艺术大师倘若没有激情没有足以让观众共鸣的激情，而大师则沦为工匠、艺术亦只剩技巧了。所以，人无时无刻不为感情而"呼吸"。这正为受感情所困扰埋下了伏笔。

当感情与真理并行不悸的时候，感情则成为激励人去奋斗的"催化剂";可当感情与真理发生冲突的时候，却又如何呢?林觉民在《与妻书》里说:即是爱汝之心，使吾敢勇于就死也。在这里情感升华了，困扰消失了。"爱汝之心"与 "助天下人爱其所爱"合而化为一股浩然之气，足以惊天地泣鬼神，草木为之含悲，风云因而变色。可以说:林觉民的《与妻书》就是在面临情感与真理的冲突时最惊心动魄的答卷啊!

然而古儒的经典里，却不是这样看的。即使是孔子也会在《春秋》里违心曲笔。至于孔子以下，自不待言。等级森严的封建制度下，伦理也成了束缚人的工具了。鲁迅怒斥封建礼教"吃人"，真可谓入木三分。在那样的伦理下，哪还有真理可言?

柏拉图"背叛"先师，说:"吾爱吾师，吾尤爱真理。"布鲁塔斯在刺人凯撒最后一剑时说:"不是我爱凯撒少，而是我爱罗马多。"当感情的亲疏与事物真理冲突时，他们是多可敬的言传身教!

【点评】论证翔实 语言典雅

一读这题目，你就会感到这是一篇不同寻常的作文。读罢全文你会加深这一印象的。开篇两个设问句始先破题，接着通过多方面卸翔实论证，明确地阐述了这样一个道理:当感情的亲疏与事物真理叫突时，应当选择真理。行文多方面选取论据，尤其难能可贵的是，将访文中的事例有选择地作为论据，足见该考生学以致用的能力。行文诏言儒雅，显得大气不俗。

导语：你会用英语表达时间吗？下面是yuwenmi小编为还在备考的同学整理的优秀英语素材，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

一、“年、月、日、小时”的表达

(一)表示“在某年”：

① in + 阿拉伯数字(读的时候用基数词，从后到前，分两截来读)。如：

He was born in 1971. (1971读作nineteen seventy-one)

②使用year时，year放在数词之前。如：

in the year 253 B.C. (253 B. C. 读作two five three B.C. ) 在公元前253年。

(二)表示“在某月”：

in +月份名词(开头第一字母要大写), 如：in January / February。

(三)表示“在某月某日”：

① on + 月份+ 序数词(th可省略, 但读时要念出来)。如：

National Day is on Oct. 1.

② on + the + 序数词+ of + 月份。如：

National Day is on the 1st of October.

(四)表示“在某整点钟”:

at +基数词 (+ oclock / sharp)。如:

Our meeting will begin at five oclock.

古时，有一个老人，夫人早亡，膝边有二男一女。女儿出嫁了，儿子儿媳倒也孝顺。老人手头尚积有些金银财宝，安享晚年，丰衣足食。

一日，两个儿子要求父亲将金银细软分给他俩，作为经商的本钱。老人经不起苦苦哀求，便同意了。想不到儿子分得金银即变了卦，不但不孝老父亲，而且让媳妇每日咒骂老人。为赡养老人之事，弟兄也争执不休，最后才勉强决定轮流赡养老人，每人养一个月。从此，老人过着被虐待的日子!

二月二十八日，老大对父亲说：“今天满一个月了，明天即是三月份，你该上老二家了。”而老二却说：“今天才二十八日，还差三天才是三十一日，老大该再养你三天。”于是，老人象个皮球似地被踢来踢去，没奈何来到女儿家。好在女儿孝顺，老人才得安生。

孝顺女对兄长不孝父亲之事义愤填膺，便施一计教训两个兄长。恰好这时侄儿来作客，她买了好多食物和新衣服一套送给侄儿说：“姑姑现在阔气多了。因为，你爷爷带来一批珠宝。”侄儿回家后，把情形讲给家人听。这一来，兄弟俩坐立不安了，商议了一回，老着脸皮将老人接了回来。每日好鱼好肉，说不尽满嘴献媚奉承话。

直到老人仙逝后，搜遍家园的四面八方，也不见一点珠宝之影。此时此刻，妹妹才悲愤地泄露“天机”，羞得两位厚颜无耻的兄长恨不能钻入地缝里!

