应用文写作英语四级考试计划【精彩20篇】

关于应用文的概念， 1979 年上海辞书出版社出版的《辞海》的解释是:应用文是人们在日常生活、工作和学习中所应用的简易通俗文字，包括书信、公文、契约、启事、条据等。定义很简单，但没能概括出应用文的本质特征，仅仅指出应用文的“简易通俗”，这才只是应用文的一些方面，而不是全部特征。

根据国务院办公厅颁布的《国家行政机关公文处理办法》中对公文的定义，推广开来，应用文的定义应为:应用文是机关团体、企事业单位以及人民群众在日常工作、生产和生活中办理公务以及个人事务时，交流情况、沟通信息，具有直接实用价值和惯用格式的一种书面交际工具。这个定义规定了应用文的本质特征，使它明显区别于其他文体，又涵盖了应用文的基本特性。

应用文的起源至迟可以追溯到殷商社会晚期，也就是距今 3000 多年前，可以说我国有初步定型文字的最初年代也就伴随着有了应用文的使用。殷墟出土的甲骨卜辞，商周时期的钟鼎文，《周易》中的卦、爻辞等，都是应用文的原始形态。所以，如果说，神话是中国文学的“祖先”，那么甲骨文则是应用文的“祖先”了。

应用文的使用非常广泛，几乎涉及各个领域、各个部门、各个阶层、每个个人。比如，科研单位的人员，需要用学术论文;政府机关指导工作，需要用公文;工商企业经营，需要用合同;打官司，需要用诉状;即使个人今天生病了、不能上课，也需要用到请假条;……。相对于其它文体来说，应用文的使用频率要高得多:许多人可以一辈子不写小说、剧本、诗歌、散文，但他在工作、生活、学习中却免不了要写应用文，小到写张请假条，大到计划、总结、论文等。正如 叶圣陶 先生所说的那样:“大学毕业生不一定能写小说诗歌，但是一定要能写工作和学习中实用的文章，而且非写得既通顺又扎实不可。”

可以这么说，应用文使用的广泛，已经到了无所不在的程度。今天在中国特色的社会主义市场经济条件下，应用文是任何企事业单位和个人日常工作、生活中不可缺少的一个重要工具。

应用文同别的文体比较，有共性，也有个性。共性是他们都是对客观事物的反映，都要谋篇布局、用词造句、使用标点符号，讲究条理性、逻辑性，同样使用叙述、说明、议论等表达方式，要求准确、鲜明、生动的文风。具体表现在以下几方面。

教学内容:

第一节 应用文的主题

应用文写作基础知识既有与一般文体写作的共通之处，更多的是其在写作知识运用上的独特性，只有掌握其独特性，才能正确、规范地写好应用文体。

主题先行性

一、主题的特点 主题单一性

主题显露性

应用文的主题就是解决问题的方法、建议。其主题是十分明确直接的，主题的确立大多不是写作者有感而发，而是应客观实际的需要，为解决实际问题而产生的，由此可以说应用文主题就是解决问题的具体方法。因此应用文的主题具有以下特点:

文学作品的主题是从生活中、从已获取的材料中提炼出来的，往往反对主题先行。而应用文主题的确立与文学作品主题的确立不同，其主题确立在全文写作之前，所谓“意在笔先”。因为应用文总是先产生了具体问题而后产生写作的需求，而解决这一问题的方法、结论往往也产生在文章写作之前;同时执笔者的写作行为往往也是被动的，是应解决问题而动笔，写作的过程更是确切地体现主题。如《国务院关于同意黑龙江省调整哈尔滨市部分行政区划的批复》一文就是为答复《调整哈尔滨市部分行政区划的请示》而写的文章，表示同意请示提出的请求事项而作，主题一定是确立在写作之前。

一般说文学作品的主题具有其复杂性，对主题的理解更呈多元化。然而应用文的主题则必须单一、明确，读者对主题的理解不允许多元，而要求理解上的同一性，这样才利于统一认识，更有利于问题的解决。如:《关于当代青年消费问题的调查报告》一文就消费观念、消费现状、消费趋势和消费结构等四个方面，展开调查，尽管涉及面广，材料较丰富，但文章紧紧围绕“当代青年消费”这一中心，内容集中，一题一议，主题单一、明确。

文学作品的主题要求含蓄、曲折，令人回味。而应用文写作就不同，要求直截了当地点明主题，表明态度，提出解决问题的措施和办法，对文章所涉及的各类问题，必须有明确的观点立场，应该怎么做，解决什么问题，达到什么目的，都要明确地表达出来。

标题显旨

二、主题的表现方法 开头点旨

结尾点旨

应用文主题的表达要做到明确、显露。那么怎么才能做到主题从文章中显露出来呢?下面就给大家介绍几种表现方法:

标题显旨，就是在文章的标题中直接点明主题。如《三季度物价水平再次转降，出口增速趋于稳定》，这篇经济活动分析报告的标题就直接点明了主题，让人一看就大致明白了文章的主要内容，主题十分显露。这不失为是一种使主题显现的好方法。

这种方式是在文章的开头或每一段落的开头用简短的语句陈述主题，使主题凸现出来。如《 2001 年经济形势展望》一开头就指出: “展望 2001 年，经济回升的势头还比较微弱，促进经济的持续向好仍然需要克服许多困难。” 开宗明义，点明主题。再如《靠名牌赢得市场--关于深圳市飞亚达(集团)股份有限公司的调查》一文在 “启示:现代企业必须重视实施名牌战略” 的小标题下，分三段来阐述这一问题，在每段开头用段首句点明主旨:第一段的段 首句: 实施名牌战略是提高产品质量、提升企业品味的内在要求。 第二段的段首句: 实施名牌战略是企业参与市场竞争尤其是国际市场竞争的客观需要。 第三段的段首句: 实施名牌战略是增强国家经济实力的重要手段。 在这三句主题句的提示下，每段的中心就十分明了。

这种方式是在文章的的结尾之处点明文章主题。如李政道的论文《基础、应用科学与生产三者关系》一文就是采用这一方法结尾。文章的结尾指出: “我再重复一下，没有基础学科就没有应用学科，没有应用学科就没有生产学科，三者是紧密结合在一起的。” 非常清晰地显示了主题。

主题决定材料的选取

三、主题的作用 主题决定文种的选用

主题决定结构的安排

主题决定表达方式的选用

实训:

根据下面材料概括出主题，并用主题句表现出来。

1 .目前，全世界的年教育经费已超过 2000 亿美元，在公共资金的支出中仅次于军事经费，占第二位。世界工业化国家人口只占世界人口约三分之一，其教育经费比发展中国家多十倍以上。中国人口占世界总数超过五分之一，但教育经费仅占约三十分之一。按 1982 年的数字算，人均教育费为 11.2 元人民币，属世界 14 个人均教育经费不足 5 美元的国家之一。

2 .国外有两家鞋厂，各派一位推销员到太平洋某岛国去推销本厂的鞋子。上岛后不久，他们各发回一份电报。一位的电文是:“此岛上的人都不穿鞋，明天我就回去。”另一位的电文是:“太好了!这个岛上的人都没穿上鞋子，我打算长驻此岛。”

第二节 应用文的材料

材料的真实性

一、材料的特点 材料的现实和新颖性

材料的典型性

应用文写作对材料是十分依赖的，常言道“巧妇难为无米之炊”，为了表现主题我们需要收集一系列材料，或综合或舍取运用到文章的写作之中，使主题真实立体地表现出来。应用文材料的使用除了与文学作品有共通之处外，更多地体现自身特点:

应用文在材料的选用过程中不准改变材料本身性质，必须保持材料的真实性，对材料的时间、地点、数据、事实过程及结果都不能任意改动，否则就会使材料本身的价值发生变异，导致歪曲事实的真相，弄虚作假的后果，失去应用文的主题应有的价值，不仅不能解决问题，反而于事无补。应用文要求的真实是“绝对的真实”，也就是说所有材料要确凿无误、持之有据。不仅对搜集到的材料要反复核实，在材料的解释上，也要有科学的态度，实事求是。

应用文写作是为了解决现实问题而作的即时之作，其主要的材料需选取能反映现实的新颖材料。所谓现实是指，围绕文章要解决的问题所存在的事实(数据)材料而非通过联想和推论得到的材料。如在《新的消费热点:出门旅游过年》一文中，为了陈述出门旅游过年的现状，就采用了大量的事实(数据)材料: “根据国家旅游局对江苏、广东、云南、海南、北京、福建、广西、四川、黑龙江、湖南、山东、山西等 13 个省、自治区、直辖市的调查，……今年春节期间，这些地区直接由旅行社接待的国内旅游人次比往年至少有 15 %的增长……以上 13 个省、区、市的旅行社，春节期间共接待旅游者 124 万人次，旅行社营业收入 14 亿元。” 文中采用的材料都是新近现实发生的，这是大多数应用文材料的特点。所谓新颖是指，材料本身是新近产生的，如新事实、新政策、新的统计数据、新发现的问题等和用新的角度重新审视其新意。

所谓典型性是指那些最能支持主题和说明问题的材料。典型材料可以是一个具体的事例，一些有说服力的数据和一些带有普遍性的现象。如题为《“小解放”为何俏销湖北》的市场调查报告中，在说明“优质服务获得良好口碑”这一经验时，采用了这样一则事实材料: “去年 10 月的一天傍晚，河南省郑州市某单位的一辆小解放牌车在去广州途径武汉时，在武汉黄鹤楼处出现问题，求助电话打到了该销售中心，中心经理立即亲自带队迅速赶到现场，发现该车是用户对后驱动桥端面螺丝没拧紧而发生齿轮油漏尽，导致差速器锥齿烧损。当维修人员在后半夜将修好的车交给用户时，用户激动地说虽然我们不属于该省管辖，又没带保用手册，并且问题又是因我们使用不当所致，你们还这样及时周到地服务，太让我们感动了!‘小解放走到哪服务到哪，此言不虚，以后再买车，还买‘小解放。” 这一材料就是一则很能表现主题的材料，是典型的材料。 直接获取

获取材料的方法

二、材料的选取 间接获取

围绕主题，挖掘材料的意义

材料的使用 根据主题的需要，进行详略处理

合理安排材料，注重条理

如何获取材料，哪些材料是应用文写作值得关注的?下面我们谈谈这个问题:

