中国考生雅思大作文写作两大误区总结

经常有学生问我，为什么我的英文水平不差，但写作分数总是上不去，我也遇到过很多英语专业的学生，考过专八考过研，但是考雅思的时候，写作分数却不理想。他们觉得自己写得很好，举了好多例子，用了好多丰富的词汇，但写作却只有6分。

我想，这也是很多中国考生对于雅思写作（尤其是大作文）的误区。对于这些学生的疑惑，我的回答是：词汇用得多不代表用得准，例子举得多不代表紧扣题目。

和国内很多考试不同，雅思的大作文（TASKII）关注的不仅仅是论据的多少，更重要的是论据的拓展，以及论据是否能引起外国考官的共鸣；所谓的语言丰富，并不是一味地堆砌华丽的句型和辞藻，而是要地道、准确地表达语义。

下面，我想根据10多年的教学经验，结合中国学生写作中常见的问题，分享一些有关雅思大作文的教学心得：

误区一：堆砌论据或例子太啰嗦

我们都知道，议论文需要有论点和论据，那么在雅思大作文中，到底要罗列多少论据？是不是论据越多，分数就越高呢？答案是否定的。下面是某位学生作业中的选段：

题目：

Some working parents think that childcare centers providethe best care for children who are still too young to go to school. Otherworking parents think that family members such as grandparents will be bettercarers for their children.

Discuss both views and give your opinion.

主体段摘选：

Grandparents have many life experiences which can sharewith their grandchildren. In addition, children can learn from their grandparents’ stories to lead them in a right way in their lifestyle. What’s more, kids can feel the love fromtheir family, so that they will not form anti-social behavior. Also,many grandparents have much time to look after their grandchildren after theyretire. For all these reasons, I think working parents should ask their parentsfor help to take care of their children instead of sending kids to childcarecentres.

这位学生在论述“家庭成员照顾小孩”的主体段中，罗列了四个理由：1. 祖父母人生经验丰富 2 孩子可以学习祖父母的人生经验 3 孩子可以感受到家庭温暖 4 祖父母有很多时间照顾孩子。

乍眼一看，写了好多理由，但仔细分析，每个理由都没有充分展开论证，其中，理由1和2 其实是一个点，完全可以合并，中间无需使用 In addition，这属于滥用关联词；理由3，kids can feel the love from their family 和they will not form anti-social behavior之间逻辑跳跃，中间缺乏因果逻辑链；理由4 many grandparents have much time to look after theirgrandchildren，只提到了现象，没有继续拓展，“有时间照顾” 对 “孩子”有什么用呢，能给家庭带来什么益处呢？没有提到结果。

因此，这样的主体段，在雅思写作中是拿不到高分的，因为雅思大作文的评分标准（我们以8分标准为例）明确指出了：

Band 8 presents a well-developed response to thequestion with relevant, extended and supported ideas

既然要充分展开细节，那么势必在一个主体段中无法堆砌太多的细节，否则没有展开的空间。我们只需要挑选1-2个有力的理由，通过举例、因果、对比等方法展开论证即可。

那么，另一个问题来了？究竟要如何展开细节，例子要描述得多细致呢？下面我们来看另一个极端：

题目：

Every year several languages die out. Some people thinkthat this is not important because life will be easier if there are fewerlanguages in the world. To what extent do you agree or disagree with thisopinion?

主体段摘选：

However, the costs that one has to bear to accept theextinction of a language is massive. One of the most important ones is the lossof the sense of cultural belongings. We could take China as an example. Whenthe People’s Republic of China was founded, citizens had a low literary level,and could not communicate with people from other cities or provinces well. Thegovernment then implemented the policy of “speaking standard Chinese Mandarin”throughout the whole country. Within a couple of decades, people in everycorner of the country have learned to speak standard Mandarin. However, manymillennials whose grandparents adopt Cantonese, Hokkien, or Shanghainese asmother languages, had found it hard to participate in their relatives’ daily conversations and could not bring themselves into the local cultures. The loss of the cultural identity had made youngsters feel being isolated, and at the same time, had made their parents and grandparents uneasy because they wereafraid that the cultural gaps among generations would be deepened. The Chinesegovernment then noticed the phenomenon and started to emphasize the importanceof exposing young generation to local languages while speaking standardMandarin well.

