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在分析讨论之前，我想先问一下考生：
“优秀的文章一般都符合哪几个标准呢？”
可能大家会觉得这个问题很奇怪，因为文章的类型不同，其目标和功能就不同，所以衡量的标准自然也千差万别。但是，我想大家应该都会赞同一个说法—— 一篇优秀的文章应该能够 用最少、最精确的文字来达到预期的表达效果 。如说明文要将说明对象有顺序地逐步展开；记叙文应交代清楚事件所发生的过程及其影响；议论文应依照逻辑层层论证某个观点等。而这些表象反映出来的本质大体是相同的，总结起来就是3个标准： 内容简洁、中心明确以及语言考究 。“内容简洁”指的是 言简意 赅 ，字字珠玑；“中心明确”指的是文章围绕一个中心论点而展开；“语言考究”指的是词汇丰富且措辞精准。毫无疑问，语言方面功力的提升需要长期的积累和沉淀，所以该标准很难通过短期的训练而实现。相比之下，其他两个标准——“内容简洁”和“中心明确”则相对简单多了，只要勤加训练就可以做到。再告诉大家一个事实吧，若是能以最少的文字来准确表达文章主旨，那么即使语言方面不够出彩，也可以得到一个不错的托福写作分数。
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
需要说明的是，言简意赅指的是文字的质量，与文字的数量没有直接的关系。托福考试对于字数的确有要求（不少于300字），但这只是一个门槛而已，真正决定分数高低的还是文字质量。考生中不乏500字的Fair和300-500字的Good。
虽然“内容简洁”和“中心明确”看起来是两个不同的方面，但二者却密切相关。为什么呢？因为要做到简洁，就必须先有一个明确的中心论点，否则就是诸多信息的胡乱堆砌，毫无目标和方向可言，也就难免冗长且混乱了。因此讨论信息的收集时，在“专注”这个部分我将重点从“内容简洁”和“中心明确”这两个角度展开分析（注意：在接下来的学习过程中，大家要把握好这一点，记得我们是从不同角度解析同一个问题）。
西方人认为好文章应该符合6个“c”的标准——“concise”（简洁）、“clear”（清晰）、“complete”（完整）、“consistent”（一致）、“correct”（正确）和“colorful”（生动）。“concise”居于首位。知名剧作家安东·巴甫洛维奇·契诃夫（Anton Pavlovich Chekhov）也曾经说过“Brevity is the sister of talent”（简洁是天才的姊妹），简洁的重要性由此可见一斑。此外，亨利·戴维·梭罗（Henry David Thoreau）的一番话同样值得我们细细品味：“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”（并非故事篇幅要长，而是将它缩短需要花费很长一段时间。）内容简洁会使文章提升一个层次，而写作的功力也能从中体现出来。
但这并不是说，大家写文章的时候字数越少越好，要知道简洁必须建立在文章传达正确意义的基础上，千万不能走极端，不可以为了追求绝对的简洁而故意省略一些必不可少的重要信息。
我们先看一个小段落，然后再来讨论到底怎样才是简洁但不简单的文字。
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
案 例 分 析
PASSAGE EXCERPT:“One of the most puzzling aspects of the paintings is their location. Other rock paintings-for example, those of Bushmen in South Africa-are either located near cave entrances or completely in the open. Cave paintings in France and Spain, however, are in recesses and caverns far removed from original cave entrances. This means that artists were forced to work in cramped spaces and without sources of natural light. It also implies that whoever made them did not want them to be easily found. Since cave dwellers normally lived close to entrances, there must have been some reason why so many generations of Lascaux cave dwellers hid their art.”
Online Test: Lascaux Cave Paintings
这段文字节选自托福的一篇阅读文章，ETS在这里设置了考题，可见它的重要性非同一般。这段文字是经过精心构造并且斟酌的词句，所以无疑也是一个极其优秀的写作范例。有些考生可能会很纳闷：
“文勇老师，你到底想干什么？为什么要额外强调一篇托福阅读文章呢？我们现在不是在一起讨论写作的事情吗？”
其实不管是阅读还是写作，无非都是信息的吸收或者呈现。阅读的时候，我们的重心是理解并分析别人写出来的优秀文章，而写作的时候，我们的目标则是写出一篇让别人读起来喜欢的、同样优秀的文章。显然，“阅读”与“写作”二者事实上是相通的，都是关乎好文章的重要事项。在写作的开始阶段，我还没有要求大家去做大量的练习，毕竟有效的实践是建立在扎实且准确的理论基础上的。所以我们先来分析一下ETS出品的权威范文——考试的阅读文章，这样能少走一些弯路。
我想带着各位一起来分析文中明显标记出来的那句话“This means that artists were forced to work in cramped spaces and without sources of natural light”（这意味着艺术家们被迫在狭小的空间里工作，并且没有自然光源）。根据这句话，ETS出了一道推理题，问我们能从这句话中得出什么推论。正确答案是“They developed their own sources of light to use while painting.”（他们自己研制出了在绘画时所需要的光源。）
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
讲到这里，关于这篇阅读文章本可以画上句号了，但是我想针对这个题目深入地多想一个层次。因为文章里讲他们在狭小的、没有自然光源的地方来画画，所以我就推理出“他们技艺精湛，炉火纯青，即使没有光也能照常工作”。可能有些考生听完我的想法之后觉得好像也说得通，于是动摇了。事实上，我刚才随口提出的疑问是可以通过对文章的分析给予解答的，通过文中那句话是绝对不可能得出“摸黑画画”这个结论的。为什么呢？因为作者悄悄使用了“natural”这个词来修饰“light”，而这个单词的出现表明这句话必定有言外之意。
“文勇老师，那到底有什么玄机呢？好深奥啊。”
其实优秀的文章都有一个共性——字字珠玑，而这才是真正意义上的简洁。每个组成部分都各司其职，不可取代。
在解释“natural”之前，我们先来看几个生活中的例子吧，一起体会语言之妙。
案例一
如果我问A：“嘿，哥们！你身上带钱了吗？”他回答说：“哎哟，我今儿没带人民币。”那我听完之后会是怎样的感觉呢？“小样儿，那你是不是带美元了啊？”
案例二
如果我问B：“哥们，你喜欢汽车吗？”他回答说：“我不喜欢低档次的车。”那我就会认为“好吧，你是有钱人，只喜欢高档次的车。”
上面两个对话很类似，它们反映出了一个有关简洁的问题，这意味着： 在一篇追求简洁的优秀文章中，被额外修饰与强调 的概念是值得关注的。所以只要遇到被特意强调的概念，大家就要格外留意，思考一下言外之意是什么。对于“钱”这个整体概念，如果单独强调了“人民币”，那就意味着可能还会涉及其他币种；对于“汽车”这个泛指的概念，如果刻意强调了“低档次”，那就意味着可能还需要考虑其他档次的车。也就是说，只要涉及了某特定分类，我们就要留意与之相关的其他分类。
这时候大家重新思考一下关于“cave painting”的那句话，尤其是后半句“without sources of natural light”，注意这里的修饰成分“natural”，特意强调了分类的概念，那么我们就要想一下与之相关的其他类别，显然与“自然光源”相对的就是“人造光源”，也就是最终的答案——“虽然黑漆漆的狭小洞穴中没有‘自然光源’，但是他们研制出了其他可用的光源”。现在各位明白了吧？起初我故意忽略了“natural”，将“without sources of natural light”（没有自然光源）缩减理解为“without sources of light”（没有光源），而“没有光源”当然就意味着“在黑暗中进行了”。如果文章真的想表达“他们学会了摸黑画画”这个意思，那么根本就没必要再强调“natural”这个概念了。在这种文章的目标之下，“natural”这个单词的出现是一种冗余现象，应该被删除。也就是说，一篇优秀文章中的每一个单词其实都承载着作者的某种特殊用意，可能暗示着某些重要信息。对此，大家需要额外留心，读懂其言外之意。
通常提到“简洁”时，大部分人想到的只是避免词句方面的重复，用最少的词语表达同样完整的意思。常见的例子是“I like the wine produced in France”表达效果就不及“I like French wine”。但在这里，我所论述的简洁概念不仅仅是避免重复。现在是时候告诉诸位我的中心论点了：
简洁并不意味着“句子短，文字少”，而是要保证自己笔下的每一个单词和每一个信息都承载着无法取代的独特使命，做到“不冗余，有所指”。
我们再来看几个做到简洁的例子吧。
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?Extended family (grandparents, cousins, uncles and aunts) becomes less important today than in the past. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.