all the same 仍然,照样的

as regards 关于,至于

anything but 根本不

as a matter of fact 实际上

apart from 除...外(有/无)

as a rule 通常,照例

as a result(of) 因此,由于

as far as ...be concerned 就...而言

as far as 远至,到...程度

as for 至于,关于

as follows 如下

as if 好像,仿怫

as good as 和...几乎一样

as usual 像平常一样,照例

as to 至于,关于

all right 令人满意的;可以

as well 同样,也,还

as well as 除...外(也),即...又

aside from 除...外(还有)

at a loss 茫然,不知所措

at a time 一次,每次

at all 丝毫(不),一点也不

at all costs 不惜一切代价

at all events 不管怎样,无论如何

at all times 随时,总是

at any rate 无论如何,至少

at best 充其量,至多

at first 最初,起先

at first sight 乍一看,初看起来

at hand 在手边,在附近

at heart 内心里,本质上

at home 在家,在国内

at intervals 不时,每隔...

at large 大多数,未被捕获的

at least 至少

at last 终于

at length 最终,终于

at most 至多,不超过

at no time 从不,决不

by accident 偶然

at one time 曾经,一度;同时

at present 目前,现在

at sbs disposal 任...处理

at the cost of 以...为代价

at the mercy of 任凭...摆布

at the moment 此刻,目前

at this rate 照此速度

at times 有时,间或

back and forth 来回地,反复地

back of 在...后面

before long 不久以后

beside point 离题的,不相干的

beyond question 毫无疑问

by air 通过航空途径

by all means 尽一切办法,务必

by and by 不久,迟早

by chance 偶然,碰巧

by far 最,...得多

by hand 用手,用体力

by itself 自动地,独自地

by means of 用,依靠

by mistake 错误地,无意地

by no means 决不,并没有

by oneself 单独地,独自地

by reason of 由于

by the way 顺便说说

by virtue of 借助,由于

by way of 经由,通过...方法

due to 由于,因为

each other 互相

even if/though 即使,虽然

ever so 非常,极其

every now and then 时而,偶尔

every other 每隔一个的

except for 除了...外

face to face 面对面地

The benefit of volunteering

As we all know, volunteering has a meaningful and positive impact on the community you serve and the people you help. In the meanwhile, it can have many benefits for you, too. In my opinion, there are two reasons to

volunteer: feel good about yourself while helping others; build your portfolio.

On one hand, volunteering makes you feel good about yourself on a purely selfish level. There are few things more satisfying than helping people. Hammering nails on a new home while the owner beams with pride right next to you is an amazing feeling. Walking or running to raise funds for a cause close to your heart helps to give you a sense of purpose and helps you realize just how lucky you are. As a volunteer, you will gain new perspective, for it’s so easy for us all to get a little too wrapped up in our own lives. On the other hand, from a professional standpoint, volunteering is a great way to add to your portfolio. From press releases to design pieces, from public speaking to fundraising,

you will have the opportunity to build your portfolio. This is especially beneficial for students or young professionals, although all of us should continually work on building our portfolios.

Apart from the benefits of building up your confidence and making your portfolio better, there are probably many other benefits you will find in your volunteer work. So it is time for you to participate in more volunteer work to help others as well as help yourselves.

[支教的意义英语高考作文

阅读电视广告词： If we don t save water,the last drop of water will be a tear-drop. 根据提示，写一篇60-80词的短文。

提示：

1.生活离不开水。

2.可饮用水在减少。

3.水污染严重。

4.应保护水源，再利用水。

Water is very important to humans.We can t live without water.The water we can drink is falling.But some people don t seem to care about it.They waste a lot of water.They pour dirty water into rivers and lakes.Water pollution is getting more and more serious.So we must do something to stop the pollution.We not only protect the water but also find ways to reuse it.If we don t do this,the last drop of water will be a tear-drop.

水对人类很重要，我们不能没有水，水可以喝掉。但是有些人似乎并不在乎。他们浪费很多水。他们把污水排入河流和湖泊，水污染越来越严重，所以我们必须做点什么停止污染。我们不仅保护水，还发现利用它的方式。如果我们不这样做，最后一滴水将是一滴眼泪。

[高考英语作文：水的重要性

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

duststorms are becoming a great concern for both the public and the government in recent years. every spring overwhelming sands and dust sweep the northern part of china, blocking out the sky, enshrouding cities and villages, bring much inconvenience and problems to peoples lives and work. in some regions, sandstorms have caused great loss in both peoples lives and properties.

duststorms are largely created by man himself. on the one hand, too much air pollution causes a greenhouse effect, which, in turn, leads to global wanning in climate. this results in wet places on the earth even wetter and dry places even drier. on the other hand, over grazing, poor fanning, tree cutting, strip mining all leave theland unprotected. when the wind blows, it blows away topsoil and loose soil.

duststorms are another punishment nature gives to mankind. we must be alert to this ecological alarm. we should not only take effective measures to stop duststorms but also draw some lessons from it. we should not "develop" the local economy at the cost of the natural environment.

