商务英语写作常用句型(实用20篇)

四六级考场上分秒必争，气氛紧张，若能提前准备好一些常用句型，一方面能节省一些语言组织及思考的时间，缓解紧张心情。下面是小编收集整理的历年英语四级写作常用句型总结，希望对您有所帮助！

一、开头

1. Recently the phenomenon has become a heated topic.

2. Recently the problem has been brought into focus.

3. Nowadays there is a growing concern over ... .

4. What calls for special attention is that...

5. There’s no denying the fact that...

6. what’s far more important is that...

7. It is common knowledge that honesty is the best policy.

8. It is well-known that…

9. Many nations have been faced with the problem of ...

10. According to a recent survey, ...

11. With the rapid development of ..., ...

二、结尾

1. From what has been discussed above, we can draw the conclusion that ...

2. In conclusion, it is imperative that ...

3.In summary, if we continue to ignore the above-mentioned issue, more problems will crop up.

4.With the efforts of all parts concerned, the problem will be solved thoroughly.

5.Taking all these into account, we ...

6. Whether it is good or not /positive or negative, one thing is certain/clear...

7.All things considered, ...

8.It may be safely said that...

9.Therefore, in my opinion, it’s more advisable...

10. It can be concluded from the discussion that...

11. From my point of view, it would be better if...

三、表比较

1. The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

2. The advantages of A are much greater than those of B.

3. A may be preferable to B, but A suffers from the disadvantages that...

5. For all the disadvantages, it has its compensating advantages.

6. Like anything else, it has its faults.

7. A and B has several points in common.

8. However, the same is not applicable to B.

9. A and B differ in several ways.

10. Evidently, it has both negative and positive effects.

四、表原因

1. A number of factors are accountable for this situation.

A number of factors might contribute to (lead to )(account for ) the phenomenon(problem).

2. The answer to this problem involves many factors.

3. The phenomenon mainly stems from the fact that...

4. The factors that contribute to this situation include...

5. The change in ...largely results from the fact that...

6. Part of the explanations for it is that ...

7. One of the most common factors (causes ) is that ...

8. Another contributing factor (cause ) is ...

9. Perhaps the primary factor is that ...

10. But the fundamental cause is that ...

五、表结果

1. It may give rise to a host of problems.

2. The immediate result it produces is ...

3. It will exercise a profound influence upon...

4. Its consequence can be so great that...

六、表反驳

1. It is true that ..., but one vital point is being left out.

2. There is a grain of truth in these statements, but they ignore a more important fact.

3. Many of us have been under the illusion that...

4. It makes no sense to argue for ...

5. Such a statement mainly rests on the assumption that ...

6. Contrary to what is widely accepted, I maintain that ...

七、表证明

1. No one can deny the fact that ...

2. The idea is hardly supported by facts.

3. Unfortunately, none of the available data shows ...

4. Recent studies indicate that ...

5. There is sufficient evidence to show that ...

6. According to statistics proved by ..., it can be seen that ...

[四级考试作文常用句型

现在是各大学校放寒假的时间，年后要参加中考的同学们要注意了，趁着假期要好好恶补一下英语哦，下面是小编收集整理的中考英语作文写作指导，希望对您有所帮助。

最近几年的中考英语当中，很多省市已经摆脱了单一作文模式，采用一大一小两个作文相结合的模式。例如，去年辽宁沈阳中考英语作文就是一个小作文，应用文-写假条，加上一个大作文，汉语提示作文构成。今年，北京中考英语作文也将是两个，一个看图作文在加上一个提示作文构成。这一讲，我们先来学习一下看图作文的写法。

看图作文要求考生按照所给图画，通过合理的联想将一组画面的内容正确地表达出来。看图作文与其他类型作文的不同之处在于，它除了要求考生有英语语言表达能力，还要求考生有观察能力、分析能力和想象能力。

写好看图作文应注意的事项1、结合文字提示，正确理解图意。一般情况下，看图作文在提供图画的同时也附带有简要的文字提示，我们可以利用文字提示去正确地理解图意，得到要点。切忌孤立地看图而忽视文字提示。

写作从图画的细节出发。所谓细节，就是指图画中的人物、事件、地点、环境、时间、动作等。依据图画细节，就可以把图画的内容用英语具体而生动地表达出来了。

例题分析(例题)

同学们，看到下面的四幅图片及相应的报道后，你感到最担忧的是哪两种情形?请简述你担忧的理由并提出建议或希望。

要求：

⒈ 从所给素材中任选两种情形进行阐述，不可多选或少选。

⒉ 条理清楚，意思连贯，语句通顺，标点正确;

⒊ 词数 80 ～ 100。

参考词汇： 建议 suggest v. suggestion n.

气体 gas n. 污染 pollution n.

THE POLLUTIONS

① One third of the worlds people dont have enough clean water.

② More and more diseases are caused by polluted air.

③ People are disturbed quite often by kinds of noises.

④ Every person in our city makes about 1.8 kilos of rubbish every day.

这道看图作文题，主题和图片连接得不是很紧密。从考查的形式上来说，虽是看图，实质上却属于提示性的作文。这个作文应该结合个人的观点，选择的余地还是很大的。做这个题应该注意几个方面：

1、认真读题。注意，题目虽然给了四幅图，但是却只要求写其中的两个就行。

2、题意要求的是阐述个人的观点-最担忧的两种情形。而不是对图片进行描述。

3、结合所给的提示。提示中，对每种污染都进行了阐述，考生可以这些描述进行写作。

4、注意字数，语法，拼写等，避免错误。

下面是两个例文，大家可以参考一下。

One possible version:

The environment is becoming worse and worse. There are many kinds of pollution I worry about. The most serious two are water pollution and air pollution, because people cant live healthily with dirty water and polluted air, nor can animals. More and more diseases are caused by polluted air.

I think factories should not pour dirty water into the river directly or produce more waste gas. Wed better go on foot or by like instead of by car, because more cars mean more waste gas. We should make our world more and more beautiful.

Another possible version:

The first fact I worry about is noise pollution. People cant sleep well if there is too much noise. Thats why so many people prefer to live in the countryside rather than live in the noisy city. I suggest all the factories and cars shouldnt make terrible noises. If they make terrible noise that isnt allowed, they will be fined, and we can also produce the cars which cant make terrible noise.