TOEFL:2006.6.9/2006.6.10
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
There used to be a time when family members remained physically near each other through all generations: When Mother and Father got married, they moved in with Grandma and Grandpa (and perhaps also Brother and Sister); when Mother and Father had children,Grandma and Grandpa helped raise them; Brother and Sister remained close to Niece and Nephew, helping to share the burden of parenting until they left to start their own families (and probably moved in right next door).
《新托福真题详解——写作分卷（第一册）》
这是一篇托福写作文章的节选，作者表达的主要观点是“曾经有段时间，家族成员世代都住得很近”，作者特意强调“曾经有段时间”（There used to be a time），指出过去的情况如何，那么暗含的意思就是现在的情况已经不一样了，现在家族成员没有住得那么近了。如果不想表达这种变化，就无须强调这个时间点了。
案 例 分 析
PASSAGE EXCERPT: “Oil pools are valuable underground accumulations of oil, and oil fields are regions underlain by one or more oil pools. When an oil pool or field has been discovered, wells are drilled into the ground.Permanent towers, called derricks, used to be built to handle the long sections of drilling pipe. Now portable drilling machines are set up and are then dismantled and removed. When the well reaches a pool, oil usually rises up the well because of its density difference with water beneath it or because of the pressure of expanding gas trapped above it. Although this rise of oil is almost always carefully controlled today, spouts of oil, or gushers, were common in the past. Gas pressure gradually dies out,and oil is pumped from the well. Water or steam may be pumped down adjacent wells to help push the oil out. At a refinery, the crude oil from underground is separated into natural gas, gasoline, kerosene, and various oils.Petrochemicals such as dyes, fertilizer, and plastic are also manufactured from the petroleum.”
TPO-4: Petroleum Resources
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
在这里我们用的是阅读材料进行分析，其实就是为了防止考生觉得在过度强调这些字眼。ETS在这些关键词处设置了考题，恰恰说明了它们的重要性，做到了“不冗余，有所指”。
Which of the following can be inferred from this paragraph about gushers?
A. They make bringing the oil to the surface easier.
B. They signal the presence of huge oil reserves.
C. They waste more oil than they collect.
D. They are unlikely to occur nowadays.
该文章节选自 阅读部分 ，我们先来关注包含出题点的那个句子吧：“Although this rise of oil is almost always carefully controlled today, spouts of oil, or gushers, were common in the past.”整句话的意思是“尽管现在石油的上升已经可以得到很好的控制了，但在过去，井喷时常发生”。题目问的是通过这句话能推断出关于“gushers”（喷油井）的哪些信息，正确答案是D选项“They are unlikely to occur nowadays”（如今它们出现的概率很小）。这时候各位应该反应过来了，文中讲的是“… gushers,were common in the past”，它特意强调了时间概念“in the past”，指出“过去的时候它们很稀松平常”，那么隐含之意就是“现在情况大不同了，几乎没有”。这样来看，答案和原文配合得天衣无缝，顺理成章。
接下来，我们再分析一个在词句层面简洁但不简单的例子。
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
案 例 分 析
PASSAGE EXCERPT: “The Whigs, in contrast,viewed government power positively. They believed that it should be used to protect individual rights and public liberty, and that it had a special role where individual effort was ineffective. By regulating the economy and competition, the government could ensure equal opportunity. Indeed, for Whigs the concept of government promoting the general welfare went beyond the economy. In particular, Whigs in the northern sections of the United States also believed that government power should be used to foster the moral welfare of the country. They were much more likely to favor social-reform legislation and aid to education.”
OG Practice Test 1: Nineteenth-Century Politics in the United States
Which of the following can be inferred from this paragraph about variations in political beliefs within the Whig Party?
A. They were focused on issues of public liberty.
B. They caused some members to leave the Whig party.
C. They were unimportant to most Whigs.
D. They reflected regional interests
和上一个案例很类似，这依旧是选自托福阅读文章的一道推理题。先看关键句“In particular, Whigs in the northern sections of the United States also believed that government power should be used to foster the moral welfare of the country”，意思是“特别是美国北部的辉格党认为政府应该促进国家的道德福利建设”。而题目问的是文章中关于辉格党内部政治观念多样性的认识，正确答案是D选项“They reflected regional interest”（这种多样性表明了不同地区的利益问题）。有些考生可能就纳闷了：这和地区差异有什么关系呢？文中提到了这是美国北部（northern）的辉格党所持的观点，在一篇优秀的ETS文章中，必然会做到简洁，而其中又强调了“northern”这个地理位置的概念，于是这就说明了暗分类的存在：既然有“北部”，也就肯定会有与之对应的“南部”，而且二者观点肯定不同，否则就没必要进行区分了，所以文章暗含不同地区的利益问题。
讲了这么多，我只想证明一件事情，诸如“in the past”和“in the northern sections”等被强调的细节信息用得恰到好处，简单、精练、不可或缺，这就是我所推崇的简洁。以后各位写文章的时候应努力保证笔下的每一个单词都有自身承载的特定意义，若没有就是冗余，果断删掉，争取做到字字珠玑。
我们来看下面的段落，看看它是否做到了简洁：
With the better understanding and accepting ability to the switching modern tech, we teenagers are the experts of its products.I recall a funny video clip about how the old and the young generations treat the new digital product differently: a girl asks her grandfather how he feels about his iPad while he is busy cutting vegetable on the very machine, then washing it with running tap water and putting it back into the cabinet. He totally treats the tablet computer which allows people to work, educate, and entertain with just their fingers as an iron-hard anvil（年轻人对于日新月异的当代科技有着更好的理解能力和接受能力，他们可谓是科技产品专家。我想起了一段有趣的关于新老两代如何对待新型电子产品的视频片段：一个女孩问她祖父是否喜欢他的iPad，而她祖父正忙着在那台机器上切菜，然后用流动的自来水把它冲洗干净，最后放回柜子里。他完全把仅仅是动动手指就可以让人们工作、学习甚至娱乐的平板电脑当作铁一般坚硬的砧板。）
一定会有考生说：
“文勇老师，这个段落一点都不简洁，尤其是最后一句，因为明明用一个 iPad 就足够了，作者非要啰啰唆唆地说上一堆： the tablet computer which allows people to work, educate, and entertain with just their finger 。”
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
果真是这样吗？我们来思考一下“the tablet computer which allows people to work, educate, and entertain with just their finger”这些内容在文中的作用是什么。没错，就是要突出强调iPad这种先进电子产品的强大之处，从而与前文祖父的做法形成鲜明对比。“tablet computer”说明了iPad方便易携带；“allows people to work, educate, and entertain”说明了iPad所具备的功能；“with just their finger”说明了操作之简便。每一个词都有所指，整个段落没有冗余的成分，所以，这不是不简洁，这是在特定场景、特殊目的下的有意为之。