Dear Mr. Smith ,

I am Lihua ,chairman of the student union , from chenguang high schoo. I am

very pleased to learn that you are coming to visit our school on June 26. I am

writing to tell you what we have arranged for you.

In the morning , there will be a forum in the school auditorium , where

visitors and students from our school communicate with each other ,talking about

school life and cultural differences . At noon, you are invited to have lunch in

our school cafeteria with students from our school. You can taste dumplings

,noodles and other Chinese foods .In the afternoon, the students in our school

will show you around the HaiHe river .

How do you like the arrangements ? I hope you will have a nice time in Tian

jing

Yours sincerely ,

Li Hua

减压

假设你们班要在下星期一举行题为"The Ways for Students to Relax"的班会，请结合报道的内容。用英语写一篇80字左右的发言材料。

内容包括：

1. 简要介绍造成现在学生学习压力大的原因。

2. 你认为来自于English Online调查结果的放松方式是否有效，为什么？

3.谈谈你个人自我放松的有效做法（至少三点）。

Dear fellows,

Not only adults but also we students often feel stressed because we have too much homework to do, and we are very busy studying every day, we don’t have our own time to do what we are interested in. We are very tired and sleepy all day, so we should learn to deal with it. What should we do to relax?

From the result of the survey, I think doing sports with classmates is a good way to relax. Because it’s good for our health and it can make us relaxed.

I also have three ways to relax ourselues. First, we can listen to music. Second, we can go to the movies with our parents on weekends. Don’t study at home all the weekend. Third, when we feel tired, we can think about something interesting.

I hope my suggestions can help you.Thanks!

[高考英语话题作文减压

导语：关于中国民间故事你知道多少呢，下面是语文迷小编为大家整理的中国古代民间四大传说故事，欢迎阅读，谢谢!

中国古代民间四大传说故事：《牛郎织女》《孟姜女哭长城》《梁山伯与祝英台》《白蛇传》。

一、梁山伯与祝英台

从前有个姓祝的地主，人称祝员外，他的女儿祝英台不仅美丽大方，而且非常的聪明好学。但由于古时候女子不能进学堂读书，祝英台只好日日倚在窗栏上，望着大街上身背着书箱来来往往的读书人，心里羡慕极了!难道女子只能在家里绣花吗?为什么我不能去上学?她突然反问自己：对啊!我为什么就不能上学呢?

想到这儿，祝英台赶紧回到房间，鼓起勇气向父母要求：“爹，娘，我要到杭州去读书。我可以穿男人的衣服，扮成男人的样子，一定不让别人认出来，你们就答应我吧!”祝员外夫妇开始不同意，但经不住英台撒娇哀求，只好答应了。

第二天一清早，天刚蒙蒙亮，祝英台就和丫鬟扮成男装，辞别父母，带着书箱，兴高采烈地出发去杭州了。

到了学堂的第一天，祝英台遇见了一个叫梁山伯的男同学，学问出众，人品也十分优秀。她想：这么好的人，要是能天天在一起，一定会学到很多东西，也一定会很开心的。而梁山伯也觉得与她很投缘，有一种一见如故的感觉。于是，他们常常一起诗呀文呀谈得情投意合，冷呀热呀相互关心体贴，促膝并肩，两小无猜。后来，两人结拜为兄弟，更是时时刻刻，形影不离。

春去秋来，一晃三年过去了，学年期满，该是打点行装、拜别老师、返回家乡的时候了。同窗共烛整三载，祝英台已经深深爱上了她的梁兄，而梁山伯虽不知祝英台是女生，但也对她十分倾慕。他俩恋恋不舍地分了手，回到家后，都日夜思念着对方。几个月后，梁山伯前往祝家拜访，结果令他又惊又喜。原来这时，他见到的祝英台，已不再是那个清秀的小书生，而是一位年轻美貌的大姑娘。再见的那一刻，他们都明白了彼此之间的感情，早已是心心相印。

此后，梁山伯请人到祝家去求亲。可祝员外哪会看得上这穷书生呢，他早已把女儿许配给了有钱人家的少爷马公子。梁山伯顿觉万念俱灰，一病不起，没多久就死去了。

听到梁山伯去世的消息，一直在与父母抗争以反对包办婚姻的祝英台反而突然变得异常镇静。她套上红衣红裙，走进了迎亲的花轿。迎亲的队伍一路敲锣打鼓，好不热闹!路过梁山伯的坟前时，忽然间飞沙走石，花轿不得不停了下来。只见祝英台走出轿来，脱去红装，一身素服，缓缓地走到坟前，跪下来放声大哭，霎时间风雨飘摇，雷声大作，“轰”的一声，坟墓裂开了，祝英台似乎又见到了她的梁兄那温柔的面庞，她微笑着纵身跳了进去。接着又是一声巨响，坟墓合上了。这时风消云散，雨过天晴，各种野花在风中轻柔地摇曳，一对美丽的蝴蝶从坟头飞出来，在阳光下自由地翩翩起舞。

