来源：21世纪英文报第754期

CRACKING CET

在本期四六级考试专栏中，全国四六级考委会的夏国佐教授对读者题为"What electives to choose"的作文进行了讲评和改写。按照四级作文评分标准，作文部分满分15分，这篇文章得11分。本栏目下期将邀请夏教授对2007年12月份的六级作文试题进行指导。如果你希望自己的文章得到夏教授的点评，请按下面要求写出一篇短文，发到elt@21stcentury.com.cn。

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled The Digital Age. You should write at least 150 words following the outline given below.

1.如今数字化产品得到越来越广泛的使用，例如……

2.数字化产品的使用对人们工作、学习和生活产生的影响

读者的原文

What electives to choose

As we know, each unversity has provided many electives for students to choose. At my university, the electives range from art to medicine.

In my opinion, students choose the electives for many different reasons. Some choose the electives which are interesting. For example, one of my classmates enjoys gymnastic, so she chooses the Latin gymnastic. She once told me that gymnastic can help her get a strong body and beatiful figure. Others choose elective courses that they think will be useful in the future. For instance, one of my roommates chooses the Online English Translation. She believes that the class will help her improve her ability to translate.

For me, I choose the Online English Speaking class. For one thing, I think it will help with my spoken English. For another thing, if I can communicate with many people then I can make many friends.

The additional courses can broaden our horizons. We can benefit from them. We can learn much more that we can't get from compulsory courses. But still, we shouldn't neglect the major courses we are studying.

修改后的文章

What Electives to Choose

As we know, all universities now offer students elective courses. At my university, the electives range from arts to sciences.

As I see it, students choose their electives for many different reasons. Some choose electives that interest them. For example, one of my classmates enjoys gymnastics, so she chose artistic gymnastics. She says gymnastics can help her build up a strong body and a beautiful figure. Others choose elective courses that they think will help further their future career. For instance, one of my roommates chose Online English Translation. She believes the course will help her improve her translation ability.

As for me, I chose the Online English Speaking class. For one thing, I think it will help me improve my spoken English. Also, if I can communicate with many people in English, then I can also make many foreign friends. Elective courses can broaden our horizon and bring us many benefits. We can learn much that we can't get from compulsory courses. Still, we shouldn't neglect our major courses. Otherwise, we'll lose more than we gain.

夏老师的点评

这篇文章写得比较好，内容充实，叙说清楚，前后连贯，表达也基本到位。从文字上看，大的句子结构基本正确，但是语言的使用不够精确。还是有比较多的小错, 包括一些常用词的拼写错误。下面是几点具体的修改建议：

1. 第一段第二句中的"range from art to medicine"建议改为"range from arts to sciences"。"range from"这个短语用得很确当，但是"art"单数表达的意思是"美术"、"艺术"；"medicine是"医学"，都是专业，作为选修课，恐怕很难。而"arts"表示的是 "文科" (subjects of study, such as history, literature and languages), "sciences"表示的是 "自然科学"(subjects of study, such as chemistry, physics and biology)，是可以选修的课程。

2. 第二段第一句中的 "In my opinion"，是一个用来表达自己意见的短语，往往是对一件事的评判，用在这里不很恰当。建议改为 "As I see it"，虽然也是表示自己的看法，但是语气比较缓和。试比较下面两句：

Handmade cheeses are justifiably more expensive than the factory-produced equivalents and are, in my opinion, worth every penny.

After two seasons as captain of Essex, he resigned saying: "As I see it, when you win you're supposed to and when you don't, it's your fault."

同一句"students choose the electives for many different reasons"中的定冠词"the"应去掉，或者改为"their"，因为"electives"在这里并无专指。同样的道理，接下去第二句中的定冠词"the"也应去掉。

3. 第二段第三句中的"gymnastic"均应改为"gymnastics"。"体操"的名词永远是复数形式"gymnastics"。"Gymnastic"是形容词。另外，"so she chooses"应改为 so she chose"，因为"choose"这个动作在这里不是经常性的，而是已经过去了。还有，"Latin gymnastics"没有听说过，建议改为"artistic gymnastics"。

4. 第三段第一句中的"For me"应改为"As for me"。"As for"(至于)用来引导一个与刚才谈及的内容有关的新的主体，例如：

You can ask the others if they want to go, but as for myself, I'll be busy in the office.

Kitty's got so thin. And as for Carl, he always seems to be ill.

"For"是用来说明你的陈述跟谁有关，例如：

The questions on this paper are too difficult for 10-year-olds.

5. 第四段第二句"We can learn much more that we can't get from compulsory courses"语法有错。这个句子没有比较，所以不能用"more"，应改为"We can learn much that we can't get from compulsory courses".

6. 第四段末尾，建议加一句"Otherwise, we'll lose more than we gain"，这样就把道理讲清楚了。