The other pollution is rubbish pollution. If everyone makes so much rubbish, one day we may live in a world filled with rubbish. Some people throw the waste paper about. I suggest rubbish should be put into different kinds of dustbins or paper bags.

下面，我们来看看这道题的评分标准。一般来说，各地的评分标准都和下面的这个标准差不多。这个最高的标准，实际上也就是我们写作的目标。

评分标准：

1. 内容完整，语句流畅，无语法错误，书写规范，给9-10分;

2. 内容较完整，语句较流畅，基本无语法错误，书写较规范，给6-8分;

3. 内容不完整，语句欠流畅，语法错误较多，书写较规范，给3-5分;

4. 只写出个别要点，语法错误较多，书写欠规范，只有个别句子可读或不知所云，给0-2分。

看图作文不可小视。希望大家掌握答好这种题型的要点，并积累词汇。

写作是考研英语的第二大重头戏，仅次于阅读。但是这部分又经常被考生忽略，考前不动手，依赖临考模板，很难写出高分作文。那么，如何准备2018考研英语写作呢?一起来看下。

对于考研英语写作，最基本的要求是考前必须动笔写出35篇文章，其中十篇应用文，二十五篇图画作文。注意：动笔写的文章最好是有范文的题目。写作应分为五步：

NO.1 写作

写作写作，第一步首先是写!一定要动手写，你看多少，背多少，都没有动手写来得实在，建议同学们拿考题多加练习。

NO.2 仔细对比

第二个就是仔细对比，写完后对照范文从三个方面去研究：第一个是内容，也就是构思和原文有何区别;第二个是语言，也就是用词、用句和原文有何区别?第三个是结构，就是你的行文思路和原文有什么区别?这是第二个步骤，写作的区别其实就是写作的弱点。

NO.3 背诵

第三步骤就是背诵：也就是可以去背诵一些范文。有的同学说了，范文我背过了，但是写作的时候还是不会写。有两个原因，第一个原因是你背得不熟，背得结结巴巴，还不如不背;第二个原因是没有练过，只是死记硬背。

所以为什么背了还不会用，有两个原因，第一背不熟，第二没有练过。背到什么程度，有12个字“滚瓜烂熟、脱口而出、多多益善。”要背到不需要去想，不需要去动脑子!如果背一篇文章还需要去想，那就证明还背得不熟。大家上考场，如果能想起平时的70%，那已经是相当不错了。所以一定要背熟，这就是第三个步骤。

NO.4 默写

第四个步骤就是默写：背熟后把书合上，把这篇文章默写下来。默写后，做一个工作：仔细对比原文发现写作弱点，你会发现你默写的文章和原文会有一些出入，包括拼写、语法、标点等，这种错误就是你写作的弱点，最好能够把这些错误用红笔标出来。大家为什么写作拿不到高分，根源只有一个——错误太多。很多错误自己都不知道。

NO.5 仿写

第五个步骤就是仿写：什么叫仿写?就是模仿你背过的文章再写出一篇新文章。在背完一篇文章后，要想想这篇文章有什么精彩的词组、词汇和句型可以使用。然后换一个话题，把这篇作文用一下，用里面词汇、词组和句型去构思另一篇文章。

写作的注意点和技巧：写作首要的是，一、不跑题;二、字数达到要求;三、字迹整洁工整;四、少有语病。

这些是很基本的要求，考试的时候就要好好落实。比如，拿到作文题目后要审题。在写的过程中注意字数的限制，不要写太多，会扣分的，字数不够也会扣分。所以实在不行就写完一段话，停下来数一数字数。字迹工整可能短期内提高不了。只要你比平时稍慢一点写字母，就会写得比较整洁。要知道老师的印象分是很重要的。病句的避免技巧就是，凡是你想的过程中感觉别扭的句子，多半就是病句。干脆不要写出来，换一种形式去表达。不要追求好词，要追求准确性。

在考前，小作文的提高是非常快的。方法就是分析小作文的类型。应用文写作部分(小作文)考查内容包括投诉信、咨询信、道歉信、求职信等信函类应用文，而且涵盖报告、通知、海报等告示类应用文。不同类型的作文，要自己总结模版。小作文是完全可以准备模版的，其作用也是常明显。一定要注意：总结出自己的模板。

教案(Teaching Plan)是教师施教的课时计划或方案,是帮助教师有效地进行素质教育教学的依据.教案可以帮助教师有计划、有步骤地进行素质教育教学,充分利用课堂教学时间,高质量地完成教学任务.教案写得如何将直接影响教学效果的好坏.因此,在日常教学中,广大教师都非常注重写教案.那么写教案时应写什么呢?

一、写课题(Topic)和课型(Lesson Type)

课题相当于文章的标题,讲课时要首先告诉学生,并写在黑板上.因此要写得准确.课型是指该节课的讲授类型.初中英语的主要课型有:新授课(New lesson)、巩固课(Reinforcement Lesson)、复习课(Revision Lesson)、语音课(Phonetic Lesson)、听力课(Listening Lesson)、听说课(Aural-Oral Lesson)、阅读课(Reading Lesson)、语法课(Grammar Lesson)等.不同的课型应用不同的授课方式或方法,只有确定了课型,才能选择有效的素质教育教学方法.

二、写素质教育教学目标(Teaching Objective)

素质教育教学目标是教案的核心内容,是教师施教的准绳.教学目标要符合大纲对教材的要求.由于教学目标要在课堂上展示给学生,让学生明确,所以写素质教育目标时,要力求简明扼要,浅显易懂,便于操作和检测,一般3~4个目标为宜.

三、写素质教育教学的重点(Main Points)、难点(Difficult Points)和关键点(Key Points) 素质教育重点是课堂教学的主要任务;教学难点是师生顺利完成教学任务的障碍;素质教学关键是攻克教学难点的突破口.在教案中写清一节课的教学重点、难点和关键点,能提醒教师在讲课时注意突出重点、突破难点、抓住关键.

四、写教具(Teaching Tools)

课堂上需要什么教具要写清楚,如录音机、教材录音带、教学挂图、卡片、实物(或模型)、小黑板、刻印好的练习题、彩色粉笔、幻灯片等.

五、写素质教育教学过程(Teaching Procedure)

素质教育教学过程是教案的主要部分.写教学过程主要写以下几方面的内容:

1. 写教学环节.教学环节即教学任务是什么要写清楚,做到心中有数.目前有些教师采用"三阶段六环节"教学模式,即:准备阶段(自由交流、复习检查)、讲练阶段(导入课程、分层操练)和发展阶段(巩固发展、布置作业).

