背诵

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

1、请保留一份单纯，使你多一份与人的友善，少一些心灵的冷漠麻木;请保留一份单纯，使你多一份人生的快乐，少一些精神的衰老疲惫;请保留一份单纯，使你多一份奋进的力量，少一些故作高深的看破红尘。

2、成功是你梦寐以求的那朵红玫瑰，挫折正是那遍及周围的针刺。快乐是你辛勤耕耘获得的果实，悲伤正是那成熟前的秕粒。

3、天空收容每一片云彩，不论其美丑，所以天空宽阔无边。大地拥抱每一寸土地，不论其贫富，所以大地广袤无垠。海洋接纳每一条河流，不论其大小，所以海洋广阔无边。

4、当简爱说：“我们是平等的，我不是无感情的机器”，我懂得了作为女性的自尊;当裴多菲说：“若为自由故，两者皆可抛”，我懂得了作为人的价值;当鲁迅说：“不在沉默中爆发，就在沉默中灭亡”，我懂得人应具有反抗精神;当白朗宁说：“拿走爱，世界将变成一座坟墓”，我懂得了为他人奉献爱心的重要。

5、大厦巍然屹立，是因为有坚强的支柱，理想和信仰就是人生大厦的支柱;航船破浪前行，是因为有指示方向的罗盘，理想和信仰就是人生航船的罗盘;列车奔驰千里，是因为有引导它的铁轨，理想和信仰就是人生列车上的铁轨。

6、什么是幸福?幸福是果园里果农望着压满枝头果实的满脸喜色，幸福是教室里莘莘学子憧憬未来的动人笑脸，幸福是实验室里科学家又有新发现时的舒展眉头，幸福是领奖台上运动员仰望国旗冉冉升起时的莹莹泪光。幸福是奋斗的结晶，勤劳的丰碑。

7、未经历坎坷泥泞的艰难，哪能知道阳光大道的可贵;未经历风雪交加的黑夜，哪能体会风和日丽的可爱;未经历挫折和磨难的考验，怎能体会到胜利和成功的喜悦。挫折，想说恨你不容易……

8、幸福，时时刻刻围绕在你身旁。如果你从母亲手中接过饭碗，心存温馨，那就是幸福;如果你在灯下读着朋友的来信，品味友情，那就是幸福;如果你独坐一隅，静静听歌，凝神遐思，那就是幸福

9、有人说，幸福是星级宾馆里山珍海味间的觥筹交错;有人说，幸福是高档舞台厅里动人旋律中的翩翩起舞;有人说，幸福是端座奥迪、宝马车于人流如潮的大街上招摇过市;也有人说，幸福是待在密室里数着成叠的百元大钞;然而我要说：拥有这些，不一定就是真的拥有了幸福!

10、远去的飞鸟，永恒的牵挂是故林;漂泊的船儿，始终的惦记是港湾;奔波的旅人，无论是匆匆夜归还是离家远去，心中千丝万缕、时时惦念的地方，还是家。

11、幸福是什么?是功成名就、受人敬仰吗?是恬静悠闲、无牵无挂吗?是高朋满座、儿孙绕膝吗?我说：幸福是……。

12、人生就像一座山，重要的不是它的高低，而在于灵秀;人生就像一场雨，重要的不是它的大小，而在于及时。

13、要装进一杯新泉，你就必须倒掉已有的陈水;要获取一枝玫瑰，你就必须放弃到手的蔷薇;要多一份独特的体验，你就必须多一份心灵的创伤。

14、“指点江山，激扬文字”是一种豪迈的潇洒，“天生我材必有用”是一种自信的潇洒，“独钓寒江雪”是一种高洁的潇洒，“不破楼兰终不还”是一种悲壮的潇洒。

15、风从水上走过，留下粼粼波纹;阳光从云中穿过，留下丝丝温暖;岁月从树林走过，留下圈圈年轮，朋友，我们从时代的舞台上走过，留下了什么呢?