在实践之中积累材料。在自身及周围同事的工作实践中做个有心人，时刻关注有价值的事件及数据，如在工作中及时对做了什么工作、采用了什么方法、取得了什么效果、有哪些人参与等信息及时记录收集。

在观察中掌握材料。在观察时要做到实事求是，防止主观武断、先入为主，同时要全面、系统、动态地进行观察，以获取真实、广泛、完整的材料，并能把观察所得及时整理成文字，给写作提供基础。

在调查中拓展材料。个人的实践和视野总是有限的，观察也不可能做到深入细致，这样就需要走向实际、走向社会，向有关人士了解情况，做一些调查，以扩大自己的视野，获取材料上的补充。经济类的应用文，调查是必不可少的步骤，如市场调查报告，市场预测报告需在调查之后，才能动笔。

通过查阅文献资料获取材料。应用文写作材料常常从有关文件、正式出版物，以及会议资料中获取材料，为写入具体文章之用，因此大量查阅文献资料来获取材料，是应用文写作经常采用的方法。

获取材料是写作的第一步。总的来说，获取材料要求以多为好，以全为贵。材料多了，便于比较、鉴别，更有选择的余地;材料全面，观点才能不至于偏颇，因此，动笔之前，应当围绕主题，占有详尽而充实的材料。

其次，强调对感性材料的分析研究，不能停留在表面的认识上，要挖掘材料能凸现主题的一面，使其在文章中发挥挖掘主题的作用。如有这样一则材料 : 某日，某国驻广州领事馆的外交官员去珠江三角洲某市参观，市长亲自接待，但讲不好普通话请了一个翻译，本来 10 分钟就可以讲完的话，结果用了 20 分钟。此外交官用标准的普通话问:广东不是在大力推广普通话吗么? 这则材料从不同的角度可展现不同的主题，但意义深浅不一。从较粗浅的角度看，可表现“市长不重视说普通话”的主题;进一步挖掘可表现“我们的官员素质的高低，直接关乎办公的效率”。这样的材料还可以根据主题的需要进行开拓。同学可以动动脑筋来挖掘一下。

使用材料时，要分清主次。对材料的加工整理，无非是为了突出文章的主题，加强应用文的表达效果，处理材料的详略要以此为据。突出事件特征的材料要详写，一般材料可略写;处于主体地位的材料详写，处于从属地位、过渡的材料略写;读者不熟悉的材料详写，熟悉的略写;材料之间角度相异的详写，材料之间相同的略写。

根据主题的需要，按照一定的组织形式，安排材料的先后顺序，在安排顺序时要考虑材料的主次、时间的先后、材料间的逻辑顺序、人们认识事物的规律、事物发展的过程等因素。

最后，数字材料是应用文写作中十分重要的材料，数字有时比文字材料更具体、准确、更能说明问题。因此，要注意: ⑴ 真实、准确地用好数据材料。 ⑵ 运用统计数据，展开分析论证，更好地为主题服务。 ⑶ 适当地使用统计图表。 ⑷ 变抽象的数字为具体，使其形象。如有两篇介绍乐山大佛的文字，其中一篇在介绍时用了这样一些数字: “乐山大佛身高 71 米 ，头高 14 . 7 米 ，宽 10 米 。” 这些数字看似具体清晰，但比较抽象，大佛的高大这一主题没有凸现出来。另一段文字这样写道: “佛像有三十多层楼高，耳朵有四人高，每只脚背上可以停五辆解放牌汽车，脚大拇指上，可以摆一桌酒席。” 这段文字也用了数字，但采用文字叙述的方法，使抽象的数字形象了，大佛的高大形象仿佛就在眼前，极好地体现了主题。

实训:

概括下列材料的主题。

1 .随着市场的进化，专业化分工的加强，未来 10 年内，以往支撑家电企业的自营渠道因为成本原因将全面撤退，而其他大量零星的代理商将通过特许经营方式加盟到大的品牌渠道中，成为品牌渠道的连锁店。

2 .据 1987 年国家审计局的公报， 1985 -- 1986 年仅对 2700 多个县以上的教育主管部门的审核，查出被挪用、占用普教经费，竟高达 5 亿多万，占审计总额的 5 %，成了违纪金额中的主要项目。被占用的钱用来建干部宿舍、招待所、办工楼、买小汽车、经商办厂。一个县教育局竟把 40 万转入银行吃利息，而置全县二万多平方米的学校危房于不顾。

第三节 应用文的结构

固定性

一、应用文结构的特点 条理性

文种不同结构不同

应用文是经过长期写作实践，逐渐形成较固定的写作结构，以适应实际工作需要，使写作更快速，阅读更便捷，提高办事效率。特别是公文写作，其格式更规范，结构更固定。

应用文写作要求有严密的思路，表现在结构上以求清晰有条理。在写作中要根据主题的需要安排好结构。如写事件，就应按“开端--发展--结果”的顺序安排结构;写问题就应按“发现问题--分析问题--解决问题”的顺序安排结构。

凡文种都有相对稳定的结构样式，应用文写作结构安排需适应不同文体的要求。如写合同就需要将合同的条款按标的、数量、质量、价款等内容分条列项地写清楚;写通知要按目的依据、事项、执行要求的顺序安排结构。

二、常见的应用文结构模式

(一)单段式

正文内容用一个自然段来表达。用于内容少而单一，不便分开，往往采用一段文字来表达。如写在商品外包装上的说明文;公文中的函、批复，也常用一段文字来进行写作。“玉兰油”写在外包装上的说明: “经实验证明能帮助减少细纹。四星期内，肌肤重现青春光泽。请不要涂抹在眼睛及眼睑周围。如不慎入眼，即用清水彻底洗清。如有持续眼睛刺激，请向医生咨询。如有持续皮肤刺激，请停止使用。请置于儿童接触不到的地方。” 这就是单段式。

(二)两段式

正文内容用两个自然段来表达。用于内容简单，不需每层内容都分段。这种结构模式，一般用于以下几种情况:

1 .把结语部分内容和主体内容分开写，单列一个自然段，成为两段式。即行文的缘由和行文事项为一段，希望、要求等结语为一段。

2 .写作目的缘由、行文事项各为一段。

3 .在转发、发布性公文中，将发布或转发的文件名和发文意见列为一段，执行要求另为一段。

4 .在答复性公文中，将表示收到对方文件为一段，而答复事项为另一段。

5 .没有开头、结语部分，将主体内容列为两段。

(三)三段式

这是短篇应用文比较规范的常用模式。正文把写作目的缘由、写作事项、结尾分为三段来写。

(四)多段式

它用于内容较多，篇幅较长的应用文书，总共有四个自然段以上。一般是开头概述基本情况、说明原因、目的、依据，结尾单独成段或省略结尾，主体部分内容分为若干个段，各部分不分条列项。如短文式的说明书、简单的市场预测报告等。内容多、篇幅长的应用文书，一般不宜采用多段式，宜采用将主体内容分成几部分，用小标题或总分条文式。

(五)条款式

用分条列项的形式安排结构。规章制度、计划、合同和职能部门的一些文书，较多使用这种形式。全文从头到尾都用条款组织内容，给人以眉目清楚、排列有序的印象。

(六)表格式

这是应用文不同于其他文体所特有的一种结构形式。表格式通常有以下两种形式:

1 .由职能部门或企事业管理部门或企业如银行、厂矿、公司等单位，事先印制好表格式的规范文本，将有关内容分项列出，各项之后留下空白，让使用或合作单位和个人按规定填写。表格文书一般要注明填写要求和注意事项。如申请专利、商标的文书、合同、税务征管文书、财务会计文书，大都采用这种形式。

2 .作者单位临时制作的表格式文书。根据写作目的，将有关统计数据编制成表格。

三、应用文结构的基本内容及写法

(一)标题

应用文写作的标题，要求充分体现主题，有的标题还有规范要求。这与文学作品形式多样、灵活多变的标题有着明显的不同。应用文的标题通常有三种形式:

1 .公文式标题。这类标题程式性强，表达直接而少变化，主要用于公文。

2 .新闻式标题。新闻式标题通常又称文章式标题，又可分为单标题和双标题两种形式。单标题有的直接提出文章主题，如 “小商品也要高质量” 、 “做好纪检信息工作实践与体会” ;有的概述主要内容，如 “积极财政政策仍将持续至少两到三年的时间” ;有的在标题中提出问题，如 “日本经济何时走出低谷” 。

双标题是有正题和副题的双行标题，其中正题符合单标题的要求，更多地突出文章主题，副题则对正题起补充作用，常常说明应用文的内容范围和文种，如 “靠名牌赢得市场--关于深圳市飞亚达(集团)股份有限公司的调查” 、 “繁重 · 活跃 · 稳定 · 上升-- 2002 年国内市场发展趋势” 。

3 .论文式标题。这类标题或表达文章的观点和内容或点明所论述范围。如 “核心竞争力--企业制胜的根本” 、 “双峰县农村劳动力转移的调查与思考” 。

(二)开头

应用文写作开头担负着统领全文，揭示主题或全文的作用。开头要求开门见山，直接显露，常见的开头方式有:

1 .概述式。这种方式要求用简明扼要的语言，围绕主题介绍有关情况或背景。如一篇题为《加强民族团结 繁荣民族事业》的总结开头: “山东省青州市是少数民族居住比较集中的地区之一，有回、满、蒙古、朝鲜、土家等 27 个民族， 2 . 6 万余人，占全市人口的 2 .5 %。近年来，青州市积极加强 民族团结，繁荣民族事业，有力地推动了全市经济和社会各项事业全面发展。” 就是用了这一开头方式。报告、会议纪要、调查报告等文种也常用此开头方式。

2 .说明依据式。开头引用上级指示精神或有关法律，常以“根据”、“按照”、“遵照”等词语领起下文。如《关于粮食政策性财务挂帐停息的意见》一文的开头: “根据中共中央、国务院关于妥善解决粮食财务挂帐问题的一系列文件精神，结合各地清理粮食财务挂帐的实际情况，经过反复研究，对粮食财务挂帐实行停息的有关政策提出如下意见”。 这种方式常在通知、批复、通告、规章等文种的开头使用。