2. 写知识点和所用时间.写好知识点,教师使用教案时能一目了然,有的放矢.写好所用时间,能使教师从容掌握教学速度,合理安排每个教学环节所需的时间,充分利用课堂时间.

3. 写教师活动.不仅要写教师"教什么",还要写出教师"怎样教",即写清楚教师要教的内容,写出讲授这些内容的方法.写出课堂用语和各环节的过渡语.课堂用语要求简练、口语化,用学生已经学过的熟悉的、听得懂的英语来解释或表达新的教学内容.各环节之间的过渡语要自然流畅.写出使用教具的时机和方法,写板书内容等.

4. 写学生活动.写出学生学习的内容和学习方法,特别是怎样学应写清楚.不能简单地把学生活动写成听、读、思考、操练、做题等.

六、写课堂训练题(Exercises)

备课时精心设计的有针对性的随堂练习题和达标题要写在教案中.写清出示这些题的办法,如用小黑板、看刻印材料或学生已有材料等.写出这些题的答案和解题方法.

七、写课堂小结(Summing-up on Teaching)

课堂小结是教师帮助学生回顾和总结本节课的学习内容的重要环节.小结的方式和方法要在教案中写清楚,不论是教师引导学生总结,还是由教师归纳总结,都要注意把本节课的内容纳入知识系统之中,使学生在整体上把握知识.

八、写板书设计(Blackboard Designs)

板书是有声有色的教学语言,它具有直观性、形象性和启发性.因此,教师在课堂上要有计划

地使用黑板,板书什么内容、写在什么位置、用什么颜色的粉笔等要在备课时设计好,并写在教案中.避免课堂上东写一个句子、西写一个短语、一会儿写、一会儿擦、一会儿擦了又写的板书混乱现象.好的板书能使讲课的内容系统化、结构化,有利于学生复习本节课的知识. 写教案时要考虑的问题

1、如何开始备课

在教师着手备课之前，必须吃透课程标准（大纲）及教材，在此基础上，考虑学生的认知规律和实际的语言能力，以确定课题和教学目的，明确教学目标。从教学目标出发，确定重点和难点，考虑用哪些教学法来组织课堂。然后精心挑选、设计练习，确定要做、改、删、增的练习，列授课计划提纲，再逐步仔细预测各种教学技巧和教学手段的应用，特别是涉及可能修改计划、增删内容的教学步骤。

2. 思考几个问题

（1）教学技巧上，是否有足够的变化可以使课堂教学生动有趣？成功的外语课上总有不同的活动，使学生思维活跃，情绪高涨。

（2）不同教学技巧的应用和教学的组织有没有得到有序的、合乎逻辑的安排？理想化的课堂教学须朝着教学目标由易及难、循序渐进。建立在新知识之上的教学活动必须精心安排。

（3）整堂课的节奏设计得好吗？节奏的含义，可以有以下三个方面：第一，活动不能太短，也不能太长。如果课堂活动多而短，那么学生刚刚找到某活动的“感觉”，又得“跳到”下一个活动去了。这样不好。第二，教师应考虑如何把各种教学技巧、教学手段和教学组织形式揉合在一起。例如，一堂课上连续搞全班俩俩全班小组俩俩全班……的活动，每个活动五分钟，那么，这些活动是难以发挥其应有作用的。第三，控制好节奏也有利于各个教学活动之间的衔接。例如：

（4）整节课的时间有没有安排好？这是备课最难控制的因素之一。新教师往往容易提早授完所备内容，而后又易矫枉过正，不能完成课时计划。这里有两点值得提醒。预先准备一些“备用”的复习活动。如果提早授完已准备的内容，则进行复习巩固练习。

3. 学生的个体差异

随着教学过程的重心由教师向学生转变，学生的主体作用日益突出。课堂教学必须充分考虑学生的个体差异。我们主张，备课一般应以中等程度的学生为准，但也应适当照顾两头的学生。可以考虑以下五个方面：（1）教学内容适当包含一些较难或较易的项目，（2）针对不同水平的学生问不同难度的问题，（3）设计的教学活动尽可能让全体同学都参与。

4. 学生谈话与教师谈话

备课时要充分考虑教师与学生的谈话时间。一般的英语课上，总是教师说得多， 学生说得少。要注意让学生有较多的机会进行交际。

导语：好的句子正确运用能给作文带来意想不到的效果，下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的英语作文，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

1. According to a recent survey， four million people die each year from diseases linked to smoking.依照最近的一项调查，每年有4，000，000人死于与吸烟有关的疾病。

2. The latest surveys show that quite a few children have unpleasant associations with homework.最近的调查显示相当多的孩子对家庭作业没什么好感。

3. No invention has received more praise and abuse than Internet.没有一项发明像互联网一样同时受到如此多的赞扬和批评。

4. People seem to fail to take into account the fact that education does not end with graduation.人们似乎忽视了教育不应该随着毕业而结束这一事实。

5. An increasing number of people are beginning to realize that education is not complete with graduation.越来越多的人开始意识到教育不能随着毕业而结束。

6. When it comes to education， the majority of people believe that education is a lifetime study.说到教育，大部分人认为其是一个终生的学习。

7. Many experts point out that physical exercise contributes directly to a persons physical fitness.许多专家指出体育锻炼直接有助于身体健康。

8. Proper measures must be taken to limit the number of foreign tourists and the great efforts should be made to protect local environment and history from the harmful effects of international tourism.应该采取适当的措施限制外国旅游者的数量，努力保护当地环境和历史不受国际旅游业的不利影响。

9. An increasing number of experts believe that migrants will exert positive effects on construction of city. However， this opinion is now being questioned by more and more city residents， who complain that the migrants have brought many serious problems like crime and prostitution.越来越多的专家相信移民对城市的建设起到积极作用然而，越来越多的城市居民却怀疑这种说法，他们抱怨民工给城市带来了许多严重的问题，像犯罪和卖淫。

10. Many city residents complain that it is so few buses in their city that they have to spend much more time waiting for a bus， which is usually crowded with a large number of passengers.许多市民抱怨城市的公交车太少，以至于他们要花很长时间等一辆公交车，而车上可能已满载乘客。