16、希望大海风平浪静，却常常有狂风和恶浪。希望江河一泻千里，却常常有旋涡和急流，希望生活美满幸福，却常常有悲伤和忧愁。

17。冬天的河干涸了，我相信，春水还会来临，那时白帆就是我心中的偶像;风中的树叶凋零了，我相信，泥土里的梦将在枝头开花结果。

18、天使的翅膀碎了，落到人间，成了我们的忧伤;诚信的被囊抛了，散到世上，成了撒旦的魔杖。

19、没有哪一种胭脂能涂抹时间，没有哪一件服装能掩饰灵魂，没有哪一套古籍能装潢空虚。

20、它可能是一座山，让你感受巍峨，它可能是一片海，让你体会壮阔，它可能是一首交响乐，让你领略激越，它可能是一座石雕，让你明白雄健。

21、在经受了失败和挫折后，我学会了坚韧;在遭受到误解和委屈时，我学会了宽容;在经历了失落和离别后，我懂得了珍惜。

22、不是苦恼太多，只是我们不懂生活;不是幸福太少，只是我们不懂把握。

23、责任感是诸葛孔明“鞠躬尽瘁，死而后已”写就的《出师表》，责任感是孔繁森离家别母血洒高原树立的公仆丰碑，责任感是贝多芬挑战人生超越自我谱写的《命运交响曲》。

24、金钱可以买来名贵的手表，但买不来宝贵的时间;金钱可以买来美味的食品，但买不好的胃口。

25、是一丛秋菊，也要散发芳香;是一片秋叶，也要装点大地;是一株古柏，也要撑起蓝天;是一眼古井，也要流出清泉。

26、尊重别人是一种美德，受人尊重重是一种幸福。

27、书是良药，刘向说：“书犹药也，善读可以医愚”;书是益友，臧克家说：“读过一本书，像交了一位益友”;书是窗户，高尔基说：“每一本书，都在我面前打开了一扇窗户”。

28、成熟是一种素质，一种源于心灵表于行动的素质;成熟是一种能力，一种自我约束自我管理的能力;成熟是一种态度，一种对任何事物都保持冷静的态度;成熟是一种心境，一种能看淡一切，万事淡如水的心境。

29、信念之于人，犹翅膀之于鸟，信念是飞翔的翅膀

30、爱心是一片照射在冬日的阳光，它使贫病交迫的人分外感到人间的温暖;爱心是一泓出现在沙漠的泉水，它使濒临绝境的人重新看到生活的希望。

31、包装是房子富丽堂皇的外壳，包装是丑妇手上绚丽的太阳伞，包装是模特在舞台上走出的一字猫步。

32、“慈母手中线，游子身上衣”说的是亲情;“人生得一知己足，斯世当以同怀视之”说的是友情，“曾经沧海难为水，除却巫山不是云”说的是爱情;“苟利国家生死以，岂因祸福避趋之”说的是爱国情。

写作的过程最后是一个输出的过程，它跟同学们大脑的语料库的积累，还有英文素材的积累和长期的修养是密不可分的。写作就跟银行存钱一样，零存整取，一点点的存进去，最后取出来的时候可以一大把一大把的取。如果我们平时背范文、背句子、背单词、背语法、背句型、背结构背得少，考前也没有进行练习的话，那考试中肯定会遇到很多的困难。所以这里建议大家去背诵考前背诵范文，背五篇左右是打底的，背到滚瓜烂熟，脱口而出。

挑代表性范文

考前应该大范围的进行准备，而不是把题目押到一两个上面。但是也不要求全部背诵，只要把里面的作文大部分进行精读和预览就可以了，可以挑出代表题型，图画作文、英语作文、还有图表作文以及提纲作文，至少每种各背一篇或者两篇，加在一起背五到八篇的范文就可以了。

相信大家都知道“熟读唐诗三百首，不会吟诗也会吟”的道理。就是说熟读背诵是学习诗歌行之有效的方法之一。熟读是学习的基础，只有反复诵读，才能对诗的韵味、声律、意境等有较好的理解。

论文写作也是这个道理，多读多看是非常重要的，只有足够的输入才能有一定的输出。而大家多读多看的目的是能够对论文的结构有一定的了解。每个部分的写作都是有一定的固有的套路的，每个部分的内容该怎么表达，时态语态是怎么样的，通过背诵文献能够使得大家有很深刻的理解。当然，你需要背诵的文献，最好是跟自己研究较为相关的，这样才能够更有针对性。

很多人常说，每次读完文献 (不管是细读还是粗读)，合上文献后，想想看，文章最重要的take home message是什么，如果不知道，就从abstract，conclusion里找，并且从discuss里最好确认一下。这样一来，一篇文章就过关了。take home message其实都不会很多，基本上是一些concepts，如果你发现你需要记得很多，那往往是没有读到重点。