3 .陈述目的式。开头以简明的语言，直接说明写作的目的和意义，常用介词“为”、“为了”领起下文。如《国务院关于成立经济贸易办公室的通知》一文开头写道: “为适应加快改革开放和经济建设的新形势，加强宏观调控和协调日常经济工作，国务院第 100 次常务会议决定，……”。

4 . 说明原因式。开头常用“由于”、“鉴于”、“因为”等词领起下文，也可以简述发文原因，再引出写作目的。如《广州市建设用地起坟通告》的开头 “因建设的需要，经核准，市公安局天河区分局征用天河区东圃镇堂下乡(村)土地。为便利建设工程顺利进行，……”。

5 .议论式。开头用议论的表达方法，表达作者的看法，提出观点。如《现代化企业需要什么样的复合型会计人才》的开头: “随着社会主义市场经济的不断深入发展，会计工作也不断拓宽，过去那种单一的会计知识结构已远远不能适应会计管理工作的需要，会计人员作为企业经济管理的重要的专门人才，必须相应地提高自身的专业素质，改变原来那种单一的知识结构，以适应市场经济发展的需要。因此，培养造就一批复合型会计人才是当前会计工作的一项重要任务，也是企业发展向现代化迈进的关键所在。”

6 .提问式。先提出问题，然后引出下文。这种开头方式能引起读者的注意和思考。这种开头方式常见于调查报告、学术论文的写作。如《核心竞争力--企业制胜的根本》的开头: “在激烈的市场竞争中，一个企业制胜的根本是什么?为什么有的企业能长盛不衰，有的企业只能成功一时，而有的企业却连一点成功的机会都没有?笔者一直为这些问题所困惑。” 这篇论文就是采用了提问式开头。

(三)结尾

应用文的结尾讲究言尽意尽，不留“余味”，不添“蛇足，更不能草率。常用的结尾方法有:

1 .强调式。对文中提出的问题作强调说明，以引起重视。

2 .结论式。对文中的主要观点或问题，加以归纳总结或略作重申，以加深印象。

3 .说明式。对与主体内容有关但性质不同的问题或事项作补充交代、说明，以保证内容的完整性，如公文结尾交待施行日期、执行范围、传达对象、与该文规定不符的原有规定如何处置等;论文结尾处说明尚未解决而应另作讨论的问题。

4 .号召式。提出希望，发出号召，展望未来。如公文的通报、市场预测、计划等常用这种结尾形式。如《关于成都矿产综合利用研究所值班人员勇斗歹徒先进事件的通报》一文结尾就是采用这一方法。

5 .建议式。针对设定的施行目标、产生的问题提出意见和建议。

除了上述几种结尾方式，还有请求式、责令式、表态式等不一一列举，有的则没有结尾，自然收尾。

实训:

指出下列开头所使用的方式。

1 . 20 世纪 90 年代后，我国计算机市场随着信息化建设的启动和发展，进入前所未有的高速发展阶段， 1991 年至 1997 年间的平均增长速度高达 56.9 %。 1998 年由于受到亚洲金融危机的和我国经济出现通货紧缩等国内外宏观经济环境的影响，增长速度下降。此后，经过调整和转型，我国计算机产业和市场在发展速度、结构升级、市场拓展、出口贸易、企业转制等多方面均出现了飞跃性的进步。

2 .教育在社会发展中处于什么地位?它与科技、经济的关系如何?不久前，河南教委组织 17 个地区、 34 个县教育部门的同志对 100 多个村进行调查。

3 .根据《国务院关于建立职工医疗保险制度的决定》、《 ×× 省推进城镇职工基本医疗保险制度改革的意见》和《国务院办公厅转发劳动保障部财政部关于实行国家公务员医疗补助意见的通知》精神，结合我省公务员医疗保障的实际，制定本实施意见。

第四节 应用文的表达方式及语言

一、表达方式

应用文写作中常用的表达方式只有叙述、说明、议论三种，而描写、抒情一般在广告、调查报告、经济新闻等文体中偶尔使用。我们现在只谈叙述、说明、议论这三种方式在应用文体中的使用。

(一)叙述

叙述这种表达方式是应用文体写作常用的一种方法。有的以叙述事实作立论的依据，如通报、经济活动分析报告、市场调查、总结等;有的以叙述事实为依据进行决策和预测;有的对事实作如实反映和记载，如会议纪要、合同、诉讼公文等。叙述在应用文写作中有如下几个特点:

1 .以记事为主

应用文写作反映现实，解决问题，与记叙文以写人为主不同，而是多以记事为主，如反映经济活动状况、市场情况、经济信息、介绍典型经验、阐述事情原委、总结工作等，采用叙述来记事。

2 .叙述客观真实

文学作品的叙述可作艺术加工，所述事件不必是客观存在的事实。但应用文不同，其所述事实，必须客观真实，不允许对事实夸大或缩小，更不能歪曲事实或主观臆造，否则就会导致决策失误，使经济活动混乱，使企业和消费者蒙受损失。如市场预测所依据的市场事实失真，那么预测结果必定出现很大的偏差，从而导致决策的失误。

3 .以概括叙述为主

文学作品需通过叙述细节来塑造人物形象，展开故事情节。而应用文写作则是通过叙述为文章得出正确结论作依据。如通报的叙述是为后面阐述事实的性质，达到对这一事件学习，鉴戒或引起注意的目的而服务的。叙述本身不是全文的核心(主题)所在，因而应用文写作的叙述大多用简明扼要的概括叙述。

4 .多用顺叙

为使应用文条理清晰，让读者掌握理解所述的客观事实，在文章中常常使用顺叙。在叙述时有的按照时间顺序，有的以事件发展的顺序，有的按人们认识事物的客观过程来叙述，这样叙述能使较复杂的事实头绪清晰，一目了然。

5 .语言较平实

应用文的语言要求平铺直叙，较少使用修饰性词语，笔法较朴实。因为应用文语言是需把握问题实质，直接表现主题，为主题服务，而不像文学作品那样文笔的曲折，主题的含蓄 , 讲究语言的修饰性、词语的色彩，常用修辞手法，应用文的实用性决定了其语言的简洁朴实。

(二)说明

说明这一表达方式在应用文中是与叙述相结合的，起到对客观事物真实介绍说明的作用，有很多文种都依赖这一表达方式。如说明书、报告、请示、经济活动分析、合同、自荐书等，都离不开说明。说明在应用文写作中表现出以下几个特征:

1 .说明客观、科学

通过说明真实客观地反映事物的真实面貌，本质特征，这就要求说明需客观、科学、严肃。

2.多用数字进行说明

说明不但要客观真实，而且要做到准确无误，用数字进行说明就能起到这样的作用。因此在应用文写作中就少不了数字进行说明，特别是需要反映量的变化时，数字的作用就尤为突出。

3.综合使用多种说明方法

在说明方法使用的过程中，常常是多种方法结合同时使用。如数字说明和比较说明、定义说明和分类说明等说明方法结合运用，这样可以把事物说得更具体、准确。

(三)议论

应用文写作常常用议论的方式进行评论、分析，探寻事物发展的规律，阐述主题。其议论有以下几个特点:

1 .重数据、重材料

与议论文的议论不同，应用文中议论不是靠言论的雄辩，而是需要无可辩驳的事实材料和数据为依据，正可谓“事实胜于雄辩”。应用文反对不切实际的议论。如在一篇《三季度物价水平》的经济活动报告中，对该季度的物价水平转降的情况分析是这样议论的:“ 三季度，居民消费价格总水平同比上涨 0.8 %，涨幅比二季度缩小 0.8 个百分比，其中 9 月份已转为下降，同比下降 0.1 %;社会商品零售价格总水平同比下降 0.9 %，已连续 4 个月处于下降之中，并且降幅在不断增大;工业品出厂价格指标同比下降 1.7 %，降幅比二季度增大 1.4 个百分点。各种物价总水平再次全面转降在很大程度上是外生性涨价因素所致，但这也清晰地表明困扰我国经济的紧缩和总需求不足问题并未真正消除，而只是被外生性涨价因素掩盖起来了。一旦政策支持力度减弱，经济就会再次下降。” 这段文字在议论时采用了大量的数据材料，材料充分，议论切合实际，得出的结论有说服力。

2 .常与说明、叙述等方式结合使用

夹叙夹议、说议结合，是应用文中的议论特点。应用文写作往往不单独进行完整的议论，议论依赖于所叙述的事实和说明的现象，是在事实和现象的基础上进行议论。如在一篇《靠名牌赢得市场》的调查报告中，文章是这样写的:“ 90 年代初，瑞士、日本各种品牌的钟表开始大规模进入中国市场。面对严峻的市场形势，公司决策层认真研究数量和质量的辩证关系，决定借鉴国外钟表工业发展的成功经验，走‘少而精的道路，即以提高‘单位面积的产出取胜，生产高技术含量、高附加值的产品，在工艺上精益求精，把人、财、物集中用到刀刃上，争取在最短的时间里后来居上。 ”这段文字采用夹叙夹议方法，材料具体，剖析深入，语言生动活泼。

二、 语言运用

应用文的语言与文学创作的语言有较大的差别，其主要特点是:

(一)程式化

程式化的语言是写作实践的产物，是应用写作实践中常用的习惯用语，这种语言已经约定成俗，得到广泛的认可和共识。学习掌握这种语言的关键是表达要简明合乎规范。程式化的语言根据功用不同，可大致分为下列几方面内容:

举例

称谓语

本人、我、你、贵、该

起始用语

兹因、据核实、关于、鉴于、为了

结尾用语

为荷、为盼

表态用语

照办、可行、同意

谦敬用语

请、承蒙、惠示、惠允

时限用语

当即、立即、从速

期望用语

务希、务请、如蒙、勿误

列举概括用语

各类、多起、数事、上项、如下

特殊含义的用语

签发、核查、归口、取缔、缺口、责成、任命、复议、追加

(二)书面化

应用文的写作性质决定其语言风格表现为简明、规范、严肃，而书面语能较好达到这一语言要求，因而应用文语言大多采用书面语进行书写。如《中共中央关于接受宋庆龄同志为中国共产党正式党员的决定》中写道: “她一贯是共产党最亲密的战友，是中国各族人民包括台湾同胞和海外侨胞衷心敬爱的领袖之一，是爱国主义、民主主义、国际主义和共产主义的伟大战士，是保卫世界和平事业久经考验的前驱，是全体中国少年儿童的慈爱的祖母……。” 中的“同胞”、“战士”、“祖母”等用的都是书面语，改为口语就不合适了。