11. There is no denying the fact that air pollution is an extremely serious problem： the city authorities should take strong measures to deal with it.无可否认，空气污染是一个极其严重的问题：城市当局应该采取有力措施来解决它

12. An investigation shows that female workers tend to have a favorable attitude toward retirement.一项调查显示妇女欢迎退休。

13. A proper part-time job does not occupy students too much time. In fact， it is unhealthy for them to spend all of time on their study. As an old saying goes： All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.一份适当的业余工作并不会占用学生太多的时间，事实上，把全部的时间都用到学习上并不健康，正如那句老话：只工作，不玩耍，聪明的孩子会变傻。

14. Any government， which is blind to this point， may pay a heavy price.任何政府忽视这一点都将付出巨大的代价。

15.Nowadays， many students always go into raptures at the mere mention of the coming life of high school or college they will begin. Unfortunately， for most young people， it is not pleasant experience on their first day on campus.当前，一提到即将开始的学校生活，许多学生都会兴高采烈。然而，对多数年轻人来说，校园刚开始的日子并不是什么愉快的经历。

以下是由语文迷网精心为大家整理提供的关于教育的英语名言，欢迎大家参考选择。

Education has for its object the formation of character.

教育的目的在于品德的培育。——斯宾塞

He can ill be master that never was scholar.

没当过学生的人成不了一个好先生。

Teaching others teaches youself.

教学相长。

Better untaught than ill taught.

宁可不受教育也强于受坏的教育。

Instruction knows no cladistinction.

有教无类——《论语》

The best bred have the best portion.

最好的教养是最好的嫁妆。

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

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

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

与其不受教育，不知不生，因为无知是不幸的根源。(古希腊哲学家 柏拉图)

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

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

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

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

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

教育是一个逐步发现自己无知的过程。(美国历史学家 杜兰特)

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

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

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

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

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

身教胜于言教。(英国作家、批评家 约翰逊 S)

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

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

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

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

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

(Francis Bacon , British philosopher )

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

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

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

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

勤于学习的人才能乐意施教。(英国诗人 乔叟)

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

与其不受教育，不知不生，因为无知是不幸的根源。(古希腊哲学家 柏拉图)

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

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

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

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

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

教育是一个逐步发现自己无知的过程。(美国历史学家 杜兰特)

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

一个受过教育的人，不懂外语是极不方便的。(俄国剧作家 契克夫 A P)

英语写作当中经常会用到“……很重要”这一句式，一般考生会用something be important/essential的词汇表达。不过学了比较状语从句以后，大家可以试着用一种更高级的表达方式，一定会让阅卷老师眼前一亮，作文高分就不在话下啦。

箴言仿写：Cultivation is to the mind what food is to the body.

——M·T·Cicero

上述句子可以概括为A is to B what C is to D.替换ABCD四个名词就可以用来表达“重要性”这一概念。

【例句】

★ 人生态度——乐观与悲观

A positive attitude is to life what the sun is to the earth.积极的态度对于生活，好比太阳对于地球一样。

★ 谈读书

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.阅读对于思想，好比运动对于身体一样。

★ 赡养父母——家庭

Family is to the people what life is to the individual.家庭对于人类，好比生活对于个人一样。

★ 投诉信

Cleanness is to the canteen what reputation is to the people.清洁对于食堂来说，好比名誉对于人一样。

★ 谈诚信

Honesty is to the people what life is to the creature.诚信对于人来说，好比生命对于人一样。

比较状语(倍数表达法)：

A+ be+倍数+as many/much as+ B

A+ be+倍数+the amount+ B

A+ be+倍数+what it was+ B

【例句】

★ 从1999年到2009年，奢侈品的销售增长了3倍。

①The sale of luxuries doubled from the end of 1999 to 2009.

②The sale of luxuries increased three times/three-fold from the end of 1999 to 2009.

③A three-fold increase was seen in the sale of luxuries from the end of 1999 to 2009.

④There was a three-fold increase in the sale of luxuries from the end of 1999 to 2009.

【写作练习】

定语从句与状语从句的写作方法指南：合并简单句!

1.通过指代关系合并简单句为定语从句

【例句】

★ 故事发生于19世纪末期。那个时候，中国正遭受西方列强的蹂躏。

A: The story happened in the late 19th century.

B: At that time, China was suffering from the invasion of western powers.

→合并为定语从句：The story happened in the late 19th century when China was suffering from the invasion of western powers.

2.通过逻辑关系合并简单句为状语从句

【例句】

★ 这个问题很复杂。我们花了近两周的时间才把它搞定。

A: The problem was very complicated.

B: It took us nearly two weeks to solve it.

→合并为结果状语从句The problem was so complicated that it took us nearly two weeks to solve it.

长难句虽然是考研[微博]复习中让很多考生都头疼的一部分，但可以说是无处不在的，不仅仅是阅读理解和翻译题中，需要我们去读懂并理解，更重要的是在作文题中，准确精彩地写出几个长难句，往往会让你的作文增色不少，也是你作文制胜的重要砝码，所以考研英语要想拿高分，千万不能忽视长难句哦。

1)时间：

when， not…until(直到…才…)， as soon as(一…就…)

2)目的：

so that + clause; (为了)

3)结果：

so…that…(如此…以至于…)， too…to do(太……以至于……)

4)条件：

if， unless(除非)， as long as(只要)

5)比较：

as…as…(与…一样)， not so…as…， than

(5)认真检查，检查信息点是否全面，时态、人称是否一致，句子结构是否清晰，短语使用、单词拼写是否准确等。

检查后，将草稿誊写在纸上，请注意按结构分段，书写清晰。

下面列举一些在检查中可发现的错误：

We livemore and more comfortable.

改正：comfortably(副词修饰动词)

2.we can getmany informations by reading newspapers.

改正：much information (不可数名词由much修饰)

3.There willhave a football game tomorrow.

改正：There will be a football game tomorrow.(Therebe句型的将来时结构)

4.I thinkride a bike can keep our health.

