初中英语说明文写作模板（汇集20篇）

1、审题：审题是做到切题的第一步。所谓审题就是要看清题意，确定文章的中心思想、主题，并围绕中心思想组织材料。

2、进行构思，列出简单的提纲，打造文章之骨架：审好题、立好意后，就要写提纲，打造文章的骨架。文章布局要做好几件事：安排好层次段落，铺设好过渡，处理好开头和结尾。

3、扩展成文：根据字数多少扩展成篇。扩展的内容一定要紧扣主题，千万不要写那些与主题不相关的内容。展开的方式包括：顺序法、举例法、比较法、对比法、说明法、因果法、推导法、归纳法和下定义等。可以根据需要任选一种或几种方式。

在这一步骤中还需注意三方面问题：

1、确保提纲中段落结构的思路与各段主题句的一致性。只有这样，才能保证所写段落不偏题、不跑题。

2、要综合考虑各个段落的内容安排，避免段落内容的交叉。

3、用好连接词，注意段落间、句子间的连贯性。要做到所写文章层次分明，思路清晰，文字连贯，就需要在句与句之间、段与段之间架起一座座桥梁，而连接词起的正是桥梁作用。

在扩展的过程中也有些窍门，以下几点可供参考：

1、在整篇文章中，避免只是用一两个句式或重复用同一词语。英语中存在着极为丰富的同义词，准确地使用同义词可以给读者清新的感觉。同时要灵活运用各种句式，如倒装句、强调句、省略句、主从复合句、对比句、分词短语、介词短语等，从而增加文章的可读性。

2、使用不同长度的句子。如果一个意思用一句话写不清楚的话，通过分句和合句或用两句、三句来表达，增强句子的连贯性和表现力。

3、改变句子的开头方式，不要总是以主、谓、宾、状的次序。可以把状语至于句首，或用分词等。

4、学会使用过渡词。递进furthermore，moreover，besides，in addition，then，etc ;转折however，but，nevertheless，afterwards，etc ;总结finally，at last，in brief，to conclude，etc ;强调really，indeed，certainly，surely，above a11，etc ;对比in the same way，just as，on the other hand，etc。

5、确定文章用第几人称写，基本时态是什么。使用人称时人物不能张冠李戴或指代不明。时态要尽量保持一致。

检查修改：要检查复核，不要写完了事。

要留时间通读全文，修改可能出现的错误。检查上下文是否连贯，句子衔接是否自然流畅。检验的标准主要是句子是否通畅，该用连词的地方用了没有，所用的连词是否合适，是否有语法错误，主谓是否一致，动词的时态、语态、语气的使用是否正确，词组的搭配是否合乎习惯，是否有大小写、拼写、标点错误等，还有就是注意卷面整洁。

可归纳为：中心突出，主题明确;层次清楚，条理清晰;表达

根据提示信息，写一张母亲节贺卡。

Wang Ping: What day is it tomorrow, do you know?

Zhang Hua: Oh, it’s Mother’s Day. It’s on the second Sunday in May.

Wang Ping: What are you going to do on Mother’s Day?

Zhang Hua: I’ll help my mother do some cleaning. What about you?

Wang Ping: I’ll give her a card.

1. 假如你是Wang Ping, 请添写卡片问候你的母亲。

2. 格式正确、语句通顺、书写工整、规范。

To: my best mother in the world,

Best wishes for Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day!

Thank you for everything, Mum.

[给母亲的贺卡初中学生英语作文

The reader is reading from the literature (recorded knowledge of the carrier) to obtain and use information and knowledge of social practice, the process of physiological and psychological processes. Reading is a basic human access to knowledge and means an important way, as is the text of which have begun, is a text record of human understanding of natural and social practice experience as a symbol, a symbol that they start to have all kinds of literature, , And will have to read the information on the documents. With the social development so far, with the emergence of computer technology, digital and network technology popularization and development of electronic audio book market, expanding the carrier carrying information resources has changed, peoples reading habits and books published by the Also means increasing occurrence. According to the 2006 Fourth National Survey of the National Reading: Chinese on-line reading from l999-year rate of 3.7 percent to 27.8 percent in 2005, the average annual growth rate of 107%. Experts point out that digital technology and the development of the Internet has changed the Chinese peoples reading habits. The author believes that such a major impact in the following aspects.