(三)常用数词

应用文写作常用数字来说明问题，因此经常大量使用数字。在分析问题、说明问题时，运用数字，可以比较明确地表达事物的状态，从而加深对该事物的认识。如一个企业管理是否先进，只有运用同行业国内外的对比数字才能说明。邓小平同志在《关于科学和教育工作的几点意见》中，讲到我国科研人员少、队伍小时用了三个数字:美国科研队伍有 120 万人;前苏联是 90 万人;我们是 20 多万人。这三个数字勾勒出三个国家科研队伍的基本状况，十分清晰地说明了我国科研人员少、队伍小的现状。应用文常用的数字有以下几种:

举例

绝对数和概数

乐山大佛身高 71 米 ，头高 14 ﹒ 7 米 ，宽 10 米 。

平均数

力争五年内人口年平均增长率控制在千分之十二点五左右。

百分数

2003 年，我国粮食增长 16 %，棉花增长 66 %，糖料增长 83 %。

对比数

甲比乙多生产了两倍。

(四)运用应用文语言的要求

1 .叙述语言需简洁、概括。

在进行叙述时要用最简短的语言陈述特定时空的信息，通过概述事实的主干，而不应纠缠于耗时费事的具体情节之中。如有一篇表彰通报是这样写的: “ ××× 在科学研究上走的是一条不平凡的路，他全心扑在科研上，而忘记了个人的事。有一次孩子病了，他妻子在家里忙着护理，打电话到 ××× 单位叫他赶回家把孩子送医院治疗。 ××× 接了电话答应后，电话筒一放他又埋进了实验。他妻子在家中左等右等等不到他回家，急得像热锅上的蚂蚁，又往 ××× 单位打电话，这时 ××× 正潜心做实验，电话铃声都没听见了。他妻子又急又气只好打 120 急救中心的电话，才把孩子送往医院治疗。他的小孩高烧退后，还在问他妈妈:‘爸爸又出差了吗?或者还没下班……” 该公文将 ××× 先进事迹作为表彰决定的理由时，不懂得以最简洁的文字陈述特定时空的信息，通过快叙概述事实的主干，而仍用记叙文慢叙写话的方法表述公文事实，结果摆脱不了耗时费字的情节纠缠，公文内容冗长，不简明扼要，失去了公文的品味，违背了文约事丰的要求。

2 .语言表达要严谨、有分寸。

应用文语言表达是否严谨有分寸，关系到对问题的判断、处理是否合理、准确。如一份处理决定，其中这样写道: “李××在 1998 年 9 月间收受×××工程公司的 50 万元的巨款。案发后李××还和×××工程公司经理及会计订立攻守同盟，妄图掩盖其过错”。 文中“过错”一词有失严谨，表述与事实不符，李××的行为不是过失而是严重犯罪。

3 .数据语言书写要规范、清晰、准确。

具体要做到以下几点:( 1 )在同一篇文章中序数数字的体例要统一，不能体例混杂。如 “农历初一至初 7 放假” 一句，前后数字体例书写不规范，需统一书写。同时分数与小数的体例也必须统一。如 “该县企业所得税收入完成 95.6 万元，比去年增长百分之十三 ” 也出现了混写的错误。( 2 )表示公元世纪、年代、年、月、日、时刻均需使用阿拉伯数字 , 而星期则用汉字。如” 21 世纪 ” 、“ 90 年代 ，“星期五”。( 3 )邻近两个数字并列表示概数时，应该用汉字书写，数字与数字之间不能用顿号将其隔开。如“ 3 、 4 天 ” 应写成”“三四天”，“七、八种”的“七”和“八”之间不能用顿号隔开。

4 .朴实、简洁。

应用文的语言要求准确无误，朴实无华，简洁有力，不像有些文学作品用华丽多彩的语言去描摹事物，呈现事物的形象，而是提倡朴素美，简洁美。如一篇公文是这样写的: “ 2000 年某天深夜，乌云密布，雷声隆隆，大雨倾盆而下，刹那间，美丽富饶的鱼米之乡被一片汪洋吞没。接连几天如注的暴雨，淹没了田野、冲毁了村庄和工厂，交通、电力、通讯一度中断。这百年不遇的特大洪涝灾害，给我乡造成了不可估量的损失。……” 这段语言就违反了应用文语言的写作要求，带有浓厚的文学色彩，不够朴实、简洁，也有失真实。

实训:

指出下面语段中语言表达的错误。

( 1 ) ××× 收受包工头的贿赂几十万元，造成国家直接或间接经济损失二千多万元。

( 2 ) ××× 自 1998 年以来用五年的时间，先后完成了省部级的科研成果十多项，多次获得国家省部级的奖励。

( 3 )国际化的经济浪潮汹涌澎湃，怀有强国之梦的国家就是以能加入 WTO 为最高梦境的。随着入关的脚步一天天逼迫，我市的乡镇企业局深入学习“三个代表”重要思想，真抓实干，使我市乡镇企业的局面生机盎然，发展蒸蒸日上，千帆竞发，波澜壮阔，入关前的我市乡镇企业的形势十分喜人……

新的一年又来了,这是一件值得高兴的事!可是,欢乐的春节也带来了十分紧张的考试!我想:呀!不能再像以前一样玩了,考试可是一件正经大事,如果考不好的话,那不就太"悲哀"了吗?

嗯哼!我想来想去决定先制做一份"复习计划"!(诸位请注意:复习计划哪科的都包括哦!)"我写呀我写,我剪呀我剪,我贴呀我贴!哈哈,大功告成了!"经过几分钟以后,我家墙上就有了一些"光彩"喽!现在,我来讲我的复习计划了,与大家分享啦!

每天都要复习一个单元的内容.早上7点起床,半小时把事做完,然后就开始复习了.

语文:先把单元里要背的内容再背一遍,再把词语盘点写1~3遍,然后把教材详解上有用的东西读熟.

数学:把数学书上有用的东西读熟.

英语:把书上的单词三英一汉读熟.

科学:把要抄的题抄在科学本上.

品德:读内容.

这可都是一个单元的哦!你可不要觉得少!因为有许多内容在学校已经复习过了,就不用再复习了.这都是星期天要做的事哦!

为了迎接期中考试，我也专门订制了一个期中复习计划，让我的期中复习更科学更有效。我语、数、英三科相对来说，数学比较差，所以，我要加强数学的复习。因此我定了一个期中复习计划。

我设定计划是这样的：在剩余的几天里，把考过的考试卷拿出来重做一遍，把一些曾经做错的题反复做，直到会做。多做一些练习题，多看看老师讲过的一些重点、难点题，学会方法，就不怕类似的题目了。把各科的书本拿出来多看看，不懂的地方，要去问，正所谓学问学问，多学多问。

但愿我的期中复习计划会帮助我在期中考试中取得好成绩。但是，有一点我坚信，只要有付出就会有回报，只要我认真，专心的好好复习了，我就能取得好成绩，如果，我不认真复习的话，那我就不要妄想在期末考试中取得好成绩，正所谓有付出就有回报，还有没有付出就不要想有回报，这是我冲刺期中考的唯一信念。我会以这个信念来做为我的动力，一直坚持下去。

同学们，让我们在最后的一个星期里，好好复习迎接期中考试吧。

开学已经过半了，对于小升初后的同学们而言，期中考试就是检验你们初中学习成果的第一次标准。正所谓“凡事预则立，不预则废。”考试成绩的得来一方面来自于学生自身所学的知识，另一方面复习指导的有效、得当也是一个非常重要的方面。根据学校的安排，以及我们初一语文备课小组的统一教学方案，同时结合老师对教材的梳理、班级学生的具体情况及语文学习的实际情况，我们积极为即将到来的期中考试制定周密详细的复习计划，以巩固学生的实际所学内容，增强语文基础方面的积累，提高语文的基础能力，把学生的积极性和学习的潜力充分调动挖掘出来，使学生在这次考试中取得优异成绩，使整个初一级部的学习成绩有较高的突破。

初一语文的期中考试复习主要是针对第一单元、第二单元和第三单元的课文，以及后面的古诗。

复习目的：

1、巩固课本中的基本知识点，主要是生字词方面和语言训练方面，引导学生让知识点构成线，织成网，形成知识系统。

2、引导学生认识中学语文试题的结构与模式，并学会如何积极应对。

3、逐渐训练中学应试的技能技巧，如指导阅读题答题方法等。

4、在对知识的学习过程中学会并运用语文复习方法。

复习内容：包括基础知识、课文讲解重难点、阅读理解题、作文训练等等。

复习重难点：基础知识的掌握的不牢固，部分学生考试作答不理想，语言组织能力较差;阅读理解没有做题方法，不能以课文为例灵活应用，许多主观性的题目不敢作答;写作文文比不流畅，思路不清晰，而且大多数学生没有自己的真情实感，喜欢编造了事。

复习方法：讲授法，练习法，考试法，评析法。

复习计划：

基础知识：重点识记生字、解词、重点的文学常识、部分课文的背诵，，主要是学生自主背诵记忆，教师作适当的点拨。

课文讲解重点：主要在老师讲解下学生理解并记忆，重点在文言文。重点在体会散文中所蕴含的人文内涵，领悟人间真挚而美好的感情;同时注意语言的积累和写法的借鉴。

练习巩固：复习学案的相关内容，及时讲解，反馈学生的掌握情况。

作文指导：老师根据平时所学内容对作文训练进行有重点的指导，主要是写景类散文。结合所学习的课文，揣摩、欣赏其中的精彩句段和词语，以及修辞手法的运用，在自己的写作中要学会适当的借鉴。

复习学案的分工:

字词部分:丁洁

古文部分:张敏

默写部分:王长丰

名著赏析:印松

应对重难点的策略：

1， 课下加强基础知识的识记，把学生按程度分小组，互帮互助，课堂加强提问以巩固其识记结果。

2， 拓展课外阅读，课堂讲解多侧重方法训练，课下多做针对性练习。

3， 鼓励学生多参加社会实践，并敢于抒发自己的真情实感，同时加强语言训练与应用。

总之，在复习中我们要争取做到全面、细致，有计划、有步骤地复习归纳各方面知识，培养学生的自学能力和考试的能力，希望通过一段时期的努力可以在期中考试中取得满意的成绩，进一步提高学生学习语文的兴趣，增强学习的积极性。

Time flies, the twinkling of an eye, and a semester has passed, we welcomed our long-expected winter holiday, celebrated our joy. This, of course, happiness is not to play computer to watch TV every day of the "happy", but a reasonable arrangement of holiday time, mix to get happiness. Here is my winter vacation plan, please review.