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
但是，如果某位考生在写作文的时候，他并不需要特别强调iPad的这些优势，却同样大书特书，就会给人不简洁的印象。如这样一组对话：A问：“你喜欢花儿吗？”真实的情况是B的确不喜欢花儿，但如果这时候从B口中冒出的答案是“我不喜欢装饰用的假花”，那么就会出问题了。因为这种回答是带有暗含信息的，容易让人错误地理解为“B确实喜欢花儿，但只钟情于鲜花”。这样一来说话人所描述的情况就与事实不相符了，交流就不顺畅了。写文章也是一样，如果没有特别的目标，那么简洁是第一要素，千万不要过多强调一些限定成分，给人以错觉。
需要注意的是，考试的时候对于字数是有一些硬性规定的，那我们要做的就是在保证数量的基础上逐步提升品质，这就需要我们好好修炼了。但是大家也不要太有压力，我之所以讲这么多危言耸听的话，并且提出略显严苛的要求，其实目的只有一个——提醒各位谨慎下笔，要比过去任何时候都更重视写作，甚至在心里应该有“将我的文章拿去给别的考生做阅读题目”这样的想法，然后猜想：“别人看到我在文中随手提及的时间点、地点，甚至只是对一件事情的简单形容时，会有怎样的感受呢？”有这样的心理预期之后，大家就会从一个全新的视角来看待这个考试中的重头戏——写作了。要合格做到“简洁”这一点，一开始的时候可能会有些难度，大家可能会忽视一些细节，依旧犯一些错误，不过没关系，至少心中应该牢牢树立这个坚定的目标，争取尽快达成。
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
前面强调过“写文章要简洁”，并且提到要做到简洁，避免画蛇添足，首先就要有一个明确的中心论点，然后让其他论据和分论点都来为中心论点服务，也就是要争取做到“unity”和“consistency”。
虽然“统一性”（unity）和“一致性”（consistency）在定义上不太相同，但是二者的关系却密不可分，因此在这里我将二者放在一块儿进行讨论。
“统一性”（unity: reference of all parts of a literary or artistic composition to a single main idea）指的是整篇文章围绕一个中心论点来展开；“一致性”（consistency: agreement or harmony in parts or different thing）指的是整篇文章从头到尾所有的论证过程（包括分论点和论据）要非常一致地朝一个共同的方向努力，即支持并证明已有的中心论点。
具体来讲，写文章的时候我们应该做到三点：
（1）中心论点明确且与题目统一一致（紧密扣题）
（2）分论点与中心论点统一一致（各段围绕中心论点论述）
（3）分论点的具体论证与分论点统一一致（段落内逻辑自洽）
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
当文章的中心论点很明确的时候，我们能更好地保证所写的例证和分论点都不会跑题，而也只有当所有的句子和段落都不偏离主题时，才能真正实现篇章层面上的简洁。
要达到以上这个要求，首先应该对自己说这样一句话：“My purpose is to _____ my audience that _____.”写一篇文章的时候心中应该明确写作目的，即自己所要证明的观点或者论述的事情，这一点毫无疑问。可是除此之外，我还要强调：不仅仅是文章层面上，其实写每一个段落、每一句话甚至是每一个单词的时候都应该反复多遍地回答上面这个填空题，以便明确每一个步骤的独特意义（虽然这是一个非常土的方法，但是很实用，它可保证目标明确，思路不迷失，文字不冗余）。
Some people think they can solve important problems by themselves or with the help of their families, so they do not need help from the government.
Can we solve significant issues with our own ability?Opinions on this matter vary. Some people think that they can handle important problems by themselves or with the help of their families. Others think that they can by no means deal with all problems. Personally, I stand in line with the latter point of view, as there are many roles of the government that cannot be displaced by any individual.
Firstly, the government constructs infrastructure,such as transportation routes, which is critical for people’s convenience. Any civilization cannot last for long without well-developed transportation. The government who has the right to use all sorts of powerful resources such as millions of dollars or the best engineers can manage to build the net of traffic to connect one place to another. This traffic net, rang from interstate highways to town-to-town airline, guarantees our modern lifestyle for the convenience it offers. From my experience, born in a suburban community, I often recall the memory that my parents drove me to school in the downtown,and this distance took us as long as two hours with the poor road condition. Since the government constructed an express way five years ago, we only need less an hour on this trip.
Secondly, the government provides people with a huge number of public services which they cannot live without，like education, medical treatment, security and so on. The government not only founds hospitals but also runs medical insurance to ensure people’s health and medical treatment with less money spent from their own bill.
Thirdly, the government can offer assistance in extreme circumstances, especially when people are stricken by a disaster. There are some significant incidents which we cannot get rid of by ourselves, such as earthquakes, tsunamis or volcano eruptions. One of these tragic events in China in the recent decade is the earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province in 2008, causing seventy thousand deaths. People who went through this tragedy were aided by the government who helped them to stay safe and healthy, to find their loved ones in rubble, and later to reconstruct their home. Obviously,when people run into some unpredictable and catastrophic happenings, they cannot leave government’s help.
With all the reasons and evidences presented above, it is abundantly clear that the government plays an indispensible role in the life of every member of the society. In the face of some difficulties, people are not able to live without the hel from the government.
学生原作
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
这是一篇学生的习作。作文题目讲的是“有些人觉得凭借自己以及家人的力量足以应付一些重大问题，不必非得政府出面解决”。看完文章的第一段，我们会发现这篇文章对题目持反对观点，它认可政府所发挥的不可替代的作用。接下来给出了三个分论点，大写特写政府的光辉形象，夸奖它的非凡功绩。最后是总结部分，呼应首段。
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
大家觉得这篇文章写得好吗？看上去很美。但还记得我提出的那个标准吗？检查的时候其实只需要不厌其烦地验证“段落的中心是否与文章的中心一致”。我们一起来分析一下这篇文章吧。首段提出中心论点“个体的力量有限，政府的许多角色不可取代”，目标很明确，根据题目抛出的主题确定了全文的立场和方向，这里没有问题。主要是正文的论述部分有些跑偏了，作者给出的几个分论点“目的”（purpose）都是在“夸政府如何强大”，没有列出“重要问题”（important problems）来证明政府所做的事情的重要性，也没有将“政府力量”和“个体力量”（individuals themselves）进行对比，使得正文的论述与题目主题和首段提出的中心论点产生了偏差。虽然用了很多的笔墨和篇幅，但是作者其实只讨论了中心论点三分之一的元素，违背了我们刚提到的两个原则——“统一性”（unity）和“一致性”（consistency）。这时候大家就明白了，这原来是一篇有缺陷的、不太值得学习的文章。
其实，这篇文章的作者写作功底还是不错的，如果关注到行文过程中各部分的目标，稍作修改，就可以成就一篇高分作文，下面我们就来看看如何针对刚才的分析中提到的毛病进行修改：
Can we solve significant issues with our own ability?Opinions on this matter vary. Some people think that they can handle important problems by themselves or with the help of their families. Others think that they can by no means deal with all problems. Personally, I stand in line with the latter point of view, as there are many roles of the government that cannot be displaced by any individual.