实际上，这么做的目的只能是做到了读懂，但是其实并不能够对自己的写作能力有什么帮助。所以小编建议大家背诵跟自己研究相关的文献。

身处农村的小学生从小活动范围有限，学生视野不开阔，对外面世界的了解并不像城市孩子，而农村的小学教师还有一大批是从前的社请教师转正过来的，他们其中好多都没有受过严格的师范教育，虽说已具备多年的教育教学经验，在新一论课程改革的背景下，教学方法依然显出无法适应的迹象，比如，为了让孩子能在考试之中得一个比较好的成绩，不昔花大量时间让学生们背诵《同步作文》《作文大全》等里的范文，致使形成比较别扭的习作，比如：

妈妈，我想对您说：为什么别人都有星期天，我却没有，每当我熬下星期五已经累得不行了，可您却给了我最大的压力，星期六不让我玩，就让我做作业，可是作业做的时间长了，也会让我厌烦。

……

有一次，学校组织春游，你却不让我去，后来我给我的几个朋友说了，是他们说服了你，你才让我去春游。

在路上我们蹦蹦跳跳的走着，我们玩了一会儿，就又到其他地方去，可您就是不让我去。

我就觉得很后悔，人家来了，说那儿的山多美水多美，当时我却为什么不能去，在回家的路上我们搭了个公共汽车，我突然间看见了一片白菜，我高呼起来，好大的白菜呀！有的同学听见了哈哈大笑起来，骂我傻瓜，人家说那是花菜，顿时我脸通红，像布不一样。

妈妈，请你还我星期八，为什么别人有星期天，我却没有，我真的很悲哀，为什么哥哥可以去玩，我不可以，我每天放学，您就让我做作业，我想拥有一个星期天为什么那么难？

——习作《我真想有一个星期八》

这篇作文题目与其为《我真想有一个星期八》，还不如命为《妈妈，我想对您说》更为恰当。文不对题，却强拉硬拽，很显然在进入考场前小作者已经准备了一篇作文。这样的作文教学存在的弊端在于：（1）在没有教会学生如何对待优秀范文的情况前，这种教法严重影响到学生的学习时间结构，徒增学生的学习负担。（2）破坏了正确认识作文乃至正确学习语文的观念，使语文的学习变得枯燥而没有生气。（3）虽然说我们可以在范文当中积累好词好句，但若教师对这篇范文的构思不加以引导，学生在考试作文中将生硬组织，甚至笑话百出。（4）最后，也是最重要的，这种做法严重的影响了作文的情感态度价值观导向，在这类习作中，作者之所写乃他人的感情，自我已不复存在。

1、阅读经典文学作品

让自己爱上文学，做一个追求文学和艺术素养的求学者。大部分学习编导的同学的文学素养还是比较高的，底蕴不错。

在这个基础上尽量多看一些包含基础知识的书，假如没有时间，最起码语文课本里面需要背诵的古诗词要会背，名家的经典散文要会背，还有中外知名的作家的作品要阅读和了解，潜移默化的掌握这些作家的代表作品。

2、精读和泛读并行

编导生看文学名著，不仅仅为了应对文艺常识考试，老师问你这个问题：“你喜欢什么书，喜欢哪本名著？”如果你连一本名著都没有读过，就比较尴尬了。在看的过程中精读的文学名著不必贪多，最好选择知名度比较大的小说，最好是近代的，比如茅盾的、鲁迅的、张爱玲的等等。选择几本，把里面的故事、人物、主题全部弄清楚。然后再选择一些书进行泛读。大概了解书的内容就可以了，这些内容从网上就可以了解，建议把百度百科利用好。

3、多看经典的电影

老师经常会问到，知名导演的电影作品，有时候会给出电影作品名字，让你写出或者选择导演的名字。也有时候给出导演的名字，让你写出两三部代表作品。复杂一点的问题会考察你对电影故事内容的掌握，比如给出四个选项，这四个选项都是关于战争的电影，让你选出哪一部是关于越战题材的电影。

要应对这样的问题，就需要在平时看电影的过程中积累，而且亲身看电影的经历比从书上了解印象更深刻，更有利于记忆。经典电影包括历史评价高的、影响力大的、得过重要奖项的。