二、牛郎织女

牛郎只有一头老牛、一张犁，他每天刚亮就下地耕田，回家后还要自己做饭洗衣，日子过得十分辛苦。谁料有一天，奇迹发生了!牛郎干完活回到家，一进家门，就看见屋子里被打扫得干干净净，衣服被洗得清清爽爽，桌子上还摆着热腾腾、香喷喷的饭菜。牛郎吃惊得瞪大了眼睛，心想：这是怎么回事?神仙下凡了吗?不管了，先吃饭吧。

此后，一连几天，天天如此，牛郎耐不住性子了，他一定要弄个水落石出。这天，牛郎象往常一样，一大早就出了门，其实，他走了几步就转身回来了，没进家门，而是找了个隐蔽的地方躲了起来，偷偷地观察着。果然，没过多久，来了一位美若天仙的姑娘，一进门就忙着收拾屋子、做饭，甭提多勤劳了!牛郎实在忍不住了，站了出来道：“姑娘，请问你为什么要来帮我做家务呢?”那姑娘吃了一惊，脸红了，小声说道：“我叫织女，看你日子过得辛苦，就来帮帮你。”牛郎听得心花怒放，赶忙接着说：“那你就留下来吧，我们同甘共苦，一起用双手建设幸福的生活!”织女红着脸点了点头，他们就此结为夫妻，男耕女织，生活得很美满。

过了几年，他们生了一男一女两个孩子，一家人过得开心极了。一天，突然间天空乌云密布，狂风大作，雷电交加，织女不见了，两个孩子哭个不停，牛郎急得不知如何是好。正着急时，乌云又突然全散了，天气又变得风和日丽，织女也回到了家中，但她的脸上却满是愁云。只见她轻轻地拉住牛郎，又把两个孩子揽入怀中，说道：“其实我不是凡人，而是王母娘娘的外孙女，现在，天宫来人要把我接回去了，你们自己多多保重!”说罢，泪如雨下，腾云而去。

牛郎搂着两个年幼的孩子，欲哭无泪，呆呆地站了半天。不行，我不能让妻子就这样离我而去，我不能让孩子就这样失去母亲，我要去找她，我一定要把织女找回来!这时，那头老牛突然开口了：“别难过!你把我杀了，把我的皮披上，再编两个箩筐装着两个孩子，就可以上天宫去找织女了。”牛郎说什么也不愿意这样对待这个陪伴了自己数十年的伙伴，但拗不过它，又没有别的办法，只得忍着痛、含着泪照它的话去做了。

到了天宫，王母娘娘不愿认牛郎这个人间的外孙女婿，不让织女出来见他，而是找来七个蒙着面、高矮胖瘦一模一样的女子，对牛郎说：“你认吧，认对了就让你们见面。”牛郎一看傻了眼，怀中两个孩子却欢蹦乱跳地奔向自己的妈妈，原来，母子之间的血亲是什么也无法阻隔的!

王母娘娘没办法了，但她还是不甘心织女再回到人间，于是就下令把织女带走。牛郎急了，牵着两个孩子赶紧追上去。他们跑着跑着，累了也不肯停歇，跌倒了再爬起来，眼看着就快追上了，王母娘娘情急之下拔出头上的金簪一划，在他们中间划出了一道宽宽的银河。从此，牛郎和织女只能站在银河的两端，遥遥相望。而到了每年农历的七月初七，回有成千上万的喜鹊飞来，在银河上架起一座长长的鹊桥，让牛郎织女一家再次团聚。

三、白蛇传

清明时分，西湖岸边花红柳绿，断桥上面游人如梭，真是好一幅春光明媚的美丽画面。突然，从西湖底悄悄升上来两个如花似玉的姑娘，怎么回事?人怎么会从水里升出来呢?原来，她们是两条修炼成了人形的蛇精，虽然如此，但她们并无害人之心，只因羡慕世间的多彩人生，才一个化名叫白素贞，一个化名叫小青，来到西湖边游玩。

偏偏老天爷忽然发起脾气来，霎时间下起了倾盆大雨，白素贞和小青被淋得无处藏身，正发愁呢，突然只觉头顶多了一把伞，转身一看，只见一位温文尔雅、白净秀气的年轻书生撑着伞在为她们遮雨。白素贞和这小书生四目相交，都不约而同地红了红脸，相互产生了爱慕之情。小青看在眼里，忙说：“多谢!请问客官尊姓大名。”那小书生道：“我叫许仙，就住在这断桥边。”白素贞和小青也赶忙作了自我介绍。从此，他们三人常常见面，白素贞和许仙的感情越来越好，过了不久，他们就结为夫妻，并开了一间“保和堂”药店，小日子过得可美了!