Firstly, the government constructs infrastructure,such as transportation routes, which is critical for people’s convenience. Any civilization cannot last for long without well-developed transportation. which is critical to the well-being of its people . （突出重要） The government who has the right has the advantage over individuals （突出与个体力量对比的 优势） to use all sorts of powerful resources such as millions of dollars or the best engineers can manage to build the net of traffic to connect one place to another. This traffic net, rang from interstate highways to town-to-town airline, guarantees our modern lifestyle for the convenience it offer we rely on in modern life . （突出重要） From my experience, born in a suburban community, I often recall the memory that my parents drove me to school in the downtown, and this distance took us as long as two hours with the poor road condition. Since the government constructed an express way five years ago, we only need less an hour on this trip. This immensely improved my family’s living standard, considering how much time saved for other meaningful activities. （突出重要） And for sure, we, by ourselves, could never accomplish such a big project. （突出与个体力量对比）
Secondly, the government provides people a huge number of public services which they cannot live without，like education, medical treatment, security and so on. The government not only founds hospitals but also run medical insurance to ensure people’s health and medical treatment with less money spent from their own bill. These important services require wide and huge collection of money that few individuals could have the ability or credential to afford （突 出与个体力量对比）
Thirdly, the government can offer assistance in extreme circumstances, especially when people are stricken by a disaster. There are some significant incidents which we cannot get rid of by ourselves, such as earthquakes, tsunamis or, volcano eruptions. One of these tragic events in China in the recent decade is the earthquake in Wenchuan, Sichuan Province in 2008, causing seventy thousand deaths. People who went through this tragedy were aided by the government who helped them to stay safe and healthy, to find their loved ones in rubble, and later to reconstruct their home. Obviously,when people run into some unpredictable and catastrophic happenings, they cannot leave government’s help.
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
With all the reasons and evidences presented above, it is abundantly clear that the government plays an indispensable role in the life of every member of the society. In the face of some difficulties, people are not able to live without the hel from the government.
学生习作课后修改版本
What do you remember about your life before you were three? Few people can remember anything that happened to them in their early years. Adults’ memories of the next few years also tend to be scanty. Most people remember only a few events-usually ones that were meaningful and distinctive, such as being hospitalized or a sibling’s birth.
How might this inability to recall early experiences be explained? The sheer passage of time does not account for it;adults have excellent recognition of pictures of people who attended high school with them 35 years earlier. Another seemingly plausible explanation-that infants do not form enduring memories at this point in development-also is incorrect. Children two and a half to three years old remember experiences that occurred in their first year, and eleven month olds remember some events a year later. Nor does the hypothesis that infantile amnesia reflects repression-or holding back-of sexually charged episodes explain the phenomenon. While such repression may occur, people cannot remember ordinary events from the infant and toddler periods either.
Three other explanations seem more promising.One involves physiological changes relevant to memory.
Maturation of the frontal lobes of the brain continues throughout early childhood, and this part of the brain may be critical for remembering particular episodes in ways that can be retrieved later. Demonstrations of infants’ and toddlers’ long-term memory have involved their repeating motor activities that they had seen or done earlier, such as reaching in the dark for objects, putting a bottle in a doll’s mouth, or pulling apart two pieces of a toy. The brain’s level of physiological maturation may support these types of memories, but not ones requiring explicit verbal descriptions.
A second explanation involves the influence of the social world on children’s language use. Hearing and telling stories about events may help children store information in ways that will endure into later childhood and adulthood. Through hearing stories with a clear beginning, middle, and ending children may learn to extract the gist of events in ways that they will be able to describe many years later. Consistent with this view, parents and children increasingly engage in discussions of past events when children are about three years old. However, hearing such stories is not sufficient fo younger children to form enduring memories. Telling such stories to two year olds does not seem to produce long-lasting verbalizable memories.
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
A third likely explanation for infantile amnesia involves incompatibilities between the ways in which infants encode information and the ways in which older children and adults retrieve it. Whether people can remember an event depends critically on the fit between the way in which they earlier encoded the information and the way in which they later attempt to retrieve it. The better able the person is to reconstruct the perspective from which the material was encoded, the more likely that recall will be successful.
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
This view is supported by a variety of factors that can create mismatches between very young children’s encoding and older children’s and adults’ retrieval efforts. The world looks very different to a person whose head is only two or three feet above the ground than to one whose head is five or six feet above it. Older children and adults often try to retrieve the names of things they saw, but infants would not have encoded the information verbally. General knowledge of categories of events such as a birthday party or a visit to the doctor’s office helps older individuals encode their experiences, but again, infants and toddlers are unlikely to encode many experiences within such knowledge structures.
These three explanations of infantile amnesia are not mutually exclusive; indeed, they support each other.Physiological immaturity may be part of why infants and toddlers do not form extremely enduring memories, even when they hear stories that promote such remembering in preschoolers. Hearing the stories may lead preschoolers to encode aspects of events that allow them to form memories they can access as adults. Conversely, improved encoding of what they hear may help them better understand and remember stories and thus make the stories more useful for remembering future events. Thus, all three explanations-physiological maturation, hearing and producing stories about past events, and improved encoding of key aspects of events-seem likely to be involved in overcoming infantile amnesia.
TPO-6
这是一篇托福阅读文章，文章的标题意思是“婴幼儿期记忆缺失”。我们先看第一段，它描述了一种现象：很少有人记得婴幼儿时期的事情，即便是成年人对这段时间的记忆也很模糊，这个现象就是标题所说的婴幼儿期记忆缺失。接下来的段落都是在试图解释为什么会出现这种现象：第二段先从反面说“时间的流逝”并不能解释这种现象，紧接着后面的第三段、第四段、第五和第六段各提出了一个更具说服力的解释，最后一段对这三个更具说服力的解释之间的关系进行总结。由此可见，作者所有的论述都是围绕一个目的进行的，都是在回答第二段第一句提到的“How might this inability to recall early experiences be explained?”，做到了“中心明确”。
事实上，在不断回答文章各组成部分的“purpose”这个过程中，我们会客观且理性地审视行文思路是否合理，从而理顺逻辑；判断某个部分是否篇幅过长，从而避免出现冗余的情况。相信我，这绝对是一个可以让人受益终身的建议，考试的时候有助于大家写出条理清晰的文章，更重要的是有助于大家培养更为严谨的思维习惯。最后，请大家与我一起温习一下这句非常重要的、应该在行文过程中反复提醒自己的句子吧：
My purpose is to _____ my audience that _____.
