杜克教授給留學黨關于寫作的十條良心建議，托福/SAT/文書寫作不用愁

Category: SAT-SAT2, 申請求職, 留學考試, 美本申請 Date: 2017年8月21日下午6:54

留學申請準備過程中，托福、SAT以及文書都涉及到寫作這個基本技能，哈佛大學校長Drew Faust在之前接受美國著名雜志Atlantic采訪時提到，有時候一個學生寫的一篇好文章就可以使學校決定是否錄取這個學生，寫作更能反映學生的真實水平。那么對于留學黨而言，如何提高自己的寫作水平呢？以下是杜克大學教授分享給大家關于寫作的十點建議，或許對你有所啟發！

在大學工作的近30年中，我看到很多有才華的人因為不能寫作或者沒有寫作而失敗了。而有些能力平平的人（每天早上，我都能從鏡子中看到這個人）就因為掌握了寫作技能在學界混得還算不錯。

這開始于研究生院。從那時起，你要從上課轉變為寫作，開始幾乎正好相反的轉型。許多研究生在前兩年上課期間是人人都羨慕和高看的明星，但突然間他們發現自己不再是主角了。相反，那些不在乎通過認真閱讀參考書目中的每一頁書來討好教授的不起眼的學生突然給刊物投稿而且發表了，實現了從學生到專業學者的轉變。

其實，差別并不復雜，就是因為寫作水平。

瑞切爾?托爾（RachelToor）和本刊其他作家都談過寫一手好文章是多么艱難，確實如此。幸運的是，很多學科寫文章的標準非常低，你根本不需要寫得很好。下面，我提出學術文章寫作的10條建議，它們或許能幫助人們寫得稍微好一些。

Writing is an exercise

You get better and faster with practice. If you were going to run a marathon a year from now,would you wait for months and then run 26 miles cold? No, you would build upslowly, running most days. You might start on the flats and work up to more demanding and difficult terrain. To become a writer, write. Don't wait for that book manuscript or that monster external-review report to work on your writing.

1寫作是一種訓練，需要日積月累

只有通過練習才能寫得更好、更快。如果你一年后要跑馬拉松，你能夠等待幾個月后一下子跑26英里嗎？不可能，你應該逐漸增加，每天都要跑。

你或許可以先在平地上練習，慢慢在要求更高的、難度更大的地方跑。要成為作家，就要寫作。不要等待需要寫書稿或寫可怕的外部評審報告了才開始寫作。

Set goals based on output, not input

"I will work for three hours" is a delusion; "I will type threedouble-spaced pages" is a goal. After you write three pages, do somethingelse. Prepare for class, teach, go to meetings, whatever. If later in the dayyou feel like writing some more, great. But if you don't, then at least you wrotesomething.

2制定以產出導向的目標，而不是以投入導向的目標

“我要學習三小時”是一種幻覺，而“我要寫出雙倍行距的三頁文章”才是目標。寫了三頁后再做別的事，備課、上課、開會或別的什么。如果晚上你覺得還想寫，當然好。如果沒有寫的意愿，至少你要寫點什么。

Find a voice; don't just "getpublished."

James Buchanan won a Nobel in economics in 1986. One of thequestions he asks job candidates is: "What are you writing that will beread 10 years from now? What about 100 years from now?" Someone once askedme that question, and it is pretty intimidating. And embarrassing, because mostof us don't think that way. We focus on "getting published" as if ithad nothing to do with writing about ideas or arguments. Paradoxically, if allyou are trying to do is "get published," you may not publish verymuch. It's easier to write when you're interested in what you're writing about.

3傾聽內心的召喚，不能為發表論文而發表論文

詹姆斯?布坎南（JamesBuchanan）在1986年獲得諾貝爾經濟學獎。他向求職者提的問題之一是“10年后可能還有人閱讀的你的作品是什么？100年后呢？”有人曾問過我這個問題，這確實讓人感到恐懼，也令人尷尬，因為我們多數人不這樣想。

我們關心的是“發表”，就好像文章和觀點或論證沒有任何關系似的。矛盾的是，你越是竭力想“發表”，你就越發表不了什么東西。而當你真正對所寫的東西感興趣時，寫作往往就變得更容易一些。

Give yourself time

Many smart peopletell themselves pathetic lies like, "I do my best work at the lastminute." Look: It's not true. No one works better under pressure. Sure,you are a smart person. But if you are writing about a profound problem, whywould you think that you can make an important contribution off the top of yourhead in the middle of the night just before the conference?

Writers sit at their desks for hours,wrestling with ideas. They ask questions, talk with other smart people overdrinks or dinner, go on long walks. And then write a whole bunch more. Don'tworry that what you write is not very good and isn't immediately usable. Youget ideas when you write; you don't just write down ideas.

