托福写作提升方法：仿写和阅读
不少同学总是抱怨自己写的文章用词不够高大上，想要解决语言单一的问题，平日积累是必不可少的。因为作为输出型考试，前期的输入过程至关重要。积累的最好方法就是阅读和仿写。阅读的材料在体裁上尽量选择essay(散文、评论性文章)。读英文小说，对培养阅读兴趣和语感很好，但对托福写作的帮助不直接。因为这些作品属于文学写作，其语境和议论文有很大差别，即便学到很炫的词句，也很难有用武之地。最后，别忘了一件事情：仿写。只看不写，永远不能将输入语言化成输出语言。就像大家背单词，可是考场上很难使用出来是一样的。尽量仿写整句，保持原句结构，替换内容。作文，尤其独立作文，应该是个人化的。因此，从一开始大家就应该在语言上打造属于自己的风格。
那么，托福考试对于语言的要求到底是如何的呢?也就是说怎样的文章能够获得ETS的青睐?我们来看一下《官方指南》对独立写作评分标准(scoring rubric)对语言的要求，考纲中有这么一段话“Displays consistentfacility in the use of language, demonstrating syntactic variety, appropriateword choice, and idiomaticity, though it may have minor lexical or grammaticalerrors.”通过对比之前介绍的综合写作的语言要求，独立写作对语言的要求显然更高，对词和句都比较具体的要求，而且尤其指出了“灵活多变的句式”和“恰当的词汇”，这里就包含了词汇的变化，不能老是重复使用某个词汇或表达。也就是说托福对语言的要求是“多变”’。
词汇方面，通过分析《官方指南》(p211)上诚信这篇满分范文可以看出，考官(Rater)对其语言的评论用了“fluent, accurate and varied”三个词。在这篇范文中，题干的核心词是“tell the truth”，而作文中用了“honesty”，“dishonesty”，“reliability”，“lie”，“lying”，“hide”和“trust”等替代了核心词。这样不仅让考官领略到你词汇的丰富(lexical resources)，而且还能感觉到你对于核心信息展开和解释的能力。
在句式方面，考官评论中用了“a variety of sentence structure”(句子结构的多样)。包括如下句式：1)各种从句：that引导的定语从句，after引导的时间状语从句，although、however和even though引导的让步状语从句。2)使用wish的虚拟语气句3)用but引导的转折并列句，还有either…or的否定并列句4)现在分词做状语的非谓语现象5)How和What引导的反问句(rhetorical questions)，还有感叹句。6)as…as的同级比较句，还有比较级和最高级的使用。此外，常用语法现象如不定式、动名词等也是比比皆是。这篇文章虽然语言朴素简单，几乎没有任何高大上的词汇，且文章的整体结构也不是传统的五段三体(开头主旨+主题三个分论点段+结尾结论)，但语言上却充满各种变化，所以仅靠这一优势就足已让这位考生的文章脱颖而出，获取考官满分的褒奖，这是值得我们反思，学习和模仿的。
实际上大家身边有很多出色的语言材料可以利用，我个人比较推荐《经济学人》这种学术性较强的杂志。今天带大家来欣赏一篇文章，文章中的语料尤其适合作为数据举例法的框架，大家平时也可以按照这种分析方法进行积累，仿写。
Sorry, Strivers: TalentMatters
How do people acquire high levels ofskill in science, business, music, the arts and sports? This has long been atopic of intense debate in psychology. (这就是我们常说的：XX话题正在被热议)
Research in recentdecades has shown that abig part of the answer is simply practice — and a lot of it. In a pioneering study, the Florida StateUniversity psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his colleaguesasked violin students at a music academy to estimate the amount of time they haddevoted to practice since theystarted playing. By age 20, the students whom thefaculty nominated as the “best”players had accumulated an average of over 10,000 hours, compared with just under 8,000 hours for the “good” players and not even 5,000 hours for the leastskilled.
这一段就可以用在利用研究做论证来支持论点 ,通常是这样一个结构:研究机构( In a pioneering study, the Florida StateUniversity psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues +研究目的(toestimate the amount of time they had devoted to practice)+比较结构students(跟修饰限定语 )do sth, compared with 另外一群体
Exhibit A is a landmark study of intellectually precocious youthsdirected by the Vanderbilt University researchers David Lubinski andCamilla Benbow. Theyand their colleagues tracked theeducational and occupational accomplishments of more than 2,000 people who aspart of a youth talent search scored in the top 1 percent on the SAT by the ageof 13. (Scores on the SAT correlate so highly with与XX有紧密联系I.Q. that the psychologist Howard Gardner described it asa “thinly disguised” intelligence test.) The remarkable finding of their study isthat, compared with the participantswho were “only” in the 99.1 percentile for intellectual ability atage 12, those who were in the 99.9 percentile — the profoundly gifted — were between three and five times morelikely to go on to earn a doctorate, secure apatent, publish an article in a scientific journal or publish a literary work.A high level of intellectual ability gives you an enormous real-worldadvantage.
本段中红色字体同样是引用研究做例子支撑的一个模版 ,大家仔细体会。这里附上简化模版 :
A survey, conducted by a psychologist and hiscolleagues in Florida State, shows a remarkable finding after tracking 100people who has frustrated experience after doing challenging things. Thefinding indicates that those people tend to be less confident when face a newthing. 这里的地点和人物,以及研究对象都可以根据不同的题目来换。
下面我们用一道机经题目进行仿写吧!
Do you agree or disagree? It was easier to identify whatjobs or careers were secure and successful in the past than it is now.
A survey, conducted by Career Service Center in China, showsa remarkable finding after tracking two groups of people with the first at theage of 50 and above and the second aged from 20 to 30. The remarkable findingof the study is that, 32.5% of the first group respectively choose the optionof civil servants and teachers, and 72.4% of the second group circled the thirdoption of other occupations such as singers, freelance writers and so on. Thedifference in the two groups of figures lies in the transition of people'sattitude of choosing a job.
分析这篇文章旨在帮助大家学习如何用研究事例支持自己的观点，以后会和大家分享更多的满分文章或者实用段落，大家平时也要多多积累，勤于练习!
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