什么才是优秀的英语作文？如何写出高质量的英语作文？

通常我们在评价一篇汉语文章“有文采”时，指的是其遣词造句出色。那么，英文的文采如何体现呢？与中文类似，英文的文采可以通过两个方面体现，一个是用词，另一个是修辞。下面小编会通过一些具体的例子来做说明。

1.用词

唐朝诗人贾岛因为斟酌“鸟宿池边树，僧敲月下门”究竟应该用“推”还是用“敲”而碰巧遇到韩愈，于是有“推敲”的典故。这说明好作品是一个字斟句酌的过程，有时候用好一个词就能起到画龙点睛的效果，英文中也有很多这样的例子，比如：

In nature, though, diamonds are unremarkable. They are simplycrystals of carbon, albeit crystals of a type that needs a fair amount ofpressure to form. And carbon is the fourth-most abundant element in theuniverse. For that reason, diamonds are thought to be the commonest gemstoneson Earth. Elsewhere in the cosmos, as demonstrated in a paper just published inNature Astronomy, they are probably available in embarrassing abundance.

上面这段文字的背景是：钻石因为稀缺而价格高昂，但在宇宙中组成钻石的物质其实并不稀缺。《自然天文学》杂志上面最新发表的论文显示，钻石这种物质在宇宙其他地方很常见，有多常见呢？原文的说法是：they areprobably available in embarrassing abundance 翻遍世界上所有词典，恐怕没有任何一本会告诉你abundance可以用embarrassing来修饰，但embarrassing在这里如神来之笔，它很好地说明了钻石的数量之多：已经多到令人尴尬的程度了。

还有另外一个例子：

After passing Titan, Cassini will dive back towards Saturn, butthis time, it will not return. On September 15th, at about 1pm London time, itwill kiss the outer edges ofSaturn’s atmosphere and begin to tumble, losing contact with Earth.

卡西尼探测器在通过土星的卫星泰坦之后将会坠入土星，对于重返土星这一过程，作者用了一个词：kiss，kiss在这里并不是“亲吻”的意思，而是指“轻触，轻拂”。这一词很形象地说明了卡西尼轻轻掠过土星外层大气的场景。

2.修辞

英文中用到的修辞手法主要有这几种：排比、对仗、重复、押韵、比喻、引用等。

（1）排比

排比将结构相同或相似的语言单位平行并列，达到对称的形式美。这种手法在演讲中很常见，比如著名的GettysburgAddress:

But, in a larger sense, wecannot dedicate-- we cannotconsecrate-- we cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, haveconsecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

上面的句子连用三个we cannot来增强语气，读起来很有感染力。

又比如马丁路德金的演讲I have a dream:

I have a dreamthat one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaningof its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men arecreated equal."

I have a dreamthat one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slavesand the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at thetable of brotherhood.

I have a dreamthat one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering withthe heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will betransformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

马丁路德金在演讲中用了一系列I have a dream来说明自己对种族平等的希望，表达效果很震撼，类似的例子还有奥巴马在2008年获胜演讲时用的六个 ”Yes we can.”

（2）对仗

对仗的手法与对比类似，只不过它是用意义相反的语言单位来形成强烈的对比感。比如阿姆斯特朗在登月时说的一句话：That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. 其中就用到了对仗的手法。

最近我在《卫报》上读到一篇文章：How technologydisrupted the truth，作者在文中表达了对互联网技术加剧人们认知差距的担忧，其中出现一组句子在对仗的运用上炉火纯青：

Now, we are caught in a series of confusing battles betweenopposing forces: between truth and falsehood, fact and rumour, kindness andcruelty; between the few and the many, the connected and the alienated; betweenthe open platform of the web as its architects envisioned it and the gatedenclosures of Facebook and other social networks; between an informed publicand a misguided mob.

这一系列对比句写得如行云流水，读起来本身就是一种享受。作者也通过这一组句子很好地说明目前互联网上这两股势力的隔阂之深。

（3）重复

重复手法则是通过对某个单词或短语的重复来起到强调的作用，比如《经济学人》的前主编JohnMicklethwait在他的离任告别文章The case forliberal optimism里面写过一个句子：

But for the things this newspaper cares about, the past nineyears have been a battle, one that has left me in a state of paranoid optimism. Paranoia because so much remains underthreat; optimism because, for themost part, the creed this newspaper lives by is strong enough to survive.