可以先把中国导演从第一代到第六代导演的代表作看看，再看一下豆瓣评分前100的电影，往年经常考的电影也要看看。

4、根据时间线索来记忆

文艺常识的考察无非就是时间、人物名字、作品名字、事件。想要系统的记忆，最好的办法是用时间这个线索把这些事件串联起来。

记忆的时候最好是按照历史事件的发展来记。中国古代文学史散文创作经历了先秦诸子散文和历史散文，汉朝《史记》和赋，唐朝“古文运动”和唐宋八大家，明朝“唐宋派”、“公安派”、“竞陵派”，清朝“桐城派”等的发展；诗词创作经历了先秦《诗经》和楚辞、汉乐府、魏晋南北朝“建安七子”和陶渊明、唐宋近体诗如“初唐四杰”、山水田园诗派、边塞诗派和以李白、杜甫为代表的浪漫主义、现实主义诗派、宋词豪放派和婉约派等的发展；小说创作经历了先秦神话、魏晋南北朝的志怪小说和轶事小说和谴责小说、唐传奇、宋话本、明拟话本《三言》、《两拍》、明清四大古典小说和谴责小说等的发展；戏曲创作则以元朝为其黄金时代，包括元杂剧和散曲两部分，散曲又包括小令和套数两种。 这样记忆是不是更简单了？

5、多查，互相印证，互为补充。

目前市面上关于文艺常识的书很多，但有些知识可能存在一些争议，比如世界第一部有声电影到底是哪一部？有学者说是美国华纳兄弟公司拍摄的《爵士歌王》，也有人说是1926年华纳公司拍摄的《唐璜》。学习编导的高中生没有时间去研究和查证世界电影历史中的事件，但可以多看几本包含电影知识的书，再决定哪一个作为背诵的固定答案。目前来看，文艺常识的书里面基本都赞成世界第一部电影是《爵士歌王》。

6、大声读出来

想要强化文艺常识知识点在大脑中的印象，就把它大声的读出来。先将整句话读几遍，然后把关键词单独的读几遍。读的时候，脑海中要根据它的意思来描绘它的画面。举个例子：奥地利的作曲家舒伯特被誉为“歌曲之王”。著名作品有《摇篮曲》、《小夜曲》。你先把这句话读出来，然后再重复“舒伯特”、“歌曲之王”、《摇篮曲》、《小夜曲》这四个关键词，在读的过程中在想象一下舒伯特在拉小提琴的，沉醉这优美的音乐当中。

7、用自由联想法复习学过的知识点

在等车之类的无聊时刻，复习文艺常识知识点也许是很好的消遣。可以靠周围事物来触发灵感发挥你的自由联想。

比如你在等车的时候，看到对面广场上有一个人坐在长椅上，手里拿着巧克力。通过这样画面你可以想象到《阿甘正传》这部电影，这部电影里面有很多关于战争的情节，然后你可以联想到美国的关于表现战争的优秀影片有《拯救大兵瑞恩》《战争之王》《拆弹部队》《辛德勒的名单》等，通过《辛德勒的名单》想到它的导演史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格，他通过这部电影获得奥斯卡最佳影片、最佳导演等奖项，想到奥斯卡颁奖，可以联想到重要知识点欧洲三大电影节是意大利的威尼斯国际电影节、法国的戛纳国际电影节和德国的柏林国际电影节。

当你身边没有书的时候、当你坐车旅行无聊的时候、当你在晚上躺在床上准备入睡的时候，联想起来吧。

8、累积常考知识点，整理制作成卡片

提高文艺常识的学习效率，同时又增加记忆量的有效方法之一是将常被问到的知识点、你总不记不住的知识点抄下来，制成卡片。

文艺常识记忆的方法有很多，各人的情况不同，但是，相信大家合理利用了上述小技巧能够事半功倍！

一、Great changes in my hometown

More than twenty years ago, my hometown was just a small , old and poor town. Most of people were farmers. There were few factories. The people didn’t have enough food to eat and wore old clothes. They had a hard life .

Great changes have taken place in the past twenty years . The people have found a lot of ways of making money . Now there are many tall buildings . They are very beautiful . Roads are wide and clean . People can take buses or drive their own cars to go to work . Many people have cell phones and personal computers. People’s living conditions have improved a lot . Thanks to the government’s efforts . my hometown is becoming more and more beautiful .

看了好文章，不单是理解就够了，还应该在理解的基础上多多背诵，才能达到融会贯通、据为已有的效果。英语宜多诵多背，把一些句型、短语，一些文章的片段或全篇，背得滚瓜烂熟，让这些材料在你的脑袋里扎根，当你要用的时根，它们使会自然而然地冒出来。背诵可以培养正确使用语言的习倔，增强语感，这样就可以避免生搬硬套地写一些中国式的英文。加强背诵能变难为易，变费力为省力，能有效地帮助学生提高写作能力。现在背诵和熟记一些语言材料，对中学生来说将会受用无穷。

上课铃响了，钟老师乘着歌声的翅膀笑眯眯地走进教室。钟老师双手往后一背，扫了同学们一眼，说：“同学们，既然我们已经把《学弈》这片课文学完了，那么，我们来背一背怎么样？”钟老师边走边说，样子好像对我们充满了信心。