这位学生在论证“语言多样性的重要性”时，举了中国普通话和方言的例子，语言功底很不错，词汇和句型非常丰富，可惜，这种写法在雅思考试中并不讨巧，显然，例子写得太长、太啰嗦了。如果这是一篇2000词的论文，这个例子是很不错的，但是，雅思大作文只有250单词篇幅的空间（40分钟写作时间），我们没有时间/空间、也没有必要去描述那么复杂的例子。

最重要的是，这位学生在花了将近13行的篇幅，描述完复杂的例子后，这段主体段就结束了，并没有对例子进行任何论证，也没有回应中心句（没有点题）。那么，这个例子和题目中的语言消亡有什么关系呢？写这个例子的目的是要证明什么呢？这些关键信息都没有写。

可见，理由发展不充分和例子太细、太啰嗦都是不可取的。在使用举例法时，建议尽量将例子控制在2-3行内，描述完例子后，必须对例子进行论述，回应题目。

误区二：堆砌华丽辞藻和复杂句式（但实际不知所云）

大作文的另一大误区就是“语言丰富性”，很多学生认为，语言丰富，就是要尽量用big words，写一堆花里胡哨的单词和句型，就能拿到高分。但是，我们要知道，作文的首要目的是传达信息，如果写出来的句子考官都看不懂，那么即便用了再复杂的句型和词汇，也是徒劳。

以下是从学生作业中节选的两个案例：

反面教材一：

A foreign company willextremely stimulate the developing country’s step into a considerably beneficialcompetition in long term and eventually helps the country significantly promotetheir economies.

这句话看上去词汇非常丰富，用了extremely,beneficial, considerably, eventually，significantly很多修饰语，但是，整句话读起来非常拗口，stimulate … step into… 以及considerably beneficialcompetition 这些搭配非常Chinglish，其实这句话想要表达的无非2个概念，引进外商能够帮助发展中国家营造良好的竞争环境，从而促进经济发展，这2个概念之间是因果逻辑，我们不妨用plain English 先把这层概念表达出来，然后再用thus连接两个分句：

The invitation of foreigncompanies will help developing countries to create an environment of healthycompetition, thus promoting the economy of developing countries in along term.

反面教材二：

The lack of timestudents devote to compulsory voluntary work that they could have saved up forstudy can be hard to be compensated by the result of the former, taking intoaccount that the test score which a student could get is the sole criteria thatdetermines what levels of universities they could go in some countries.

这句话写得相当复杂，这位学生故意设计了定语从句、被动态、非谓语等很多句型，可惜，最后把自己绕进去了，出现了逻辑错误。他想要表达的意思是：把原本花在学习上的时间用在了志愿服务上，会影响学业成绩，而在一些国家，能否上一个好大学，取决于分数，而非志愿服务。按照他原本的意思，lack of 是多余的，加了lack of ，反而出现了逻辑错误。

我们不妨用通俗易懂的英文来表达前半句语义，再另起一句，表示后半句大学入取的语义：

Requiring each student to participate in voluntary workmeans that their time and energy devoted to academic study may be reduced, whichwill undermine their academic performance. In some countries such as China, theadmission to a prestigious university depends on academic results rather thanvoluntary work.

因此，我们不要以为句子越长，分数就会越高，关键是语义要能表达清楚，如果出现了令考官费解的长句，反而得不偿失。

下面是雅思官方真题集中节选的一段7分作文选段：

The best solution for this problem would be informing peopleabout what they eat, because sometimes we don’t know that. They have already donesomething to inform people about the characteristics of food, of course, andlabels are one of the most important things, as they tell us all theingredients of a particular food. Yet, not many people spend some of their timereading labels…

这段话看上去并没有很“高级”，甚至有一些“口语化”，但是在考官眼里，这段话的句型和词汇是“丰富”的！考官评语中写道：考生使用了a range of linking devices，比如 Yet，使用了a good range of vocabulary，比如 informing peopleabout what they eat

这个案例告诉我们：中国人眼中的“语言丰富”和外国人眼中的“语言丰富”是不一样的，考官并没有很看重花里胡哨的、生僻的词汇，而是更看重词汇的搭配以及语言的流畅度，另外，需要指出的是，状语从句，也是复合句的一种，用好了关联词，也是加分的！

我们在遣词造句的时候，不要一味地追求复杂、高级的词汇和句型，比如，有些考生会拼命用倒装、强调句、独立主格、定语从句等，或者想方设法写一些正常人看不懂的单词，这种思路本身就是错误的，作文的目的是要让考官看懂文章的主旨和逻辑，而不是一味地“炫技”。很多时候，一些简单的从句，看似简单、但搭配确切的小词，也能拿到高分。

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中国考生雅思考试大作文备考建议