英语写作中常见的语法错误汇集19篇

中考即"初中毕业和高中阶段招生考试"，是选拔考试，但又是建立在义务教育基础上的选拔;中考要考虑初中学生升入高中后继续学习的潜在能力，但高中教育还是基础教育的范畴。yuwenmi小编提供一些中考英语写作必备句子给大家，欢迎借鉴!

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

人们把会使用计算机与人生成功相提并论。

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

在过去的几十年，先进的医疗技术已经使得人们比过去活的时间更长成为可能。

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

事实上，我们必须承认生命的质量和生命本身一样重要。

4. We should spare no effort to beautify our environment.

我们应该不遗余力地美化我们的环境。

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

人们相信拥有计算机技术可以获得更多工作或提升的机会。

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

从这几年我搜集的信息来看，这些知识并没有人们想象的那么有用。

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

现在，人们普遍认为没有一所大学能够在毕业时候教给学生所有的知识。

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

这是一个关系到生死的问题，任何国家都不能忽视。

9. For my part, I agree with the latter opinion for the following reasons:

我同意后者，有如下理由：

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

在给出我的观点之前，我想看看双方的观点是重要的。

11.There is no denying the fact that air pollution is an extremely serious problem :the city authorities should take strong measures to deal with it.

无可否认，空气污染是一个极其严重的问题：城市当局应该采取有力措施来解决它。

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

一项调查显示妇女欢迎退休。

13.A proper part-time job does not occupy students too much time .In fact ,it is unhealthy for them to spend all of time on their study .As an old saying goes :All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy

一份适当的业余工作并不会占用学生太多的时间，事实上，把全部的时间都用到学习上并不健康，正如那句老话:只工作，不玩耍，聪明的孩子会变傻。

14.Any government which is blind to this point may pay a heavy price.

任何政府忽视这一点都将付出巨大的代价。

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

越来越多的人开始意识到教育不能随着毕业而结束。

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

说到教育，大部分人认为其是一个终生的学习。

17.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.

大部分学生相信业余工作会使他们有更多机会发展人际交往能力，而这对他们未来找工作是非常有好处的。

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

无可争辩，现在有成千上万的人仍过着挨饿受冬的痛苦生活。

19.Although this view is widely held ,this is little evidence that education can be obtained at any age and at any place.

尽管这一观点被广泛接受，很少有证据表明教育能够在任何地点任何年龄进行。

20.No one can deny the fact that a person’s education is the most important aspect of his life.

没有人能否人这一事实:教育是人生最重要的一方面。

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

依照最近的一项调查，每年有4,000,000人死于与吸烟相关的疾病。

22.The latest surveys show that Quite a few children have unpleasant associations with homework.

最近的调查显示相当多的孩子对家庭作业没什么好感。

23.No invention has received more praise and abuse than Internet.

没有一项发明象互联网同时受到如此多的赞扬和批评。

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

人们似乎忽视了教育不应该随着毕业而结束这一事实。

25.Many experts point out that physical exercise contributes directly to a person’s physical fitness.

许多专家指出体育锻炼直接有助于身体健康。

26.Nowadays ,many students always go into raptures at the mere mention of the coming life of high school or college they will begin. Unfortunately ,for most young people ,it is not pleasant experience on their first day on campus.

当前，一提到即将开始的学校生活，许多学生都会兴高采烈。然而，对多数年轻人来说，校园刚开始的日子并不是什么愉快的经历。

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

考虑到问题的严重性，在事态进一步恶化之前，必须采取有效的措施。

28.Proper measures must be taken to limit the number of foreign tourists and the great efforts should be made to protect local environment and history from the harmful effects of international tourism.

应该采取适当的措施限制外国旅游者的数量，努力保护当地环境和历史不受国际旅游业的不利影响。

29.An increasing number of experts believe that migrants will exert positive effects on construction of city .However ,this opinion is now being questioned by more and more city residents ,who complain that the migrants have brought many serious problems like crime and prostitution.

越来越多的专家相信移民对城市的建设起到积极作用。然而，越来越多的城市居民却怀疑这种说法，他们抱怨民工给城市带来了许多严重的问题，象犯罪和卖淫。

30.Many city residents complain that it is so few buses in their city that they have to spend much more time waiting for a bus ,which is usually crowded with a large number of passengers.

许多市民抱怨城市的公交车太少，以至于他们要花很长时间等一辆公交车，而车上可能已满载乘客。

与其他文体相比，英治议论文的结构一般较为固定，有下列几个部分组成：

1.提出需要议论的议题;

2.摆出正反两方面的观点;

3.表明作者持何种态度;

4.论证自己观点的正确性从而使读者接受自己的观点;

5.小结。

在具体写作中要注意下列几点：

1.议题的提出要开门见山，不要拖泥带水，啰啰唆唆

2.正反两方面的观点一般都要摆出，有时也有只强调一种观点的，那么这就等于将上述第二点和第三点合在一起了

3.作者的观点必须鲜明，不能模棱两可

4.论证自己的观点是议论文的最关键的部分。论证手段与英语说明文中的一些写作手法相同，常用的有罗列法、举例法、因果法、比较法等等。

5.对于较长的英语议论文还可以在文章结尾时对全文要点作一小结。

下面这篇学生作文是较为典型的一篇英语议论文：

Should Examination Be Abolished (取消)?

The examination system has come to be the main theme (主题)of modern education. One should take an examination andsucceed in passing it before he could be admitted， promoted or graduated. As it plays so important a role in the realm of education (教育的领域) it is under much criticism (评论) as to its validity (有效性) . People who are in favour of it try to develop this system more; those who are against it believe that such a system should be abolished. Should examination be abolished? In my opinion it should be.

Many people think that an examination is the only means to test knowledge， but， in fact， that is not true. A few questions given in an examination could by no means cover the whole field of the subject. Thus those who are able to answer them may be the poorest of the students and yet happen to know just a few points about that subject.

Id like to say that， because of the existence of the examination system， students pay so much attention to gaining high marks， that they often forget the chief purpose of education. The so-called clever students devote (贡献) themselves to the study of textbooks only. They， of course， know nothing but the skeleton (梗概) of knowledge. The end and aim of education， however， is to enable students to learn how to live. To do this， students must get themselves to do all kinds of training， physicalas well as mental. The present examination system has discouraged students from making such an attempt.

Moreover， since the students try so hard to put their lessons into memory in as short a time as possible， psychologically (心理上来看)， they soon forget the whole subject as soon as the examination is over. Surely this is one of the greatest wastes ever made in the history of civilization.

Lastly， in order to get high marks， there is a great temptation (诱惑) for students to cheat (作弊) in an examination. Indeed， such a practice becomes the means to the end. They cheat their teachers， their parents and also themselves. Such a tendency would impair (损害) our moral standards (道德标准) .

Therefore， I am of the opinion， in conclusion， that the examination system should be abolished.

2015中考将至,目前距2015 中考仅有几个月，因此现在是复习的关键时刻，在此YJBYS为了让考生们了解更多的中考试题，以为今年的中考取得更好的成绩。YJBYS的小编为考生们收集了2015年中考(精选)英语作文高分技巧分享，具体内容请各位考生及时查看如下，尽请关注!