“哗”，一阵混乱，如热锅上的蚂蚁。几秒过后，教室里恢复了平静，同学们全神贯注地盯着钟老师看，63双眼睛已聚集在了一点。同学们似乎已等的有些急燥了，教室里出现了一点儿小小的声响。钟老师嘴角悄悄的往上翘了翘。“那我们先请第五排同学好不好？”“从左到右依次来吧！”全班又一阵哗然。坐在我后面的周灵佩左右看了一下，发现是自己第一个，还没回过神来，就被旁边的刘翔宇喊起来了。“恩，弈秋，通过之善意者也。使，弈秋悔二人弈~”是‘诲’不是‘悔’，全班纠正到。“哦，使弈秋诲二人弈！”她改正道。我看见同学们有的满意的笑了笑。全排背完了，钟老师也给了“酬劳”的，每人加了两颗星星。 同学们一看老师手中的花名册，眼睛都亮了，一个劲的争取把手举到最高，连吃奶的劲都用上了。第七行被抽到了，第七行的同学受宠若惊，得意慌了，摆出各种胜利的手势家迷人的pose显示出他们的兴奋。没被抽到的同学也跟着他们背，想把它背的再熟些，好让老师多加几颗星星。第七行的同学吸取了第五行同学的教训，明显要背的好一些。而第三次抽的第二排就更上一层楼了，背的又熟，声音又大，于是各各加了三颗星，露出了胜利的微笑。

我想：这次背诵比赛并不仅仅是一个简简单单的背诵比赛，因为它体现了我们6.3班别具特色的一面！

我背书是很困难的，我是一个不太爱背书的孩子，我也是一个很难背书的孩子。而那天我们教授的恰巧是白居易的著名作品《长恨歌》。“汉家有女初长成，养在深闺人未识。”然后又背“春寒赐浴华清池，温泉水滑洗凝脂。”然后又背：“7月7日长生殿，夜半无人私语时。在天愿作比翼鸟，在地愿为连理枝。”然后又背来背去，我总也记不住啊！老师，您怕不是骗我的吧？怎么这首诗，那么难背呀。

老师讲了很多有关唐玄宗跟杨贵妃的趣事。然而，我了解了也背不出来。是不是《长恨歌》真的那么难背呢？当时老师说背完了就过来听孟子。孟子可能是老师唯一想跟我讲的先秦诸子了，然而，我《长恨歌》怎么也背不完，所以一直没机会。我其实一直认为我是可以背下来的，然而一次又一次的不成功，让我怎么也想不出来。

所以《长恨歌》我整整背了一周，那是我所有文章中背诵的最久的一次。之前的《桃花源记》我半天就好了，五柳先生传，我三个小时就背到了。归去来兮，用了一天，然后《长恨歌》却可以用一周。我想我是堕落了，也就从那一次之后，我就很少再去老师那里了，我记得在我印象中，我就再也没听老师讲授更多的国学知识了。

那之后我便被父母接回了家，自学了起来。然而我很想回到课堂，我很想去听孟子，但是又想，我《长恨歌》还没背完。原来我还不够努力呀！

这学期，黄老师要求每一篇课文都要背诵。

我们急了。每天都早早到校，不再一到校就打打闹闹，而是一到校就拿出书认认真真读课文。黄老师也提前到校督促我们读书。值日干部更加负责了，每天努力地盯着大家读书。

星期五，黄老师在走廊上就听见教室里传出的朗朗书声。我们一个个都聚精会神地盯着书本上的每一个字，大声朗读。

今天要背诵《雅鲁藏布大峡谷》这篇课文。我们放开喉咙，一心一意地读，一遍一遍又一遍。我看见有些记忆能力比我强的同学背完这一课，去读后面的课文了。我不服气，于是坚持再读几遍。一会儿，我就背得滚瓜烂熟了。心里不禁有一点儿得意：太简单了。

上完语文课，黄老师交代：“明天要背《鸟的天堂》，请同学们抓紧时间背诵。”老师一说完，有些人就愁眉苦脸的。我心里得意洋洋地想：这还不简单？小菜一碟。

可好景不长，等我背诵的时候就发觉文章实在太长了，一下子还真背不出来。

放学后，我垂头丧气地回家，做完其他作业就马上读书、背书。结果很长时间都没有背出来。

“唉，要是不要背就好了。”我忍不住唉声叹气。

接着，我就像丢了东西的娃娃，趴在桌子上懒洋洋地读书：我们吃过……一直读呀读，声音有气无力的。妈妈似乎看出了我的心思，问：“怎么了？是不是背不出啊？”