由于“保和堂”治好了很多很多疑难病症，而且给穷人看病配药还分文不收，所以药店的生意越来越红火，远近来找白素贞治病的人越来越多，人们将白素贞亲切地称为白娘子。可是，“保和堂”的兴隆、许仙和白娘子的幸福生活却惹恼了一个人，谁呢?那就是金山寺的法海和尚。因为人们的病都被白娘子治好了，到金山寺烧香求菩萨的人就少多了，香火不旺，法海和尚自然就高兴不起来了。这天，他又来到“保和堂”前，看到白娘子正在给人治病，不禁心内妒火中烧，再定睛一瞧，哎呀!原来这白娘子不是凡人，而是条白蛇变的!

法海虽有点小法术，但他的心术却不正。看出了白娘子的身份后，他就整日想拆散许仙白娘子夫妇、搞垮“保和堂”。于是，他偷偷把许仙叫到寺中，对他说：“你娘子是蛇精变的，你快点和她分手吧，不然，她会吃掉你的!”许仙一听，非常气愤，他想：我娘子心地善良，对我的情意比海还深。就算她是蛇精，也不会害我，何况她如今已有了身孕，我怎能离弃她呢!法海见许仙不上他的当，恼羞成怒，便把许仙关在了寺里。

“保和堂”里，白娘子正焦急地等待许仙回来。一天、两天，左等、右等，白娘子心急如焚。终于打听到原来许仙被金山寺的法海和尚给“留”住了，白娘子赶紧带着小青来到金山寺，苦苦哀求，请法海放回许仙。法海见了白娘子，一阵冷笑，说道：“大胆妖蛇，我劝你还是快点离开人间，否则别怪我不客气了!”白娘子见法海拒不放人，无奈，只得拔下头上的金钗，迎风一摇，掀起滔滔大浪，向金山寺直逼过去。法海眼见水漫金山寺，连忙脱下袈裟，变成一道长堤，拦在寺门外。大水涨一尺，长堤就高一尺，大水涨一丈，长堤就高一丈，任凭波浪再大，也漫不过去。再加上白娘子有孕在身，实在斗不过法海，后来，法海使出欺诈的手法，将白娘子收进金钵，压在了雷峰塔下，把许仙和白娘子这对恩爱夫妻活生生地拆散了。

小青逃离金山寺后，数十载深山练功，最终打败了法海，将他逼进了螃蟹腹中，救出了白娘子，从此，她和许仙以及他们的孩子幸福地生活在一起，再也不分离了。

四、孟姜女

秦朝时候，有个善良美丽的女子，名叫孟姜女。一天，她正在自家的院子里做家务，突然发现葡萄架下藏了一个人，吓了她一大跳，正要叫喊，只见那个人连连摆手，恳求道：“别喊别喊，救救我吧!我叫范喜良，是来逃难的。”原来这时秦始皇为了造长城，正到处抓人做劳工，已经饿死、累死了不知多少人!孟姜女把范喜良救了下来，见他知书达理，眉清目秀，对他产生了爱慕之情，而范喜良也喜欢上了孟姜女。他俩儿心心相印，征得了父母的同意后，就准备结为夫妻。

成亲那天，孟家张灯结彩，宾客满堂，一派喜气洋洋的情景。眼看天快黑了，喝喜酒的人也都渐渐散了，新郎新娘正要入洞房，忽然只听见鸡飞狗叫，随后闯进来一队恶狠狠的官兵，不容分说，用铁链一锁，硬把范喜良抓到长城去做工了。好端端的喜事变成了一场空，孟姜女悲愤交加，日夜思念着丈夫。她想：我与其坐在家里干着急，还不如自己到长城去找他。对!就这么办!孟姜女立刻收拾收拾行装，上路了。

一路上，也不知经历了多少风霜雨雪，跋涉过多少险山恶水，孟姜女没有喊过一声苦，没有掉过一滴泪，终于，凭着顽强的毅力，凭着对丈夫深深的爱，她到达了长城。这时的长城已经是由一个个工地组成的一道很长很长的城墙了，孟姜女一个工地一个工地地找过来，却始终不见丈夫的踪影。最后，她鼓起勇气，向一队正要上工的民工询问：“你们这儿有个范喜良吗?”民工说：“有这么个人，新来的。”孟姜女一听，甭提多开心了!她连忙再问：“他在哪儿呢?”民工说：“已经死了，尸首都已经填了城脚了!”

