英文寫作手冊第4-6章(精簡版)

1、英文寫作手冊第4-6章（精簡版）Part Four The ParagraphA paragraph is a unit of thought;. Effective Paragraphs1. UnityUnity of a paragraph is concerned with its content. If all the sentences in the paragraph lead to one central theme, the paragraph is unified. The central theme is usually summarized in what is call

2、ed the topic sentence. It often appears at the beginning of the paragraph; however, it may also be found in the middle or at the end of a paragraph.One of the central preoccupations of the arts and humanities is the observation of human beings. Painters and sculptors create images of the human form;

3、 writers tell stories or compose poems about human experience; musical artists give melodic contours to the human spirit; historians and philosophers ponder the essential qualities of human civilization and nature. And in our own lives, in our own ways, we spend a great deal of our energy and attent

4、ion on our fellow creatures, being in families and other kinds of relationships, observing people with curiosity and interest in the course of the day, thinking about and forming our own character - deciding what kind of person we wish to be - as we grow.2. CoherenceCoherence of a paragraph is conce

5、rned with its form, or its organization. The sentences in a paragraph should be arranged in a clear, logical order, and the transitions should be smooth and natural. As a result, the reader finds it easy to follow the writers train of thought and understand what he is talking about.There is some fee

6、ling nowadays that reading is not as necessary as it once was. Radio and especially television have taken over many of the functions once served by print, just as photography has taken over functions once served by painting and other graphic arts. Admittedly, television serves some of these function

7、s extremely well; the visual communication of news events, for example, has enormous impact. The ability of radio to give us information while we are engaged in doing other things - for instance, driving a car - is remarkable, and a great saving of time. But it may be seriously questioned whether th

8、e advent of modern communications media has much enhanced our understanding of the world in which we live.- Mortimer J. Adler3. TransitionCoherence may not be perfect even if the writer arranges his sentences in a clear, logical order. He has to use good transitions so that one sentence runs smoothl

9、y to another.The following ways may help the writer to produce a fluent paragraph:A. Using parallel structures;B. Repeating words or word groups;C. Using pronouns to refer to nouns in preceding sentences;D. Being consistent in the person and number of nouns and pronouns, and the tense of verbs.In th

10、e following paragraph, note how the writer makes use of all these ways to achieve coherence.Americans are queer people: they cant play. Americans rush to work as soon as they grow up. They want their work as soon as they wake. It is a stimulant - the only one they are not afraid of. They used to ope

11、n their offices at ten oclock; then at nine; then at eight; then at seven. Now they never shut them. Every business in America is turning into an open-all-day-and-night business. They eat all night, dance all night, build buildings all night, make a noise all night. They cant play. They try to, but

12、cant. They turn football into a fight, baseball into a lawsuit, and yachting into machinery. They cant play. The little children cant play; they use mechanical toys instead - toy cranes, hoisting toy loads, toy machinery spreading a toy industrial depression of infantile dullness. The grownup people

13、 cant play; they use a mechanical gymnasium and a clockwork horse. They cant laugh; they hire a comedian and watch him laugh.- Stephen Leacock. Ways of Developing Paragraphs1. Planning a Paragraph2. Development by TimeIn telling a story or recounting an event, the easiest and clearest way is to desc

14、ribe things in order of time: earlier things are mentioned before later things, the first thing first and the last thing last. This method is also called chronological sequencing.James Murray was born in Scotland in 1873, the son of a village tailor. He went to a parish school, but he left at 14 and

15、 he educated himself with pertinacity. He loved knowledge and he loved to impart it. He became a schoolmaster; he learned language after language and was alive to geology, archeology and phonetics, as well as to local politics. He had to leave Scotland because of the illness of his first wife, and h

16、e became a bank clerk in London. By sheer energy of scholarship, and without benefit of any university education, he made himself indispensable to the other remarkable philologists of his day. He returned to school-teaching and lived a 72-hour day for the rest of his life. For the invitation to edit

17、 what became the O.E.D. was one that he could not refuse. At first he combined it with his school work; later he moved to Oxford and dedicated himself to building the best sort of monument - best in that it was not a monument to himself, and best in that it was not a monument to something dead but r

18、ather to something living: the English language.- Christopher Ricks3. Development by ProcessWhen you have to explain how something is done, you usually follow a chronological sequence and give a step-by-step description. As the steps must occur one after another, the exact order in which they are ca

