雅思考官的权威写作辅导(英)

　　The Introduction

　　There are two important steps you must take before you write your answer to an exam question. The first is preparing your answer correctly and the second is writing the introduction to your answer.

　　Preparing your Answer

　　NB : DO NOT BEGIN WRITING YOUR ESSAY UNTIL YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO SAY!!

　　This may seem to be so obvious it's almost pointless to say it. And yet huge numbers of students forget this basic rule. They look around and see that everyone else has started and the pressure to start with something, anything and not get left behind is tremendous. As a result, they end up dumping information rather randomly onto the page and hoping for the best. This is never a good idea.

　　Think about the zoo, or a museum, or a textbook. The animals, exhibitions or information are not just thrown in at random, but are grouped together according to some kind of overall structure. If they weren't, people would quickly get lost or bored and this is what will happen to your examiner. Imagine you're giving a guided tour of what's out there, plan out your route first and then make sure your reader can stay with you all of the way. Do not introduce material suddenly, and be absolutely ruthless in excluding irrelevant material from the essay (essays are too short to allow waffling).

　　Before you can plan your route, you would have to know what the people you are guiding have come to see. The answer to that is presented in the question that is being asked. This means that before anything else can happen you need to interpret the question.

　　Take some time at the start to read the question carefully. I'd even go so far as to say read it out to yourself under your breath. It's amazing how the mind can play tricks on you when you're flustered, so take your time about it. Better to waste a few minutes here then get half way through your answer and realised you've made a mistake.

　　It may sound like a tough job to interpret a question, but most questions are written in a very similar fashion. You could almost say that there's a formula to it. Firstly, the question will be linked to a specific area of the course being examined. You can usually spot this pretty easily as the name of the area will be mentioned or some of the major terms or individuals connected to the area will point the way. But you need more than that, because an area can be huge, covering enough information to fill an entire library shelf-load of books. You need to narrow it down, and to there are clues in the question to help you do this too. Usually the question is phrased in such a way as to highlight some sub-section of the area, allowing you to focus on that and cutting down the amount of information you need to bring in.

　　There are some traditional ways to phrase essay questions that are used in many different courses. We've included a small example of the most common ones with a rough outline of what the phrasing is looking for.

　　Question & Possible approach to answering it :

　　×Some statement & quote. Discuss

　　×Discuss the idea that ……

　　×Assess the truthfulness of the statement & quote by presenting info from the area that either supports the opinion in the statement & quote or contradicts it.