改正：I think riding a bike can keep us healthy.(动名词作主语)

掌握了以上的写作方法和技巧，建议同学们多练习或模仿不同题材的文章，正如一句格言“No pains，no gains.”所述，相信参加小升初的学子们只要能够坚持反复的写作磨练与付出就一定能在来年的择校考中写出一篇能够展示内心世界之美的英语作文。

1)做模版：拿几片范文，找几句比较拽的结构型句子，拼凑出一个你自己顺手的框架即可。不用到处找，也不用找很多，一个框架即可，当然，准备一些可以替换的词：比如recommendation替换conclusion.漂亮句子很多，但若水三千，我只掬一瓢饮。

2)找出主要的错误类型，每种写出一道两句经典的表述即可。

3)考时30分钟分三个阶段：一)12-15分钟，写出完整的第一段，三个征文段的topic sentence，和完整的末段。写第一段的同时就构思topicsentence,末段无非是重复结论和三句topic。这样的好处是结构已经完整了，你不用慌了。。二)13-10分钟，完成三段正文。我以前觉得这个很困难，后来想通了。无非是把这层意思说清楚就行。3句话就够了。也够长了。三)5分钟check.还一个作用时，是在前面没有完成，还有一个buffer,也不至于弹尽粮绝。

4)非常措施：考试万一时间不够，首段就抄原句;如果时间还不够，末段就cut-paste首段和topic 的文本，稍加修改即可。但是，结构是完整的。

5)ok作文法的精髓和适用范围：精髓：看上去很美。适用范围：不想得6分的人(因为想的6分的人追求的是实际上也很美。如果运气好，可以的5分，运气不好，可以的4分。

一、Nothing is + ~~~ er than to + V Nothing is + more +形容词+ than to + V

例句：Nothing is more important than to receive education. 没有比接受教育更重要的事。

二、~ the + ~ est +名词+(that)+主词+ have ever + seen(known/heard/had/read，etc)

~ the most +形容词+名词+(that)+主词+ have ever +seen(known/heard/had/read，etc)

例句：Helen is the most beautiful girl that I have ever seen. 海伦是我所看过最美丽的女孩。

Mr. Chang is the kindest teacher that I have ever had. 张老师是我曾经遇到最仁慈的教师。

三、~~~ cannot emphasize the importance of ~~~ too much.(再怎么强调……的重要性也不为过。)

例句：We cannot emphasize the importance of protecting our eyes too much.

我们再怎么强调保护眼睛的重要性也不为过。

四、It is universally acknowledged that +句子~~(全世界都知道……)

例句：It is universally acknowledged that trees are indispensable to us.

全世界都知道树木对我们是不可或缺的。

五、There is no denying that + S + V……(不可否认的……)

例句：There is no denying that the qualities of our living have gone from bad to worse.

不可否认的，我们的生活品质已经每况愈下。

六、There is no doubt that +句子~~(毫无疑问的……)

例句：There is no doubt that our educational system leaves something to be desired.

毫无疑问的我们的教育制度令人不满意。

七、An advantage of ~~~ is that +句子(……的优点是……)

例句：An advantage of using the solar energy is that it wont create(produce)any pollution.

使用太阳能的优点是它不会制造任何污染。

八、The reason why +句子~~~ is that +句子(……的原因是……)

例句：The reason why we have to grow trees is that they can provide us with fresh air.

The reason why we have to grow trees is that they can supply fresh air for us.

我们必须种树的原因是它们能供应我们新鲜的空气。

九、Adj + as + Subject(主词)+ be，S + V~~~(虽然……)

例句：Rich as our country is， the qualities of our living are by no means

satisfactory. {by no means = in no way = on no account一点也不}

虽然我们的国家富有，我们的生活品质绝对令人不满意。

十、So +形容词+ be +主词+ that +句子(如此……以致于……)

例句：So precious is time that we cant afford to waste it.时间是如此珍贵，我们经不起浪费它。

攻克英语写作：滴水穿石，积累成章

考研作文作为考查考生语言表达等综合能力的题型，是考研英语的压轴戏。考生在日常复习中应更趋向于积累。考研作文的复习和提高是与一些科学的学习方法和有效的学习技巧分不开的，在此，万学海文考研英语辅导专家提供大家一些练习方法及技巧，希望对同学们有所帮助。

考研作文分为大、小两类。小作文多以应用文体裁为主，例如求职信、感谢信、辞职信，道歉信等，这类作文不需要复杂华丽的文采修饰，表意明确就可以了；大作文的题型多是通过图片或者提示文字，要求考生完成提示所透视出来的问题。命题范围，从近几年看，都比较倾向于当前社会热门话题或观念。

一、欲速则不达，步步行进

想要达到一定的程度，首先要向这个程度看齐。就写作来说，如果你想将自己的作文水平提高到一个质的飞跃，首先你要懂得去吸取别人文章中的精华。这个吸取精华的过程就是阅读。只有多阅读，才能够培养起良好的语感，才会知道如何去构思，如何去质疑别人的观点，表达清楚自己的意思。正所谓"读书破万卷，下笔如有神"。无论何时，大家都勿急躁，因为"跑"得好的前提是"走"，

作文这种慢火候才能提高的题更是如此，一步一个脚印才是写作稳步提高的策略。

近些年写作考题的内容和主题，基本都与当年的热点话题有一定的关系，所以平时多阅读英语报纸、杂志，能够帮助你掌握更多的话题资源。对于比较热点、比较重要的主题，可以有目的地进行搜集整理。阅读的过程也应该讲究方法，应该以泛读与精读结合的方式进行学习。一些好的文章建议你读过以后做英文阅读笔记（即观后感）。在读与写的过程中，你的写作水平自然会得到快速提高。

二、在研读中背记

除了读与写，还要进行适当的背。背诵是积极备战快速提高写作成绩的一条捷径。建议考生可以选择历年真题中的写作佳文，先是研究，思考人家是怎么构思，怎么写的，获得高分的闪光点在哪。再在理解的基础上记忆，更能够在无形中增强你的表达能力。同学们也可以拿一些英语原著名篇来读、背，这样可以加强自己的语感，使自己的表达更加地道。

三、每周一练，积累成章

表达能力需要考生平时多一点练习，给自己制定一个写作计划。一周至少练习一篇文章。在加强写作练习之后，你的文章才能够 "成章"。因此，实际动手的能力至关重要。平时训练的重点应该锁定在文章是否切题，行文是否表意明确、通顺，有无语法错误等。另外，一定要给每一次行文限定一个可行的时间。并且，按照这个时间严格要求自己完成。

如果你能够找到范文，然后在练习之后进行比较，效果会更加明显。假使没有范文作为标样，建议你可以找英语水平较好的同学看一看。也许评看你作文的这个考生英语水平不是很高，但个人看别人文章的缺点很容易看出来。如果条件允许，找老师请教一下最好。

掌握好的方法加之持之以恒，相信最后的成功一定属于你，继续坚定的考研信念，自信满满的走下去。

作文一直是考生重点关注的部分，也是考试的重难点，考生可以抓紧时间背诵一些作文万能句型，考试的时候可以帮助自己提高作文水平，分享了四级考试英语作文的常用句型，一起来看看吧！

一.开头

1.Recently the phenomenon has become a heated topic.

