怎样写文章

怎样写文章 A brief introduction of Elwyn Brooks White (1899-1985) Personal life White was born in Mt. Vernon, New York, the youngest child of Samuel White, a prosperous piano manufacturer, and Jessie Hart. He served in the army before going on to college. White graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1921. While at Cornell, he worked as editor of The Cornell Daily Sun with classmate Allison Danzig who later became a sportswriter for The New York Times. The right picture is that of White’s He published his first article in The New Yorker magazine in 1925, then joined the staff in 1927 and continued to contribute for six decades. Best recognized for his essays and unsigned "Notes and Comment" pieces, he gradually became the most important contributor to The New Yorker at a time when it was arguably the most important American literary magazine. From the beginning to the end of his career at the New Yorker he frequently provided what the magazine calls "Newsbreaks", these being short, witty comments on oddly-worded printed items from many sources, under various categories such as "Block That Metaphor." He also served as a columnist for Harper’s Magazine from 1938 to 1943. In 1929, White and James Thurber published their jointly written, amusing satire on Freudianism, Is Sex Necessary? on behalf of a niece, In the late 1930s, White turned his hand to children's fiction Janice Hart White. In 1978, White won an honorary Pulitzer Prize for his work as a whole. Other awards he received included a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963 and memberships in a variety of literary societies throughout the United States A brief Introduction of James Thurber詹姆斯?瑟伯 and his works James Thurber(1894-1961)created some thirty volumes of humor, fiction, children's books, cartoons, and essays in just about as many years. A founding member of The New Yorker staff, Thurber wrote and illustrated such enduring books as The Thurber Carnival and My Life and Hard Times, which have appeared in countless editions and dozens of languages throughout the world. The picture on the right is that of James Thurber’s 1. Dictation Script Like a landscape photographer, a writer is confronted with a huge chunk of scenery; like the photographer, the wirer chooses what she will focus on, which piece she will narrow down to and depict with care and grace. Once that selection is made, the photographer begins to explore the details of the new scene he has framed and the writer begins to explore the specifics of the narrowed topic. The end result is a highly detailed view of one aspect of a landscape or, for the writer, one area of knowledge of one special experience. ? Supplementary reading materials for this unit 作家论写作 Whether a man write well or ill, has much to say or little, If he cares about writing at all, he will appreciate the pleasures of composition. To sit at one’s table on a sunny morning, with four clear hours of uninterruptive security, plenty of nice white paper, and a r pen---that is rue happiness. ---- from “The Joys of Writing” by Winston Squeeze Leonard Spencer Churchill 一个人写得好与坏，写得多与少，如果他喜爱写作的话，就会享受其中谋篇布局的 乐趣。在一个阳光明媚的清晨，伏案写作，不受任何人打扰地坐上四个小时，加上 有足够的好白纸，还有一只“挤压式”妙笔----这才是真正的幸福。The right picture is that of Churchill’s 2. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft is an autobiography and writing guide by Stephen King published during 2000. It is a book about the prolific author's experiences as a writer. The second section is practical advice on writing, from tips on grammar to ideas about developing plot and character. King describes it as a guide for how "a competent writer can become a good one." He stresses his beliefs that a writer should edit out unnecessary details and avoid the use of unnecessary adverbs. 3. more about writing--- “Writing briefly” anonymous writer (In the process of answering an email, I accidentally wrote a tiny essay about writing. I usually spend weeks on an essay. This one took 67 minutes—23 of writing, and 44 of rewriting.) I think it's far more important to write well than most people realize. Writing doesn't just communicate ideas; it generates them. If you're bad at writing and don't like to do it, you'll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated. As for how to write well, here's the short version: Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can; rewrite it over and over; cut out everything unnecessary; write in a conversational tone; develop a nose for bad writing, so you can see and fix it in yours; imitate writers you like; if you can't get started, tell someone what you plan to write about, then write down what you said; expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong; be confident enough to cut; have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are confusing or drag; don't (always) make detailed outlines; mull ideas over for a few days before writing; carry a small notebook or scrap paper with you; start writing when you think of the first sentence; if a deadline forces you to start before that, just say the most important