1. Collect materials

Writing requires materials. As the saying goes: "It's hard for a clever woman to make a meal without rice." Without rice, no matter how clever the daughter-in-law is, she cannot cook. Without materials, no matter how good the writer is, he cannot write an article. Many students feel anxious when writing articles and don't know what to write. The main reason is that they don't have the materials. Collecting and obtaining materials is the basis of writing and the first step in the writing process. There are three ways to collect materials:

1. Observe life

Life is the source of writing, and writing is to reflect life. To accurately reflect life, you must understand it. The way to understand is to observe. Use our various senses to feel, examine, investigate, and summarize the characteristics of various things. Understanding the phenomena of life, understanding the essence of life, and thus understanding life correctly are the most important and fundamental materials for writing.

2. Read books, newspapers, periodicals, documents and other written materials

Written materials are the knowledge and experience accumulated by human beings, and are a treasure house of writing materials. Through reading, you can absorb nutrition, broaden your horizons, increase your knowledge, and obtain a large amount of writing materials. The authors who have created important works in ancient and modern times, both at home and abroad, are all well-read and obtained rich nutrition from books. The famous writer Deng Tuo said: "Reading a book of astronomy in half a month has accumulated some useful information. Reading a book of geology in half a month has accumulated some useful information. Half a month is not much, and there are twelve months in a year. There are twenty-four." When Marx wrote "Das Kapital", he extracted more than 1,500 major reference books. Therefore we must read often. It is necessary to read not only literature books, but also theoretical books; not only books on social sciences, but also books on natural sciences. Only in this way can we expand our knowledge, improve our cognitive abilities, and collect useful and rich materials. 3. Think, analyze and observe the direct and indirect materials obtained from reading, and form some personal opinions and opinions.

When we observe external phenomena, we will have a kind of psychological activity, or arouse an emotion, or have our own understanding and opinions. This kind of emotion and understanding is extremely important for writing. Only by having your own feelings can you write unique articles and infect others. Therefore, we must be good at capturing this feeling during observation, grasp it tightly when there is any hint, experience it repeatedly and carefully, and try our best to expand our sensitivity. When you have feelings, you should write them down in time to avoid them being fleeting.

After obtaining the materials in reading, you must also conduct some analysis and research, and through in-depth thinking in your own mind, you can gain new understanding and form new opinions, even if they are immature and fragmentary. view. These understandings, opinions, and opinions are also materials for writing and play an important role in writing argumentative, explanatory, and application articles.

We sometimes have to use imagination and association to expand the picture of life and enrich writing materials for certain scenes we observe. For example, in the article "Lychee Honey", the author associates the characteristics of bees with farmers with similar characteristics. The author writes about bees as well as farmers. Deepen the description of bees through association. Many articles that use objects to express emotions and express aspirations are the use of this kind of association. Therefore, imagination and association are also important ways to obtain materials. 3. How to accumulate materials

The materials we obtain through observation, reading, analysis and research leave an impression in our minds. In order to facilitate future writing, we should accumulate and store these materials.

There are many ways to accumulate materials, and they should be chosen appropriately according to the content of the accumulation.

1. The observed content and feelings during the observation can be accumulated by keeping an observation diary.

As a middle school student, you should develop the habit of keeping an observation diary. In doing so, you can not only accumulate the observed materials, but also cultivate your own observation skills and develop good observation habits. When writing an observation diary, use appropriate language to express your opinions. This is actually training in writing. If you keep writing for a long time, the material will be enriched, and your ability to choose words and form sentences will also improve.

2. Use various methods to accumulate materials obtained from reading books, newspapers, periodicals, and documents and analyze the materials to form personal opinions. This can be accumulated in the form of notes, cards, newspaper clippings, etc.

The accumulated content includes:

(1) Language accumulation: such as the accumulation of wonderful words, literacy, vocabulary, vivid descriptions, wonderful sentences, special Sentence patterns, etc.

(2) Skill accumulation.

(3) Accumulation of ideas: such as systematic theories, novel viewpoints, profound analysis, penetrating insights, etc.

(4) Accumulation of examples: such as meaningful events, historical facts, precise figures, etc.

(5) The accumulation of aphorisms and mottos: including proverbs, sayings, aphorisms, aphorisms, famous quotes, reference couplets, etc.

(6) The accumulation of personal opinions, experiences, and feelings.

There are four types of accumulation using notes and cards: excerpt type, summary type, experience type, and index type. The excerpt style is suitable for the accumulation of language, examples, thoughts, and aphorisms. Extract important content from books, newspapers and periodicals related to your study, work, and research. When excerpting, the excerpt must be word-for-word, and even punctuation marks must not be omitted or marked incorrectly. The author and source must also be written, and the name and page number of the book from which the excerpt is taken should be indicated. The excerpted content should be divided into several items and recorded by item. For example, middle school students can excerpt based on the content of studying hard, establishing ambitions, uniting and forging ahead, working hard and living plainly, observing disciplines, persisting in exercise, loving the country and the people, paying attention to civilization, respecting teachers, paying attention to methods, etc. The accumulation of skills, ideas, and examples is suitable for the use of summary style. The summary style is generally used for long articles, and the full text cannot be excerpted. Just record the summary points. The experience type is a form of note-taking suitable for other people’s opinions, experiences, and feelings. Indexing is to arrange, organize and index the notes and cards recorded for easy search.