A digital network for the promotion of reading

Access to information resources more convenient and efficient. Computer technology has brought about in areas such as storage and retrieval facilities, so that the carrier of information resources in the form of great changes have taken place, most of the information resources have been digitized, from paper to electronic resources, changes in resources, making many In looking for information resources and access to really become faster and more convenient. With the emergence of the network, the Earth is reduced to a "village", the distance is no longer an obstacle to the dissemination of information, access to a more simple and quick. In addition, the network is also promoting the digital information resources to enhance the process, more and more digital information resources, networking, in order to more convenient and efficient access to needed resources, the emergence of Baidu, Google, Sohu, and other search engines, which Greatly changed the way people access information model, greatly improved peoples reading needs

Our parents give us much love every day,so we should give them love,too.That was a holiday,I stayed at home alone.I made a dinner for my parents.Because I was only seven,the meal was really awful.But my mother never stopped saying,"Its very delicious!"She said she was very impressed.

How do you give your parents love?

"Enough! Enough!"I said when Father and Mother were still giving me more fish ad meat. My bowl was piled up like a little hill.

"Dont study too late into the night. Do be careful of your health. Have you had any examinations recently?"Father asked me in great concern.

My face turned red. I didnt dare to give Father an answer. I hadnt made any progress in my studies. I did badly in all subjects. I only got 60 for maths and failed in physics.

"It doesnt matter. Try to find better study methods and to work harder. I am sure you can enter a college!"Hearing these words, I bent my head down. What a kind father! He didnt scold me, but encouraged me instead.

"Have you used up the money I gave you last night?"With these words, Father was taking his wallet out."Mother has just given me 10 yuan.""Buy something to eat when you are hungry."Father passed me another ten-yuan note.

Should I accept it? Father and Mother love me deeply. Why couldnt I get god marks in exams? Tears came into my eyes.

"Dont cry. Now I will take you to the bus stop."As usual, Father carried that heavy bag and went to his dirty old bike.

[我的家人初中英语作文

Love for my parents

Our parents give us much love every day,so we should give them love,too.That was a holiday,I stayed at home alone.I made a dinner for my parents.Because I was only seven,the meal was really awful.But my mother never stopped saying,"Its very delicious!"She said she was very impressed.

How do you give your parents love?

1. To cherish the enviroment is to love ourselves.

爱护环境就是爱护我们自己。

2.Water is the source of ourlives

水是生命之源。

3.I make an urgent appeal that measures should be taken to cope with the situation

我急切呼吁应该采取措施改变现状。

4.Our government is doing its best to take measures to fight against pollution.

我们政府正努力制定措施与污染作斗争。

5.We are sure that well win the battle.

我们坚信我们能赢得战斗。

6.Its high time that we should protect our enviroment from being polluted.

是时候我们应该防止环境污染了。

7. Keep our mountains green，the wate clean，and the sky blue.

使我们山更绿，水更清，天更蓝。

8.However，natural resources are not inexhaustible.some reserves are already on the brink of exhaustion.

然而自然资源并不是无穷无尽的，一些储量已经到了穷尽的边缘。

9.If we do something with no thought for the furture . The later generation would be in danger.

如果我们不为将来考虑，后代就会受到威胁。

10.Our earths days are numbered without urgent help.

没有及时的帮助我们的地球就屈指可数了。

11(Sth.)are bound to generate severe consequences if we keep turning a blink eye to them.

如果我们继续睁一只眼闭一只眼的话，……一定会有恶劣的后果。

This dog is my uncle gave me.

A pair of pointed little ears, sparkling little eyes, black and white body, round small tail, composed of a lovely puppy - handsome. Often stroll it, the other passers-by likens it into a cat. Because it is too small, too thin, and sometimes I want it to grow up, but uncle said: "It is a small dog, not too big.

It is time to eat, really picky. Only eat beef and chicken, dog food sometimes do not even look at a look. When sleeping is really different. Because it has an indispensable item before going to bed, thats what Im throwing plush toys. 1,2,3,4 ... ... 15, it still refused to stop, I continue to play with it until more than 20, it was rest. getting ready to sleep. And sleep is very strange time, often I liken it as a cat: because the cat is always a pattern of sleep, handsome is the case.

That sharp call, often makes me feel the buzzing ears. Sometimes the guest came in, it will be called, how to say it can not stop, it may be the dogs nature it! But its call, it is not the same ah! Really do not understand. It also has a poor side. I remember once: my mother and I went out to buy something, handsome with that eyes looked at me, I thought: it is too poor, why can not take him?