当我强调“明确的中心论点”这个概念的时候，特别担心大家会狭义地将“明确”的观点完全等同于“一边倒”的观点。以托福独立写作题目为例，ETS一般都会问“Do you agree or disagree with the following statement A”。一般来说，大家心目中明确的观点可能就是“我同意A”或者“我反对A”。而当我们写同意A的文章时，肯定就要极力呈现A的诸多优点；反之，当对A持坚决反对的态度时，则会疯狂地列举出A的种种缺点。虽然这两种写法都符合“中心论点明确”这个原则，却都过于极端，属于“一边倒”的情形。
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
事实上，生活中的事物都是较为复杂的。有些事物具有两面性，优缺点并存，如大家都听过的“科技是把双刃剑”，科技可以提高人类的生活质量，但也会带来环境问题，进而降低人类的生活质量。而有些事物本身是中性的，只代表客观情况，它们给人带来的或好或坏的影响完全取决于其他外部条件，如“电视给社会带来正面还是负面影响”这一话题。要知道，电视本身是没有意识的，它不会主动影响人们以至于社会，实际上在影响大众的是通过电视传播信息或内容的人，《SAT官方指南》中有一篇文章形象地称这些人为“wire-puller”（幕后操控者），当这些人希望通过电视这一媒体传递正能量时，电视就可以给社会带来正面影响，通过积极向上的教育节目，观众可以了解更多知识，从而树立正确的价值观和人生观。如红遍全球的《荒野求生》（ Man vs. Wild ），该节目不仅介绍了很多求生知识和技巧，也让人们认识到了大自然的残酷与无情、人类的渺小。通过观看这一节目，很多人都会放弃之前“想要冒险，挑战自然”这种单纯幼稚的想法。但是，当幕后操控者希望利用电视达到某一负面目的时，电视对观众的负面影响也不容小觑。如《意志的胜利》（ Triumph of the Will ）这部在第二次世界大战期间拍摄的电影就是纳粹政府用来煽动群众，向他们灌输纳粹思想的，其危害不言而喻。
对于前者——具有两面性的事物，我们可以有所侧重地论述其中的一面，但是也要注意文章观点的完整性，不能为了重点突出它的优点而完全忽略它的缺点，或是为了强调它的缺点而从头到尾对它的优点只字不提，这两种做法都是不理智的。
而对于中性的事物，我们亦不可摒弃“具体情况，具体分析”的原则，如果忽视其他影响因素和外部条件而简单地将其归类到或好或坏的行列都是不合适的。事实上，写文章要严谨，而某物一定好或一定坏的片面文章显然是不够严谨的。
那么，如何才能同时做到“观点明确”且“严谨不极端”呢？在这里，我给大家推荐两种写作方式——“让步写法”和“居中写法”。
“让步写法”在写作中很常见，可分为 引出观点时的让步和 证明观点时的让步。
什么情况最适合“让步写法”呢？一般情况下， 当想要论 述一个事物的优点大于其自身的缺点（或反之，缺点大于优点） 时，或者当想要描述一个事物的优点 / 缺点大于另外一个事物 的优点 / 缺点（两个事物进行比较）时，建议大家最好采用“让 步写法”。
注意，“让步写法”涉及两个事物的比较时，其中一个事物的优点往往会是另一个事物的缺点，反之亦然，所以二者是此消彼长、紧密联系的。
1）引出观点时的让步
引出观点时应该如何让步呢？我们通过下面这个写作题目来讲一下：
“Is travelling in a group led by a tour guide the best way to travel?”
请大家思考如下几个问题：
● 该题目中是否存在暗含的比较对象？
● 如果存在，那么二者相比，更倾向于哪一个？
● 讨论对象一有哪些优点？
● 讨论对象二有哪些优点？
显然这个题目中确实存在暗含的比较对象——跟团旅游与自己旅游。假如我们更倾向于“自己旅游”，那么中心论点其实就是对“跟团旅游”的否定，告诉读者它并不是最好的选择。
接下来开始构思作文，第一段先让步，简单罗列“跟团旅游”的一两个优点，然后立地反击，引出自己的观点：“跟团旅游”具备一定的优势，但在某些方面它却比不上“自己旅游”。接着可以分两段详细论述一下“自己旅游”的显著特色（各位心里要清楚，肯定“自己旅游”这种方式的同时其实也就是在指出“跟团旅游”的不足之处，所以请不要列举双方共有的优点），最后得出结论：“跟团旅游并不是最好的旅行方式，自己旅游会是个不错的选择。”
这就是引出观点时的让步，我们可以在文章开头简单罗列没有被选择的一方的优点，但要记住反驳，将话题最终引到自己选择的一方来。
2）证明观点时的让步
在具体的论证中，“让步”是承认有两个比较对象的文章的主观点有一定的不足之处，并解释一下不足如何瑕不掩瑜或说明一下克服不足的方法，使得文章的整体论述趋于客观和完整。例如我们在写托福作文的时候，主体部分可以采用“三段论”的形式——两段正面描述加一段包含负面描述的“让步段”，或者两段负面描述加一段包含正面描述的“让步段”。
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
换句话说，对某个论述对象先大夸特夸一番之后，为了避免将其表扬得过了头，在最后的部分收一收，提一下“当然它也不是完美和绝对正确的”，再列举几个无伤大雅的小缺点；或是对某个论述对象大肆贬低一番后，为了防止太过极端，所以在最后的部分也提一下“当然它也有一定的可取之处”。这是大家喜闻乐见的一种做法，很多老师也建议学生写文章的时候采用让步方法，这样能体现我们的辩证思维，对于问题的分析和认识也更客观、成熟且全面。
需要注意的是，让步并不等同于只是干巴巴地承认自身缺陷，而不作任何自圆其说的解释。这一点与让步在引出观点时的用法有所不同。什么意思呢？假设某篇文章的立场是支持某个观点，主体部分采用“三段论”的结构，其中有一个段落来进行让步，可能有考生会相当“大方”地指出文章观点存在的种种局限性，对其进行严肃的声讨。这种做法当然不可取，简直就是大煞风景，给读者一种“以己之矛，攻己之盾”的感觉，对于文章的主观点来说无疑是严重的削弱，也不利于文中信息的准确表达，考试时一定要避免。真正意义上的良好让步，除了坦承一些缺陷与不足之处，还应该进一步解释强调它们是可以被克服的，问题并不大，或这些缺陷本身是暂时的，但从长远利益看是有利的。这样既体现了谦和的态度，也透露出一种更为成熟全面的思考角度。所以大家就知道了，让步的时候需要拿捏好尺度，过犹不及。
下面是几篇在论述中使用了“让步写法”的范例。
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?In order to succeed, you should be more like others than be different from everyone else. Use specific reasons and detail to support your answer.
Admittedly, being unique risks rejection by those around us. That’s why the majority of us tend to follow fashion trend and to listen the advice of others. However, too much imitating and conforming will finally overwhelm us, rendering our mind inept and incapable of independent thinking. To be successful and truly happy, one needs to chart out one’s own course through life. Only with such attitude can one chase one’s own dream toward success.
学生习作课后修改版本
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?Working at home using computers or telephones is better than working in the office. Use specific reasons and details support your answer.
Admittedly, people tend to be over-relaxed and less efficient when they work at home-no supervision from directors, no pressure from their diligent peers, and in the meantime more possibilities for leisure and entertainment,even the household chores can be distracting. But is this enough to deny working at home? Of course not. We can easily fight this by giving employees clear and exact task descriptions and deadlines and ask them to report their progress from time to time. We may also set some punishment rules for those who cannot finish the tasks well or cannot finish on time. In this way, the efficiency of working at ho can be secured and we can better enjoy the benefits it brings.
学生习作课后修改版本
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?The most important education that a person gets is from the outside of the schools and classrooms. Use specific reasons and examples to support your ideas.
TOEFL: 2006.9.23
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
I agree with the statement that the most important education comes from outside the classroom, though the degree to which this is true, in some cases, depends on what the career goal is. Lectures, book study, and lab experiments are essential for the research scientist, but “outside education”may not have so great an impact on the effectiveness of his research conducted individually in his own lab. But for most people who are in interactive roles in their social and professional lives, the “street-smarts”, the actual experience they get as members of a football team, a chorus, a community service project, and who travel to other provinces or countries are better able to put their classroom knowledge into an effective social, professional, personal perspective which makes them more understanding friends, more helpful colleagues, and more fulfilled individuals.
The marketer who does not understand the varying tastes and characteristics of those from other areas of the country or world cannot truly understand how to “reach” the customers to convince them to buy his project. The colleague who has never played on a sports team, participated in a community project, or sung in a chorus cannot truly understand the importance of teamwork and shared responsibility. The manager who has never traveled in-country or abroad cannot be truly sensitive to the cultural differences within his staff.Those who have not experienced or seen the difficulties of lif that face so many less fortunate, can never really appreciate how lucky they are.