一、了解高分作文的特点

要想作文获得高分，必须了解高分作文具有的特点，才有助于我们朝之而努力。高分作文一般具有以下特点：

1、书写工整，书面整洁，很少有涂改痕迹。

2、分段合理。全文分段一般不止一个自然段，让阅卷老师很容易就能找到作文所要求写的要点和重要句子。

3、要点齐全，不缺要点。

4、首尾呼应，自然成一体。

5、使用了大量的高级词汇和句型。阅卷老师一看就知道这个同学的功底非不一般，自然就给打高分了。

6、开头言简意赅，不啰嗦，不偏题，迅速引入主题。

7、段与段之间，自然过渡。有合适的连接词。

8、句与句之间，有恰当的连接词，使之自然成一体。

9、全文中同一个意思，基本没有重复使用某一个词、短语或者句型等，说明这个同学的词汇量不同寻常。老师自然就对该作文有好感了。

10、能够恰当使用谚语、格言等给文章添彩。

二、勤积累，巧准备

要想作文得高分，除了了解以上的特点外，还要在平时的学习中注意一下方面：

1、牢记课标词汇是基础

一篇作文多数是由积极词汇写出来的，这些词汇主要来源于课标。因此，牢记课标词汇是写好作文的基础。

2、掌握课标词汇和短语的用法

要想作文不扣分或者少扣分，有个要求是作文的语病少。怎么能够减少语病呢?这就要求我们在平时的学习过程中反复通过练习，掌握课标词汇和短语等的用法。例如，对于as soon as 、stop some body from doing something 、other 、another等的用法很多学生就经常出错。

3、高度重视同一个意思的多种表达方式

高分作文有个特点是：让老师发现你拥有丰富的词汇量，你的水平高人一筹。这由何而来?靠我们在平时学习过程中，逐步积累起来的。比如：今年的中考作文，谈的就是帮助他人的问题。同一个意思“帮助”，假如你就用一个动词“help”，岂不显得你词汇贫乏?假如你在作文中不断地变换方式，用help、give somebody a hand、 give a hand to somebody 、be in need of 等以表达“帮助”同一个意思，岂不更好呢?

像这样的例子很多，比如：大家都觉得很简单又很基础的“表示姓名的方式”就有：my name is jim. i’m jim. i’m called/named jim. i’m a boy called /named /with the name of jim. 等等。

表达年龄的方式有：she is 12. she is 12 years old. she is aged 12. she is a girl of 12(years old) 。 she is a girl aged 12.等等。

很显然，使用高级一点的更好。

4、加强练习，积累经验

学习语言最好的方法是运用，作文也不例外。我们要想作文得高分，必须经常练习，才能提高水平。

5、充分利用作文范文

很多资料书上都有作文范文。诚然，他们有很多值得借鉴的地方。

我们怎么利用它们呢?首先，我们先不要看文章，自己先思考一下：假如你来写，你会怎么去写，会用到哪些词或者句子等。然后去比较，勾出其中的好词佳句，并且把它摘录在专门的作文册子上。供写作时选用。

另外，背一些范文也是很有必要的。

6、背诵一些谚语和警句

作文中如果出现恰当的谚语和警句，会有锦上添花的效果。

三、精心审题，沉着写初稿

很多同学看到作文后，下笔就写。这是不对的。一则很容易写偏题、写出病句，涂改后书面又不整洁，影响得分。

其实，会写作文的同学都知道，审题非常的重要，可以防止很多毛病，提高得分。那么我们审题要做些什么呢?

审题主要要做一下事情：

1、审人称、时态、体裁等

审题时，要求我们要弄清楚这篇文章主要使用的人称是第几人称，什么时态、什么体裁。这些问题解决后至少不会犯很严重的错误：全文皆错。

2、明确必须表达的要点

高分作文有个特点是要点齐全。如果漏掉一个要点，则要扣分。因此我们必须认真细读其要求，把必须表达的要点勾出来。保证不漏掉任何一个要点。

3、罗列出可能会用到的短语、句型，确定好使用哪个?

4、确定好如何分段

就是要确定好，将哪些要点放在一个自然段里面，首段、尾段打算写哪些?

以上YJBYS的小编为考生们收集了2015年中考(精选)英语作文高分技巧分享试题

雅思写作考试是对考生的综合语言能力的考查，但有的考生在备考过程中，往往只是注重应试培养。那我们应该如何合理高效的备考雅思写作呢?

正如之前上面所说，许多考生备考过程中，往往会忽视了对语言知识和实际运用能力的锻炼，那么常见不可取的备考方法有哪些？考生们可以来看看自己有没有中枪

1. 话题准备，厚此薄彼：

教育类和科技类话题通常是雅思写作题库的主角，尤其是教育类话题，考试频率相对来说比较高，如剑9写作的4个话题中，就有两个是教育类。可是这就造成了一些考生在备考雅思写作时比较偏心，只是准备教育类和科技类话题，疯狂的背相关词汇，表达及素材观点，对其他话题却置之不理，这让其他话题情何以堪啊。其实，纵观近几年的雅思写作考试，社会类，环境类和媒体类等话题始终都是一线演员，拥有着和教育类及科技类话题一样比较高的出镜率，而其他话题也不断上位。因此，考生应了解近年雅思写作考试题库和出题规律，针对不同题型和话题，掌握写作方法和技巧，积累相关的词汇表达，句型结构和素材观点，确保万无一失。

另外，在准备雅思图表作文时，同学们不应该只练习曲线图，饼图，柱状图和表格的写作，还要重视流程图和地图题，熟悉表示时间次序和地理方位的相关短语及表达。尤其是地图题出现的频率在近两年的雅思考试中呈现了明显的上升态势，而其中以考察历史变迁的类型为主。所谓历史变迁，即某个地方在经历一段时间后发生了一些调整或改变，可能是地图上的建筑物从无到有，也可能是建筑的位置改变或是规模的扩大或缩小等等。需要同学们从给定的地图中挖掘相应的信息，按照时间和空间顺序，用恰当的语言有逻辑的呈现给读者。《剑九》Test 1就为我们呈现了一道变迁题。这种图表其实难度不大，但是有的童鞋在平时备考的过程中接触且准备的很少，所以在考场上根本无法动笔。事实上，如果我们在备考时，熟记表示方位的词汇和表达，仔细分析并经常练习此类题目，我们就能更好地把握这类题目的写作技巧与方法，在考场上遇到此类题目时不再迷茫。

课文中的经典句子，又是精华中的精华，背熟之后对你的写作语法有很大的帮助。下面来看看小编为大家带来的英语课文经典句子吧，希望对你有帮助。

1、 Flora,whose beautiful hair and dress were all cold and wet, started crying.

2、 Tree after tree went down, cut down by the water, which must have been three meters deep.

3、 The garden that was once so beautiful was completely destroyed, swept away by the wild water.

4、 I found some photos of interesting places which were not too far away from Chengdu.

5、 He told me that I could go on a two-day trip to Leshan and Emei, which wasn’t too expensive.

6、 First,we went to Leshan, where we climbed all the way up the mountain to see the Buddha.

7、 Looking up at the large head and down at the large feet makes you feel so small.

8、 Wei Bin took photos of us standing in front of the Buddha.

9、 Steven Spielberg, whose mother was a music teacher, was born in 1946 in a small town in America.

10、 In 1959 Spielberg won a prize for a film which he made when he was thirteen years old.

11、 The reason why he could not go there was that his grades were too low.

12、 Here he worked on a short film, which won him a job as the youngest film director in the world.

13、 This was the moment when Spieberg’s career really took off.

14、 I hate hiking and Im not into classical music.

15、 I surf the Internet all the time and I like playing computer games.

16、 Rock music is OK, and so is skiing.

17、 When are you off to Guangzhou?

18、 My plane leaves at seven, so I think we’ll take a taxi.

19、 See you when I get back.

20、 The next moment the first wave swept her down, swallowing the garden.

21、 Now ,the water, which was cold as ice and flowed faster than a river, was above her knees.

22、 Jeff and Flora looked into each other’s face with a look of fright.

23、 Chuck is a businessman who is always so busy that he has little time for his friends.

24、 One day Chuck is on a flight across the Pacific Ocean when suddenly his plane crashes.

25、 He realizes that he hasn’t been a very good friend because he has always been thinking about himself.

26、 Chuck learns that we need friends to share happiness and sorrow, and that it is important to have someone to care about.

27、 When he makes friends with Wilson, he understand that friendship is about feelings and that we must give as much as we take.