Handsome hands out to play, may be vigorously. Sometimes bite the tail to the tail, and sometimes happy to jump high, and sometimes ... ... really excited do not know how the good! To the downstairs quickly run up, two small ears vertical, hair with the wind fluttering. It can be run when the strange, and other dogs are running, and it is dancing run, run a few steps to look back at us, and then continue to run up. You have to meet, and must laugh!

This is my little pet - handsome, I really like it!

COOD HEALTH良好的健康

We all wish (hope) to be happy, so we should take good care of our health.

Health is the best treasure (which) a man can possess. Money can do many things, but it cannot buy happiness. However, so long as man has good health, he can enjoy the pleasures of human life.

In order to insure good health we must pay attention to three things. They are-nourishing food, fresh air and proper exercise.

我们大家都希望快乐，所以我们应该好好保重健康。一个病人因为失去健康而很少快乐。

健康是一个人所能拥有最好的财富。钱能做许多事情，但是它却不能购买。然而，只要一个人有良好的健康，他就能享受人生的乐趣。

为了保证良好的健康，我们必须注意三件事情。它们是营养食物，新鲜空气和正当运动。

[初中英语日记.良好的健康

Christmas as a grand festival of the west, in addition to the Christmas

tree, also cannot little taste delicious food. Before Christmas Turkey dinner is

a case card main course, people might do in a microwave oven, the holidays a lot

of people now is in outside restaurant to have dinner, merchants can also use

the opportunity to make money out of customers, of course, there are many

Christmas food, ginger bread, candy, and so on.

In addition, people also give gifts to each other, this is the childrens

favorite, often can get lots of presents.

Recently, I saw an interested video that was shot by a young foreigner. He

played two roles-a Chinese mother and an American mother. He imitated the

reaction about how the mothers treated their children in education. It was so

obvious that Chinese mothers took care of their children all the time and they

would do all the things for them. While the American mothers focused on the

childrens independence. They would ask the kids to do housework and when they

grew up, they asked the kids to move out. Both parents showed different ways to

love their children and their love was equal, for every mother is a great

heroine.

First I often listen to music ,then I take a showerahd have a breakfast,then I do my homework and have dinner.After I can taking a nap on 2 oclock.At 4 oclock ,I can play the computer and football.Last I have lunch and sleep.

On New Years Eve,all the family people get together to have a big dinner in the resturant.It make our family people get toghther.We enjoy ourselves and in the new year we all strive hard.

首先我经常听音乐，我先洗澡然后去吃早饭，后来我做作业吃午饭，之后我可以在2-4点睡一小会，我可以玩电脑踢足球，最后我吃晚饭睡觉。

在除夕夜的时候，我的家人坐在一起在饭店吃团圆饭。这是我的家人团聚。我们很享受并且在新年我们都将你努力奋斗。

材料作文，是根据所给材料和要求来完成写作的一种作文形式。与其他类型的作文题相比，材料作文在审题、构思、立意等方面均有一定难度，加强材料作文的审题、立意训练，对同学们应对中考作文，无疑是有帮助的。 根据材料呈现中心内容的深浅，我们将其分为明确、隐晦、多元三种类别。下面我们结合2008年部分地区中考材料作文题，对明确、隐晦、多元三类作文材料审题立意方法分别进行讲解。

1.因果推断法。材料作文，从呈现形式上看，一般由材料（故事、情景设置或图画等）和写作要求两个部分组成。有的材料作文题，材料的主旨和要求是很明确的。请看2008年浙江绍兴中考作文题： 仔细阅读下面文字，完成作文。 情景：小文远离父母在外地读中学，汶川特大地震发生后，他想把由父母替他储蓄的500元压岁钱捐给灾区。小文知道自己的家境并不富裕，但他觉得必须说服父母取出这笔钱，献出他的爱心。 尝试：请你以小文的身份，给父母写一封信，表达这种心愿。 这道作文题的材料是预设的生活场景：小文欲将父母替自己储蓄的500元压岁钱捐给灾区。文题要求以小文的身份写信给他的父母，说服家境并不富裕的父母将此钱捐出。虽然上面这道作文题题意和要求很明确，但是如何准确立意，还是值得思考的。在这里，我们可采用“因果推断法”，即由材料的结果找出原因，最终得出材料的中心。写信的结果是要说服父母将钱捐出，用什么理由（原因）说服父母，让他们心动呢？这很关键。因为涉及到文章的立意问题。有同学从灾难的严重，到灾民的无助；从抗震的艰辛，到救灾的感人等；结合自己家境的实际情况，从现状分析入手，陈述自己作出此举的理由，其立意显然胜人一筹。