19、rried out is most important. In giving instructions, imperative sentences and sentences with the indefinite pronoun you as the subject are often used.First, place the victim on his back and remove any foreign matter from his mouth with your fingers. Then tilt his head backwards, so that his chin is

20、pointing up. Next, pull his mouth open and his jaw forward, pinch his nostrils shut to prevent the air which you blow into his mouth from escaping through his nose. Then place your mouth tightly over the victims. Blow into his mouth until you see his chest rise. Then turn your head to the side and l

21、isten for the outrush of air which indicates an air exchange. Repeat the process.4. Development by SpaceBefore we begin to describe a place, whether it is a large country or a small room, we have to decide on the order in which to name the different parts or details. For this we should find out the

22、space relationships between them and arrange our description accordingly.Mr. Cook, a renowned American historian, arranges the books on his bookshelves in a unique way. In the upper right hand corner, there are books about the development of the early colonies in New England and the War of Independe

23、nce. Right under them can be found books on the slave trade, the plantation system and the growth of the southern states. The left side of the shelf contains hundreds of books concerning subjects of the Westward Movement, Indian culture, the cowboys contributions to American society and the Gold Rus

24、h in California. From the description above, one can see that Mr. Cook regards his bookshelves as a map of the U.S. and arranges his history books accordingly. It is odd, but it is convenient.5. Development by Example or GeneralizationSupporting a topic sentence with examples or illustrations makes

25、a general statement specific and easy to understand. An illustration is a case, a specimen, an instance. Vivid illustrations light up abstract ideas and make them clear, interesting, memorable, or convincing.Knowledge often results only after persistent investigation. Albert Einstein, after a length

26、y examination of the characteristics of matter and energy, formulated his famous Theory of Relativity, which now acts as a basis for further research in nuclear physics. Using plaster casts of footprints, fingerprints, and stray strands of hair, a detective pertinaciously pursues the criminal. After

27、 years of work Annie Jump Cannon perfected the classification of the spectra of some 350,000 stars. Investigations into the causes of polio have provided us with the means for prevention and cure of this dreaded disease only after many years of research. As students, we too are determined in our inv

28、estigation to find, retain, and contribute to the store of human knowledge.Details or examples are usually arranged in climactic order: the least important comes first, followed by others in order of increasing importance.It was a typical Russian winter. The first snowstorm had turned everything whi

29、te. The wind was howling, swirling and tumbling over a vast land of ice and snow, freezing and destroying whatever stood in its way. A ragged, misshapen army was staggering and struggling desperately for survival, cold, hungry and decreasing in size every day. The year was 1812. The army was the rem

30、nants of Napoleons expeditionary force which was withdrawing from Russia after receiving its worst defeat. The war with Russia turned out to be a fiasco for Napoleon and had a devastating effect on his career.6. Development by Comparison and ContrastThe method of comparison and contrast is often use

31、d. We compare the present and the past of China, the cultures of the East and the West, Chinese and English. By comparing and contrasting we may get a clearer picture of things.Strictly speaking, a comparison points out the similarities between two or more persons or things of the same class, while

32、a contrast, the differences between them. In practice, however, comparison and contrast often appear together, because people generally compare two things that are similar in certain ways and different in others.There are two major ways of organizing paragraphs of comparison and contrast. One way is

33、 to examine one thing thoroughly and then examine the other. In this way, the aspects examined in the two things should be identical and in the same order. This method is called block comparison or block contrast. The other way is to examine two things at the same time, discussing them point by poin

34、t. This method is called alternating comparison or alternating contrast.The following paragraph is a good example of alternating comparison.The same qualities that make people good house guests make them good hospital patients. Good house guests can expect a reasonable amount of service and effort o

35、n their behalf, and hospital patients can also. Guests have to adjust to what is for them a change, and certainly hospital patients must do the same. No one appreciates a complaining, unpleasant, unappreciative house guest, and the hospital staff is no exception. House guests who expect vast changes

36、 to be made for their benefit are not popular for long. Certainly nurses and other personnel with their routines feel the same way about patients in their care. Just as house guests must make adjustments to enjoy their visits, so patients must make adjustments to make their stays reasonably pleasant

37、 and satisfying under the circumstances.The television western of several years ago differs greatly from the western of today. Ten years ago, for example, the swindler or bank robber in a western could be identified not by the crimes he committed so much as by the color of the clothing he wore - whi

38、ch was black. Today the television western reveals the villain by mannerisms and personality. At one time, every western had a superhuman, invincible good guy with whom the viewers could identify because he too lived out on the farm. Currently, the central figures of the west are average people who