While it is true that we must have the special knowledge in specific areas of endeavor to have sufficient technical a informational data to do a job, it is the out-of-class experience that gives us the practical social skills and understanding of human nature to allow us to be really effective, efficient, successful, fulfilled individuals in all aspects of life.
《新托福真题详解——写作分卷（第一册）》
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
我们再来看一篇托福阅读中使用“让步”写法的文章。
案 例 分 析
PASSAGE EXCERPT: “The benefits of play must outweigh costs, or play would not have evolved, according to Darwin’s theory. Some of the potential benefits relate directly to the healthy development of the brain and nervous system. In one research study, two groups of young rats were raised under different conditions. One group developed in an“enriched” environment, which allowed the rats to interact with other rats, play with toys, and receive maze training.The other group lived in an “impoverished” environment in individual cages in a dimly lit room with little stimulation.At the end of the experiments, the results showed that the actual weight of the brains of the impoverished rats was less than that of those raised in the enriched environment (though they were fed the same diets). Other studies have shown that greater stimulation not only affects the size of the brain but also increase the number of connections between the nerve cells. Thus, active play may provide necessary stimulation to the growth of synaptic connections in the brain, especially the cerebellum, which is responsible for motor functioning and movements.
Play also stimulates the development of the muscle tissues themselves and may provide the opportunities to practice those movements needed for survival. Prey species, like young deer or goats, for example, typically play by performing sudden flight movements and turns,whereas predator species, such as cats, practice stalking,pouncing, and biting.
Play allows a young animal to explore its environment and practice skill in comparative safety since the surrounding adults generally do not expect the young to deal with threats or predators. Play can also provide practice in social behaviors needed for courtship and mating. Learning appropriate social behaviors is especially important for species that live in groups, like young monkeys that needed to learn to control selfishness and aggression and to understand the give-and-take involved in social groups.They need to learn how to be dominant and submissive because each monkey might have to play either role in the future. Most of these things are learned in the long developmental periods that primates have, during which they engage in countless play experiences with their peers.
There is a danger, of course, that play may be misinterpreted or not recognized as play by others,potentially leading to aggression. This is especially true when play consists of practicing normal aggressive or predator behaviors. Thus, many species have evolved clear signals to delineate playfulness. Dogs, for example, will wag their tails, get down their front legs, and stick their behinds in the air to indicate “what follows is just for play.”
TPO-30: Role of Play in Development
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
讲到这里，相信大家对“让步写法”已经有一个较为清楚且全面的认识了，平时可以留意训练一下，牢牢掌握这个方法。
讨论完上述用“让步写法”处理的“一边倒”文章之后，不知道大家有没有思考过另外一种情形呢？即，事物本身是中性的，对人们的影响应具体情况具体分析。如此，我们可能对论述对象持“既不同意，也不反对”的态度，那么这种类型的文章观点可以算作“明确”吗？请注意我的回答“ 其实这种观点 也是非常明确的 ”。原因一目了然，态度很明确，就是要保持中立。这是我想重点强调的一点，希望大家也可以尝试这种写法。
事实上，我强烈建议各位以后参加诸如SAT和GRE等注重思辨性思维（critical thinking）的考试时，尽可能多地采用这种“明确但不极端”的观点。因为“明确”只是意味着观点本身清楚，而未必是必须倒向其中的某一方，居中型的观点同样能表明坚定的立场。而且，居中型的观点更容易体现作者能客观地看待事物。
当我们阐述一个居中型观点时，显然参与论述的信息就更多了——讨论对象的优点和缺点全部囊括。如此，必然要从辩证的角度来分析信息。当我们尝试从辩证的角度去写文章的时候，文章无疑也就显得更加严谨了。
我们来看一个范例吧。
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
In our time, specialists of all kinds are highly over-rated.We need more generalists-people who can provide broad perspectives.
In this era of rapid social and technological change leading to increasing life complexity and psychological displacement, both positive and negative effects among persons in Western society call for a balance in which there are both specialists and generalists.
GRE写作ISSUE官方给出的6分范文
这是一道作文题目以及ETS官方给出的一篇满分范文的首段。题目给出的观点是“当今社会中，各种专才被高估了，我们需要更多见识广博的通才”，而范文首段在结尾处亮明了观点——二者同等重要。也就是说，考试的时候大家完全可以采用居中型观点，ETS也不会不支持这种做法。
SAT和GRE等考试一直都在反复强调一个单词，即“critical”（思辨性的），这一点在托福中也有类似的要求。如何使文章有“critical”？它不但要求文章观点明确，而且思路也应严谨，这显然对考生的写作能力以及思考能力提出了更高的要求。写一篇“明确”的文章，易，无非就是开门见山，亮明观点，任何一篇非居中型文章都可以做到。然而，写一篇“明确且严谨”的文章，难！因为在一篇文章中，“明确”和“严谨”往往很难同时体现出来。
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
等以后有机会的时候，再跟大家详细地讨论GRE和SAT的写作需要注意哪些事情，在这里就不赘述了。
一般来说，非居中型文章会让人感觉很简单，信息量小，甚至非常“shallow”和“superficia”，尤其是“一边倒”的极端型文章，思维单薄。我们当然更希望“rater”（阅卷老师）会认为我们的文章不但层次多样，而且结构严谨，确实是经过一番冥思苦想的，因此我们应尽量使之厚实丰满一些。如面对同一个作文题目，甲同学的观点是“同意”，这样写出来的文章无疑很明确，但是在层次上就不够多样了，体现不出考生较强的思辨性。而乙同学却聪明地选择了“既不同意，也不反对”作为中心论点，其实这样有利于把文章的结构写得足够复杂，因为选材的空间和延伸的方向更多元了。 我希望大家对待一个特 定的考试（比如GRE或者SAT）时会特意构造较为复杂的文章， 而后精心打磨，使其明确起来。
具体来讲，什么时候推荐采用“居中写法”呢？我们可以分成两种情况。
情况一：两个事物进行比较，无法简单地判定哪个更好或哪个更差时，可采用“居中写法”。
情况二：一个事物如果优点和缺点各占一半，没有明显的好，也没有明显的坏时，我们也提倡用“居中写法”。
因为将两个事物A和B进行比较时，会分别列出A和B的优缺点，进行比较。在有些情况下，A的优点大于B，而有些情况下，A的优点小于B，或A的缺点大于B，我们无法简单地倾向于A或B，这时如果我们不分情况，只是简单地说A好（B不好）或B好（A不好），都欠妥。因此提倡用“居中写法”，其实也就是对A和B都不偏向。分析一个事物的优缺点时同样如此。
针对这两种情况，该怎样采用“居中写法”来写呢？下面我用具体的例子来说明。
情况一： “Are parents the best teachers?” 这道题目中有比较关系吗？是有的，虽然最高级的出现并没有明确直观地给出相比较的两方。这时，我们需要自己把与题目中所给一方相对的另一方或几方找出来，即把比较关系和对象“具体化”。针对这道题，可以给“父母”（parents）找一个比较对象，如“学校教师”。如此一来，话题就变成了将“父母”和“学校教师”对孩子的影响进行比较，分析孰轻孰重。如果我们认为二者各有所长，就可以采用“居中写法”。文章的中心论点则为“父母在有些方面是孩子最好的老师，但在有些方面却不是”。“父母”是孩子最早的老师，对孩子的品行和性格最有影响力，能够为孩子树立榜样，培养孩子善良、顽强、坚持不懈等品格，并且在生活方面与孩子有很多接触，能够顾及他们生活上遇到的困难并教他们克服。但是和“学校教师”相比，“父母”的局限性在于他们缺乏专业知识和专业的教育方法等，导致在专业方面，家长无法成为最理想的老师。最终总结“在生活和品格方面，父母是孩子最好的老师；但是在专业方面，学校教师更好，所以我们不能笼统地说父母是孩子最好的老师”。
情况二： “Has technology made the world a better place to live in?”题目问“科技有没有将世界变得更好”，意思是科技是否具备将世界变好的优势，其实也就是将科技本身的优点和缺点进行比较，在对优缺点参半的事物进行评论时，最好采用“居中写法”。首先中心论点是“科技在有些方面确实使世界变得更美好了，但在有些方面却使世界变得更糟糕了”。在接下来的论证过程中，正面论据包括“科技的发展使得一些以前无法治愈的疾病得到了更好的治疗”以及“科技的发展使得粮食产量大幅提升”等；而负面论据包括“科技的发展给人类带来了威胁或潜在风险，如食品安全问题、电磁辐射等”，“科技的进步加快了工业化的进程，使环境污染更加严重，破坏了人类的居住环境”等。结论：“不能简单地说科技使世界更美好或者更糟糕了，我们需要一分为二地看待这个问题。”
下面这三篇文章可供考生参考。
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
Some people think that human needs for farmland,housing, and industry are more important than saving land for endangered animals. Do you agree or disagree with this point of view? Why or why not? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.