猛地听到这个噩耗，真好似晴天霹雳一般，孟姜女只觉眼前一黑，一阵心酸，大哭起来。整整哭了三天三夜，哭得天昏地暗，连天地都感动了。天越来越阴沉，风越来越猛烈，只听“哗啦”一声，一段长城被哭倒了，露出来的正是范喜良的尸首，孟姜女的眼泪滴在了他血肉模糊的脸上。她终于见到了自己心爱的丈夫，但他却再也看不到她了，因为他已经被残暴的秦始皇害死了。

一、几点重要原则

1.智者利用押题，傻子依赖押题!

2.书面表达整篇背诵绝无必要，可以以看读为主，关键是从中汲取一些常用的词汇和表达，并能得体熟练地运用。考场上应变能力很重要!

3.英文写作模仿很重要。有时也很有效。但不能过于牵强，尤其是对一些长难句的刻意模仿使用。

4.文似看山不喜平，起承转合一定要有!

5.“见微知著，一叶知秋”，几个亮点足矣：有道是：浓妆淡抹总相宜，作文写得简洁到位要比长篇大论更显功力。

6.心不为形役。不要身陷逐字逐句“英汉对号”式的字面翻译，要把表达的主动权始终握在自己手里。

二、善用万能句以不变应万变

历届高考，书面表达考得最多是提示作文，即提供一定的情景内容，要求考生完成100词左右的短文。

从命题方式看，有短文提示、要点提示、图画提示、情景提示以及图表提示等；体裁以应用文为主，记叙文为辅：题材为广大中学生所熟悉的日常生活。从提供要点的情景方面看，历届高考书面表达题均属供料小作文，采用文字供料或文字说明加图画(图表)的方式供料。

备考时，同学们要利用有限的时间把以前背的范文整理一下，从中选出不同体裁、不同题材的范文各一篇(范文以高考真题的高分作文为佳)，把它们重新记忆，一定记牢。这样，高考时不管什么样的文章都可套用背诵好的格式。避免考场上因紧张而无章可循。

最后阶段，还要总结一下写作时常用且能出彩的固定句型、句式，比如强调句型、定语从句、名诃性从句等，牢记英语的五个基本句式，背诵平时老师总结的万能句。以不变应万变。

考场答题前，应仔细审题，研究所提供的文字和图画(图表)材料和作文要求。分析、提炼要点，理顺要点，确立基本的写作思路，不要忽略任何一个词。关键的词更不能遗漏，构思好写几个方面，缺一不可。

写作时，尽量用学过的英语句型和词组。少写长句和复杂句以免弄巧成拙、漏洞百出。但目前高考有关书面表达的评分标准要求作文中应有“较多的语法结构和词汇”，因此同学们在书面表达中不能都写小句、短句和单句，还要正确运用高级词汇和复杂结构。恰当运用过渡词，使写出来的文章含金量更高，更具可读性。

三、高分作文六大特性

1.条理性。指的是合理安排文章结构。首先，在文章思路、组织材料、叙述顺序等方面要有一定的条理性。其次。根据需要，安排好段落，各段之间要层次分明，也要重视每一段的开头和结尾，开头语往往是总起句，结尾语往往是总结句。

2.准确性。指要求写出语法正确的句子，包括时态、语态、用词和句法等，要准确、地道地表达。必须要牢牢掌握一些常用句型或习惯表达，避免中式英语，在实践中不断总结中英用法的差异，养成用英语思维写作的习惯。

3.流畅性。指根据整篇文章思想的需要，有效采用不同的连接手段，使文章层次清楚、行文连贯。

4.简洁多样性。简洁性就是语言简洁，不重复。多样性就是能随情景内容的变化写出句式多样的语句。这也是新课程标准对写作的评价标准。

5.思想性。新标准对写作的要求，增加了情感因素，在准确流畅表达写作要点的同时，适当增加句子的感情色彩，增加一些人情味，使文章读起来更亲切，完全达到与读者进行交流的目的。

6.美观性。指的是卷面书写规范、清楚、干净、整洁。

四、怎样才能有‘拽”的感觉

1.高考写作的实质——变相考查句型与词汇的灵活应用

英语写作不同于语文作文的写作，如果说语文作文是一个自由发挥的舞蹈，那么高考英语写作就是带着枷锁在跳舞。我之所以这样来形容，是因为高考英语写作的内容都已经通过文字、表格、图片这三种形式给定，内容方面，不需要学生进行发挥，大家所需要发挥的就是不要老去给这个不变的内容穿毫无变化的校服(简单句)，而要去穿一些不一样的衣服，让它显得不那么单调，让阅卷老师能看到不同，而那些所谓的衣服也就是多变句型与词汇。