2.Recently the problem has been brought into focus.

3. Nowadays there is a growing concern over ...  .

4. What calls for special attention is that...

5. There’s no denying the fact that...

6. what’s far more important is that...

7.It is common knowledge that honesty is the best policy.

8.It is well-known that…

9.Many nations have been faced with the problem of ...

10.According to a recent survey, ...

11. With the rapid development of ..., ...

二.结尾

1.From what has been discussed above, we can draw the conclusion that ...

2.In conclusion, it is imperative that ...

3.In summary, if we continue to ignore the above-mentioned issue, more problems will crop up.

4.With the efforts of all parts concerned, the problem will be solved thoroughly.

5.Taking all these into account, we ...

6. Whether it is good or not /positive or negative, one thing is certain/clear...

7.All things considered, ...

8.It may be safely said that...

9.Therefore, in my opinion, it’s more advisable...

10. It can be concluded from the discussion that...

11. From my point of view, it would be better if...

三.表比较

1.The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

2.The advantages of A are much greater than those of B.

3.A may be preferable to B, but A suffers from the disadvantages that...

5.For all the disadvantages, it has its compensating advantages.

6.Like anything else, it has its faults.

7.A and B has several points in common.

8.However, the same is not applicable to B.

9. A and B differ in several ways.

10. Evidently, it has both negative and positive effects.

四.表原因

1.A number of factors are accountable for this situation.

A number of factors might contribute to (lead to )(account for ) the phenomenon(problem).   2. The answer to this problem involves many factors.

3. The phenomenon mainly stems from the fact that...

4. The factors that contribute to this situation include...

5. The change in ...largely results from the fact that...

6. Part of the explanations for it is that ...

7. One of the most common factors (causes ) is that ...

8. Another contributing factor (cause ) is ...

9. Perhaps the primary factor is that ...

10. But the fundamental cause is that ...

五.表结果

1. It may give rise to a host of problems.

2. The immediate result it produces is ...

3. It will exercise a profound influence upon...

4. Its consequence can be so great that...

六.表反驳

1. It is true that ..., but one vital point is being left out.

2. There is a grain of truth in these statements, but they ignore a more important fact.

3. Many of us have been under the illusion that...

4. It makes no sense to argue for ...

5. Such a statement mainly rests on the assumption that ...

6. Contrary to what is widely accepted, I maintain that ...

七.表证明

1. No one can deny the fact that ...

2. The idea is hardly supported by facts.

3. Unfortunately, none of the available data shows ...

4. Recent studies indicate that ...

5. There is sufficient evidence to show that ...

6. According to statistics proved by ..., it can be seen that ...

[四级考试英语作文常用句型

（一）改写一般疑问句：

（1）原句中有be动词的，将be动词提前，其他顺序不变。

例如：Thisisacat.变为Isthisacat?

（2）原句中有情态动词的（can/may/shall/would）将情态动词提前，其他顺序不变。例如：Hewouldlikeapie.变为Wouldhelikeapie?

（3）原句中是一般动词的，在句首加助动词do或dose（用于主语是第三人称动词单数的句子），其他顺序不变。例如：Iplaytheguitar.变为Doyouplaytheguitar.

（4）原句中的some变any。

注：以情态动词开头的一般疑问句，并且要求对方做肯定回答的some不变。

（5）原句中的第一人称改为第二人称。例如:Iamanurse.变为Areyouanurse?

（6）以dose开头的一般疑问句，原来动词的第三人称单数形式要变回原形。例如：Hereadsastorybook.变为Dosehereadastorybook?

（二）改写否定句：

（1）原句中有be动词的，直接在be动词后面加not。例如：Itisadog.→It’snotadog./Itisn’tadog.

（2）原句中有情态动词的，直接在情态动词后加not。

例如：Iwouldlikeahotdog.→Iwouldnotlikeahotdog.

（3）原句中是一般动词的，在一般动词前加don’t或doesn’t（用于主语是第三人称单数的句子），doesn’t后面用原型。例如：Iseethreehamburgers.→Idon’tseethreehamburgers.

原句中的some变any例如：Ihavesomebreadan

dmilk.→Idon’thaveanybreadandmilk.

（4）以let开头的祈使句，如果是letus或letme,直接在其后加not；如果let后面其他人称代词宾格（you、him、her、them、it）就在let后面加助动词don’t。例如：Letusgotothepark.→Letusnotgotothepark.再如：Letthemdohomework.→Don’tletthemdohomework.

（三）对划线部分提问：

对划线部分提问，就是先把一个陈述句的划线部分去掉，然后变为一个特殊疑问句：一是特殊疑问句+一般疑问句；

二是特殊疑问句+陈述句（对主语或主语的定语提问，therebe结构除外）

⑴划线部分是人，用who提问。

⑴划线部分是主语，用who提问，who后面的动词要用第三人称单数形式。如：Whois；Wholikes;Whohas?

方法：who+原句的剩余部分

例如：①HelenandMikearelisteningtomusic.

→Whoislisteningtomusic?

②Ihavesomemodelplanes.

→Whohasanymodelplanes?

⑵划线部分是表语，用who提问。

方法：Who+剩余部分的一般疑问句形式

⑵划线部分是事或者物，用what提问。

方法：what+剩余部分的一般疑问句形式。

注：如果原句是therebe句型，直接用What’s+地点状语来提问。例如：①Wewouldliketobuysomethingsforaparty.

→Whatwouldyouliketobuyforaparty?

②Therearealotofcakesintheplate.

→Whatisintheplate?

⑶划线部分是物主代词或名词所有格，用Whose提问。

方法：⑴划线部分是主语的定语时，Whose+剩余部分

例如：Ourclassroomisbright.

→Whoseclassroomisbright?

⑵划线部分是表语或表语的定语时，Whose+剩余部分的一般疑问句形式例如：①ThewomanisSuYang’steacher.