28、 The lesson we can learn from Chuck and all the others who have unusual friends is that friends are teachers.

29、 I found the bathroom, but I didn’t find what I was looking for.

30、 Don’t forget to buy me some ketchup on your way back.

31、 There are more than 42 countries where the majority of the people speak English.

32、 In total, for more than 375 million people English is their mother tongue.

33、 In China students learn English at school as a foreign language, except for those in Hong Kong, where many people speak English as a first or a second language.

34、 In only fifty years, English has developed into the language most widely spoken and used in the world.

35、 With so many people communicating in English every day ,it will become more and more important to have a good knowledge of English.

36、 For a long time the language in America stayed the same, while the language in England changed.

37、 In the same way Americans still use the expression “I guess “(meaning “I think”),just as the British did 300 years ago.

38、 At the same time, British English and American English started borrowing words from other languages ,ending up with different words.

39、 Except for these differences in spelling, written English is more or less the same in both British and American English.

40、 However,most of the time people from the two countries do not have any difficulty in understanding each other.

41、 Many people travel because they want to see other countries and visit places that are famous, interesting or beautiful.

42、 Many of today’s travelers are looking for an unusual experience and adventure travel is becoming more and more popular.

43、 Instead of spending your vacation on a bus, in a hotel or sitting on the beach, you may want to try hiking.

44、 Hiking is fun and exciting, but you shouldn’t forget safety.

45、 A raft is a small boat that you can use to paddle down rivers and streams.

46、 If you want a normal rafting trip, choose a quiet stream or river that is wide and has few fallen trees or rocks.

47、 The name “whitewater “comes from the fact that the water in these streams and rivers looks white when it moves quickly.

一、审题

我们拿到作文后第一件要做的事就是审题。审题的作用在于使你写作不跑题(如果跑题，条理和语言再好，也得不到及格分，甚至0分。)那末审题要审什麽呢?

1.体裁(议论文，说明文，描述文)

审题就是要审作文的题材和体裁。因为什末样的体裁就会用什末样的题材去写。那末体裁包括那些呢?它包括议论文，说明文和描述文。从近些年看，四级作文不是单一的体裁，而是几种体裁的杂合体。例如： Directions: For this part ,your are allowed 30 minutes to write a composition on the topicTrying to Be A Good University Student .You should write at least 100 words and you shouldbase your composition on the outline (given in Chinese ) below :

1.做合格大学生的必要性

2.做合格大学生的必备条件(可以从德智体方面谈)

3.我计划这样做

很多人说这种类型的作文是议论文。这是片面的，因为，第一段要求写"...必要性"，这说明本段体裁是议论文;第二段要求写"

...必备条件"，这说明本段要求写说明文;儿地三段要求写"...这样做"，这说明本段要求写描述文。所以在大多数情形下，四级作文是三种体裁的杂合体。

2.根据不同体裁确定写作方法

我们审题的目的就是根据不同体裁确定不同的写作方法。通过审题，我们可以看出四级作文大都是三段式。如上例第一段为议论体，第二段为说明体，地三段为描述体。而各种文体又不同的写作方式： 议论文;要有论点和论据，而且往往从正反两方面来论述。例如上面第一段的思路是：做合格大学生，会怎末样(这是从正面论述);不能做合格的大学生，会怎末样(从反面论述);所以我们要做合格的大学生(结了论)。

说明文：可以从几方面或几条来说明一个问题，就上作文而言，可以从方面(德智体)来说明合格大学生的必要性。

描述文：一"人"为中心描述一个"做"的过程。与上两段相比，本段的主语多为人称代词，他要与第二段相互应进行描述。 二 确定主题句

通过审题，我们知道该如何确定正确的写作思路。下边我们就谈如何些。第一部就是要写主题句。主题句是确保不跑题的前提，只有不跑题才有可得及格分。写主题句嘴保险的方法就是把中文提纲的各句译成英语。例如上述三段主题句分别为：

1.It is very necessary to be a good university student . (议论体的主题句)

2.There are several respects of necessities to be a good university student .(说明体的主题句)

3.What I will do in the future is the following .(描述体主题句)

如果要求句是英语就可以把它变成主题句，例如这样一篇作文：

Good Health

1.Importance of good health

2.Ways to keep fit

3.My own practice

这样的作文的要求句就可以扩充成主题句。扩充后三段的主题句分别为：

1.It is very important to have good health .(将名词 importance变成形容词important)

2.There are four ways to keep fit for me .(用 there be 句型)

3.My own practices are the following .(采用原词)

二、条理清楚

保证不跑提示写作当中第一任务，第二个重要任务就是要做到条理清楚。对于议论文来说，正反面要清楚，对于说明文来说条理要清楚，对于描述文来说，谁干什么要清楚。就拿上例Good health 来说，第一段保持正反面要清楚救应这样写：正面(With good health ,we can...)，反面(Without good health ,we cando nothing .We cant do...)

为了使文章更具有条理性，我们可以用first(ly) second(ly) third(ly)等副词，他们可以是文章的条例性更加突出。作文是主观题，想得告分就必须引起老师的主意，老师的时间很短(每篇作文只有一两分钟就要阅完)，所以我们在列调试最好不用: To be with,... after that ,...And then, ... The next , ... Thefollowing , ... As last ... 。因为用这样的词语不利于老师看出你作文的条理性。

三、保证作文符合字数要求的十二句作文法

考生一般都希望作文达到字数而又不至于写得太多，因为写得太多一方面暴露自己语言上的弱点，另一方面又会占用过多的时间。写得太多还易跑题，一个有效的方法就是十二句作文法。

我们知道，四级作文都是三段式。我们算一下，如果我们在每一段中写上四句，即主题句加两三句扩展句和一个结论句就可以了。这样全片在十二句左右，每一句十多个词，就又120-150个字。大家可以试图找一些作文题练一练。

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

导语：不论从何种角度，环保都是当代世界发展不可忽视的一环。它也不再仅仅是一种措施和行动，而是一种经济行为，并带动了一系列相关的产业。下面是yuwenmi小编为大家整理的说明中国发展环保经济的状况的英语句子，欢迎阅读与借鉴，谢谢!

1. While developing its economy， China will handle properly the relationship among the population， natural resources and the environment.

2. The Chinese government pays great attention to environmental problems arising from Chinas population growth and economic development.

3. China relies on improving supervision， management and technological progress to promote environmental protection.

4. Land， arable land in particular， should be used reasonably and economically. Strong measures will be taken to strengthen the building of the urban environmental infrastructure， regulate industrial structure and lay-out， shun the unpromising way of pollution first， treatment afterwards， and strengthen prevention and control of the pollution in major river valleys to ensure the security of the drinking water of the inhabitants.

【参考译文】

1、中国在发展经济的同时，将处理好的人口之间的关系，自然资源和环境。

2、中国政府高度关注中国人口增长和经济发展所带来的环境问题。

3、中国依靠强化监督管理和技术进步，促进环境保护。

4、土地，特别是耕地，应该合理和经济地使用。将采取强有力的措施来加强城市环境基础设施建设，调整产业结构和布局，避免“先污染，后治理的工作方式，加强预防和控制主要河流污染以确保居民饮用水安全。

下面是由语文迷网小编精心为大家整理提供的英语句子，供大家写作参考。

1、Time flies.

时光易逝。

2、Time is money.

一寸光阴一寸金。

3、Time and tide wait for no man.

岁月无情;岁月易逝;岁月不待人。

4、Time tries all.

时间检验一切。

5、Time tries truth.

时间检验真理。

6、Time past cannot be called back again.

光阴一去不复返。

7、All time is no time when it is past.

光阴一去不复返。

8、No one can call back yesterday;Yesterday will not be called again.

昨日不复来。

9、Business neglected is business lost.

忽视职业便是放弃职业。

10、One today is worth two tomorrows.

