Gaokao Topic Essay Online - Double Color Composition

Author: Wen Bo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: Pursue the Dream of Achieving High Scores in Gaokao Essays
Essays are a creative endeavor, and labor is essentially creating beauty for life. Therefore, even middle school essays carry the obligation and responsibility to create beauty and bring readers a sense of it. Gaokao essays cannot escape this duty, and topic-based essays encourage candidates to expand their writing scope, simultaneously inspiring students to convey the best possible sense of beauty to readers and society through a single essay. The beauty of an essay is not just about content that delights the heart but also about visuals that please the eyes. In writing, "readability" and "aesthetics" should be two interdependent brothers. Naturally, "readability" is an intrinsic beauty, which is very important, but "aesthetics" should not be overlooked at all. "Aesthetics" refers to the pleasant impression the visual presentation of an essay gives. However, in daily writing practice, we may focus too much on the former—i.e., excessively digging into content, organizing materials, and reviewing the thesis—while often saying, "Ah, as long as the content is good, who wouldn’t appreciate it?" This is not the case. An essay with an unattractive or carelessly presented appearance can hardly convey a sense of "rigor" or "proper attitude." Such an essay cannot be considered excellent. "Aesthetics" requires meticulous attention. From deliberating on the title to centering it, from the first word of the main body to the last, from the spacing of the first paragraph to the punctuation of the last, from careful word choice to skillful revision and correction, from the font of the entire text to the varying emphasis throughout to create a rhythmic aesthetic, all of these should fall within the scope of meticulous attention. Achieving flawless "aesthetics" while also delivering endlessly readable "readability" is a crucial step toward "full marks" and realizing the "dream of full marks."
Balancing "Stability" and "Innovation"
Exam essays have the harshness of "one essay determines a lifetime," so the first requirement is "stability"—that is, striving for high standards while maintaining stability. For achieving the "dream of full marks," this is even more important. In fact, this "stability" boils down to a single word: "harmony." Harmony with what? Harmony with the basic requirements of middle school essays set by the "Curriculum Standards," harmony with the requirements of the "Exam Syllabus" for exam essays, harmony with the rhythm of social and technological progress, and harmony with the identity of contemporary middle school students—all of these are broad harmonies. There are also smaller harmonies: aligning with the intent of the prompt, the inclination of the testsetter, the basic norms of exam essays, the fundamental characteristics and techniques of genre writing, the basic requirements of excellent essays, and one’s own strengths in expression. These two levels of "harmony"—the broad and the small—are the essence of "stability."
Note that these are the basic requirements. If you fail to meet some of these harmonies, it may leave a poor impression on the evaluator. On the surface, these basic harmonies seem restrictive, but in reality, many of them only require slight attention. Moreover, most of them are just vague reminders. As the saying goes, "Limited freedom is the truest freedom."