sentence first; write about stuff you like; don't try to sound impressive; don't hesitate to change the topic on the fly; use footnotes to contain digressions; use anaphora to knit sentences together; read your essays out loud to see (a) where you stumble over awkward phrases and (b) which bits are boring (the paragraphs you dread reading); try to tell the reader something new and useful; work in fairly big quanta of time; when you restart, begin by rereading what you have so far; when you finish, leave yourself something easy to start with; accumulate notes for topics you plan to cover at the bottom of the file; don't feel obliged to cover any of them; write for a reader who won't read the essay as carefully as you do, just as pop songs are designed to sound ok on crappy car radios; if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately; ask friends which sentence you'll regret most; go back and tone down harsh remarks; publish stuff online, because an audience makes you write more, and thus generate more ideas; print out drafts instead of just looking at them on the screen; use simple, Germanic words; learn to distinguish surprises from digressions; learn to recognize the approach of an ending, and when one appears, grab it. 4. The following material is from VOA, for listening practice, please refer to MP3 for this unit. [VOA单词大师] How to Write an essay AA: I'm Avi Arditti and this week on WORDMASTER: what a teacher and a student have to say about writing a persuasive essay. DANNY SHEFFIELD: "My name is Danny Sheffield and I teach in Bentonville, Arkansas, at Northwest Arkansas Community College." AA: "Why don't you fill us in a little bit about some of the conventions of writing a persuasive essay in American higher education." DANNY SHEFFIELD: "Well, one of the basic things about writing any essay is to remember three key points about how to present an English essay. Number one, say what you're going to say, so you're telling the reader what you're going to talk about, what you're going to write about, and maybe even your stance during that first introductory say-what-you're-going-to-say paragraph. "The second thing is, say it. And here's where you introduce the topics that you have generalized in your say-it paragraph, your introductory paragraph, and provide details and specifics and statistics and facts to support what you have stated. "And the third part is, say it again. Summarize the main parts of your essay and re-emphasize definitely the key points that you have made and that you want your reader to understand. "And I think as far as writing essays at the secondary level, post-secondary level, to keep it that simple -- to say what you're going to say, say it and say it again -- is a key to having students produce effective essays." AA: "But what really separates an outstanding essay from one that's maybe just good or average?" DANNY SHEFFIELD: "I would maybe characterize an excellent essay as having a personal tone -- " AA: "And what do you mean by a personal tone?" DANNY SHEFFIELD: "A person using their personal voice rather than trying to academinize -- " AA: "Make it sound overly academic." DANNY SHEFFIELD: "Yes, yes. Because people respond to a personal voice a lot of times much more emotionally than they do -- and psychologically -- than they do to an academic voice. And so if you're writing an argumentative or persuasive essay, you want to touch that person's emotions, and by using your natural voice, then that -- that puts it more into the excellent category rather than 'Oh, this is a good academic essay.' No, you can say 'This is an excellent persuasive argument that you have presented here. I can hear you saying this.'" PEI-WEN JUAN: "My name's Pei-wen Juan, I'm from Indiana State University." AA: "And how long have you been there, how long have you been at Indiana State?" PEI-WEN JUAN: "It's one and a half year." AA: "And you're from Taiwan. So now you've been at Indiana State University for a year and a half studying, and have you found it's been difficult getting used to American academic writing? Or were there many differences from academic writing in Taiwan?" PEI-WEN JUAN: "Yes we do. That's a big problem for most of Taiwanese students or Asian students because when we are writing, when we are taught to write, we use the euphemistic way to deliver our opinions. We have the general ideas and we kind of tell people indirectly, and at the end we focus on what we want to say. But in America it's not like that. You have to show the most important part, the thesis statement first, then you give a lot of supporting ideas which make it clear and people know what you are going to say." AA: "And what are you getting your degree in?" PEI-WEN JUAN: "Teaching English as a second language." AA: That was Pei-wen Juan from Taiwan, and before that Danny Sheffield from Arkansas. I spoke with them in Denver, Colorado, at the recent convention of TESOL, or Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. And that's WORDMASTER for this week. Archives are at voanews.com/wordmaster. I'm Avi Arditti.