一个今天胜似两个明天。

11、The morning sun never lasts a day.

好景不常;朝阳不能光照全日。

12、Christmas comes but once a year.

圣诞一年只一度。

13、Pleasant hours fly past.

快乐时光去如飞。

14、Happiness takes no account of time.

欢娱不惜时光逝。

15、Time tames the strongest grief.

时间能缓和极度的悲痛。

16、The day is short but the work is much.

工作多，光阴迫。

17、Never deter till tomorrow that which you can do today.

今日事须今日毕，切勿拖延到明天。

18、Have you somewhat to do tomorrow,do it today.

明天如有事，今天就去做。

19、To him that does everything in its proper time,one day is worth three.

事事及时做，一日胜三日。

20、To save time is to lengthen life.

节省时间就是延长生命。

21、Everything has its time and that time must be watched.

万物皆有时，时来不可失。

22、Take time when time cometh,lest time steal away.

时来必须要趁时，不然时去无声息。

23、When an opportunity is neglected,it never comes back to you.

机不可失，时不再来;机会一过，永不再来。

24、Make hay while the sun shines.

晒草要趁太阳好。

25、Strike while the iron is hot.

趁热打铁。

26、Work today,for you know not how much you may be hindered tomrrow.

今朝有事今朝做，明朝可能阻碍多。

27、Punctuality is the soul of business.

守时为立业之要素。

28、Procrastination is the thief of time.

因循拖延是时间的大敌;拖延就是浪费时间。

29、Every tide hath ist ebb.

潮涨必有潮落时。

30、Knowledge is power.

知识就是力量。

31、Wisdom is more to be envied than riches.

知识可羡，胜于财富。

32、Wisdom is better than gold or silver.

知识胜过金银。

33、Wisdom in the mind is better than money in the hand.

胸中有知识，胜于手中有钱。

34、Wisdom is a good purchase though we pay dear for it.

为了求知识，代价虽高也值得。

35、Doubt is the key of knowledge.

怀疑是知识之钥。

36、If you want knowledge,you must toil for it.

若要求知识，须从勤苦得。

37、A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

浅学误人。

38、A handful of common sense is worth a bushel of learning.

少量的常识，当得大量的学问。

39、Knowledge advances by steps and not by leaps.

知识只能循序渐进，不能跃进。

40、Learn wisdom by the follies of others.

从旁人的愚行中学到聪明。

41、It is good to learn at another man’s cost.

前车可鉴。

42、Wisdom is to the mind what health is to the body.

知识之于精神，一如健康之于肉体。

43、Experience is the best teacher.

经验是最好的教师。

44、Experience is the father of wisdom and memory the mother.

经验是知识之父，记忆是知识之母。

45、Dexterity comes by experience.

熟练来自经验。

46、Practice makes perfect.

熟能生巧。

47、Experience keeps a dear school,but fools learn in no other.

经验学校学费高，愚人旁处学不到。

48、Experience without learning is better than learning without experience.

有经验而无学问，胜于有学问而无经验。

49、Wit once bought is worth twice taught.

由经验而得的智慧，胜于学习而得的智慧;一次亲身的体会，胜过两次的教师教导。

50、Seeing is believing.

百闻不如一见。

拓展阅读：段首万能句子

1. 关于……人们有不同的观点。一些人认为……

There are different opinions among people as to ____ .Some people suggest that ____.

2. 俗话说(常言道)……，它是我们前辈的经历，但是，即使在今天，它在许多场合仍然适用。

There is an old saying______. It"s the experience of our forefathers，however，it is correct in many cases even today.

3. 现在，……，它们给我们的日常生活带来了许多危害。首先，……;其次，……。更为糟糕的是……。

Today, ____, which have brought a lot of harms in our daily life. First, ____ Second,____. What makes things worse is that______.

4. 现在，……很普遍，许多人喜欢……，因为……，另外(而且)……。

Nowadays，it is common to ______. Many people like ______ because ______. Besides，______.

5. 任何事物都是有两面性，……也不例外。它既有有利的一面，也有不利的一面。

Everything has two sides and ______ is not an exception，it has both advantages and disadvantages.

6. 关于……人们的观点各不相同，一些人认为(说)……，在他们看来，……

People’s opinions about ______ vary from person to person. Some people say that ______.To them,_____.

7. 人类正面临着一个严重的问题……，这个问题变得越来越严重。

Man is now facing a big problem ______ which is becoming more and more serious.

8. ……已成为人的关注的热门话题，特别是在年青人当中，将引发激烈的辩论。

______ has become a hot topic among people，especially among the young and heated debates are right on their way.

9. ……在我们的日常生活中起着越来越重要的作用，它给我们带来了许多好处，但同时也引发一些严重的问题。

______ has been playing an increasingly important role in our day-to-day life.it has brought us a lot of benefits but has created some serious problems as well.

10. 根据图表/数字/统计数字/表格中的百分比/图表/条形图/成形图可以看出……。很显然……，但是为什么呢?

According to the figure/number/statistics/percentages in the /chart/bar graph/line/graph，it can be seen that______ while. Obviously，______，but why?

五一劳动节，始于美国工人在19世纪90年代为争取8小时工作日而进行的斗争。自那以后，世界人民便开始庆祝这一天 - 国际劳动节。这个日子在全球所扮演的角色体现了它的力量：正是在这一天，全世界所有的工人们宣布为了共同的目标而一起奋斗。

Labor Day, began in USA workers for the 8 hour day struggle in nineteenth Century 90s.. Since then, the people of the world began to celebrate this day, international labor day. It plays role in the world embodies its strength: it is in this day, the whole world all workers announced strive together for a common goal.

在许多个五一劳动节里，工人们都受到镇压，他们的活动被禁止，流血事件还时常发生。五一节逐渐失去它原来的意义，成为了独裁者和集权统治的政权对抗工人运动的一种标志性装饰;又或者就是一个平平安安的法定假日。尽管事实如此，工人们仍然满怀信心地庆祝劳动节，因为大家都知道这个社会是靠着我们的力量、眼睛、双手和智慧而不断地发展和强壮，还需要我们不断地支持。

In many Labor Day, workers are suppressed, their activities were banned, the bloodshed has often happened. Five one Jie gradually lost its original meaning, become a kind of decoration workers movement against dictator and symbol of power centralization rule; or is a peaceful holiday. Despite the fact that, workers are still full of confidence to celebrate the labor day, because we all know that this society is relying on our strength, eyes, hands and wisdom and constantly development and strong, we also need to continue to support.

正是在这一天，我们坚持体面的工作、工人健康、饮食和住房、教育和文化表达，都是我们应得的权利，而不是特权。我们志在获得这些权利。然而在这一天，我们从未胆怯卑微地去找法官和狱卒，从未守在财长们进行会议的地方，从未说服他们工会是有益于做生意，也从未要求进行更多的对话。正是在这一天，我们大声地说出：你们的银行，你们的买断、买回，给我们带来了痛苦和大量的失业工人;你们的贸易协定和专利制让工人们无法谋生，更破坏了所有人类获得食物、水和药物的权利。正是在这一天，我们大声地说出：我们不仅要建设一个更加美好的世界，而且，我们也坚决不会让世界越变越差。

It is in this day, we adhere to the expression of decent work, health, diet and housing, education and culture, we are right, not a privilege. Were aiming to acquire these rights. However, on this day, we never fear to the judge and the humble, never keep in the finance ministers meeting place, never persuade their union is beneficial to do business, never asked for more dialogue. It is in this day, we say: your bank, you buy, buy back, causing pain and a large number of unemployed workers to our trade agreements and patent system; you let the workers were unable to make a living, even destroy all humans for food, water and medicine to the right. It is in this day, we say out loud: we not only need to build a better world, moreover, we also determined not to let the world become worse.