一连串的问题把我难住了，我委屈极了：“嗯……”

“这样背嘛。”妈妈教我秘诀，“每个自然段读5遍，直到可以背诵了再读下一段。不要总是读一遍课文就背一遍。”

我半信半疑：“哦，我试一试！”

我按照妈妈的方法，尝试背诵。背完第一段之后，我恍然大悟：妈妈教的方法真的管用！我一高兴就把烦恼抛到了九霄云外，重新找回了自信。没过多久，我就背完了《鸟的天堂》。

我发现，背完课文做《能力》时，特别轻松。我都不用去翻书了，《能力》做得又快又好！

我终于懂得了背诵的好处。我要努力，提高记忆能力。

新学期已经开始两个星期了，我们的课文学到了第四课。黄老师要求我们每课都必须背诵。我一听，呀！糟了，怎么办，怎么办？心里急得像热锅上的蚂蚁。明天又该留校了！

星期一的晚上，我做完作业就开始读第一课《观潮》，反反复复读了很多遍，还是背不出来。转眼就到十点了，妈妈说：“你先洗澡睡觉吧，明天还要读书，早上自习时再接着背！”于是我怀着不安的心情睡了。

第二天早上，我一早来到学校，继续读课文。时间一转眼过去了，但我还是背不出来，放学的时候果不其然我被留下了，我很沮丧！

星期三的时候，我们学了《雅鲁藏布大峡谷》，又要背诵。第一课还没背完，又来第二课了。我垂头丧气地回到家里，妈妈也知道我们的课文都要求背诵，看到我的样子就知道是什么事情了。妈妈叫我先把要写的作业做完再说。

做完作业后，妈妈和我说：“琪琪，妈妈知道背书是你的弱项，你先不要想着马上能背出来，你一句一句记，一段一段背，不管结果怎么样，你都不能失去信心，你尽自己最大的努力，能背多少就背多少，妈妈不怪你！”

听了妈妈的话我没那么大的压力了，不管能不能背先反反复复读。

现在已经学到了第四课，虽然我都不能完全地背出来，但我不会灰心了，一有时间我就会读课文，总有一天我会背出来的。

新的学期，去学校上课的第一天，黄老师就要求我们这个学期每篇课文都背诵。

我们学的第一篇课文就是《观潮》。放学，老师给我们布置的作业就有一项背诵任务。回家后，我做完其它作业就开始读。一开始读了好多遍我都不会背。妈妈叫我先一个自然段一个自然段地背，会背了再一起背。我照着妈妈教我的方法一段一段背，背到好晚才背完，但还不是很熟练，只能算勉强。妈妈交代我第二天早自习去认真读，早上的记忆要比晚上好。果然，我读了几遍之后在我的同桌袁紫露那里背，顺利地过关了。

这一课，袁紫露没有我背得这么熟。她在我这里背的时候总要提醒几个字，所以我让她继续去读，只要用心去读，就一定能背下来。读了一会，她又到我这里来背，这一次可以说是背得滚瓜烂熟。

学完第一课又是第二课。第二课我们学的是《雅鲁藏布大峡谷》。第二天早自习，我跟袁紫露比赛背，看哪个先背完。她也认真地读起来。这一课我只读了一个早自习就背下来了，她却背了好几天，这一次我比赢了。

难怪妈妈经常跟我说，一天之计在于晨。早上读书背书是最好的时光。我觉得背诵是一件很好的事情，既可以学习知识，还可以训练记忆。我以后一定会更努力地背诵！

新学期到了，黄老师在讲台上严肃地说：“这学期的课文全部都要背诵。”

我坐在下面很苦恼：按照我这种记忆力，就是让我读一天我都背不下来呀！

星期二，我一进教室就看见黑板上写着：一五二班所有的人今天要早自习，必须背完第一课。看完黑板上的字后，我赶紧坐在座位上一心一意地读，可是我读了二十多遍还不能背一段。

好消息就在我苦闷的时候来了，黄老师进来说：“今天读书很认真，就只要你们读三四自然段，而且是在家里背。”我一听心里马上就乐开了花。

终于熬到放学回家了，我先做完了作业到了晚上才开始背书的。我跟妈妈说，我们只要背第一课的三四段。妈妈听了之后也没说什么，只是微微点下头让我认真背。背诵的过程中，我一会儿跟弟弟玩，一会儿出去看会儿电视，一会儿玩一下平衡车，可是我似乎忘记了什么东西，这时我才想起还没把课文背下来。可是已经到了睡觉时间，我只好去睡觉了。

