huadi campus｜a successful person's look back: my opinion on the college entrance examination essay
2024-09-11
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text｜xu xiangyu (formerly a senior high school student at the high school affiliated to south china normal university, currently a student of the 2024 qian xuesen mechanics class at tsinghua university)
"taste the strange without losing its integrity, enjoy the extravagant without losing its essence", this sentence from "wen xin diao long" hits the nail on the head, pointing out the principles of word choice and sentence composition when writing articles. having experienced the college entrance examination, i have a deeper understanding of this, and here i would like to share my personal views.
i think there are three main points in writing the college entrance examination essay:
first, we should pay attention to the use of words and phrases, and the words and sentences should be simple rather than lengthy. the use of words and phrases reflects the author's language literacy and reading accumulation, but we should not excessively pursue gorgeous words and strange examples, which can easily overshadow the main theme, making the article obscure and flashy, which is contrary to the clear, accurate and concise style advocated by chinese education; second, the use of famous quotes and examples should be cautious, accurate and reasonable; third, the effective use of conjunctions can strengthen the logic of the article and highlight the power of argumentation.
let me elaborate on the above three points:
let's talk about the use of words first. nowadays, many students like to take a different approach in choosing words and sentences, prefer strange expressions, and even make up new words or long and difficult sentences, hoping to show their chinese "literacy". however, they don't know that this not only creates reading difficulties for teachers, but also increases the risk of making mistakes.
for example, "in this journey of the soul, we try to capture the thinking trajectory of others from a transcendental perspective." the wording here is obviously obscure and confusing. it not only fails to complete the writing task of "explaining the central argument and supporting it with examples and reasoning," but most of the text is also invalid and does not help to express the theme in a targeted manner.
we should learn from mr. lu xun, who wrote "thin as iron", "out of nine coins", "a broken bowl, empty", etc., with simplicity, fluency, precision and force.
another example is mr. xu ben, who wrote "what kind of faith is needed in an age of doubt" and talked about "close reading", saying "requires readers to put aside their own positions and ideas first, and see from the writer's perspective whether what he said makes sense, and evaluate whether the text can be self-consistent, well-founded, and reasonable." he also used precise words, expressed in layers, had clear logical relationships, and his language style was calm, thorough, and fluent. therefore, to write good words and sentences, you need to work hard on chinese grammar, and learn from famous writers in extensive reading to accumulate the ability to choose words and make sentences.
now let's talk about the use of famous quotes and examples. many students like to abuse famous quotes and examples in their essays, and even form a "new routine", that is, put famous quotes at the beginning and end, and the argument paragraph is one point, three examples, and one summary. the article seems rich in content, but it is actually empty and powerless.
when using famous quotes, we should first understand the background in which the quotes originated and be careful not to take them literally.
for example, if the theme of an essay is "learning is a long-term process", someone will use zhuangzi's "my life is limited, but knowledge is unlimited". zhuangzi's original intention is to say that it is impossible to pursue unlimited knowledge with a limited life, so we should focus on learning and invest our limited time and energy in the knowledge that we should learn the most and is most worth learning. so this famous saying does not actually match the theme of the essay.
when using examples, the core requirement is that they must be explained while elaborating on the examples, that is, explaining how the examples support the point of view. it is necessary to avoid examples that are only narrated without explanation or that are forcibly explained despite being unrelated.
in addition, the selection of examples should also be based on the writing requirements. for example, essays on traditional cultural themes can use more historical examples, while essays on contemporary youth themes can use more examples of modern figures.
of course, we can use some refreshing quotations and examples to make the article unconventional, but we must be careful not to appear to be "bookish" and cause obstacles to readers' understanding.
personally, i think that the college entrance examination essay "living on trees" in zhejiang a few years ago is not worth imitating.
however, some practices of "putting new wine in old bottles" are worth learning. for example, in the 2023 guangdong college entrance examination essay "the power of stories", there is an excellent model essay telling the story of "the stone-hao officer" and du fu. the author approaches the story from the perspective of the writing background. it is still an old story, but it narrates many new details that others do not know. this not only reflects the temperature of history, but also shows the author's profound literary literacy. this is worth learning.
finally, let’s talk about the effective use of conjunctions.
although conjunctions are not impressive in appearance, they can best demonstrate the author's profound argumentative language skills. using conjunctions can actually help us better sort out logical relationships, such as transitions, progressions, conditions, etc., making the level of argumentation clearer, and also avoiding confusion in our thinking during the writing process.
conjunctions can also help teachers grasp the key points of our arguments, making the article look clearer and the internal connections between sentences closer. for example, transition conjunctions such as "admittedly...but..." can play a good role in emphasizing, reminding readers that the content to be expressed next is the key point we want to say.
therefore, learning several basic types of complex sentences is a compulsory course for us to improve our language level. using varied sentence patterns can also add color to our articles.
generally speaking, there are time and word limits for essays in the exam, and what is tested is the result of our daily practice. therefore, in the process of writing essays, we should pay attention to cultivating a refined, meaningful and swaying style, master more abundant and interesting famous sayings and examples, and correct the inefficient expressions that are forced and superficial... in this way, we will be able to write good essays in the college entrance examination.
(instructor: gai yingjun)