A, serious finish the teacher leave each homework. During the holiday season, we want to learn, practice and play these three aspects, of course, learning is the most important. So, we should finish the teacher leave each homework seriously, do playing and learning.

Second, to take part in more social practice. In the study, we cant at home and watch TV every day, more out of their homes, to participate in some meaningful social practice activities.

Third, read some good books. About two months of winter vacation, we cant just want to play, but also read some good books, broaden our horizons. Truly "min and studious, fools".

Four, out of the door, go to outdoor exercise. Holiday life, little of course not stay healthy. We should make full use of vacation time, enhance their own resistance, make your body more healthy.

Fifth, preview the content of the next semester to learn. I hope I can during the holidays, understand the contents of the next semester to learn, and to prepare, at the same time also want to review what we have learnt last term.

Holiday life is like a colorful pebbles, a less intense colour, also a more relaxed joy.

时光飞逝，转眼间，又一个学期过去了，我们迎来了我们期盼已久的寒假，迎来了我们的一份快乐。当然，这快乐不是每天玩电脑看电视的“快乐”，而是合理安排假期时间，劳逸结合得到的快乐。下面就是我的寒假计划，请大家多多点评。

一、认真完成老师留的每一项作业。在假期中，我们要以学习、实践和玩耍这三方面入手，当然，学习还是最重要的。所以，我们要认真完成老师留的每一项作业，做到玩耍和学习两不误。

二、多参加一些社会实践活动。在学习之余，我们不能每天都在家里看电视，要多走出家门，参加一些有意义的社会实践活动。

三、阅读一些有益的书籍。长约两个月的寒假，我们不能只想着玩耍，还要多读一些好书，开阔我们的眼界。真正做到“敏而好学，不耻下问”。

四、走出家门，去户外锻炼身体。假期生活，当然少不了强健体魄。我们要充分利用假期时间，增强自己的抵抗力，让自己的身体更健康。

五、对下学期要学习的内容进行预习。我希望能在假期里，了解下学期要学习的内容，并进行预习，同时也要复习上学期学过的内容。

假期生活就像一个色彩丰富的鹅卵石，少了一分紧张的色彩，也多了一分轻松的喜悦。

英语考试记得姚老师说要举行一次英语考试，我心里高兴极了，老师好几次都说要发奖状，这次我一定会得奖的。老师特意留意了单词和句子，我一看太好背了，于是看了几遍，志在必得的样子，觉得明天的奖状非我莫属。可谁知道第二天，我怀着喜悦的心情考完了试，把听写本交了上去……发本子时，只听见最前面的都是100分，唯独没我的名字，我心里一直浮现着记单词句子时，没有什么不会的呀？听见老师喊道：“马昕宇，99分。”我羞愧地低着头跑上去拿了本子，心里有一种说不出来的滋味，就像打翻的五味瓶一样，在课堂上，我伤心的差点哭出来。回到家，我大哭了一场，我想了想，以后必须要认真了，如果再这样粗心大意，我永远不会得到奖状了。是啊！小树只有经历风雨后，才会更坚强。但是，人们常说：虚心使人进步，骄傲使人落后！

修辞手段一般主要用于文学性写作中。但在大学英语的英文写作中有时也需要运用一定的具有英文特征的修辞手段，而且运用得好，会使语句生动从而增添语句亮点。因此，掌握一些一般常用修辞手段对于实现语句亮点也是非常必要的。对于大学英语写作来说，主要应该掌握以下修辞手段，又称语句辞格，包括结构辞格与语义辞格。对比、排比、重复、倒装等为结构辞格，转义、双关、矛盾等则为语义辞格。

1.对比正反对比就是要巧妙地运用对称的英文句式来表达互为补充的意思，因此恰当地运用反义词语往往是必不可少的。如果一旦所要表达的内容具有这种情况，就应尽力选用这种对称的句式并选用适当的反义词语来加强语句，实现语句的亮点。

1)如“很多人很快就会发现，他们在物质上是富裕了，精神上却很贫乏”，可以这样达：

Many people will soon find themselves rich in goods，but ragged in spirit.(注：句中rich in与ragged in，goods与spirit具有正反对比的关系和效果。)

2)如“利远远大于弊”，可以这样表达：

The advantages for outweigh the disadvantages.(注：句中the advantages与the disadvantages具有正反对比的关系和效果。)

3)如“他们注意到了这些说法中的一些道理，但他们却忽视了一个重要的事实”，可以这样表达：

They have noticed a grain of truth in the statements，but have ignored a more important fact.(注：句中have noticed与have ignored，a grain of truth in the statements与a more important fact具有正反对比的关系和效果。)

4)如“这样做既有积极效果也有消极效果”，可以这样表达：

It will have both negative and positive effects by so doing.(注：句中negative与positive具有正反对比的关系和效果)

5)如“我们既有与我们很为相似的朋友，又有与我们很为不同的朋友”，可以这样表达：

We have friends similar to us and friends different from us.(注：句中similar to与different from具有正反对比的关系和效果)

2.排比英文中有时也使用排比句式，这种句式整齐而有气势，又不会使人感到单调。例如，如“读书使我们聪明，锻炼使我们强健”，可以这样表达：

Reading makes us wise while exercises make us strong. 3.重复英文一般讲求简洁，因此为表达强调偶尔使用重复可以使语句的强调内容得到突出。英文的重复又根据被重复词语在语句中的位置分为句首重复、句尾重复、首尾重复、尾首重复等。

1)如“现在是忘掉过去一切的时候了。现在是言归正传的时候了。现在是为未来而奋斗的时候了”，可以这样表达：

Now is the time to forget everything in the past. Now is the time to get down to the business. Now is the time to work hard for the future.(注：此句为句首重复，重复部分为句首的now it the time to)

2)如“我们渴望成功，而且正在为成功而努力工作”，可以这样表达：

We long for success and we are working hard for success.(注：此句为句尾重复，重复的部分为句尾的for success.)

3)如“我相信我们能够成功，我相信我们也一定会成功”，可以这样表达：

I am convinced that we can succeed，and Iam convinced that we must succeed.(注：and所连接的两个语句的句首与句尾部分同时重复，重复的部分为句首的I am convinced that与句尾的succeed)

4)如“我们现在生活在一个新的时代，而一个改革充满着风险与机遇”，可以这样表达：

We are now living in a new era，and a new era of reform is always full of ventures and chances.(注：and之前的句尾与and之后的句首重复，重复部分为a new era.)

4.倒装这里说的倒装不同于前述非修辞性的语法结构倒装。非修辞性的语法结构倒装是语句的语法结构所限定的，没有自由选择的余地，只要运用需要倒装结构的句型就要采用倒装结构。这里所说的倒装是指修辞性语义结构倒装，是进行强调的一种手段，它利用了语句句首(或句尾)的特殊位置。例如，如“充满着风险与机遇的改革的新时代正向我们走来”，可以这样表达：

Now on coming to us is the new era of reform full of ventures and chances. 5.转义转义是一种对词语灵活运用的修辞手段，主要有比喻、拟人、夸张、反语、婉转等，比喻又包括明喻、暗喻、换喻、提喻等。

1)如要表达“过去的经历就像图片一样总是在脑海中萦绕”，英文可为：

What had been experienced in the past was always looming in memory like a picture.(注：此句采用明喻，明喻的特点是使用了like一词)

2)如要表达“我们的英语老师就是我们最好的英语辞典”，英文可为：

Our English teacher is our best English dictionary.(注：此句采用暗喻，暗喻的特点是利用事物之间的相似之处进行比喻，与明喻不同之处在于不使用like一词)

3)如要表达“我正在读莎土比亚的书呢”，英文可为：

I am reading Shakespeare.(注：此句采用换喻，换喻的特点是直接借用一事物的名称宋代替另一事物的名称，使用通过联想理解其含义，但不是所有的事物都是可以用换喻来表达的)

4)如要表达“这里需要一个帮手”，英文可为：

A hand is needed here.(注：此句采用提喻，提喻的特点是用一个事物的部分来代表事物的整体或用一个事物的整体来代表事物的部分。这里用hand一词代表整个人)

5)如要表达“巨大的不幸笼罩着整个城市”，英文可为：

A great misfortune crept over the whole city.(注：此句采用拟人。拟人的特点是将事物人格化)

6)如要表达“这种想法可真是伟大的愚蠢”，英文可为：

This is really a great stupid idea.(注：此句采用反语。反语的特点是故意将话反说，具有讽刺意味)

7)如要表达“我太渴望成功了。听到成功的消息我欣喜若狂”，英文可为：

I was mad for success and on the news of success I went mad with joy.(注：此句采用夸张。夸张的特点是为表现事物的特征故意夸大其词)

时间过得真快，转眼间三年级上学期期中考试就要到了，在考试前我一定要认真复习，争取能取得一个让老师和爸爸妈妈都满意的好成绩。

怎么复习呢?就从主要的几门功课说起吧。

语文方面，我要上课认真听老师讲复习内容，并按要求做复习笔记，回家每天做复习题，还要加强阅读和写作能力。

数学方面，我也要上课认真听老师讲复习题，做计算题时要认真仔细，不能粗心大意;做应用题时要反复读题，并在草稿纸上画图计算。

英语方面，我也要上课认真听老师讲单词和句子，回家要跟着点读机练习口语发音，并每天听写期中复习单词。

以上几点要求，我一定会认真做到，争取期中考试能考到一个满意的成绩。

期中考试就要到了, 这是我的这20天的复习计划, 我要争取期中考出优异的成绩, 不辜负张老师的期望.