五一劳动节是大家庆祝过去、庆祝现在和庆祝未来的日子。我们庆祝的方式就是争取应有权利和向全世界表达我们争取权利的决心。让我们一起大声又自豪地庆祝五一国际劳动节吧。

Labor Day we celebrate the past, now and future day celebration to celebrate. We celebrate the way is to fight for their rights and express our determination to fight for the rights of the whole world. Let us loud and proud to celebrate International WorkersDay.

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

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

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

4. Many experts point out that physical exercise contributes directly to a person’s physical fitness.

许多专家指出体育锻炼直接有助于身体健康。

5.写信的开头：Very glad to receive your letter of July 13.

6.One day after school,XiaoMing passed a Café on his way home.

7.The boss had no choice but to let him in.

8.How he enjoyed himself on the computer!

9.Walking home full of fear,he was sure that he would be scolded.

10.However,other students are against the idea.

11.Sometimes we have too many examinations which are too difficult for us.

12.today’s activity has taught us the new meaning of the spirit of LeiFeng:sharing with others what you have—you time,energy,or knowledge—makes you fell warm in you heart.It has truly a difference in how I feel about myself.

13.The girl whose composition was well written is spoken highly of.

14.No matter what he says，I won’t believe.

15. Thanks to the good weather，our journey was comfortable.

16. At the news of his death，she went pale with sorrow.

写作包括两部分，一是要求在35分钟内写一篇150字左右的短文，二是要求在10分钟内写一个50--60字的便条。这两部分均为命题作文，作文内容与大学生的日常生活、学习都密切相关，另外也有社会热点问题，比如环保、旅游、健身等，题目理解起来都比较容易。

短文写作部分文体为议论文，一般采用三段式的结构，第一段为论点，第二段为论据，第三段为结论。最高要求为文章内容切题，思想表达清楚，论据充分，论证严密，基本无语言错误。要想写好一篇文章，应该注意一下写作步骤：

1.审题：作文评分的第一个要求就是内容切题，因此审题特别关键。专业四级作文都是命题作文，而且多有中文提示或提纲，所以你首先应了解命题的基本要求，理解题目的真正意图，然后确定提纲中的关键词及各要点间的逻辑，整理自己的思路，对自己所想到的内容进行组织和全面安排。尤其对要讨论的问题，该涉及的内容，所需的事实、例证、阐述、说明和总结等，在头脑中形成一个整体的构思。

2.组织段落：构思好之后，根据构思的提纲，运用选好的材料，恰当地运用连词，合理安排段落，使文章条理清楚、内容连贯。段落的组织主要是通过扩展句对主题句的支持或说明来进行的。各段的主题句在审题构思时就应基本形成，主题句确定下来，接着就是通过一系列的扩展句，来说明、论证或阐述主题句的思想。常见的段落展开方法有列举、举例、比较和对比、因果、叙述、归类、下定义等，考试时应灵活运用。

3.修改：也就是说要删除与主题不相干的内容，检查句子时态、语态等。特别应注意单词的正确拼写；字母大小写和标点符号；数的一致性（包括主语与谓语以及名词与其限定语的单复数一致性）；指代关系（包括指代的一致性和代词的选用）；动词形式（时态、语态、语气）等方面。

关于考试过程中短文写作的时间分配问题。我们知道，短文写作的时间为35分钟, 要力争写完写好, 这就要求考生做到有条不紊，忙而不乱，充分发挥自己应有的水平。建议按照如下的方案分配时间: 审题1～2分钟；组织素材, 细节和关键词: 4～5分钟；起草: 20～25分钟；修改定稿: 4～5分钟。

最后要说明的是，从某种意义上来说，专业四级考试作文有其固定的写作格式、结构，而对于固定的题型，有固定不变的表达法。因此，大家有理由相信只要训练方法得当，搞好写作是不难的。大家不妨试试多背范文和常用句型，包括各类型作文的开头、结尾句、中间展开、过渡句，以及比较、图表说明等的常用句型和表达法，然后自己多动笔写一写，只要按这样的方法进行练习，相信在一定时间内就可以在写作上取得满意的分数。因为是三段式作文，写作的时候一定注意第一段提出的论点要简洁明了，开门见山；第二段的论据要能充分说明论点，论证条理清楚；第三段的结论要水到渠成，切忌草率，严谨完整的结尾是取得高分的保证。

便条写作最主要的是注意格式正确，交待清楚，比如请柬、贺信、道歉函等，要注意称呼、正文、签名等的格式，一定要把相关的时间、地点、原因及主要事件内容交待清楚。

一、描述图画

图画作文对图画的描述应在第一段进行，且最好在首句即开始。此类作文大部分是一幅图，也会有两幅图出现的情况。如果出现两幅图，则很有可能是突显对比的情况。

图画上可能没有任何文字，也可能在上面出现了一句话，也可以单个人物说话或两个人物对话，也可能在图画外写了总结性的一句话。大家注意，这一句话或两句话一般是非常重要的，应予译出。

一般说来，对图画的描写不必过长，应以简练、准确为标准。

二、图画类作文结构分析

我们想象中的最典型最理想的图画题提纲应该是下面这样：

1. 描述图画

2. 推导绘画者的意图

3. 做出评论

对于这一提纲我们来做具体分析，其中第三点更要细致研究。首先由图画引出一种社会现象或社会问题，可以是好的，也可以是不好的。在推导绘画者的意图时多是展开说此现象或问题的表现，以证明其引人注目。还有一种可能性是说此现象或问题产生的原因，提纲可直接列出，或还用上述提纲。这时可把简单意图推导直接放到第一段描述图画之后，而在第二段中说原因。

第三段做出评论，有可能只是简单评论、深化主题就结束，但这种可能性越来越小了。这一部分很可能说的是办法，不好的事情就是如何解决的办法，好的事情就是如何进一步发展的方法。

通过上述列表，我们可以看出，多年以来，真实的提纲是怎样一步步地向我们想象中的理想模式靠近的。对于提纲里面出现的变化和规律，我们来分析一下。

我们仔细分析，会发现历年考研真题基本上都呈现"现象或问题——原因解释——解决办法"这样的模式，但变化非常多。因为我们谈论的既可以是一件值得弘扬的好事，也可能是一个令人忧心忡忡的社会问题;针对后者我们极有可能需要提出做法;而对于前者，可能解释一下就结束了，也可能要写出相应的做法。

综上所述，可以看出，比起图表作文来，图画作文要更灵活，更富于变化。我们一定要多练习，以达到一看到图画(含图中和图边文字)和提纲(有时有文章标题)就能有效地审题解题，构造出合理的具体段落的目的。

1. To cherish the enviroment is to love ourselves.

爱护环境就是爱护我们自己。

2.Water is the source of ourlives

水是生命之源。

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

我急切呼吁应该采取措施改变现状。

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

我们政府正努力制定措施与污染作斗争。

5.We are sure that well win the battle.

我们坚信我们能赢得战斗。

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

是时候我们应该防止环境污染了。

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

使我们山更绿，水更清，天更蓝。

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

然而自然资源并不是无穷无尽的，一些储量已经到了穷尽的边缘。

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

如果我们不为将来考虑，后代就会受到威胁。

10.Our earths days are numbered without urgent help.