The articles and books that will be read decades from now were written by men and women sitting at a desk and forcingthemselves to translate profound ideas into words and then to let those words lead them to even more ideas. Writing can be magic, if you give yourself time,because you can produce in the mind of some other person, distant from you inspace or even time, an image of the ideas that exist in only your mind at thisone instant.

4寫作需要充足且整塊時間

許多聰明人往往用善意的謊言欺騙自己，比如“我在最后時刻能做得最好。”瞧瞧，根本不是那回事。誰也不能在壓力下有更好的表現。當然，你是聰明人，但如果你要撰寫一個艱深的問題，怎么可能就在會議的前一天晚上思考一下就能做出重要貢獻呢？

作家坐在書桌前一連幾個小時絞盡腦汁思考。他們提出問題，在喝酒或吃飯時與聰明人交談，長時間散步，然后再一揮而就一個章節。不要擔心寫出來的東西不好，不能馬上使用。你在寫文章的時候可能有新的想法出現，而不僅僅是把思想寫下來。

那些幾十年后仍然有人讀的文章和書是由那些坐在書桌前的人寫出來的，他們強迫自己把深刻的思想轉變成文字然后再讓這些文字引導出更多的思想。如果你給自己充足的時間，寫作可能有神奇的魔力，因為你能把自己思想中特定時刻的想法的形象刻畫出來，讓在時間和空間上都非常遙遠的地方的人看得到。

Everyone's unwritten work is brilliant

And the more unwritten it is, the more brilliant it is. We have all met thoseglib, intimidating graduate students or faculty members. They are at their mostdangerous holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, in some baror at an office party. They have all the answers. They can tell you just whatthey will write about, and how great it will be.

Years pass, and they still have the samepat, 200-word answer to "What are you working on?" It never changes,because they are not actually working on anything, except that one little act.

You, on the other hand, actually areworking on something, and it keeps evolving. You don't like the section youjust finished, and you are not sure what will happen next. When someone asks,"What are you working on?," you stumble, because it is hard toexplain.

The smug guy with the beer and the cigarette? He's a poseur and neveractually writes anything. So he can practice his pat little answer endlessly,through hundreds of beers and thousands of cigarettes. Don't be fooled: You arethe winner here. When you are actually writing, and working as hard as youshould be if you want to succeed, you will feel inadequate, stupid, and tired.If you don't feel like that, then you aren't working hard enough.

5別自欺欺人了，神馬“十年磨一劍”！從現在做起

沒有寫出來的東西越多，就越精彩。我們都遇見過那些口若懸河、令人欽佩的研究生或者老師。他們在酒吧或者辦公室聚會上一手拿著啤酒瓶，另一手拿著香煙，旁若無人般高談闊論。他們對什么問題都能回答，會告訴你他們要寫什么東西，內容將多么精彩。

但幾年過去了，再問他“你在寫什么書？”時，他們仍然給出同樣的答案，200字的答案。從來沒有變化，因為他們實際上除了吹噓外，根本沒有寫任何東西。

另一方面，你在研究某些東西，它在不斷變化。你不喜歡剛剛寫完的東西，也不敢肯定接下來將發生什么。當有人問“你在寫什么？”時你張口結舌，不知怎么回答，因為這很難解釋。

那些拿著啤酒和香煙的自鳴得意的家伙呢？他們是裝腔作勢的人，實際上從來不寫任何東西。通過幾百瓶啤酒和幾千支香煙，沒完沒了地重復他們的答案。不要被假象所迷惑，你才是勝利者。當你真正在寫作，為了成功努力工作時，你會感到自己太愚蠢、水平太臭、疲憊不堪。如果你沒有這樣感覺，那說明你還不夠努力。

Pick a puzzle

Portray, or evenconceive, of your work as an answer to a puzzle. There are many interestingtypes of puzzles:

?"X andY start with same assumptions but reach opposing conclusions. How?"

?"Hereare three problems that all seem different. Surprisingly, all are the sameproblem, in disguise. I'll tell you why."

?"Theorypredicts [something]. But we observe [something else]. Is the theory wrong, oris there some other factor we have left out?"

Don't stick too closely to those formulas,but they are helpful in presenting your work to an audience, whether that audience is composed of listeners at a lecture or readers of an article.

6編一個好聽的故事

描繪甚至設想你的著作是在猜謎。有很多有趣的謎語：甲和乙從同一個假設開始卻得出了相反的結論，怎么回事？

這里有三個似乎都不一樣的問題，奇怪的是，它們是同一個問題偽裝出來的，我來告訴你這是為什么。

理論預測了某個結果，但我們觀察到了其他內容。是理論錯誤還是我們忽略了某些因素？

不要被這些模式所限制，但它們在把你的研究呈現給受眾時非常有幫助，無論是演講的聽眾還是文章讀者。

Write, then squeeze the other things in

Put your writing ahead of your other work. I happen to be a "morning person," so I write early in the day. Then I spend the rest of my day teaching, having meetings, or doing paperwork. You may be a "night person" or something in between. Just make sure you get in the habit ofreserving your most productive time for writing. Don't do it as an after thoughtor tell yourself you will write when you get a big block of time. Squeeze the other things in; the writing comes first.