我的复习计划是每天复习一单元语文, 熟读课文,复习生字词, 让妈妈帮忙听写, 要求背诵的课文再背一遍, 直到八个单元都复习完了, 就做巩固练习. 然后再反复复习.

数学就是多做练习题, 把不会的题目多做几遍, 达到熟能生巧. 改掉期中考试粗心的毛病. 英语每天睡觉前都坚持念一课新课. 再复习一课前面的旧课, 新课学完, 就做同步练习, 一直到九课都做完了, 再做期末模拟测试题, 做完了再反复念课文, 争取达到每一课都会背.

关于应用文的概念， 1979 年上海辞书出版社出版的《辞海》的解释是：应用文是人们在日常生活、工作和学习中所应用的简易通俗文字，包括书信、公文、契约、启事、条据等。定义很简单，但没能概括出应用文的本质特征，仅仅指出应用文的“简易通俗”，这才只是应用文的一些方面，而不是全部特征。

根据国务院办公厅颁布的《国家行政机关公文处理办法》中对公文的定义，推广开来，应用文的定义应为：应用文是机关团体、企事业单位以及人民群众在日常工作、生产和生活中办理公务以及个人事务时，交流情况、沟通信息，具有直接实用价值和惯用格式的一种书面交际工具。这个定义规定了应用文的本质特征，使它明显区别于其他文体，又涵盖了应用文的基本特性。

应用文的起源至迟可以追溯到殷商社会晚期，也就是距今 3000 多年前，可以说我国有初步定型文字的最初年代也就伴随着有了应用文的使用。殷墟出土的甲骨卜辞，商周时期的钟鼎文，《周易》中的卦、爻辞等，都是应用文的原始形态。所以，如果说，神话是中国文学的“祖先”，那么甲骨文则是应用文的“祖先”了。

应用文写作基础知识----应用文的表达

1. 叙述

叙述，指的是把人物的活动、经历和事件发展变化过程交代出来一种表达方式。在应用文写作中是最基本、最常用的表达方式。

应用文写作中叙述的人称，有第一人称(“我”、“我们”)和第三人称(“他”、“他们”)。使用第一人称“我”、“我们”系指作者本人，或作者所代表的群体、单位，如书信、请示、报告、总结等文体的写作，多用第一人称。有时，为简要起见，常使用无主句。有的应用文体，如新闻报道、简介、调查报告、会议纪要，为表明作者立场客观、公正，传播的信息真实、可信，常采用第三人称写作。

应用文中的叙述方式有顺叙、倒叙、插叙、分叙等。应用文中记叙事件的发展过程，介绍单位的基本情况，一般都是按顺叙，即时间先后为序来叙述。其原因在于，应用文重在实用，不求委婉、曲折，故多采用直接的笔法叙事、说理。倒叙、插叙、分叙等用得较少，只在通讯、消息、调查报告的写作中才用得上。

应用文中的叙述要力求真实、准确，不带主观感情色彩;线索清晰，表述完整;以概述为主，尽可能用概括的语言说出其前因后果、来龙去脉，使读者了解其梗概。

2. 说明

说明，就是用简明扼要的文字对事物、事理及人物进行解说的表达方式。目的是使读者对事物的形态、构造、成因、性质、种类、功能，对事理的概念、特点、来源、演变、关系等有一个鲜明的了解和认识。

说明在应用文中使用广泛，如解说词、广告词、说明书、简介等文体，主要是用说明的方法来写的。其他文体如经济文书、科技文书、诉讼文书、行政公文等，也常常借助说明的方法解释事理，剖析事理。

说明的方法多种多样，在使用过程中应注意：定义说明要求“被定义者”和“定义者”外延相等，用语简明准确，具有科学性，不能用否定形式，避免“同义反复”;解释说明要求抓住要领，言简意明;分类说明注意根据写作意图选择恰当的分类角度，再次分类只能依据一个标准，各类的总和要等于被分类的事物;比较说明运用时要求用来作比的事物与被比物要相似，有明确的相比点，尽量用人们熟悉的事物作比;举例说明要求事例典型能给人以深刻的印象，举例应扼要，只需概述介绍，不必具体铺叙;引用说明要求引文要有针对性，要贴切，所引资料要认真核实，使之准确可靠;比喻说明应力求准确贴切;数字说明要求数字准确无误，每个数据都要有来源;图表说明要求选择图表要有代表性和针对性，表格的设计要合理，使人一目了然。

3. 议论

议论，即议事论理，是运用事实材料和理论材料进行逻辑推理阐明观点的一种表达方式。它主要特点是证明性，即通过摆事实、讲道理，或证明自己观点的正确，或驳斥对方观点的错误。

在应用文写作中，议论经常使用。调查报告、总结、通报等文体，经常在叙述事实、说明情况的基础上，表明对人物、事件、问题的评价。指示、决议、会议纪要等公文，也常用议论来阐明党和国家的方针、政策，让下级机关和群众理解和执行。

应用文写作中的议论，与一般议论文中的议论有明显的区别。一般议论文中，议论是最主要的表现方法，贯穿全文始终，论点、论据、论证三要素齐备。而在应用文写作中，最主要的表达方式是叙述和说明，议论居于从属的地位，一般只是在叙述、说明的基础上进行。另外，应用文的议论，一般也不需要作长篇大论，不需作复杂的多层次的逻辑推理，也不一定具备论点、论据、论证这样一个完整的议论过程，而只是在需要分析论证的地方，采取夹叙夹议的方法，或采取三言两语的方式，点到即止，不作深入论证。

运用议论要注意，一要庄重，对任何事物的评价要实事求是，以理示人，以理服人。二要明快，要直截了当的阐明观点，不拐弯抹角，不回避矛盾。

英语考试……应该跟原先一样不是很难吧。

终于开始了。我舒了一口气。写着笔试的内容，觉得这次还是挺简单的，全部都是课文里的内容，没有太多的课外内容。写到一大半后，我看到了“写作”这个题目。我背的东西有用了。可是，上面只是要按照一个短文来仿写。唉，看来是白用那么长的时间来背了。

写完笔试后，我检查了好几遍。因为我的语文数学都没考好，这次一定要细心了。

老师终于来给我们念听力了。我的心里乱成了一锅粥。这个单词是什么意思?算了，就填“B”吧。最后一个听力，我把自己的心揪了起来。这是老师说的最重点的一个题，这题要是错了，那这分数……

终于考完了!同学们都舒了一口气。我们在对答案。“这题应该是A。”“不对，应该是B!”同学们在争辩着。

明天就不用考啦!我们自由啦!同学们高兴地蹦了起来。

本次英语考试以中考题型命题，加强对基础知识的考查，侧重考查学生综合运用语言的能力。命题材料贴近学生生活，难度适中。其中听力笔录要点和书面表达失分较多。我所教两个班级19班比20班在人平，及格率和优秀率方面稍高。

从本次考试所反映的现状来看，今后的教学中应注意：

1.加强单词听写和课文背诵的落实工作，多关注课文文本知识。

2.狠抓基础知识，加强写作训练。书面表达能客观地反映学生英语基础知识掌握情况，并且一直是学生的薄弱环节。

3.继续注重英语阅读教学。阅读理解在我们的各种测试中所占分值越来越大，而且选材也更趋广泛化。因此课堂教学中要侧重“篇章”，强调“含义”，将语篇教学贯穿于课文教学和阅读理解教学中，利用语篇教学扩大学生词汇量，增强语感，丰富文化知识，提高学生分析问题和解决问题的能力。

4.注重兴趣培养，慎防两极分化。从试卷分析中可以看出，每个学校都不同程度地出现了令人担忧的“两极分化”现象。初学阶段一定要注意激发培养学生的学习兴趣，关注学生的情感，营造宽松，民主、和谐的教学氛围，保护每个学生的自尊心和学习英语的积极性。只有这样，掉队的学生才会减少，也才可能大面积提高人平。

5.注重课堂“时效性 ”，在优化课堂组织教学、合理设计教学活动，加大训练强度和密度的基础上，注重因材施教、分层教学。既要使大多数学生掌握好基础的知识与技能，同时注重知识的扩展和规律性知识的总结与归纳，让好学生也能获得充分的发展。

6.加强听力训练，营造语言环境。课堂上一定要加强对学生的听力训练，坚持用英语组织教学，尽可能利用多种教学资源让学生接触地道的语音、语调，多听英、美人士的录音材料。

一个句子必须按照一定的模式来组织，这个模式称为句式。下面是语文迷为大家提供的高考英语写作优秀句式，供大家参考。

1) on the other hand, the contribution of day schools cant be ignored.

2) due to high tuition fee, most of ordinary families cannot afford to send their children to boarding schools.

3) since it is unnecessary to consider students routinelife, day school can lay stress on teaching instead of other aspects, such as management of dormitory and cafeteria.

4) furthermore, students living in their own home would have access to a comfortable life and have more opportunities to communicate with their parents, which have beneficial impact on development of their personal character.

5) from what has been discussed above, we may safely draw the conclusion that both of day schools and boarding schools are important to train young students for our society.

6) there is much discussion over science and technology. one of the questions under debate is whether traditional technology and methods are bound to die out when a country begins to develop modern science and technology.

7) According to a recent survey, four million people die each year from diseases linked to smoking.

8) The latest surveys show that quite a few children have unpleasant associations with homework.

9) No invention has received more praise and abuse than Internet.

10) People seem to fail to take into account the fact that education does not end with graduation.

11) An increasing number of people are beginning to realize that education is not complete with graduation.

12) When it comes to education, the majority of people believe that education is a lifetime study.

13) Many experts point out that physical exercise contributes directly to a persons physical fitness.

14) 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

15) 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.

16) 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.

17) 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.

18) An investigation shows that female workers tend to have a favorable attitude toward retirement.

19) 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.

20) Any government, which is blind to this point, may pay a heavy price.

21) 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.

22) In view of the seriousness of this problem, effective measures should be taken before things get worse.

23) The majority of students believe that part-time job will provide them with more opportunities to develop their interpersonal skills, which may put them in a favorable position in the future job markets.

24) It is indisputable that there are millions of people who still have a miserable life and have to face the dangers of starvation and exposure.

