《英语写作基础教程》讲义

《英语写作基础教程》讲义

Chapter 1 Using Proper Words

Choice of words

build up a large vocabulary

the recognition vocabulary

the active vocabulary

2. Approaches to the building up a vocabulary

Learning words from a word-list or from a dictionary.

(2) Learning words from speech and writing (context)

E.g. Kill

He killed the man.

He killed the dog.

They killed the proposal.

Please kill the engine.

She is dressed to kill.

You are killing me.

She killed her child with kindness.

He took a snack to kill his hungry.

He killed every day at the park.

He killed himself with overwork

He killed the spirit of the group.

The news killed their hope.

These flowers kill easily.

He killed three bottle of Whisky in a week.

Kill one’s appetite

Kill peace

Kill the mood

Kill marriage

II. Using words correctly

1.overcome Chinglish

2. Beware of archaisms, obsolete words, anachronisms and newly-coined words

Words or meaning of words which are no longer in common used but occur in special text (e.g. Religious works) and poetry are called archaic.

Words or meaning which have gone out of use altogether are called obsolete.

Words that are inappropriate for the time about which one is writing are called anachronisms

3.Avoid slang

Chapter 2 Make Correct and Effective Sentences

1. Basic elements of a sentence

2. what is a sentence?

3. Typical English sentence pattern: Subject +predicate

II.Characteristics of an Effective Sentence

[1] Correctness

1. Sentence fragment

A grammatically complete sentence has a verb with its subject. Structurally it must be a independent unit, capable of standing alone. Fragments are incomplete sentences. Usually, fragments are pieces of sentences that have become disconnected from the main clause, such as phrase clause, appositives and other such group of words, when any of them is written and punctuated as a sentence , it is called sentence fragment. Below are some examples with the fragments:

Fragment-like sentences

As exclamations

oh! Nonsense! Well done! What a day! What a pity!

How kind of you! George in Beijing ? Susan a singer?

In dialogue

A: how about this?

B: very good!

A: your name and your address, please.

B: all right , here

1. A: where to?

2. B: this way, please.

3. A: what then?

4. B: nothing.

As transitions

And a final instance

To return from our digression

Now, a few more words about the meeting today.

1. Run-on sentence