1、1英文写作手册第 4-6 章（精简版）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 c
2、alled 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 fo
3、rm; 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 att
4、ention 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 co
5、ncerned 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
6、feeling 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 funct
7、ions 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
8、 the 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 smoo
9、thly 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;2D. Being consistent in the person and number of nouns and pronouns, and the tense of verbs.I
10、n the 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
11、 open 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,
12、but 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 pe
13、ople 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
14、describe 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
15、 and 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, a
16、nd he 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
17、edit 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 b
18、ut rather 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 ar
19、e carried out is most important. In giving instructions, imperative sentences and sentences with the indefinite pronoun you as the subject are often used.3First, 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 chi
20、n is 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
21、and listen for the outrush of air which indicates an air exchange. Repeat the process4. 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
22、the 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 Indep
23、endence. 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
24、 Rush 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 ma
25、kes 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 le
26、ngthy 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. A
27、fter 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
28、 investigation 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
29、 white. 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
30、 remnants 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 Contrast4The method of comparison and contrast is ofte
31、n used. 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, w
32、hile 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 w
33、ay is 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
34、 point. 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 eff
35、ort on 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 ch
36、anges 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 ple
37、asant 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
38、- which 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 peop
39、le who 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 o
40、nly just 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 fa
41、mily whose 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 suffer
42、ed financial 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,
43、when he was 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
44、 additional poverty.There is a special form of comparison - analogy. Analogy is tracing a striking likeness between unlike things.5Electricity 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 wate
45、r to its point 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 cont
46、rol the flow 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 experience
47、d through 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 impersona
48、l, until bit 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 g
49、rows wider, 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 continue- 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