7找到自己最佳寫作狀態的時間段；其他事情統統靠邊站

我碰巧是個喜歡起早的人，所以總是在早上寫作。然后才上課、開會或做文字工作。你或許是“夜貓子”或在這兩個極端之間的某個地方。不管怎樣，要確保把精力最旺盛的時間留給寫作。不要在忙完別的事后再寫作，也不要安慰自己有了整塊兒時間后再寫作。先寫作，有時間再做其他事。

Not all of your thoughts are profound

Many people get frustrated because they can't get an analytical purchase on the big questions that interest them. Then they don't write at all. So start small.The wonderful thing is that you may find that you have traveled quite a longway up a mountain, just by keeping your head down and putting one writing footahead of the other for a long time. It is hard to refine your questions, defineyour terms precisely, or know just how your argument will work until you have actually written it all down.

8不積跬步無以至千里

許多人感到沮喪，因為他們在自己感興趣的大問題上提不出有說服力的分析，因此什么也不寫。其實，剛開始要從小事談起。奇妙的是，你可能發現自己已經在登山途中走了很長的路，繼續長時間埋頭一步一步寫下去。重新描述問題，準確定義術語，了解論證如何起作用等是很困難的，除非你實際上把它們寫出來。

Your most profound thoughts are often wrong

Or, at least, they are not completely correct. Precision in asking your question, or posing your puzzle, will not come easily if the question is hard.

I always laugh to myself when new graduatestudents think they know what they want to work on and what they will write about for their dissertations. Nearly all of the best scholars are profoundly changed by their experiences in doing research and writing about it. They learn by doing, and sometimes what they learn is that they were wrong.

?9摸著石頭過河

你最深刻的思想往往是錯誤的，或至少不完全是對的。尤其是在問題很難的時候，準確地提出問題或疑問不是輕而易舉的事。

當剛入學的研究生說他們知道自己希望研究的東西或畢業論文要寫的內容時，我總是暗自發笑。幾乎所有最優秀的學者在研究和寫作的切身經歷中都經歷過重大改變。他們都是在做中學，有時候了解到自己錯了。

Edit your work, over and over

Haveother people look at it. One of the great advantages of academe is that we aremostly all in this together, and we all know the terrors of that blinking cursor on a blank background. Exchange papers with peers or a mentor, and when you are sick of your own writing, reciprocate by reading their work. You need to get over a fear of criticism or rejection. Nobody's first drafts are good.The difference between a successful scholar and a failure need not be better writing. It is often more editing.

If you have trouble writing, then you justhaven't written enough. Writing lots of pages has always been pretty easy forme. I could never get a job being only a writer, though, because I still don't write well. But by thinking about these tips, and trying to follow them myself, I have gotten to the point where I can make writing work for me and my career.

10好文章是改出來的

文章寫出來后請他人看看。大學的一大好處是我們大部分時間都在一起，我們都知道面對一張白板一個字也寫出不來的恐怖。當你實在厭惡自己的寫作時，不妨與同事或導師交換論文，相互批改。你需要克服可能遭到批評和回絕的恐懼。誰的初稿都不好，成功的學者和失敗者的區別不一定是他們寫得好，常常是這些人的編輯工作做得好。

如果你寫作時遇到麻煩，那說明你寫得不夠多。在我看來，一下子寫很多頁輕而易舉，雖然我不可能成為作家，畢竟我文筆不好。但是，因為考慮了這些建議，并試圖按這些建議來做，我已經達到了輕松對付自己和職業所需要的寫作的地步。希望讀者也能從中受益。

本文來源于《高等教育紀事報》，作者：Michael C.Munger，2000年起擔任杜克大學政治學系主任。

2017年下半年沖刺班課程詳情

注：“內部”為沃邦學員價，報名沖刺班享有優惠；“外部”為非沃邦學員價。

授課形式

沖刺班將采用各科分項模考+點評高效模式進行，通過考后及時分析點評，考僧們可及時發現自己的薄弱之處，有針對性地調整做題策略。

課程特色

✔ 精選歷年真題，原汁原味進行考前熱身模考演練。

✔ 使用閱卷機批改，針對學生即時分數報告，便于教師進行針對性地講解。

✔ 資深教師團隊專業解析評估，純干貨精講出題思路及解題技巧，幫助考僧梳理考試規則，沖刺高分。