没有及时的帮助我们的地球就屈指可数了。

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

如果我们继续睁一只眼闭一只眼的话，……一定会有恶劣的后果。

写作词汇提升是把“阅读词汇”转化为“写作词汇”的过程。举个例子，当我在课堂上问及大家“害怕”这个词英文表达的时候，很多同学不加思维的就告诉我是“afraid”，我再问大家这个词是什么时候学的时候，很多人恍然大悟，原来词汇早在初中甚至是小学的时候就学过了。那么，考研阅卷的老师如何以“afraid”这个词判断你到底是一个合格的大学毕业生还是一个仅仅上过初中的同学呢，现在我们就不难理解为什么考研写作的平均分只有满分的一半了。

当我们翻开大学的英语课本我们会发现，在大学的四年中(甚至只是大一大二的两年中)我们就学过很多表示“害怕”但却比“afraid”要高级的多的词汇，比如：horror，scared，astonished 等等。这当中的任何一个词都会比afraid得的分数要高，这就是所谓的高级词汇取代低级词汇的过程。

现在，我们就要树立一个思想，写作的最小组成单位是词汇，词汇有低级的(baby words)也有高级的(advanced words)，想要得到考研写作高分的第一步就是要有意识的在写作中用高级词汇去取代相对低级的词汇，从而反映出自己的词汇表现能力(lexical resource)。

英语写作技巧二、句型 —— 学会自创简单句

考研写作最基本的句式称之为“自创句”。“自创句”是根据所要表达的含义完全自主创作的英文句子，其基础是语法知识。阅读时不理解某些语法现象仍然能理解文章，而写作要求精确，是和语法联系最为紧密的语言功能。其中，简单句是一切句子的基础，简单句的创作可三步走：

1. 根据句义确定唯一的谓语动词。

2. 根据动词种类(无宾、单宾、双宾、宾补或系动词)补全句子成分，如主语、宾语、宾语补足语和表语等。

3. 注意谓语动词和主语在人称和数上的一致。

英语写作技巧三、构思 —— 学习英文独特的思想表达方式

当我们有了高级的词汇和复杂的句型之后，是不是就一定能写出高分的作文了呢?不一定。写作是一个人思维的理性表达，因此，对于写作来说，思维方式的优劣更是一篇文章好与坏的根本性的指向标。

英文有自己独特的思想表达模式，要学会用英文的表达模式写作。所以建议大家在夯实词汇、句型之后多读多背多写，练习地道的英文写作思维方式。阅读和背诵是积累语言素材的关键，《新概念》序言中甚至提到“只写读过的语言”。在此基础之上，“纸上得来终觉浅，绝知此事要躬行”，阅读背诵素材之后，写作提高需要大量的实战演习

英语作文是最考察同学们英语功底的一类题型，也是在英语考试中所占分值很大的一类题型。所以在写英语作文的时候要掌握中考英语作文写作技巧才能够在中考的时候写出一篇优秀的英语作文。

初中英语作文分为四等。一等文：13-15分;二等文：9-12分;三等文：5-8分;四等文：0-4分。教给大家十个字，搞定初中英语写作，帮你拿到一等文。

要点+结构+逻辑+语法+亮点

要点：实际上中考英语写作就等于两个字，翻译!因为中考英语写作一般会给出几个要点，要求必须在文章中有所体现。文章写的再好，只要缺少要点就会扣分。所以要点，也就是文章的第二段内容，要做到全，围绕中心。

结构：中考最流行的结构就是三段式，深受各地区中考英语写作阅卷老师的喜爱。为什么尼?因为这种结构十分清晰。“观点——要点——总结”让人一目了然。三段式的第一段：简单明了，开门见山，不超过2句话，如，我们想表达小强很强壮，第一段直接说XQis extremely strong。观点明确，这一句足矣。

第二段：分2-3点说为什么他强壮。1. 每天吃10顿饭，He has ten mealseveryday!详举吃的是什么。2. 每天运动2小时，He does exercise 2 hours a day!详举做了什么运动。

第三段：经过第二段的论证，可以得出结论。但请注意，不能完全照抄第一段，要有升华。也可以提出希望和建议等。如，Howstrong and robust XQ is!I hope to be him one day!

逻辑：这里的逻辑实际指的就是逻辑词。最常用的就是表示递进的，转折的，总结的逻辑词等。递进：除了first，second，third，finally等还可以使用高级点的，如first of all(首先)，in addition，whatsmore，moreover(都是另外的意思)，in a word，all inall(表示总结的)。转折：but，yet，however等。真正有经验的阅卷老师会很注意这些逻辑连接词，因为这些词体现了这个文章的思路。

语法：其他几点都不是硬性的要求，不那样做不能说是错，只能说是不好，但是语法却是硬性的。如，单词的使用，时态等。

亮点：当我们将前八个字都做得很完美的时候也只能得到一个二等文的上。要想得到一等文，最后两个字，亮点至关重要。大家设想如果我们是阅卷老师。有两篇写人美丽的作文摆在我们面前，都是结构清晰的三段式，要点都很全，都用了一些逻辑词，都没有语法错误，但是A篇只用了beautiful，good-looking，B篇却用到了attractive，charming，catching等，我坚信正常人都会给B篇高分的。这些高级一点的词汇，词组，句型便是我们得到一等文的最有力的绝招。所以，以后写英语作文要养成一般词汇限量用的好习惯。

英语作文依靠的是同学们的语感和平时的积累，但是在面临中考的紧要关头，要想在短时间内提高英语写作水平不是一件容易的事情，这就需要同学们掌握中考英语作文写作技巧。

人类因梦想而伟大，人生因拼搏而精彩。梦想引领人生，拼搏创造传奇!下面是语文迷小编整理的关于梦想的英语名言，希望对你有帮助。

the important thing in life is to have a great aim, and the determination to attain it. (johan wolfgang von goethe, german poet and dramatist)

人生重要的事情就是确定一个伟大的目标,并决心实现它。(德国诗人、戏剧家 歌德. j. m.)

the man with a new idea is a crank until the idea succeeds. (mark twain, american writer)

具有新想法的人在其想法实现之前是个怪人。 (美国作家 马克·吐温)

the only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. (franklin roosevelt, american president)

实现明天理想的唯一障碍是今天的疑虑。(美国总统 罗斯福. f.)

when an end is lawful and obligatory, the indispensable means to is are also lawful and obligatory. (abraham lincoln, american statesman)

如果一个目的是正当而必须做的,则达到这个目的的必要手段也是正当而必须采取的。(美国政治家 林肯. a.)

ideal is the beacon. without ideal, there is no secure direction; without direction, there is no life.( leo tolstoy, russian writer)

理想是指路明灯。没有理想,就没有坚定的方向;没有方向,就没有生活。(俄国作家 托尔斯泰. l.)

if winter comes, can spring be far behind ?( p. b. shelley, british poet )

冬天来了,春天还会远吗?( 英国诗人, 雪莱. p. b.)

if you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground. (ibsen, norwegian dramatist )

如果你怀疑自己,那么你的立足点确实不稳固了。 (挪威剧作家 易卜生)

if you would go up high, then use your own legs ! do not let yourselves carried aloft; do not seat yourselves on other peoples backs and heads. (f. w. nietzsche, german philosopher)

如果你想走到高处,就要使用自己的两条腿!不要让别人把你抬到高处;不要坐在别人的背上和头上。(德国哲学家 尼采. f. w.)

it is at our mothers knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest, but there is seldom any money in them. ( mark twain, american writer )

就是在我们母亲的膝上,我们获得了我们的最高尚、最真诚和最远大的理想,但是里面很少有任何金钱。(美国作家 马克·吐温)

living without an aim is like sailing without a compass. (alexander dumas, davy de la pailleterie, french writer)

生活没有目标就像航海没有指南针。 (法国作家 大仲马. a.)

the ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully 19 have been kindness, beauty and truth.(albert einstein, american scientist)

有些理想曾为我们引过道路,并不断给我新的勇气以欣然面对人生,那些理想就是--真、善、美。 (美国科学家 爱因斯坦. a.)

the dream is not a dream, the difference between the two usually have a very worth pondering the distance.梦想绝不是梦，两者之间的差别通常都有一段非常值得人们深思的距离。