到了星期三，我大约五点左右就起床背书了。那时我读得很认真，一句一句一段一段的，终于能背下来了，妈妈那时候出来揉揉眼睛连忙竖起大拇指表扬了我。

背诵课文真是件既让我头痛又让我感到开心的事。

星期二，老师交代星期三要把第九课背诵好。

我向小组其他人提议：“我们明天比赛背书，好吗？”

陈弈霖、黄馨怡和孟靖涵异口同声：“好！谁怕谁呀！”

我很想取得背诵比赛的胜利。回家后，我做完作业就一遍一遍读课文。读熟之后，我就一句一句地背。之后又一段一段地背，最后几段连起来背。全部背流利了，我就放心了，觉得自己第二天肯定能赢。

星期三到校，陈弈霖和黄馨怡都说自己已经准备好了。只有孟靖涵不说话，原来他根本就没做准备。

等人都到齐了，我们的比赛就开始了。背诵的内容是第九课的1、2、6、9、10、11自然段。我第一个背，开始很流利，背到最后一段的时候，有一个字背错了。组长孟靖涵说：“背错了！”好可惜，眼看着就要赢了，结果得重来。

陈弈霖第二个背，背到第10段的时候，小组长说：“你少背了一句话。”陈弈霖也没有赢。

黄馨怡第6段就背错了，孟靖涵呢，根本不会背。

哈哈，机会又到了我这里。

我认认真真读了好几遍课文，去孟靖涵那里背。你猜怎么样？我流利地背完了。后来，陈弈霖和黄馨怡也背完了，不过出现了几处小错误。孟靖涵还是不能背诵。我取得了胜利，好高兴！

只要认真准备就能取得胜利。这次背书比赛让我更加自信。

一个星期二的下午，快放学了，语文老师布置了背诵第13课《小英雄雨来》3-7自然段的作业。

我们全班都快晕了，这么多个自然段，这要背到猴年马月才背得完，我们都在不停地抱怨。可是没办法，老师布置的作业我们必须完成，所以我心里就打了一个小算盘，我可以骗妈妈只用背3、4两个自然段。

回到家里，我很快就背完了3、4自然段，妈妈很是疑惑：“为什么只背这么少的自然段？”我振振有词：“老师就是这么要求的，不信你问郑邱昊！”妈妈信以为真，我也千叮咛万嘱咐妈妈一定只用签“已背诵”，不要签“已背诵3、4自然段”。我想想就很得意，很快就睡觉去了，妈妈签完字帮我把书装进了书包。

第二天早上，蒋老师开始检查背诵了。前两个自然段我倒背如流，可是后面三个自然段我要不总卡壳，要不就加字，要不就减字。蒋老师走到了我的面前，我流了一身冷汗，汗毛都竖起来了，心一直跳个不停，整个身子都僵硬了，生怕蒋老师看出来我没背。还好妈妈已经给我签字了，我又有些得意，妈妈签字就是证明啊！不好！这时我无意低头瞟了一眼签字，妈呀！妈妈签的居然是“已背诵3-4自然段”。糟了！蒋老师要向我走来了，如果让蒋老师看见我只背诵了3-4自然段她会大发雷霆，我紧张的全身冒汗，腿都在发抖。我还来不及把书本盖着，蒋老师就看见了签字。她勃然大怒，跑到讲台上把书狠狠地往桌子上一甩，大口喘着气，之后就没说什么了。

望着生气的蒋老师，我大气也不敢出，同学们的目光像利剑一样刺向我，我的心里难受极了。

蒋老师没有当众批评我，是想给我改过自新的机会。这件事也让我明白了学习要自觉，这样的人才会有出息。

每天，我们都离不开背诵，语文我们要背诵课文、古诗以及成语，数学我们要背诵公式啊什么的，英语我们还要背诵单词词组。天天要背这背那，难免会会有被不上的时候，这时我们应该需要技巧什么的，我来分享一下我的背诵法宝吧！

NO·1我建议大家选择脑子清醒的时候来背诵。如：早上6点到8点是记忆的最佳时间，如果此时背诵，效果是最好的。所以我认为大家应该好好把握我们在学校的早读时间，认认真真地读好每一个早读。

NO·2我们背诵课文时，可以先把课文朗读3到4遍，然后默默地看一遍，在看的过程中，我们要用大脑去记忆，此时的记忆我们可以把课文内容转化成一些简单的画面。我把它叫做“画面流动背诵法”，我觉得效果不错哦！