25) Although this view is wildly held, this is little evidence that education can be obtained at any age and at any place.

26) No one can deny the fact that a persons education is the most important aspect of his life.

27) People equate success in life with the ability of operating computer.

28) In the last decades, advances in medical technology have made it possible for people to live longer than in the past.

29) In fact, we have to admit the fact that the quality of life is as important as life itself.

30) We should spare no effort to beautify our environment.

31) People believe that computer skills will enhance their job opportunities or promotion opportunities.

32) The information Ive collected over last few years leads me to believe that this knowledge may be less useful than most people think.

33) Now, it is generally accepted that no college or university can educate its students by the time they graduation.

34) This is a matter of life and death--a matter no country can afford to ignore.

35) For my part, I agree with the latter opinion for the following reasons:

36) Before giving my opinion, I think it is important to look at the arguments on both sides.

37) This view is now being questioned by more and more people.

38) Although many people claim that, along with the rapidly economic development, the number of people who use bicycle are decreasing and bicycle is bound to die out. The information Ive collected over the recent years leads me to believe that bicycle will continue to play extremely important roles in modern society.

39) Environmental experts point out that increasing pollution not only causes serious problems such as global warming but also could threaten to end human life on our planet.

40) In view of such serious situation, environmental tools of transportation like bicycle are more important than any time before.

41) Using bicycle contributes greatly to peoples physical fitness as well as easing traffic jams.

42) Despite many obvious advantages of bicycle, it is not without its problem.

43) Bicycle cant be compared with other means of transportation like car and train for speed and comfort.

44) From what has been discussed above, we may safely draw the conclusion that advantages of bicycle far outweigh its disadvantages and it will still play essential roles in modern society.

45) There is a general discussion these days over education in many colleges and institutes. One of the questions under debate is whether education is a lifetime study.

46) This issue has caused wide public concern.

47) It must be noted that learning must be done by a person himself.

48) A large number of people tend to live under the illusion that they had completed their education when they finished their schooling. Obviously, they seem to fail to take into account the basic fact that a persons education is a most important aspect of his life.

49) As for me, Im in favor of the opinion that education is not complete with graduation, for the following reasons:

50) It is commonly accepted that no college or university can educate its students by the time they graduate.

51) Even the best possible graduate needs to continue learning before she or he becomes an educated person.

52) It is commonly thought that our society had dramatically changed by modern science and technology, and human had made extraordinary progress in knowledge and technology over the recent decades.

53) For lack of distinct culture, some places will not attract tourists any more. Consequently, the fast rise in number of foreign tourists may eventually lead to the decline of local tourism.

54) There is a growing tendency for parents to ask their children to accept extra educational programs over the recent years.

55) This phenomenon has caused wide public concern in many places of world.

56) Many parents believe that additional educational activities enjoy obvious advantage. By extra studies, they maintain, their children are able to obtain many kinds of practical skills and useful knowledge, which will put them in a beneficial position in the future job markets when they grow up.

57) In the first place, extra studies bring about unhealthy impacts on physical growth of children. Educational experts point out that, it is equally important to take some sport activities instead of extra studies when children have spent the whole day in a boring classroom.

58) Children are undergoing fast physical development; lack of physical exercise may produce disastrous influence on their later life.

59) In the second place, from psychological aspect, the majority of children seem to tend to have an unfavorable attitude toward additional educational activities.

60) It is hard to imagine a student focusing their energy on textbook while other children are playing.

61) Moreover, children will have less time to play and communicate with their peers due to extra studies, consequently, it is difficult to develop and cultivate their character and interpersonal skills. They may become more solitary and even suffer from certain mental illness.

62) From what has been discussed above, we may safely draw the conclusion that, although extra studies indeed enjoy many obvious advantages, its disadvantages shouldnt be ignored and far outweigh its advantages. It is absurd to force children to take extra studies after school.

63) Any parents should place considerable emphasis on their children to keep the balance between play and study. As an old saying goes: All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

64) There is a growing tendency for parent these days to stay at home to look after their children instead of returning to work earlier.

65) Parents are firmly convinced that, to send their child to kindergartens or nursery schools will have an unfavorable influence on the growth of children.

66) However, this idea is now being questioned by more and more experts, who point out that it is unhealthy for children who always stay with their parents at home.

67) Although parent would be able to devote much more time and energy to their children, it must be admitted that, parent has less experience and knowledge about how to educate and supervise children, when compared with professional teachers working in kindergartens or nursery schools.

68) From what has been discussed above, we may safely draw a conclusion that, although the parents desire to look after children by themselves is understandable, its disadvantages far outweigh the advantages.

69) Parents should be encouraged to send their children to nursery schools, which will bring about profound impacts on children and families, and even the society as a whole.

70) Many leaders of government always go into raptures at the mere mention of artistic and cultural projects. They are forever talking about the nice parks, the smart sculptures in central city and the art galleries with various valuable rarities. Nothing, they maintain, is more essential than such projects in the economic growth.

71) But is it really the case? The information Ive collected over last few years leads me to believe that artistic and cultural projects may be less useful than many governments think. In fact, basic infrastructure projects are playing extremely important role and should be given priority.

72) Those who are in favor of artistic and cultural projects advocate that cultural environment will attract more tourists, which will bring huge profits to local residents. Some people even equate the build of such projects with the improving of economic construction.

73) Unfortunately, there is very few evidence that big companies are willing to invest a huge sums of money in a place without sufficient basic projects, such as supplies of electricity and water.

74) From what has been discussed above, it would be reasonable to believe that basic projects play far more important role than artistic and cultural projects in peoples life and economic growth.

75) Those urban planners who are blind to this point will pay a heavy price, which they cannot afford it.

76) There is a growing tendency these days for many people who live in rural areas to come into and work in city. This problem has caused wide public concern in most cities all over the world.

77) An investigation shows that many emigrants think that working at city provide them with not only a higher salary but also the opportunity of learning new skills.

78) It must be noted that improvement in agriculture seems to not be able to catch up with the increase in population of rural areas and there are millions of peasants who still live a miserable life and have to face the dangers of exposure and starvation.

79) Although rural emigrants contribute greatly to the economic growth of the cities, they may inevitably bring about many negative impacts.

80) Many sociologists point out that rural emigrants are putting pressure on population control and social order; that they are threatening to take already scarce city jobs; and that they have worsened traffic and public health problems.

81) Now people in growing numbers are beginning to believe that learning new skills and knowledge contributes directly to enhancing their job opportunities or promotion opportunities.

82) An investigation shows that many older people express a strong desire to continue studying in university or college.

83) For the majority of people, reading or learning a new skill has become the focus of their lives and the source of their happiness and contentment after their retirement.

84) For people who want to adopt a healthy and meaningful life style, it is important to find time to learn certain new knowledge. Just as an old saying goes: it is never too late to learn.

85) There is a general debate on the campus today over the phenomenon of college or high school students doing a part-time job.

86) By taking a major-related part-job, students can not only improve their academic studies, but gain much experience, experience they will never be able to get from the textbooks.

87) Although peoples lives have been dramatically changed over the last decades, it must be admitted that, shortage of funds is still the one of the biggest questions that students nowadays have to face because that tuition fees and prices of books are soaring by the day

88) Consequently, the extra money obtained from part-time job will strongly support students to continue to their study life.

89) From what has been discussed above, we may safely draw a conclusion that part-time job can produce a far-reaching impact on students and they should be encouraged to take part-time job, which will benefit students and their family, even the society as a whole.

90) These days, people in growing numbers are beginning to complain that work is more stressful and less leisurely than in past. Many experts point out that, along with the development of modern society, it is an inevitable result and there is no way to avoid it.

当今天剑桥英语考试的铃声响起时，我感觉全身都已经不是自己的了，像是换了一个人的身体一样。我的手不停的颤抖着，笔尖也在颤抖，在桌子上不断地留下来回摩擦的声音。为什么我对英语考试这么害怕呢？因为我妈妈给我要求的是必须认真对待，争取考到100分。但是我对自己很没有“信心”，所以心里十分的担心。一直想着该怎么答题？要怎么才答得好，考到一。百分。就在这时考试的铃声响起了，我之前在脑袋里记到的知识，突然间一下子就飞走了。当我正在想怎么才能将那些知识找回来的时候？老师开始念听力了，我十分无奈的跟着老师的思路走，生怕有半点遗漏。

过了一会儿，老师终于把听力讲完了，我感觉浑身都松了一口气儿，但这还没完，老师紧接着说：“同学们，这次考试要认真对待，今天的题很难一定要认真考试哦。”老师不说这句话还好，但老师一说，我就感觉浑身都不自在了，感觉就像望子成龙的那些妈妈一直逼迫孩子学习，在我的心里，老师分明是在说一定要考好，不准考差。

我吓的浑身哆嗦，开始回忆我以前学过的知识，但是墙上那钟表的嘀嗒声一直在困扰着我，我想起了这个，又因为滴答声，忘了那个，一直这样重复了几次。我有点不耐烦了，我心想算了吧？直接做吧！至少比干坐在这里，思考我以前学过的知识要好吧！我拿起了笔开始面对试卷，但是看到第一道题我就傻眼了，这道题要用原形和Ing进行式加到语句上面，但是在这道题目上，老师根本就没讲这种情况，这可怎么办呢？我无可奈何，只好拿出我的点兵点将大法，但是可惜这是道填空题我没能用上我的点兵点将大法，这使我脑袋都大了一号，没办法，我只好垂头丧气地往后做，可是越往后做我的心情就越烦躁，心情也就越忐忑，有很多题，明明在上课的时候，我都听到过，但是我就是一时想不起来了。

我心想算了吧，随便猜个答案都填上去吧！我真要这么做的时候，我却看到桌子上，不知谁用钢笔在上面刻了一句话，人可以被毁灭，但不能被打败，这一句话，可能是谁在上课的时候无聊随便刻的，但是他却成为了我这次考试的救命稻草，我转念一想，是啊，我不能被打败，我必须冷静下来尽自己的最大努力做下去，就这样时间又嘀嗒嘀嗒的过去了。不一会儿时间就到了，我垂头丧气的准备走上去交上试卷，但是我又想起了刚才可在桌子上那句话，就算我做的不好，我也要做出，我好像做得很好的样子，于是我马上抬头挺胸，挺着腰板走了上去。放学时我看到老师改完试卷才走，唉，才考了96分。

后来我把这件事情告诉了妈妈，本以为妈妈会大吵我一顿，但是她却夸奖我在关键的时刻没有放弃这一项做的很好。暂时一两次考试不好没什么关系，但是必须要在你受挫折的时候，坚强起来！坚持起来！那才是你该做的！

This month, I will travel to Changsha and Zhangjiajie with my two friends, which is supposed to be a seven-day trip. We will set out on 10th, June. Now, we have prepared many things, snacks and medicines included. Firstly, we will go to Changsha by plane. The tickets are cheap, so it’s a good choice to save time. We will stay there for two days. The main goal staying there is to enjoy the delicious food in Changsha. My friend has prepared a map of must-tries and I believe they must be good. Then we will go to Zhangjiajie by train. It’s not so far from Changsha, taking about five hours to get there. Zhangjiajie is famous for its wonderful mountains. The sceneries there are amazing that no one should miss. But we will have a tough journey for climbing high mountains, which is not easy for us all. This is why we will stay there for longer. In the end, we will go home by train. This is my plan for the journey. I am sure it will be a wonderful and fruitful journey.