→Whoseteacheristhewoman?

注：对某部分的定语提问，被修饰的部分跟随特殊疑问句往前提②ThispurseisYangLing’s.

→Whosepurseisthis?

⑷划线部分是地点，用where提问。

方法：where+剩余部分的一般疑问句形式

例如：TheyarehamingaMathslessonintheclassroom..

→WherearetheyhavingaMathslesson?

⑸划线部分是“多少”，用howmany或howmuch提问。

方法：⑴句中是可数名词的用Howmany+剩余部分的一般疑问句形式例如：Therearefifteentreesintheplayground.

→Howmanytreesarethereintheplayground?

⑵句中是不可数名词的用Howmuch+剩余部分的一般疑问句形式例如：Ihaveaglassofjuiceforbreakfast.

→Howmuchjuicedoyouhaveforbreakfast?

⑹划线部分是时间，用when或whattime（具体的几时几分）提问。方法：⑴when+剩余部分的一般疑问句形式

例如：SuYangandSuHaiareathomeonSundaymorning.

→WhenareSuYangandSuHaiathome?

⑵问具体的时间直接用Whattimeisit?或What’sthetime?问

例如：It’sthreeforty-five.

→Whattimeisit?或What’sthetime?

1. 内容切题

内容切题是命题作文的基本要求，考生可从以下几个方面入手：

第一要认真审题。根据题目类别，弄清文体的要求，并判明文章的种类(议论文、说明文、记叙文)，同时确定文章要阐明的主题或要表达的中心思想，若题目已经提供了提纲，还要注意弄清各提纲要点之间的逻辑关系。考生在拿到作文题后，切勿惟恐时间不够，提笔就写。一旦跑题，发现了再改就来不及了，常言道：“磨刀不误砍柴工”。

第二要注意设计安排段落。根据文章的中心思想，确定各个段落的主题内容和主题句。如果是议论文，一般要从论点的正反两个方面来考虑，首先是某观点的合理成分或某物的长处，然后是该观点的不合理成分或该物的短处，最后阐明自己的观点。如果题目提供了提纲，只要把提纲扩展成主题句即可。

第三要避免将记忆里较熟悉的句子生拉硬扯地搬进作文，使作文结构松散，意思不明确，甚至会偏离主题。

2. 表达清楚，文字连贯

文章要做到表达清楚，文字连贯，文章各段落就必须根据提纲所确立的不同主题来展开，而且各段落的主题句要将段落的各个部分凝聚在一起，流利地表达段落大意，使段落中各部分以及段落之间的联系一目了然。

3. 句式有变化

有些考生对写作没信心，不敢大胆地使用所掌握的语言基础知识，包括英语句法知识，结果整篇文章都是以主、谓、宾句式为主的简单句子，文章显得刻板无生气。实际上，

1. What is language for? Some people seem to think its for practicing grammar rules and learning lists of words--- the longer the words the better. Thats wrong. Language is for the exchange of ideas, for communication。

语言到底是用来干什么的呢?一些人认为它是用来操练语法规则和学习一大堆单词--而且单词越长越好。这个想法是错误的。语言是用来交换思想，进行交流沟通的!

2. The way to learn a language is to practice speaking it as often as possible。

学习一门语言的方法就是要尽量多地练习说。

3. A great man once said it is necessary to drill as much as possible, and the more you apply it in real situations, the more natural it will become。

一位伟人曾说，反复操练是非常必要的，你越多的将所学到的东西运用到实际生活中，他们就变的越自然。

4. Learning any language takes a lot of effort. But dont give up。

学习任何语言都是需要花费很多努力，但不要放弃。

5. Relax! Be patient and enjoy yourself. Learning foreign languages should be fun。

放松点!要有耐性，并让自己快乐!学习外语应该是乐趣无穷的。

6. Rome wasnt built in a day. Work harder and practice more. Your hard- work will be rewarded by god one day. God is equal to everyone!

冰冻三尺，非一日之寒。更加努力的学习，更加勤奋的操练，你所付出的一切将会得到上帝的报答，上帝是公平的。

7. Use a dictionary and grammar guide constantly. Keep a small English dictionary with you at all time. When you see a new word, look it up. Think about the word-- use it, in your mind, in a sentence。

经常使用字典和语法指南。随身携带一本小英文字典，当你看到一个新字时就去查阅它，想想这个字---然后去用它，在你的心中，在一个句子里。

8. Try to think in English whenever possible. When you see something think of the English word of it; then think about the word in a sentence。

一有机会就努力去用英文来思考。看到某事时，想想它的英文单词;然后把它用到一个句子中去。

9. Practice tenses as much as possible. When you learn a new verb, learn its various forms。

尽可能多的操练时态。学习一个动词的时候，要学习它的各种形态。

10. I would also like to learn more about the culture behind the language. When you understand the cultural background, you can better use the language。

我想学习和了解更多关于语言背后的文化知识，当你理解了文化背景，你就能更好地运用语言。

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

2015中考将至,目前距2015 中考仅有几个月，因此现在是复习的关键时刻，在此YJBYS为了让考生们了解更多的中考试题，以为今年的中考取得更好的成绩。

如果一百份试卷里都是清一色的“i think”简单句,那阅卷人读起来将会多么的乏味,乏味至极的阅卷人又如何能给得出高分?所以,我们在写句子的时候,要尽可能的变换句式和结构,让文章富于变化,错落有致。具体地说:中考作文中,我们可以尝试使用更多的复合句,主要是宾语从句、状语从句以及尝试变化语态。例如,2008年中考北京卷作文题,以汶川地震为背景描写一个叫做林浩的小英雄的故事以及自身感受。其中有一句细节描写叫做“他救出了自己的同学并步行七小时到达安全地点。”例文给出的句子是“he saved two of his classmates. then he walked for seven hoursto safety。” 这句话我们可以改写成为一个从句:saving two of his classmates, lin haowalked for seven hours to safety。

如果再加上语态的变换,还可以改写成:being saved from the earthquake, two of linhao’s classmates walked for seven hours to safety with lin hao。这样的变化在作文中能够主动使用的话,一定会增加阅卷人的青睐,从而给你的文章增加获胜的筹码。

导语：英语作文也是需要日积月累的练习的，下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的优秀英语作文，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

1. We re often told that ......But is this really the case ?

我们经常被告知......但事实真是这样吗?