作者提到自己处于一种“既恐惧又乐观”的状态：恐惧是因为杂志的很多理念都遭到攻击，乐观是因为杂志赖以为生的信条足够强大，能够继续生存下去。如果你试着把这个句子读上几遍，你会发现paranoid和optimism这两个单词重复得恰到好处。如果我们把句子改写成：

But for the things this newspaper cares about, the past nineyears have been a battle, one that has left me in a state of paranoid optimism.On the one hand, so much remains under threat; on the other hand, for the mostpart, the creed this newspaper lives by is strong enough to survive.

句子分分钟变成四六级作文水平，彻底失去了灵气。

再举个例子，写作社群练习中有这样一句话：

The vast majority of people would be willing to sacrifice a fewrats in order to gain medical progress,progress that might one day savetheir life or that of a loved-one.

有学生问为什么不直接把句子写成：

The vast majority of people would be willing to sacrifice a fewrats in order to gain medical progress, which might one day save their life orthat of a loved-one.

这里也跟重复的手法有关：原句连用两个progress来强调这种医学进步的重要性，将progress改为which虽然在语法上没问题，但表达效果会大打折扣。

William Zinsser 在 On WritingWell 的序言中也写过这样一段话：

So On Writing Wellwas born, in 1976, and it's now in its thirdgeneration of readers, its sales well above a million. Today I often meet young newspaper reporters whowere given the book by the editor whohired them, just as those editors werefirst given the book by the editor who hired them.I also often meet gray-hairedmatrons who remember being assigned the book in college and not finding it thehorrible medicine they expected. Sometimes they bring that early edition for meto sign, its sentences high-lighted in yellow. They apologize for the mess. I love the mess.

这里作者使用了不少重复单词和句式，比如 I often meet... were given the book by the editor who hired them... the mess 这些重复使句子读起来非常有感情且富有节奏感。

（4）押韵

押韵主要有两种，头韵和尾韵，这种手法主要通过让两个或两个以上单词的首字母（或最后的字母）相同，以赋予语言的节奏感。举个例子，奥巴马在2009年就职演讲的第一句就运用了尾韵（同时还使用了排比的手法）：

I stand here today humbledby the task before us, grateful forthe trust you have bestowed, mindfulof the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.

下面这个例子则是压头韵和尾韵：

Public resources allocated to the arts create jobs for artistsand others whose livelihood depends on a vibrant, rich culture – just the sortof culture that breeds charitable concern for the hungry, the helpless,and the hapless.

（5）比喻

比喻有明喻、暗喻、提喻和转喻，其中用到比较多的是暗喻。J.K.罗琳在2008年哈佛毕业演讲上就用了很多精彩的暗喻，比如：

I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, andI was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an oldtypewriter and a big idea. And so rockbottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

将人生的低谷比喻为重建新生活的基石。

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure isfun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there wasgoing to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy taleresolution. I had no idea then how farthe tunnel extended, and for a long time, any lightat the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

将她在人生低谷时的努力比喻为在黑暗隧道中的摸索。light at theend of the tunnel也是英语中的一个习语，含义是“黑暗尽头的光明”。

（6）引用

引用这种手法则经常出现在文章开头或结尾，通过引用名人名言来强化自己的论据。例如下面这个例子：

“Judge a man byhis questions, rather than his answers,” Voltaire advised. Google has becomeone of the most successful firms in history by heeding that advice. Itevaluates the intention of web-surfers’ queries and returns relevantadvertising alongside search results.

作者在文章开头引用了伏尔泰的名言，“从一个人提的问题判断他是一个什么样的人，而不是从他的回答”，并将这句名言巧妙套用到谷歌上，以此来说明谷歌的搜索业务之成功。

还有一个例子：

Britain, Napoleon once supposedly scoffed, was “a nation ofshopkeepers”. Nowadays it is a nation of online shoppers. The British do agreater share of their retail spending online than almost anyone.

拿破仑据说曾嘲讽英国是一个“由小商店店主构成的国家”（在拿破仑时代的法国，小商店店主并不是一个受人尊敬的职业），作者在这里引用了拿破仑的名言，但话锋一转，指出英国现在其实是一个由网购者组成的国家，以此来说明英国网购行业的发展。

上面总结的这几种用词和修辞手法是提升英文文采的常见方式。实际上，这些手法大量出现在外刊和原版书上，平时有大量阅读习惯的同学应该深有体会。这些用词和修辞手法也值得我们在写作中借鉴——我们不应该仅仅满足于写出没有错误的英文，还应该去试着写出漂亮的英文。这是任何一名有追求的英语学习者的基本素养。

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