“two gates there are for dreams," said penelope to odysseus after his ten years’ wandering had ended. "one made for horn and one of for ivory. the dreams that pass through the carved ivory delude and bring us tales that turn to naught;those that can come through polished horn accomplish real things whenever seen."“梦想有两扇门，”在奥德修斯结束了十年的漂泊后，潘尼洛对他说，“一扇是号角制成，一扇是象牙制成。通过精雕细缕的象牙门得梦想不过是一场会归于无的海市蜃楼的童话;而那些通过磨砺的号角门的梦想才会成为真实，为人所见。”

who has the material to survive, people have a dream only talk about life. you have to understand life and life different animal survival, while others life.人有了物质才能生存，人有了梦想才谈得上生活。你要了解生存与生活的不同吗?动物生存，而人则生活。

the dream was always running ahead of me. to catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.梦想总是跑在我前面，追寻它们，乃至仅有一瞬间的与梦想合而为一，也都是动人的生命奇迹。

a person rich money is not certain, but if the man is not a dream, the poor people.一个人有钱没钱不一定，但如果这个人没有了梦想，这个人穷定了。

if winter comes, can spring be far behind ?( p. b. shelley, british poet )冬天来了，春天还会远吗?( 英国诗人, 雪莱. p. b.)

dont part with your illusions. when they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live. (mark twain, american writer)不要放弃你的幻想。当幻想没有了以后，你还可以生存，但是你虽生犹死。((美国作家 马克·吐温)

to accomplish great things, in addition to dream, must act.要想成就伟业，除了梦想，必须行动。

when you truly want something, all the universe conspires to help you finish it.当你真心渴望一件东西的时候，整个宇宙都会联合起来帮你完成它。

everything is now for the future of dream weaving wings, soar to great heights to dream in reality.现在的一切都是为将来的梦想编织翅膀，让梦想在现实中展翅高飞。

11、human nature is the most pathetic: we always dream of the horizon of a wonderful rose garden, not to enjoy today in our window open rose.人性最可怜的就是：我们总是梦想着天边的一座奇妙的玫瑰园，而不去欣赏今天就开在我们窗口的玫瑰。

faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. it is not enough that a thing be possible for it to be believed.当还缺乏产生信仰的足够理由时，要用信念去包涵。模棱两可不足以支持一个信仰。(伏尔泰)

the dream is the other shore, the reality is that on this side, action is the bridge connecting.梦想是彼岸，现实是此岸，行动是那座连接的桥。

a heart will not be hurt for pursuing a dream, when you truly want something, all the universe conspires to help you complete the.没有一颗心会因为追求梦想而受伤，当你真心想要某样东西时，整个宇宙都会联合起来帮你完成。

dreams don’t abandon a painstaking pursuit of the people, as long as you never stop pursuing, you will bathe in the brilliance of the dream.梦想不抛弃苦心追求的人，只要不停止追求，你们会沐浴在梦想的光辉之中。

在我们的英语写作过程中，如果能够很好的运用英语谚语，能给我们的作文带来亮点。下面是语文迷整理的高频谚语，一起来看看吧。

(一) Where there is a will，there is a way. 有志者事竟成。

(二) One false step will make a great difference. 失之毫厘，谬之千里。

(三) Slow and steady wins the race. 稳扎稳打无往而不胜。

(四) A fall into the pit，a gain in your wit. 吃一堑，长一智。

(五) Experience is the mother of wisdom. 实践出真知。

(六) All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. 只工作不玩耍，聪明孩子也变傻。

(七) Beauty without virtue is a rose without fragrance.无德之美犹如没有香味的玫瑰，徒有其表。

(八) More hasty，less speed. 欲速则不达。

(九) Its never too old to learn. 活到老，学到老。

(十) All that glitters is not gold. 闪光的未必都是金子。

(十一) Practice makes perfect. 熟能生巧。

(十二) God helps those who help themselves. 天助自助者。

(十三) Easier said than done. 说起来容易做起来难。

(十四) A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.千里之行始于足下。

(十五) Look before you leap. 三思而后行。

(十六) Rome was not built in a day. 伟业非一日之功。

(十七) Great minds think alike. 英雄所见略同。

(十八) well begun，half done. 好的开始等于成功的一半。

(十九) It is hard to please all. 众口难调。

(二十) Out of sight，out of mind. 眼不见，心不念。

(二十一) Do as Romans do in Rome. 入乡随俗。

(二十二) An idle youth，a needy age. 少壮不努力，老大徒伤悲。

(二十三) As the tree，so the fruit. 种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆。

(二十四) To live is to learn，to learnistobetterlive.活着为了学习，学习为了更好的活着。

(二十五) Facts speak plainer than words. 事实胜于雄辩。

(二十六) Call back white and white back. 颠倒黑白。

(二十七) First things first. 凡事有轻重缓急。

(二十八) Ill news travels fast. 坏事传千里。

(二十九) A friend in need is a friend indeed. 患难见真情。

(三十) live not to eat，but eat to live. 活着不是为了吃饭，吃饭为了活着。

(三十一) Action speaks louder than words. 行动胜过语言。

(三十二) East or west，home is the best. 金窝银窝不如自家草窝。

(三十三) Its not the gay coat that makes the gentleman. 君子在德不在衣。

(三十四) Beauty will buy no beef. 漂亮不能当饭吃。

(三十五) Like and like make good friends. 趣味相投。

(三十六) The older， the wiser. 姜是老的辣。

一、名人名言必背部分。

在英语作文中，我们经常会引用一些名人名言。这里就向大家介绍一些，务必要全部脱口而出!

高考英语作文素材，Culture 文化篇

1.A great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight.(P. B. Shelley , British poet )伟大的诗篇即是永远喷出智慧和欢欣之水的喷泉。(英国诗人 雪莱. P. B)

2.Art is a lie that tells the truth .( Picasso , Spanish painter )美术是揭示真理的谎言。 (西班牙画家 毕加索)

3.Humor has been well defined as thinking in fun while feeling in earnest. (Mark Twain , American novelist )幽默被人正确地解释为"以诚挚表达感受，寓深思于嬉笑"。(美国小说家 马克·吐温)

4.The decline of literature indicates the decline of a nation; the two keep in their downward tendency.( Johan Wolfgang von Goethe , German poet )文学的衰落表明一个民族的衰落。这两者走下坡路的时间是齐头并进的。(德国诗人歌德 . J . W .)

5.When one loves ones art no service seems too hard .(O. Henry, American novelist)一旦热爱艺术，什么奉献也不难。 (美国小说家 欧·亨利)

Education 教育篇

6.And gladly would learn , and gladly teach .( Chaucer , British poet)勤于学习的人才能乐意施教。(英国诗人, 乔叟)

7.Better be unborn than untaught , for ignorance is the root of misfortune.(Plato , Ancient Greek philosopher)与其不受教育,不如不生,因为无知是不幸的根源.(古希腊哲学家 柏拉图)

Friendship 友谊篇

8. Some friends come and go like a season. Others are arranged in our lives for good reason.(Sharita Gadison)一些朋友随季节离去，而另外一些则伴我们度过美好的季节。

9.A true friend is someone you can disagree with and still remain friends. For if not, they werent true friends in the first place.(Sandy Ratliff)真朋友是可以与你有不同见解的，如果不是，首先就不是真朋友。

10.True friendship is felt, not said.(Mariecris Madayag)朋友是说不出的感觉。

11.Friends are like stars,you dont always see them, but you know theyre always there.(Hulali Luta)朋友是感觉不到的存在。

12.Memories last forever, never do they die. Friends stay together, never say goodbye.(Melina Campos)记忆永不死，朋友永不说再见。

Health 健康篇

13.light heart lives long.( William Shakespeare , British dramatist )豁达者长寿(英国剧作家莎士比亚. W.)

14.Early to bed and early to rise , makes a man healthy , wealthy and wise.(Benjamin Franklin , American president )早睡早起会使人健康、富有和聪明。 (美国总统 富兰克林. B.)

15.The first wealth is health .( Ralph Waldo Emerson , American thinker )健康是人生第一财富。 (美国思想家爱默生. R. W.)