2. People used to ......however , things are quite different today .

过去，人们习惯......但,今天的情况有很大的不同。

3.some people think that ......Others believe that the opposite is true . There is probably some truth in both sides.But we must realize that ......

一些人认为......另一些人持相反意见。也许双方的观点都有一定道理。但是我们必须认识到......

4.Recognizing a problem is the first step in finding a solution .

认识到问题是找到解决办法的第一步。

5. It is another new and bitter truth we must learn to face .

这是一个我们必须学会面对的痛苦的新情况。

6. In short , we must work hard to make the world a better place .

简而言之，为了把世界变成更美好的地方，我们必须勤奋工作。

7.Lost time is never found again.

岁月既往，一去不回。

8.Everybody should have a dream.

每个人都该有个梦想.

9.Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.

抱最好的愿望,做最坏的打算。

10.Failure is the mother of success.

失败乃成功之母。

11.Lets look on the bright side.

让我们往好处想吧。

Thank you for your letter of 2 November. We are delighted to hear that you are to pleased with the refurbishment of your hotel. As your know .in our line of work, we depend on good ,reports about our projects to win further business. Our clients always shop around and look for references before committing themselves. With your permission, we would like to use your hotel as a reference when we discuss similar refurbishments in the hotel industry . Would you agree to our suggesting that future clients should call you? It would also be most helpful if we could occasionally bring a client to look at your hotel . We would , of course , stay overnight at least.I’ll call you next week to hear your reaction. Thanks again for you kind words.

从11月2日的来函得悉阁下对贵饭店的整修感到满意，此消息对本公司实是一鼓励。 设计行业重视声誉，客人在选择设计公司时必然会有所比较。如蒙允许，本公司欲请贵饭店作推荐人，证明有关整修的质素。未知可否让其他客户来电垂询? 此外，如获允准间或联同客户前来参观贵饭店整修，定必有莫大帮助。当然，本公司会预订房间，至少留宿一晚。

[商务英语学习作文：请求客户作推荐人

导语：套用一些英语作文模板可以得到分数的提高哦!下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的相关英语作文，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

Some people contend that ... has proved to bring many advantages (disadvantages)

有些人认为________有很多有利之处(不利之处)。

Those who argue for ... say that ...economic development of the cities.

觉得_____的人认为，______ 城市的经济发展。

Some people advocate that ....

有些人在坚持认为_________。

They hold that ... 他们认为_________。

People, who advocate that ..., have their sound reasons (grounds)

坚持认为______的人也有其说法(依据)。

Those who have already benefited from practicing it sing high praise of it.

那些从中受益的人对此大家褒奖。

Those who strongly approve of ... have cogent reasons for it.

强烈认同_______的人有很多原因。

Many people would claim that...

有人会认为___________。

Just as the saying goes: "so many people, so many minds". It is quite understandable that views on this issue vary from person to person.

俗话说，""。不同的人对此有不同的看法是可以理解的。

To this issue, different people come up with various attitudes.

对于这个问题，不同的人持不同的观点。

There is a good side and a bad side to everything, it goes without saying that...

万事万物都有其两面性，所以，勿庸置疑，____________。

When it comes to ..., most people believe that ..., but other people regard ...as ....

提到_________问题，很多人认为_________，不过，一些人则认为______是____.

When faced with...., quite a few people claim that ...., but other people think as...

提到_________问题，仅少数人认为________，但另一些人则认为_________。

书面表达是英语写作的重要组成部分，有不少学生觉得用英语写作很难，不知从何练起。笔者教学实践发现，首先要具备扎实的基础知识，抓住课本教学来培养学生的写作能力，立足教材，由易到难，由浅入深，采取多种形式来加强书面表达训练，这样英语写作水平才能得到提高。

一是通过词汇教学训练写作能力。要写好文章不是一朝一夕就能达到的，必须从最基础的词汇入手。教学中，教师要注意加强词汇方面的训练，力求给学生交代清楚每一个词语的具体用法。对一些重点的、核心的词汇讲清，讲透每个词语的单独用法和搭配用法。为了更有效地与课本结合起来，每学完一个单元，根据本单元的单词、短语造句，举一反三，帮助学生扩大词汇量，使学生词不离句，强化写作训练。

二是通过一句多译练习训练写作能力。就七年级学生而言，他们虽然接触英语学习时间不长，但教师还是要注重引导学生多做一些一句多译练习，这样有助于启发学生的写作思路。考试时选择自己有把握的句子灵活地表达同一内容，减少失误，提高得分率。通过做汉译英练习，暴露出学生受母语影响的问题，对这些问题我及时进行讲评和纠正。这样，有利于培养和规范学生的英语表达能力。

三是结合课文进行各种体裁的写作训练。目前，信息来源的渠道多种多样，学生课文中有记叙、日记、通知、便条、书信、广告和说明等多种体裁，文中还有大量的插图，教师可利用图片让学生进行看图写作。要学好英语写作就必须从课文练起，从一些常见的文体练起，由短到长，由浅入深，循序渐进地进行。

四是通过背诵训练写作。培养学生的英语写作能力，以课文为中心训练写作能力非常重要，因为课文中的句子就是规范的英语范文。因此，每学完一篇课文或对话，教师就要要求学生背诵，然后默写。这样使学生把词语放在句型、段落、篇章中去理解、记忆和体味，以至于能够仿写、改写。

五是通过仿写和改写训练写作能力。仿写也是提高英语写作能力行之有效的方法，模仿写作中，格式、构思、表达方式等方面都可模仿。但要提醒学生注意灵活变通，语句要通顺，符合英语表达习惯。仿写前要从时态，句型，内容选材等方面对学生加以辅导，指导学生怎样模仿，特别提醒学生注意时态。

另外，改写也是一种很好的方法，改写就是对文章材料的文体、式样、句式等进行改编的一种训练方式。无论是改人称、改时态，还是改对话材料为叙述文字，这都有助于学生复习巩固所学知识，又能培养学生所学知识的迁移运用能力，还能起到提高学生的写作能力。

总之，要提高学生的英语写作能力，就要培养学生养成良好的学习习惯。即：重视词、短语、造句，优秀的对话和课文要背诵，多做翻译练习，练习改写和仿写，结合课文进行各种体裁的写作训练。只有坚持不懈，持之以恒，才能写出准确、地道、规范的英语文章。