这个月，我要和我的两个朋友一起去长沙和张家界旅行，为期7天左右。我们会在6月10日出发。现在，我们已经准备了许多东西，包括零食和药品。首先，我们会坐飞机去长沙，机票很便宜，所以这是节约在路上时间的好选择。我们会在长沙待两天，主要目的是品尝长沙美食。我的朋友准备了长沙美食地图，我想那必定很诱人。接着，我们会坐火车前往张家界。张家界离长沙不太远，只需5个小时的车程。张家界以奇山闻名，风景十分壮美，我想没人会想错过这样的美景的。但是由于要爬山，所以在张家界的旅行不会太轻松，这也是我们要在张家界待久一些的原因。最后，我们会坐火车回家。这就是我这次旅行的计划，我确信这会是一个美妙而又充实的旅程。

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

在英语考试之前，看看宿舍里的人，大家似乎都有一些无法控制的忧愁，似乎对于英语考试难以接受，只不过只是期末考试是不得不接受的任务!

不过经过两个小时左右的紧张考试之后，我们几个人突然之间释放自己了，有一些东西就是这样，例如期末考试，开始考试之前总是担心成绩，可是一旦考试结束，所有的问题一下子都没有了，事情已经是定局了，即使是再伤心也无法改变!

我的舍友开始看视频了，今天是鹿鼎记更新的日子，还有一些其他的电视剧，估计现在早就已经更新出来了，所以在考试之后我们就需要恢复平常的生活，看看电视剧消磨时间，似乎没有经历过考试一样，只不过没有经历和已经经历过一样!

英语对于太多人而言太难了，我就是其中一个人，其他人也一样，所以在考试之前不得不担心自己的成绩，只不过现在担心也没有什么意思了，所以还不如放松下来，因为接下来还有其他科目考试，所以我们不能把伤心留给后面!

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，

firstly,i decide to try my best to learn english .because my english so poor that it affects my other subject.i willface many differences ,such as broadening my vocabulary, training my listening ,improving my write and so on. i must work hard because i dont want to behind the times.

secondly ,i will give up watching football games because every time it takes me two hours ,which makes me not finish my homework .as a student ,study is our duty ,so i wii focused more on study and less on playing . in order to my future ,i will work hard.

The Spring Festival, the most important festival to Chinese. Is China the biggest, the most lively, one of the most important ancient traditional festivals, is also unique to Chinese festival.

Festival, is the beginning of the lunar calendar, another name is called New Years day, Spring Festival is the biggest, the most lively, China one of the most important ancient traditional festivals, is also unique to Chinese festival. Is the most concentrated expression of Chinese civilization. Since the western han dynasty, the custom of Spring Festival continues today. The Spring Festival, generally refers to New Years eve and the first day. But in private, in the traditional sense of the Spring Festival is from the Greek festival of the day or month, 23 or 24 people, until the fifteenth, among them with New Years eve and the first day of the first lunar month. How to celebrate this holiday, in one thousand years of history development, formed some relatively fixed customs and habits, there are a lot of handed down also. During the traditional festival, the Spring Festival of the han nationality in our country and most of ethnic minorities have to hold various celebration activities, these activities are to worship deities, worshiping ancestors, blow away the cobwebs, meet jubilee blessing, pray for good harvest as the main content. Form rich and colorful, activities with strong ethnic characteristics. On May 20, 2006, "Spring Festival" folk have been approved by the state council listed in the first batch of state-level non-material cultural heritage list.

The origin of the Spring Festival has a legend, the Chinese ancient times have a kind of call "year" monster, head long feelers, fierce abnormalities. "Year" the elder deep in the bottom of the sea, every New Years eve just climbed out, swallowed cattle damage lives. Therefore, every New Years eve that day, the people of CunCunZhaiZhai could flee to the mountains, to escape the "year" animal damage. One NianChuXi, from the village outside a begging the old man. Folks a hurried panic scene, only the east village, an old woman gave the old man some food, and urged him quickly up the hill avoid "year" beast, the old man stroked his beard say with smile: "mother-in-law if let me stay overnight in the home, I must have" years "beast." Old woman continue to persuasion, begging the old man smiling without a word. At midnight, "nian" beast into the village. It found the village atmosphere unlike previous years, village east wifes husbands family, the door stick red paper, candle lit the room. "Year" beast was a shake, long a sound. Nearly the door, hospital suddenly spread "banging spluttered" Fried sound, "nian" shuddered, again dare not go up. Originally, "year" the most afraid of red, fire and exploding. At this time, her mother-in-laws door open and saw hospital a red-robed man laughed. "Year" frightened to disgrace, mess up. The next day is the first day, the people of refuge back very surprised to see the village safe. At this point, the old woman was suddenly enlighted, quickly spoke to the fellow villagers begging the old mans promise. This matter quickly spread around the village, people know driven "years" beast approach. (the legend of hakka) from then on, every year New Years eve, families paste red couplets, firecrackers; Household candle lit, keeping stay by age. Beginning in the early morning, still walk close bunch of congratulate friends say hello. This custom spread more widely, Chinese the most solemn of the folk traditional festival.

春节，中国人最重要的节日。是中国最盛大、最热闹、最重要的一个古老传统节日，也是中国人所独有的节日。

节，是农历的岁首，春节的另一名称叫过年，是中国最盛大、最热闹、最重要的一个古老传统节日，也是中国人所独有的节日。是中华文明最集中的表现。自西汉以来，春节的习俗一直延续到今天。春节一般指除夕和正月初一。但在民间，传统意义上的春节是指从腊月初八的腊祭或腊月二十三或二十四的祭灶，一直到正月十五，其中以除夕和正月初一为高潮。如何过庆贺这个节日，在千百年的历史发展中，形成了一些较为固定的风俗习惯，有许多还相传至今。在春节这一传统节日期间，我国的汉族和大多数少数民族都有要举行各种庆祝活动，这些活动大多以祭祀神佛、祭奠祖先、除旧布新、迎禧接福、祈求丰年为主要内容。活动形式丰富多彩，带有浓郁的民族特色。2006年5月20日，“春节”民俗经国务院批准列入第一批国家级非物质文化遗产名录。

春节的来历有一种传说，中国古时候有一种叫“年”的怪兽，头长触角，凶猛异常。“年”长年深居海底，每到除夕才爬上岸，吞食牲畜伤害人命。因此，每到除夕这天，村村寨寨的人们扶老携幼逃往深山，以躲避“年”兽的伤害。有一年除夕，从村外来了个乞讨的老人。乡亲们一片匆忙恐慌景象，只有村东头一位老婆婆给了老人些食物，并劝他快上山躲避“年”兽，那老人捋髯笑道：“婆婆若让我在家呆一夜，我一定把‘年’兽撵走。”老婆婆仍然继续劝说，乞讨老人笑而不语。 半夜时分，“年”兽闯进村。它发现村里气氛与往年不同：村东头老婆婆家，门贴大红纸，屋内烛火通明。“年”兽浑身一抖，怪叫了一声。将近门口时，院内突然传来“砰砰啪啪”的炸响声，“年”浑身战栗，再不敢往前凑了。原来，“年”最怕红色、火光和炸响。这时，婆婆的家门大开，只见院内一位身披红袍的老人在哈哈大笑。“年”大惊失色，狼狈逃蹿了。第二天是正月初一，避难回来的人们见村里安然无恙十分惊奇。这时，老婆婆才恍然大悟，赶忙向乡亲们述说了乞讨老人的许诺。这件事很快在周围村里传开了，人们都知道了驱赶“年”兽的办法。(客家人的传说)从此每年除夕，家家贴红对联、燃放爆竹;户户烛火通明、守更待岁。初一一大早，还要走亲串友道喜问好。这风俗越传越广，成了中国民间最隆重的传统节日。

It never be explained why so many students on campus cheat in their examinations nowadays, regardless of the danger that teachers find their secret, as it did in the case of the boy student in the cartoon/photo above. What is conveyed in the drawing is most thought-provoking and should arouse our social concern.

The implied meaning of the picture is worth discussing. Firstly, the youngs always become quite illogical when they try to descide what can be done and what can not be done. In the light of this statement, some students are often willing to sacrifice their credibility for the privillage of getting more points and being regarded as outstanding students. Furthermore, some one is afired that he can‘t pass the final exams leading to his degree, in the fruit of being absorbed into computer games or disappointment in love.

Consequently, only by cheating can they graduate and get the degree on time. Although many reasons share the problem of this drawing, one of them can be singled out for recognition: the conditions of our sociaty. Such is human nature, that we can‘t avoid being influenced by environment. In short, the root of cheating in examinations and credibilililess on campus is combinition of many factors.

There is no blinding at the fact that, in dealing with a challenge on such scale, some strong, effective and necessary counter-measures should be put on our agenda. To the begin with, a widespread education campaign should be launched to make students realize the importance of credibility. What‘s more, the government departments at different levels and related orgnizations should make joint efforts and coordination of programs to creat a more credit environment for us. Only by this package deal, can build up a harmonious and healthy sociaty.

[关于考试作弊问题的英语作文