Gaokao essay

Author: Zhou Peng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-10-01
Features: This book, "College Entrance Exam Essay—Seize 55 Points in 55 Minutes," reveals the "ambitious" aspirations of a group of "well-trained" young scholars. Through systematic training, they aim to improve the writing skills of every reader, making them winners in the essay examination. By studying past college entrance exam essays and providing concise guidance and systematic operations, you can break through in a short time and achieve high scores of over 55 points. This book, "College Entrance Exam Essay—Seize 55 Points in 55 Minutes," reveals the "ambitious" aspirations of a group of "well-trained" young scholars. Through systematic training, they aim to improve the writing skills of every reader, making them winners in the essay examination. By studying past college entrance exam essays and providing concise guidance and systematic operations, you can break through in a short time and achieve high scores of over 55 points.
Chapter: Unveiling the Mystery of College Entrance Exam Essays
Chapter Introduction: "Not fearing the floating clouds blocking the view, only because one is in a high place." For any problem, we must dispel the floating clouds of various illusions and directly attack the essence to recognize the true face of the mountain. What is the essence of college entrance exam essays? This is the question we should first explore. However, many college entrance exam essay guidance books overlook it, fail to discuss it, or assume that college entrance exam essays are the same as literary creations in essence. Without a clear understanding of the essence, our concepts become blurred. With blurred concepts, our solutions to a problem can only be like a blind man () or theoretical speculation on paper. The first step in changing a person is changing their mindset. Burn all your vague notions about college entrance exam essays here!
60-point Strategy Tips:
1. The essence of college entrance exam essays is to showcase.
Traditionally, poetry is suggestive, while prose is expressive. That is to say, the essence of poetry is to convey emotions and intentions implicitly through "suggestion," often meaning one thing while saying another. The essence of prose, on the other hand, is to display life directly through "expression" (of course, this "directness" is limited and not a complete reproduction, because literary art originates from life but is higher than life). However, whether it's poetry or prose, this is clearly a literary discussion and should be distinguished from college entrance exam essays. Literary creation and college entrance exam essays differ in at least four ways:
- Writing Purpose: Literary creation may be for life, society, or art itself, ultimately for emotional release, spiritual comfort, and soul purification. As Ba Jin eloquently put it, "The purpose of literature is to make people better." But the purpose of college entrance exam essays is extremely utilitarian—to score points! If we follow Ba Lao's saying, then the purpose of college entrance exam essays is to please the graders. "I like who I like," as the famous saying of Ah Q goes, perhaps it's not entirely unreasonable to say that graders judge scores to some extent based on personal preferences.
- Writing Style: Literary creation is relatively free, individualistic, and proactive. Whether to write, what to write, and how to write are all choices one can make. One can also consult materials, communicate with others, and revise repeatedly. However, college entrance exam essays are constrained by external factors, with strict time and word limits, and must be completed independently without external help. Following the examiner's requirements to write and then being judged by the standards of the examination venue or even individual graders, examinees are ultimately passive and have little choice.
- Writing State: Literary creation is usually prepared, often with emotions brewing within and inspiration leading to writing, with a relaxed and natural mood, fully immersed in the writing world. However, college entrance exam essays are impromptu, like rushed work, because the essay topics have not been deeply considered beforehand. Moreover, during writing, one must constantly self-check and review to ensure relevance and appropriateness, or else one might write extensively but veer off-topic. This makes the mood tense, and it's difficult to fully unleash one's abilities.
- Reading Audience: The readers of literary creation are broad and multi-layered, anyone can read it, and it can be read repeatedly for a long time, though not necessarily approved by everyone. The readers of college entrance exam essays have a relatively fixed reading level, mostly middle school Chinese teachers, university Chinese departments, and those related to Chinese teaching. The range of readers is also small, usually two (online grading), no more than three or four, and sometimes only one (manual grading), which can determine an essay's score. Moreover, this decision that determines a student's fate is made in a very short reading time, with the saying "90 seconds to life or death" circulating online. Therefore, the grader's initial impression, or their feeling, is extremely important.
With these differences, college entrance exam essays and literary creations should be fundamentally different. The suggestive method of poetry is somewhat risky. If the "degree" of subtlety is not well-handled, graders might find it obscure and incomprehensible, and the outcome is foreseeable. Drawing a monk carrying water at the foot of a mountain to express the "concealment" in the phrase "deep mountains hide ancient temples" is indeed good, but if the monk is drawn unrecognizably, such as making graders think he's a labor camp inmate or a "new new human, bald-headed group," that would be problematic. Let's compare two poems by Li Bai:
Quiet Night Thought
Before my bed, the moonlight shines bright,
Like frost on the ground.
I raise my head to gaze at the bright moon,
And bow my head, missing my hometown.
Qingping Tune (I)
Clouds resemble clothing, flowers resemble faces,
The breeze brushes the balustrade, dew glistens.
If I had not seen them on Mount Juyu,
I would have thought they were on the moon under the fairy palace.