NO·3有些同学可能认为一下把整篇课文背下来有些困难，没关系，我们可以换一种方法：化繁为简。就是一句一句的背或者一段一段的背，最后再组合到一起背就行了！

NO·4其实，我们在背诵时，只要“手、口、脑”并用，一般都会很容易记住要背的内容。如果你想要把自己背诵的时间缩短，可以把“默读课文”这一步改为抄写课文一遍。你知道吗？抄一遍，比默读十遍效果还要好呢！

NO·5在背诵英语单词的时候，最好的办法就是一边听复读机的发音，一边自己跟着念。这样可以快速记忆！

NO·6我们要把背诵的东西变成期记忆，就需要反复背诵。比如：我们背诵古诗，可以过几天翻开，在背一背。这样不断地巩固就不会忘了！

以上，就是我的背诵法宝，试一试哦，说不定会对你的背诵有很大的帮助！大家如果还有什么背诵法宝也可以分享一下，让我们永远不为背诵而烦恼！

李思张

低年级时，同学们一提起背诵就愁眉苦脸的，包给我也在其中。所以，我们都很讨厌背课文，可是我们怕什么，老师就来什么。这不，这学期老师要求我们学的课文书本要求背诵的就一定要背诵，而且都要到黄老师那儿背，背完了等黄老师打了个“背”字才能够算这一课背诵过关。

唉，背到第三课时，我就焉了，这么长的课文，这是要背到猴年马月呀！

放学后我一回到家，就唉声叹气的坐着发呆，妈妈见我这模样，便问我怎么啦？是不是遇到学习上的困难了？

唉！我们要背一篇课文，很长呢，话音刚落，又一声叹气就诞生了。

“要不，我带你读，我一句，你一句，好不好？”妈妈问我。“好啊好啊，见妈妈都参与背诵，我立马精神起来了。

“七月的新疆……”妈妈真的带我读了起来，读完之后，妈妈不禁赞叹起来，“这真是一篇写景的好文章，很好背的，你不仅要背下来，还要学习这里面的写作方法……。”“好！”我赞同的说。

开始，我还不熟练，背起来结结巴巴，可是，等我多读几遍之后慢慢地也找到了感觉，很熟练的把这篇课文背诵完了。

原来背诵的方法在于多读，多理解，功夫不负有心人，只要努力，没有做不到的事情。

刘锦昱

说起背诵课文，我简直恨之入骨，如果能够不写作文，那我简直可以上刀山下火海，可是现在我发现作文似乎不是那么讨厌了。

以前老师都是让我们在早自习，自己背诵的，可是这学期每篇课文的背诵要到黄老师那里去过关，当我听到这个消息的时候，彻底绝望了，我背是可以背，就是不敢再大人面前背啊！

每到早自习，我就使劲的读啊，读啊记呀记呀能够背第一段了，就背第二段，第二段背完了，就把第一段和第二段连起来背，就这样，慢慢的背，我便能将整篇课文全部背诵完。

第一次在黄老师那里背的时候，我的声音微微颤颤的在背的时候身体还有一些小小的发抖，心里紧张的不得了。

我看看我后面的同学张思涵还没有开始背，就已经有些微微发抖，不是吧，这么胆小。

每当我到黄老师那里背诵的时候总是改不了本性每次都紧张的不得了，很容易出错。

唉，不说了，我又得去完成我们的任务，将小学生必背古诗75首完全被下来。

作者：郭政禹

我有一个好同桌——朱博洋。个子不高，但他长着闪闪发光的眼睛，肉嘟嘟的小脸蛋，肥嘟嘟的手。看着他的手，如同一个肉球一般。但他有许多优点。

有一次，我是说让我们背诵课文。此时，我心一下子就沉重下来。我背诵能力一向不好，在以前我背一首古诗需要好几天才能背熟，现在才有点提升。我半点时间都不敢浪费，马上开始背诵。背诵，我先读了两遍，此时，令我吃惊的事情来了——他居然已经被过了老师说的内容。这让我感到不可思议，我吃惊地想：“我和他当了这么长时间的同桌，但从未知道他还有背诵这个特长。”我更加紧张了，加速背起来。

时间过去了十分钟，我终于背过了，但是不怎么熟，这是我听到他也在背——背的是倒数第二段，我听着，一会他把整篇课文背完了，这证明他已经背过了整篇课文。一会，老师开始检查了，他背得很快，但是一字不落。

我这位神奇的同桌，背诵能力真强。