39、may live on a middleclass street in any part of the country. They are characters like the bus drivers, mailclerks and accountants who live next door to you in suburbia. At night they come in off the horses to ride the television range. They become persons who respect others, drink and smoke only jus

40、t a bit, and are able not only to outshoot the bad guy, but also to outsmart him with good common sense.Although Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee were fierce adversaries during the Civil War, their lives, both military and nonmilitary, had a great deal in common. Grant descended from a family whos

41、e members participated in the American Revolution. He received his commission of second lieutenant from West Point and served in the Spanish-American War. He was later summoned by President Lincoln to assume command of the Union Forces during the Civil War. After the Civil War, Grant suffered financ

42、ial problems and was forced to declare bankruptcy. Lee also descended from a family which engaged in the American Revolution. He, too, received his commission from West Point and later fought in Mexico during the Spanish-American War. His fame as a military strategist during the Civil War, when he w

43、as the commander of the Confederate armies, is well known. Although it is not always pointed out by historians, he, like Grant, had financial difficulties after the Civil War and was compelled to declare bankruptcy. By securing a post as president of Washington College, he was able to avoid addition

44、al poverty.There is a special form of comparison - analogy. Analogy is tracing a striking likeness between unlike things.Electricity is transferred from one place to another in much the same manner as water. A water pipe performs the same function as a length of wire. The pipe carries water to its p

45、oint of use in the same manner as wire carries electricity to its point of use. A blown fuse results from the same thing as a burst water pipe. Both give out due to extreme pressure applied to the walls of the carrier. A switch is to electricity what a faucet is to water. Both of them control the fl

46、ow of the substance. Since electricity and water have some common properties, understanding the job of the plumber will help understanding the work of the electrician.- John BrowerAnalogies are especially helpful in explaining abstract ideas, for they relate ideas that cannot be experienced through

47、the senses of sight, smell, hearing, touch, or taste, to a sense experience, thus making the ideas easy to understand.Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death . The best way to overcome it - so at least it seems to me - is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until b

48、it by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river - small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider

49、, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will con

50、tinue.- Bertrand Russell7. Development by Cause and EffectOne might wonder why, after the Norman Conquest, French did not become the national language, replacing English entirely. The reason is that the Conquest was not a national migration, as the earlier Anglo-Saxon invasion had been. Great number

51、s of Normans came to England, but they came as rulers and landlords. French became the language of the court, the language of the nobility, the language of polite society, the language of literature. But it did not replace English as the language of the people. There must always have been hundreds o

52、f towns and villages in which French was never heard except when visitors of high station passed through.This surge of demand for oil will soon begin to send shock waves through the American economy and transportation system. The impact of these tremors can already be anticipated: to the consumer th

53、ey signal the end of a long love affair with the car, and to Detroit they offer an early warning that its 1985 growth aims are dangerously unrealistic. Unless we exercise foresight and devise growth-limits policies for the auto industry, events will thrust us into a crisis that will lead to a substa

54、ntial erosion of domestic oil supply as well as the independence it provides us with, and a level of petroleum imports that could cost as much as $20 to $30 billion per year. Moreover, we would still be depleting our remaining oil reserves at an unacceptable rate, and scrambling for petroleum substi

55、tutes, with enormous potential damage to the environment.8. Development by ClassificationTo classify is to sort things into categories according to their characteristics. Essential to a good classification is parallelism. T here are three kinds of book owners. The first has all the standard sets and

56、 best-sellers - unread, untouched. (This deluded individual owns woodpulp and ink, not books.) The second has a great many books - a few of them read through, most of them dipped into, but all of them as clean and shiny as the day they were bought. (This person would probably like to make books his

57、own, but is restrained by a false respect for their physical appearance.) The third has a few books or many - every one of them dog-eared and dilapidated, shaken and loosened by continual use, marked and scribbled in from front to back. (This man owns books.)9. Development by DefinitionThere are thr

58、ee basic ways to define a word or term: to give a synonym, to use a sentence (often with an attributive clause), and to write a paragraph or even an essay.When we give a definition, we should observe certain principles.First, we should avoid circular definitions.Second, we should avoid long lists of

59、 synonyms if the term to be defined is an abstract one.Third, we should avoid loaded definitions.A liberated woman is simply a woman who controls her own life, rather than allowing it to be controlled by other people, traditions, or expectations. A liberated woman can be found pursuing any line of work, including housework, or no work at all. She may or