2.写作的评分标准——怎么去迎合评卷老师的胃口

我了解到目前很大一部分学生的作文都处在15分左右，写作满分25分，15分也就是个及格分，那么15分和20多分的作文到底差在哪里?这个问题很容易回答。15分的作文中规中矩，该对的都对，包括内容要点的完整，语法与词形的正确，但是全都是简单句子的堆砌，没有任何亮点。而20多分的作文在句型词汇方面就做了很好的包装，它的句子穿的衣服已经不是校服，而是李宁、耐克，或者是阿迪，所以让人觉得很“拽”，而高考英语写作要的就是这种很“拽”的感觉。

3.写作提分的三要素——句型。连词。高级词汇

句子是我们写作文最大的单位。有了漂亮的句子。用好的连词将其连句成段，再加上一些如星星般亮点词汇的点缀，一篇好的高考英语作文就诞生了。而这三个因素中最容易把握的是句子，最难的是高级词汇，限于大家的词汇还比较有限。一篇文章中出现那么一两个就够了。我们应该把重心放在句型上，因为这个最容易把握。

但是大家又有这样的困惑，学校里老师也给了我们很多的句型啊，动辄成五十上百句的，大家背得挺多，但是面对考试的时候，发现背的那些怎么也用不上。其实不是那些东西没有用，而是它们太干了，就好比一根干骨头，大家嚼起来很没有味。也不知道该把它们往哪里放。

在这里我给大家提供一种比较切实可行、迅速提高的练习方法，在接下来的时间里只要大家按照这个方法来，就一定会有收获。

找出历年真题，一周只需要写两篇。但是要这么来写。

1.把你要写的内容要点用九到十句的汉语表达出来。

2.逐一地进行翻译，不是用简单句。而是要刻意地去想：

(1)可以用什么样的复杂句；

(2)怎样去避开不会的表达，转义。

例如：

这本书是如此的有趣，以至于我读了一遍又一遍。

1.This book was so interest，ing that l read it again and again，

2.This was such an interest，ing book that l read it again andagain，

3.This was s0 jnteresting abook that l read it again and a—gain

4.So interesting was thisbook that l read it again and a—gain

这四句译文当中无疑评卷老师最欣赏的是第四句，因为它用了倒装。

下面是由语文迷为大家整理的英语写作百搭句子，赶紧学会吧。

1. 完全同意……这种观点(陈述)，主要理由如下：

I fully agree with the statement that ______ because______.

2. 面临……，我们应该采取一系列行之有效的方法来……。一方面……，另一方面，

Confronted with______, we should take a series of effective measures to______. For one thing，______For another, ______

3. 相反，有一些人赞成……，他们相信……，而且，他们认为……。

On the contrary, there are some people in favor of ___.At the same time, they say____.

4. ……对我们国家的发展和建设是必不可少的，(也是)非常重要的。首先，……。而且……，最重要的是……

______is necessary and important to our countrys development and construction.First，______.Whats more, _____.Most important of all,______.

5. 然而，正如任何事物都有好坏两个方面一样，……也有它的不利的一面，像……。

However, just like everything has both its good and bad sides, ______also has its owndisadvantages, such as ______.

6. 早就应该拿出行动了。比如说……，另外……。所有这些方法肯定会……。

It is high time that something was done about it. For example. _____.In addition,_____.All thesemeasures will certainly______.

7. 尽管如此，我相信……更有利。

Nonetheless, I believe that ______is more advantageous.

8. 有几个可供我们采纳的方法。首先，我们可以……。

There are several measures for us to adopt. First, we can______

9. 但是，我认为这不是解决……的好方法，比如……。最糟糕的是……。

But I dont think it is a very good way to solve ____.For example，____.Worst of all，___.

10. 为什么……?第一个原因是……;第二个原因是……;第三个原因是……。总的来说，……的主要原因是由于……

Why______? The first reason is that ______.The second reason is ______.The third is ______.For all this, the main cause of ______due to ______.

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

一、优化词汇输入教学，丰富词汇知识积累

词汇是一篇文章最基本的组 成要素。头脑中如果没有一定数量的、且处于鲜活状态的词汇，就无法写出好文章。要写出好的文章，就必须善于从众多的词语中选择和运用最恰当的词语。因此， 加强词汇教学、扩大和丰富学生的词汇量是提高学生写作能力的基础工作。克拉申的“语言输入假说模式”认为：正确和恰当的语言输入将会使语言学习的效果更 佳。

最佳语言输入的两个必要条件：

1)密切相关的

2)大量的。因此，将密切相关的常用词汇、习惯搭配适当集中教学，反复归纳、不断循环和强化是较好的词 汇输入方法，同时也保证了常用词汇在头脑中的鲜活状态，为写作输出提供可靠保障。