TOEFL: 2008.3.15
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
I do not agree that human needs for land are more important than saving land for endangered animals. In my personal view, both human needs and protecting endangered animals are equally important.
Human needs for land are very important in order to give people good lives and support the development of society. For instance, as the population increases, more homes need to be built and more factories and power stations are required to supply the goods and energy that people need. More farmland is needed to produce food. If we do not convert land use for these purposes, many people will suffer and have bad lives.
On the other hand, saving land to protect endangered animals is also very important, not just because animals add variety and beauty to the world, but because animals make an important contribution to humans’ quality of life. Animals are part of the ecosystem that purifies the air, cleans the water, and provides humans with food. If we allow the animals to become extinct,we will damage the ecosystems and lose these vital services.This will have a bad impact on the development of society.
Clearly, it is impossible to say that either aspect is more important as they both have a significant impact on the quality of people’s lives. Furthermore, there is no need to choose between providing for humans and protecting animals because,the way I see it, the problem is not a shortage of land. The problem is that people see the short-term benefit of, say, cutting down a rainforest for farmland but they do not see the longterm economic benefit of protecting animals. Governments need to educate people to see the equal value of both and then we can develop society without destroying the natural world.
《新托福真题详解——写作分卷（第一册）》
上面这篇文章将“把土地用于人类需要”和“保留土地来挽救濒危动物”两个做法做了对比。文章首段先亮明观点，二者同等重要。二、三段则分别从土地对人类需求的重要性、保留土地对保护濒危动物的重要性两个方面论述两者不分伯仲。最后一段总结观点，再次点题。这是一篇典型的采用“居中写法”的范文。
Some people say that the Internet provides people with a lot of valuable information. Others think access to so much information creates problems. Which view do you agree with?Use specific reasons and examples to support your opinion.
TOEFL: 2006.3.25
What is the weather going to be like tomorrow in Beijing,China? Where did the Scottish bagpipes originate? What is Aristotle famous for? How many Euros equal one dollar?
To answer such questions in the “old” days-BI(Before the Internet)-a person would have to track down various sources in different physical places. The questioner,for example, would need to actually visit a local library to locate a world almanac (to predict Beijing’s weather) or an encyclopedia (for the bagpipes’ or Aristotle’s history), or drive to a bank for the Euro equivalency. Now all of these questions(and millions more) can be accessed easily and swiftly from any computer connected to the Internet, from (almost literally) any place in the world. Such a treasure-trove of instant information is surely one of the most impressive and most useful developments of the last 20 years.
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
And yet, there is also an unending supply of useless,and often outright dangerous, information to be had from a few clicks of the keyboard. Users can fritter their time away for hours reading banal postings from their “friends” on Facebook. (“I just made some soup and now I think I’ll take a nap.”) They can download the “Stumble upon” tool bar and spend the day lurching randomly from one site to another.More darkly, they can spend days and nights learning how to make a bomb, or adding to the political vitriol that is posted everywhere on the Web.
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
Access to information has always caused problems.Dissatisfied members of the Roman Catholic Church may have kept their complaints to themselves for much longer had Martin Luther not started the Protestant Reformation by“publishing” his 95 Theses by nailing them on the door of the church in Wittenburg. The slave-owning southerners in the US could not have been too happy when Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin incited 19th-century northerners to solidify their objections to the institution of slavery and consider the idea of a civil war. And just about every Biblereading churchgoer was horrified by what Charles Darwin hypothesized in his Origin of Species (1859). Yes, information can be very dangerous.
As free people, however, it is up to us to use resources such as the Internet wisely; it is not for our governments to tell us what we can read or what we can learn. A little knowledge may indeed be a dangerous thing, but a broad understanding of the world and how it works will surely contribute to the common good in the long run.
《新托福真题详解——写作分卷（第一册）》
这篇文章也是很典型的“居中写法”，既说到网络带来的好处（第二段），也指出了网络可能带来的问题（三、四段），最后总结观点说如何利用网络取决于我们自身。可见作者对于网络是持中立的态度。
Growth, reproduction, and daily metabolism all require an organism to expend energy. The expenditure of energy is essentially a process of budgeting, just as finances are budgeted. If all of one’s money is spent on clothes, there may be none left to buy food or go to the movies. Similarly, a plant or animal cannot squander all its energy on growing a big body if none would be left over for reproduction, for this is the surest way to extinction.
All organisms, therefore, allocate energy to growth,reproduction, maintenance, and storage. No choice is involved; this allocation comes as part of the genetic package from the parents. Maintenance for a given body design of an organism is relatively constant. Storage is important,but ultimately that energy will be used for maintenance,reproduction, or growth. Therefore the principal differences in energy allocation are likely to be between growth and reproduction.
Almost all of an organism’s energy can be diverted to reproduction, with very little allocated to building the body.Organisms at this extreme are “opportunists.” At the other extreme are “competitors,” almost all of whose resources are invested in building a huge body, with a bare minimum allocated to reproduction.
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
Dandelions are good examples of opportunists. Their seed heads raised just high enough above the ground to catch the wind, the plants are no bigger than they need be, their stems are hollow, and all the rigidity comes from their water content. Thus, a minimum investment has been made in the body that becomes a platform for seed dispersal. These very short-lived plants reproduce prolifically; that is to say they provide a constant rain of seed in the neighborhood of parent plants. A new plant will spring up wherever a seed falls on a suitable soil surface, but because they do not build big bodies,they cannot compete with other plants for space, water, or sunlight. These plants are termed opportunists because they rely on their seeds’ falling into settings where competing plants have been removed by natural processes, such as along an eroding riverbank, on landslips, or where a tree falls and creates a gap in the forest canopy.
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
Opportunists must constantly invade new areas to compensate for being displaced by more competitive species.Human landscapes of lawns, fields, or flowerbeds provide settings with bare soil and a lack of competitors that are perfect habitats for colonization by opportunists. Hence, many of the strongly opportunistic plants are the common weeds of fields and gardens.
Because each individual is short-lived, the population of an opportunist species is likely to be adversely affected by drought, bad winters, or floods. If their population is tracked through time, it will be seen to be particularly unstable-soaring and plummeting in irregular cycles.