Happiness 幸福篇

16.A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth. (G. Bernard Shaw, British dramatist)终身幸福!这是任何活着的人都无法忍受的，那将是人间地狱。(英国剧作家肖伯纳. G.)高考英语作文素材

17.Happiness is form courage .(H. Jackson, British writer)幸福是勇气的一种形式。 (英国作家 杰克逊. H.)

18.Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money ; it lies in the joy of achievement , in the thrill of creative effort .(Franklin Roosevelt ,American president )幸福不在于拥有金钱，而在于获得成就时的喜悦以及产生创造力的激情。(美国总统 罗斯福. F.)

19.Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be .(Abraham Lincoln ,American president )对于大多数人来说，他们认定自己有多幸福，就有多幸福。(美国总统 林肯. A.)

20.The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved .(Victor Hugo , French novelist )生活中最大的幸福是坚信有人爱我们。( 法国小说家 雨果. V .)

21.We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it . (George Bernard Shaw , British dramatist)正像我们无权只享受财富而不创造财富一样，我们也无权只享受幸福而不创造幸福.(英国剧作家肖伯纳. G. )

高考英语作文素材Ideal 理想篇

22.Do not, for one repulse, give up the purpose that you resolved to effect. (William Shakespeare , British dramatist)不要只因一次失败，就放弃你原来决心想达到的目的。(英国剧作家莎士比亚.W.)

23.Dont part with your illusions . When they are gone you may still exist,but you have ceased to live. (Mark Twain , American writer)不要放弃你的幻想。当幻想没有了以后，你还可以生存，但是你虽生犹死.(美国作家马克·吐温)

24.Ideal is the beacon. Without ideal, there is no secure direction;without direction, there is no life. ( Leo Tolstoy , Russian writer)理想是指路明灯。没有理想，就没有坚定的方向;没有方向，就没有生活。(俄国作家托尔斯泰. L .)

25.If winter comes , can spring be far behind ?(P. B. Shelley, British poet)冬天来了，春天还会远吗? ( 英国诗人, 雪莱. P. B.)

26.Living without an aim is like sailing without a compass.Alexander Dumas (Davy de La Pailleterie, French Writer)生活没有目标就像航海没有指南针。 (法国作家 大仲马. A.)

27.The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.(Franklin Roosevelt , American president)实现明天理想的唯一障碍是今天的疑虑。 (美国总统 罗斯福. F .)

Knowledge 知识篇

28.Activity is the only road to knowledge.(George Bernard Shaw , British dramatist)行动是通往知识的唯一道路 。 (英国剧作家 肖伯纳. G.)

29.Imagination is more important than knowledge .(Albert Einstein , American scientist )想象力比知识更为重要。 (美国科学家 爱因斯坦. A. )

30.Knowledge is power . (Francis Bacon , British philosopher )知识就是力量。 (英国哲学家 培根. F.)

Struggle 奋斗篇

31.Genius only means hard-working all ones life. ( Mendeleyev , Russian Chemist)天才只意味着终身不懈的努力。 (俄国化学家门捷列耶夫)

32.I have nothing to offer but blood , toil tears and sweat . (Winston Churchill, British Politician)我所能奉献的没有其它，只有热血、辛劳、眼泪与汗水。(英国政治家 丘吉尔 . W.)

33.Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet . (Jean Jacques Rousseau , French thinker)忍耐是痛苦的，但它的果实是甜蜜的。 (法国思想家 卢梭. J. J.)

34.There is no royal road to science ,and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of gaining its numinous summits . (Karl Marx, German revolutionary )在科学上没有平坦的大道，只有不畏劳苦沿着其崎岖之路攀登的人，才有希望达到它光辉的顶点。( 德国革命家马克思. K .)

35.Where there is a will , there is a way .( Thomas Edison , American inventor )有志者，事竟成。 (美国发明家 爱迪生. T.)

二、精彩必背部分。

在作文中经常有一些好句子可以借鉴，为此，特总结如下，务必全部脱口而出。高考英语作文素材

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

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

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

4. Many experts point out that physical exercise contributes directly to a person’s physical fitness.

许多专家指出体育锻炼直接有助于身体健康。

5.写信的开头：Very glad to receive your letter of July 13.

6.One day after school,XiaoMing passed a Café on his way home.

7.The boss had no choice but to let him in.

8.How he enjoyed himself on the computer!

9.Walking home full of fear,he was sure that he would be scolded.

10.However,other students are against the idea.

11.Sometimes we have too many examinations which are too difficult for us.

12.today’s activity has taught us the new meaning of the spirit of LeiFeng:sharing with others what you have—you time,energy,or knowledge—makes you fell warm in you heart.It has truly a difference in how I feel about myself.

13.The girl whose composition was well written is spoken highly of.

14.No matter what he says，I won’t believe.

15. Thanks to the good weather，our journey was comfortable.

16. At the news of his death，she went pale with sorrow.

三、写作指导

多使用过渡性词语。这样使文章更加连贯、更具有逻辑性。

(1)表示增加的过渡词：also，and，and then，too，in addition，furthermore，moreover，again，on top ofthat，another，first second third等。

(2)表示时间顺序的过渡词：now，then，before，after，afterwards，earlier，lat er，immediately，soon，next，in afew days，gradually，suddenly，finally等。(3)表示空间顺序的过渡词：near(to)，far(from)，in frontof，behind，beside，beyond，above，below，tothe right left，around，outside等。

(4)表示比较的过渡词：in thesameway，justlike，justas等。

(5)表示对照的过渡词：but，still，yet，however，on theotherhand，onthecon trary，in spite of，even though等。

(6)表示结 果 和 原 因 的 过 渡 词：because，since，so，as a result，therefore，then，thus，otherwise等。

(7)表示目的的过渡词：forthisreason，forthispurpose，so that等。

(8)表示强调的过渡词：in fact，indeed，surely，necessarily，certainly，withoutanydoubt，truly，torepeat，aboveall，mostimportant等。

(9)表示解释说明的过渡词：forexample，in fact，in thiscase，foractually等。

(10)表示总结的过渡词：finally，atlast，inconclusion，asIhaveshown，inoth erword，in brief，in short，in general，on the whole，ashasbeen stated等。

四、获得高分的英语书面表达的六大特性。

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

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

(3)流畅性。指根据整篇文章思想的需要，有效采用不同的连接手段，使文章层次清楚、行文连贯。(4)简洁多样性。简洁性就是语言简洁，不重复。多样性就是能随情景内容的变化写出句式多样的语句。这也是新课程标准对写作的评价标准。

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

(6)美观性。指的是卷面书写规范、清楚、干净、整洁。

五、写作步骤

高考英语作文素材，每次写作前问自己四个问题：这篇文章的体裁格式是怎样的?主体时态用什么时态?人称用第几人称?可以分几段，之间用什么过渡词、连接词?带着这四个问题去审题，搞清楚文章的主要内容，然后列出提纲。最后丰富自己的提纲就可以了。

小升初英语写作技巧之一：用介词短语替代从句，例：

原句：While they were playing tennis, she started an argument that lasted all morning.

修改后：During tennis she started an argument that lasted all morning.

原句：When you come to the second traffic light, turn right.

修改后：At the second traffic light turn left.

小升初英语写作技巧之二：删除诸如"who is”或"that is"之类的关系代词，变从句为短语，例：

句：The novel, which is written in three parts, told a story that took place in the Middle Ages.

修改后：The three-part novel told a story set in the Middle Ages.

注：把句中的"three parts"改用形容词来表达，节省了四个不必要的单词"which is written in"。我们经常可以将关系代词如"that"去掉，这只会引起最少的变动。

小升初英语写作技巧之三：剔除你不需要的单词，例：

Two joint partners will present their views over a long-distance telephone call.

写完这样的句子后，你自己再读一遍，挑出单词"joint"和"telephone"，注意删去不必要的词。