二、加强基础写作训练，活化基础知识积累

在学生写作过程中，我们 常常会发现许多学生的词汇量与运用能力不成正比的现象，写作中经常出现词汇贫乏和用词不当等问题。这种问题的出现实际上是学生获得的知识没有有效的活化。 配合词汇和句型教学，教师可以经常以所教学词汇为关键词拟定一些与时事或生活相关的话题，让学生用词、句做翻译练习，一段时间(4-5天)之后，再让学生 用这些词、句进行写作，多写多练以达到活化知识的目的。

三、广泛阅读，拓展知识积累

“熟读唐诗三百首，不会作 诗也会吟”。在大量的阅读过程中，可使学生开拓视野，拓展知识，增加语感，为写作提供必要的语言材料。写作和阅读是互相促进、相辅相成的。有些词汇和句 型，学生只是似曾相识，通过广泛的阅读能促使学生把这些东西运用得更熟练，表达得更准确。反过来，这也会有效地提高学生的阅读理解能力。

Good morning , ladies and gentlemen ,

Some of us are having problems with our parents , as they often look into

our school bags or read our diaries . I fully understand why we are not

comfortable about it , but there’s no need to feel too sad. Our parents are

checking our bags or diaries to make sure we are not getting into any trouble .

They have probably heard some horrible stories about other kids and thought we

might do the same . Or perhaps they just want to connect with us but are doing

it all wrong . My suggestion is : Tell them we want them to trust us as much as

we’d like to trust them .If you don’t think you can talk to them , write them a

letter and leave it lying around ---they are bound to read it .

Thank you!

一、积累固定搭配，避免中式英文

在高考中，很多考生写作文时都是要先想好中文内容再来翻译成英文。这看起来并没有什么不对的地方，因为一般考生的水平都达不到直接用英文来思考的程度。但差别在于英文很好的人在整体构思自己的作文时可能会用汉语，但是写作时完全的英语写作并不会存在什么障碍;只有英语水平一般的人才会将每句的意思大致用汉语想好，但写作时还是要用英文的习惯句型和固定搭配来表达，有时甚至没办法流畅的翻译出自己想的内容，再者也存在一个单词一个单词累积拼凑句子的情况 ，这就是我们常说的中式英语;之所以会这样，主要原因还是在于考生自身积累的英语习惯句型和固定搭配太少了，所以考生平时要注意积累考试常用的句型和语法基础知识，这些内容并不是太多，只要用心总结，需要很少一部分时间就能掌握的很好。

二、模糊叙述，避免不确定词汇

英语考试写作中经常遇到的一个问题就是不确定的词汇，想要描述一个事物，但是那个单词始终想不起来，这是每个考生都会遇到的问题，不论你的词汇量有多丰富，总会有你不认识的词汇出现。那么这时在考场上，我们该如何应对呢?首先我们应该想到的是找一个类似的词来代替它，也就是模糊化即用同义词表达。其次，我们可以用一句完整的话来描述出来它，对其加以解释说明。再次，如果我们实在描述不了也替代不了，那么我们还可以把一些解释不清的东西略去不写。只写那些自己会写的，避开那些自己不会写的。扬长避短，在写作中才能避开容易犯的错误而得到高分。

三、基础不过硬，少用复杂句

不少考生在考试中喜欢用很长很复杂的句式来填充自己的作文，对于英语语法熟练的考生来说这很随意，但是英语水平不过硬的考生最好不要过多地运用复杂句、长难句，因为考试作文是检验一个考生写作水平的工具，命题人虽然会以复杂句来判断考生的英语水平，但是复杂句也表示它容易出错的几率要高很多。因此，在考试中虽然我们要写复杂句但是注意不能写太多这样的句子，考试作文的句子要长短结合。基础不好的考生避免运用长难句，这样自己出错扣分的概率也小很多。

四、认真审题，思考作文分支观点

很多考生在拿到考试作文题时第一感觉是这个作文自己有话说，并且知道应该说什么，但是认真开始提笔时却往往不知道从何写起，之所以会这样是因为考生对作文的审题和观点把握并不清晰，此时考生应该先审题;其次思考简单的分支观点并且考虑可以采用的哪些简单而又成熟的句型。近几年的四级或六级题目大多都会给出提纲，一般提纲中都会包含考生需要的中心句，围绕这个中心句，考生可以考虑自己的文章结构。对于分支观点这方面，考生要尽量量力而行，不要思考太深的观点，要结合自己语言表达的能力而定。

五、重点研究近几年真题作文，掌握固定结构

准备作文的时候背诵真题作文是不可避免的，但是四六级作文真题范文数量太多，有些历时已经有些久远，参考的价值并不是很大，而要把这些都背下来似乎也不太可能，所以考生要把注意力放在近几年的作文范文上，在复习时间不太充裕的时候，并不需要整篇全部背诵，主要是学习范文的行文结构，熟悉适合自己的固定句型，这样大家背诵范文的目的就已经达到了。