2.提炼话题法。材料作文的材料，有的主旨是很鲜明的，有的则比较隐晦，这类隐晦的材料作文审题立意比较费力。下面我们来看2008年安徽芜湖中考作文题： 阅读下面的诗句，按照要求作文。 我不去想是否能够成功/既然选择了远方/便只顾风雨兼程/我不去想未来是平坦还是泥泞/只要热爱生命/一切，都在意料之中 要求：请你结合诗句的内容，选取自己感受最深的一点，自拟题目，写一篇不少于500字的文章。你可以抒发感情，可以发表看法，也可以讲述故事；文中不要出现真实的地名、校名、人名。 这个题目中的材料选自现代著名诗人汪国真的《热爱生命》，给同学们以美的享受，但诗的主旨比较隐晦，为审题设置了一定的障碍。写作的前提是你要读懂材料，然后根据要求，选择其中感受最深的一点立意构思。通过阅读，我们可概括出这首诗的内涵：人生要有目标，虽然路上注定有坎坷和荆棘，但只要坚持，只要努力奋斗，风雨过后必能见到彩虹。对此，我们可提炼出“目标”“理想”“坚持”等话题，写自己在学习、生活中遭遇困难以及自己如何定下目标，坚定不移地走下去，最终取得成功的故事；也可结合生活中典型人物的事例，发表“不经风雨，怎见彩虹”的感想；等等。

3.择一而作法。有的材料作文的材料内涵很丰富，其作文立意可以是多元的，我们可从中多角度提炼观点。请看2008年湖北黄冈中考作文题之一的作文材料： 薛谭跟秦青学唱歌，还没有把秦青的技艺学完，就自以为都学到手了，便向老师告辞回家。秦青也没有阻拦他，在城外的大道旁给他饯行。这时候秦青抚摩着拍板，慷慨激昂地高唱起来，声音振动了林间的树木，反激出的回声挡住了天上的行云。 薛谭便急忙向老师道歉，要求回去继续学习，从此以后，他一辈子再也不敢说回家的话。 材料是在讲述“薛谭学讴”的故事，其内涵丰富，角度多元。我们在阅读的过程中，要对材料认真分析，找准材料揭示寓义的角度，审出材料的写作指向，从而确定写作主题。我们可采用“择一而作”法，从材料的不同角度切入，选择最适合自己的一个角度来构思立意。如可从薛谭的角度构思，提炼出“持之以恒”“知错能改”等主题；可从秦青的角度构思，提炼出“言传不如身教”“因材施教”等主题。 总之，写材料作文，应注意以下几个方面：首先要读懂材料。因为材料作文的“材料”是命题的载体，读懂材料，才能为写作打好基础。其次，要明确要求。材料作文的写作要求是写作的限制性条件，这些要求包括文体要求、篇幅要求、拟题要求等。只有明确了这些要求，写作时才不会开“无轨电车”。第三，要写出新意，也就是要在“新”字上入手，可在角度的选择、文章的立意、表现方法的运用、篇章的布局上下工夫。

请你根据下面的提纲，以 我的家乡为题，写一篇100-字的短文。 提纲： (1) 家乡的地理位置； (2) 解放前的情况； (3) 解放后的变化； (4) 对家乡的感情。

满分作文： My Home Town My home town is a beautiful pla

请你根据下面的提纲，以我的家乡为题，写一篇100-字的短文。

提纲：

(1) 家乡的地理位置；

(2) 解放前的情况；

(3) 解放后的变化；

(4) 对家乡的感情。

满分作文：

My Home Town

My home town is a beautiful place. It stands beside a wide river and is rich in fish and rice.

But in the old days it was a poor and backward little town. Many people had no work. They lived a hard life.

In 1949 my hometown was liberated. Since then great changes have taken place there. The streets have been widened. Factories， schools， hospitals， cinemas and theatres have sprung up one after another. The life of the people is greatly improved.

I love my hometown. All the more I love its people. They are working hard so as to make it still richer and more beautiful.

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

Once, I talked to the foreign people, he was staring at me all the time,

which made me feel not comfortable, so I chose to avoid his eyes and kept a

little distance from him. When I talked about this problem to my foreign

teacher, she told me that it was natural for them to look at you during

communication, which meant respect. While in China, people do the opposite

thing. They try to avoid eye-contact, because it is not eased to look at each

other. The different culture sometimes creates distance. The foreigners always

feel strange when they look at Chinese people’s eyes and every time when they

want to come closer to hear more clearly, Chinese people will walk away. So the

more we learn about the culture, the more we know about the world.