The opposite of an opportunist is a competitor. These organisms tend to have big bodies, are long-lived, and spend relatively little effort each year on reproduction. An oak tree is a good example of a competitor. A massive oak claims its ground for 200 years or more, outcompeting all other wouldbe canopy trees by casting a dense shade and drawing up any free water in the soil. The leaves of an oak tree taste foul because they are rich in tannins, a chemical that renders them distasteful or indigestible to many organisms. The tannins are part of the defense mechanism that is essential to longevity.Although oaks produce thousands of acorns, the investment in a crop of acorns is small compared with the energy spent on building leaves, trunk, and roots. Once an oak tree becomes established, it is likely to survive minor cycles of drought and even fire. A population of oaks is likely to be relatively stable through time, and its survival is likely to depend more on its ability to withstand the pressures of competition or predation than on its ability to take advantage of chance events. It should be noted, however, that the pure opportunist or pure competitor is rare in nature, as most species fall between the extremes of a continuum, exhibiting a blend of some opportunistic and some competitive characteristics.
Online Test
这是一篇托福阅读中使用居中写法的文章。文章之中有两个比较对象：机会主义者（Opportunists）和竞争主义者（Competitors），作者分别对这两种类型的生物体的特征进行了介绍，并未说明孰优孰劣，最后还说到“单纯的机会主义者或竞争者在自然界中是很少见的，大多数物种都属于由这两个极端组成的区域中，显现出兼有二者的一些特征”。
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
事实上，当涉及有比较的对象时，既可以采用让步写法，也可以使用居中写法。这两者的区别在于，让步的时候我们是有偏好的，是更倾向于其中一个对象的，而居中写法则是没有任何偏好的。
中心明确的要点是要随时随地暗示读者自己的观点，“essay map”就是一种很好的表达形式。所谓“ essay map ”，即在一篇 文章的开头段中把下文即将阐述的理由用简洁的词语概括出来， 一般会在首段预告一下下文的 2～3 个分论点会从哪些角度出发 来支持论证这篇文章的核心论点，其好处在于让读者提前在脑 海中勾勒出全文的框架，使文章前后呼应、结构紧密，给人一 种“ well-organized ”的感觉。
我们来看一个写作中关于“essay map”的例子。
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
Which would you choose: a high-paying job with long hours that would give you little time with family and friends or a lower-paying job with shorter hours that would give you more time with family and friends? Explain your choice,using specific reasons and details.
TOEFL: 2006.7.29/2007.10.20
Everyone likes to have good times with family and friends, but to make this the most important aspect in one’s life is shortsighted and the quality of the “enjoyment” would be less varied and interesting if the job were not high-paying.I would choose a high-paying job with long hours because such a job has much greater long-term benefits for my family,for others and for myself.
In the first place, high pay means that I could provide a better life for my family-a good home, plenty of food, nice clothes, nice birthday presents and money for my children’s education. These factors are more important than a few more hours a week to spend with family if it meant, for instance that I could not send my kid to a good school or pay for needed medical treatments. And high pay also means that my wife would not need to work and she could spend more time caring for the children and giving them a good life.
Also, with a good paying job, despite the long hours, I could also be more generous with my friends and with needy people. The guy who has an easy job with lots of free time but little money cannot help himself in a crisis and much less his friends, his family and the needy who enter his life.
Lastly, with a good job, I could save up money for a good retirement and then have lots of leisure time to enjoy a more active social life. And I would also be able to be generous with my grandchildren then. I would be very happy to experience such pleasure.
So, in order to provide a good life for my family, enable my wife to concentrate on the family, have an enjoyable retirement and be a responsible, generous person, I would definitely choose the high-paying long-hour job.
《新托福真题详解——写作分卷（第一册）》
文章首段的第一句话先写一般人的观点，然后提出自己的观点“I would choose a high-paying job with long hours”，并从三方面给出这样选择的原因：“for my family, for others and for myself”。注意，这里的三点实际上就是前面提到的“essay map”。接着文章的第二、三、四段分别从这三方面进行了详细的阐述，使得全文前后呼应，结构浑然一体。
我们再来看一个阅读中关于“essay map”的例子。
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
A symbiotic relationship is an interaction between two or more species in which one species lives in or on another species. There are three main types of symbiotic relationships: parasitism, commensalism, and mutualism. The first and the third can be key factors in the structure of a biological community; that is, all the populations of organisms living together and potentially interacting in a particular area.
Parasitism is a kind of predator-prey relationship in which one organism, the parasite, derives its food at the expense of its symbiotic associate, the host. Parasites are usually smaller than their hosts. An example of a parasite is a tapeworm that lives inside the intestines of a larger animal and absorbs nutrients from its host. Natural selection favors the parasites that are best able to find and feed on hosts. At the same time, defensive abilities of hosts are also selected for. As an example, plants make chemicals toxic to fungal and bacterial parasites, along with ones toxic to predatory animals (sometimes they are the same chemicals). In vertebrates, the immune system provides a multiple defense against internal parasites.
凡是你恶心的时候就是你进步的时候
At times, it is actually possible to watch the effects of natural selection in host-parasite relationships. For example,Australia during the 1940s was overrun by hundreds of millions of European rabbits. The rabbits destroyed huge expanses of Australia and threatened the sheep and cattle industries. In 1950,myxoma virus, a parasite that affects rabbits, was deliberately introduced into Australia to control the rabbit population. Spread rapidly by mosquitoes, the virus devastated the rabbit population.The virus was less deadly to the offspring of surviving rabbits,however, and it caused less and less harm over the years.Apparently, genotypes (the genetic make-up of an organism) in the rabbit population were selected that were better able to resist the parasite. Meanwhile, the deadliest strains of the virus perished with their hosts as natural selection favored strains that could infect hosts but not kill them. Thus, natural selection stabilized this host-parasite relationship.
In contrast to parasitism, in commensalism , one partner benefits without significantly affecting the other. Few cases absolute commensalism probably exist, because it is unlikely that one of the partners will be completely unaffected.Commensal associations sometimes involve one species’obtaining food that is inadvertently exposed by another. For instance, several kinds of birds feed on insects flushed out of the grass by grazing cattle. It is difficult to imagine how thi could affect the cattle, but the relationship may help or hinder them in some way not yet recognized.
The third type of symbiosis, mutualism , benefits both partners in the relationship Legume plants and their nitrogenfixing bacteria, and the interactions between flowering plant and their pollinators, are examples of mutualistic association.In the first case, the plants provide the bacteria with carbohydrates and other organic compounds, and the bacteria have enzymes that act as catalysts that eventually add nitrogen to the soil, enriching it. In the second case, pollinators (insects,birds) obtain food from the flowering plant, and the plant has its pollen distributed and seeds dispersed much more efficiently than they would be if they were carried by the wind only. Another example of mutualism would be the bull’s horn acacia tree, which grows in Central and South America.The tree provides a place to live for ants of the genus Pseudomyrmex. The ants live in large, hollow thorns and eat sugar secreted by the tree. The ants also eat yellow structures at the tip of leaflets: these are protein rich and seem to haveno function for the tree except to attract ants. The ants benefit the host tree by attacking virtually anything that touches it. They sting other insects and large herbivores (animals that eat only plants) and even clip surrounding vegetation that grows near the tree. When the ants are removed, the trees usually die,probably because herbivores damage them so much that they are unable to compete with surrounding vegetation for light and growing space.
The complex interplay of species in symbiotic relationships highlights an important point about communities:Their structure depends on a web of diverse connections among organisms.
TPO-17
坚决不信速成扎实提高水平
文章在首段告诉大家“共生关系”是什么，共生关系共有三种类型：寄生、共栖和互利共生，接着文章的二和三、四、五段分别解释了这三种类型的共生关系。文章结构十分清晰、紧密，组织良好。这就是“essay map”的好处。