三、比較與對(duì)比法
與利用直接經(jīng)驗(yàn)相反,有些申請(qǐng)者把他們自己的經(jīng)驗(yàn)和對(duì)研究生所要求的技能進(jìn)行比較。在這種情況下,他們可以選擇 “比較與對(duì)比”結(jié)構(gòu)。例3這位申請(qǐng)人用了這一結(jié)構(gòu),他集中論述一本書對(duì)他的學(xué)習(xí)方法的影響。這一結(jié)構(gòu)還可通過(guò)變化之前的你與現(xiàn)在的你的對(duì)比來(lái)說(shuō)明你生活中的一個(gè)變化。
例3: Influence of Book
注意:為了教學(xué)目的,該文發(fā)表時(shí)未加修改。
"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book." (Thoreau) One evening, during Christmas vacation of my freshman year in college, when a formidable storm outside called for an evening of hot tea and heavy reading, I picked up a book that had been sitting on my desk for several weeks. On the cover, it read "Selections of the Essays: Montaigne." On the inside, only a few circled page numbers evidenced that the book had ever been used.
I was supposed to have read Montaigne that past quarter for Honors Humanities Core, but had, instead, done no more than to skim key pages highlighted in lecture-enough to earn myself a decent grade in the course. That was how I approached school then-with the goal of getting the highest possible grade with the least possible effort. Grades have always been, after all, very important to me. Having been unsure as to what I wanted to do in life, I figured that getting good grades would insure that once I decided on what I wanted, that that opportunity would still lie open for me. Such, then, was how I justified my attitude towards studying; it served the very practical goal of rendering myself "marketable."
This approach to academics is not original. My parents taught me that the only way I would get anywhere in life (in the States) was through education. United States immigrants, arriving in 1975 as refugees from Vietnam, our family was forced to leave all our belongings behind. We had to make a fresh start in a foreign country. My father's only asset was his mind-he had a college education. The first five years we were here, he worked at a sewage plant while studying on his own for the country's engineering exam. After passing the exam, he got a job as a civil engineer at the City of Anaheim. Six years later, he was promoted to a position above that of his own boss, then,-that of Water Engineering Manager. All along, what he taught my four siblings and I was that the best thing we could do for ourselves was to study hard. Education (along with hard work), he always said, serve as the key to succeeding and to earning people's respect in this country (which he did). I still believe him, but I have since learned that such practical ends are not the sole purpose of education.
I opened the book that evening, curious as to what I might have missed in my efforts to minimize the quarter's workload, and found more. I found myself in the middle of Montaigne's essay "On the Education of Children." Emerson once wrote that "within books, the good reader finds confidences, or asides, hidden from all else and unmistakably meant for his ear. The profoundest thought or passion sleeps as if in a mind until it is discovered by an equal mind and heart." Such was my encounter with philosophy that evening. Montaigne's words did not claim some vacant chair inside my mind, as if at an auction, hoping to win its bid for my attention. They pounced on me, rather, drilled deep into my core, and dragged out gems I had long buried. "The first lessons in which we should steep [a student's] mind," I read, "must be those that regulate his behavior and his sense, that will teach him to know himself and to die well and to live well." Montaigne's words did not so much teach me anything new, as they reminded me of beliefs I had once held, of ideas I had previously known, but forgotten or discarded as childish and impractical.
That book, read numerous times since, served as a catalyst for both my personal and academic growth. Montaigne inspired me to stress the attainment of wisdom over the acquisition of knowledge. I used to study enough to gather the "facts" of a theory, my essays having been not much more than reports on those facts, perhaps, frosted over with a bit of commentary. I tasted ideas, chewed on them for as long