Jay Zhou is a famous pop singer.  He is famous for Fine day,Class Two Grade Three, Quiet, Shanghai 1943 and so on.His music is mainly R & B and Hip-pop. His songs are full of vigor. You can＇t help moving your body when you hear them.As his music fan, I know he likes antiques very much. Do you know his full name? Yes, it＇s Zhoujie Lun.

Shopping online is quite popular in our daily life now. It is a new way of shopping. Many things are offered and wait for your choosing. Convenience is the most important advantage. You can buy anything as you like. You don’t have to queue with other shoppers. Meanwhile, it is often open for 24 hours a day.

However, there are many disadvantages about shopping online. You can’t actually see the real products. So you may be cheated easily. Also, many people will miss the best opportunity to get along well with their friends and share the joy of shopping.

In conclusion, we should make proper use of the internet shopping.

译文

网上购物在我们的日常生活中很受欢迎。这是一种新的购物方式。很多东西都提供了，等待你的选择。方便是最重要的优点。你可以随意买任何东西。你不必和其他购物者排队。同时，它通常每天开放24小时。

然而，网上购物有许多缺点。你真的看不到真正的产品。所以你可能很容易受骗。同时，许多人会错过与朋友相处的好机会，分享购物的乐趣。

总之，我们应该好好利用网络购物。

Not long before, my sister called me, she said she would be married during Spring Festival, I was so happy for her. In the wedding, I took the video, I recorded down the beautiful moment.

In my heart, my sister was just like the small girl, we played jokes on each other, I thought about our childhood time. How time flies, now she was married, she would be a mother soon.

I felt so moved, watching her growing up, I was happy for her, too. She has stepped into the new chapter of her life. I wish her all the best, I believe she will be happy forever, I am so lucky to witness her great moment.

不久之前，我的姐姐打电话给我，她说她将要在春节期间结婚了，我为她感到高兴。在婚礼上，我录影，记录下了美丽的瞬间。在我的心里，我的姐姐就犹如一个女孩，我们彼此开玩笑，我想起了我们的孩童时光。时间过得真快啊，如今她已经结婚了，她也将要成为一名母亲。我很感动，看着她长大，我也为她高兴。如今她已经进入了人生的新篇章。我给予她最美好的祝福，我相信她会一直幸福，我很幸运目睹了她的重大时刻。

[初中英语作文：我姐姐的婚礼

I did very bad in the mid-term exams two weeks ago. After that, my life

seemed to be so dark and hard. My parents felt disappointed to me, and they

always told me to study during my free time. I couldnt watch TV for more than

half an hour and I couldnt search the Internet or play games. Besides, I feel

depressed and I almost lost my heart. But yesterday, my friend came to see me.

She knew I was not happy. She encouaged me that nothing is impossible. If I

could try hard from now on, I would do good in my study. Where there is a will,

there is a way. Only confidence and hardwork can pull me out from failure. If I

want to be good as before, I have to let this failure go and restart again.

I remember in the fifth grade, in a winter vacation, because my outstanding achievements, my father in order to reward me, gave me a fluffy puppy.

The puppy is clean, but the temper has some strange, always have a person around it all the time to accompany it to play, take care of it.

Once again, because of the festivals, we would like to go out shopping, when we happily with a photo back, I saw the neighbors whispered to me, said: "You are really, put a puppy on "Oh, Im sorry, noisy to you, please forgive me." The gas disappeared. I just breathed a sigh of relief, entered the house, the dog will be like a gust of wind generally rushed over to me, but also kept licking my hand. "I do not appreciate it! I point it with his head and said:" You bad things that harm us scolded. "At that time it seems to understand my words, suddenly behaved like a small sheep, like a few times from time to time, as if to say:" I just want you to accompany me! See it look like that, I suddenly Played an unnamed compassion, then in the heart to forgive it.

If it is not hygienic, it is true that is right, do not know how the matter, this dog is very nasty bath, but it is smart puppy, so in the bath, it will be the first match, And then secretly put the claws out of the basin, and then people do not pay attention when the "wind" of the sound will be able to escape the lightning in its view is desperate brazier small tub.

This puppy is also very much like to play, if you have shopping, then do not take it out, because if you take it out, I am afraid it is not going to go home at night, because it just can not stop playing, unless Until it is hungry or dark, otherwise you do not want to go home.

How about it, this is my family that a strange quirky puppy.