2. How to deal with the relationship between observation and writing

Observation is the basis of writing. If you don't know how to observe, you can't talk about writing. Life is like a treasure house of composition materials, and the key to opening the treasure house is observation. If you can carefully observe your life, you will have the key to a treasure house with endless materials for you to choose from. Observation is the gateway to writing. Only by first learning to observe can we learn to write, so we should learn to observe.

To learn to observe, one should understand observation correctly. Some students think that observation means "seeing", but we think this is only a part of observation. It is not enough to observe with your eyes. You must also listen with your ears, smell with your nose, touch with your hands, and feel with all parts of your body. The world around us is rich and colorful. Whether it is characters, animals, plants, scenery, things, or scientific phenomena, they all have their own characteristics. And each thing has different aspects. For example, apples have color, shape, weight, taste, smell, etc. If you do not mobilize various sense organs for comprehensive observation, you will not be able to comprehensively and correctly understand the characteristics of the observation object, and the article you write will be one-sided and limited. In addition to the comprehensive use of various senses, observation also requires the use of the brain, the thinking organ, to think. Because the purpose of observation is not only to understand the phenomenological characteristics of the object of observation, but also to understand its essence, the connections between things, and the development laws of things. To understand the essence and laws, we must think and analyze the observed phenomena. It is necessary to analyze the causes contained in phenomena and think about the causal relationships between various phenomena. For example, when we hear someone speaking, we need to think about why he said such a thing. When you see a character’s expression, you have to think about what the character’s mood is reflected in this expression. When you observe other people's behavior, you need to consider the psychology of their behavior and the consequences of this behavior. When you see leaves falling from branches, you need to analyze the cause of the leaves falling, whether it is seasonal changes or pests and diseases. Think more, ask yourself more conscious questions, and pay special attention when observing, making it in-depth and detailed. Only in this way can we truly observe what needs to be observed, truly understand our lives and our environment, and truly improve our ability to observe.

If a person does not love life, how can he have the mind to observe life seriously? To observe life, you must love life and pay attention to everything. Some students, under the teacher's request, reluctantly took a look at the world around them, or looked around absentmindedly, neither mobilizing various senses to observe nor using their brains to think. harvest. Only those who love life can be interested and curious about life. I am interested in the things around me, always want to see, listen, touch, ask, study and do it myself. Only by listening, taking a look, and asking questions like this can you concentrate your energy, concentrate on it, and observe systematically and carefully.

3. How to observe life correctly

1. Grasp the characteristics of things

People often say: There are no two identical leaves in the world. There are many kinds of things in the world. All kinds of things have signs that distinguish them from other things, that is, this thing has something that other things do not have. This is the characteristic of the thing. The purpose of observation is to grasp this characteristic of things.

When observing, you must be good at grasping the characteristics of things, that is, accurately understanding and grasping things based on people's personalities and differences in things. For example, in the article "Spring", when the author wrote about the spring rain, he captured the characteristics of the spring rain's fineness, density, and abundance. This shows that the author paid attention to distinguishing the differences between spring rain and rain in other seasons when observing. Rain is also written about in "Under the Scorching Sun and Heavy Rain", which is a heavy rain in summer. The author focuses on describing the characteristics of rapid, fierce and heavy rainstorms. It can be seen that spring rain and summer heavy rain are different, and both authors are good at grasping the characteristics of things in observation. We must learn this method of observation.

2. Choose a good observation point.

The observation point is the standpoint from which the observer observes things, that is, the observer's position and angle. Every thing has different characteristics when viewed from different angles. "Viewed horizontally, it looks like a ridge or a peak on the side, with different heights from near to far." To understand the full picture of things, it is often necessary to observe things from all sides.

When observing people, due to the different relationships between the observer and the observed, the attitudes adopted, the psychology produced, and the degree of understanding of the observed are also different. For example, Lu Xun's three observations in the article "One Side" are different from each other. For the first time, the author did not know that the object of observation was Lu Xun, and observed it in a dark room. Therefore, the observation was rough, and the author only noticed the characteristics of thinness, age, the color of the gown, and the light on the cigarette holder. The second time, when Lu Xun came closer, he could see more clearly. The author observed his complexion, mental outlook, hair, beard and other characteristics. These are the characteristics of Lu Xun's face, and he observed them in much more detail. The third time, when Lu Xun sold the book worth three and a half dollars to the author for one dollar, the author couldn't help but be surprised and wanted to take a closer look at who this person was and why he was so kind to "me". Therefore, this time the observation was not only careful, but also the most prominent features of the character were grasped, and this person was identified as Lu Xun. The three observation distances are different, the conditions are different, and the observed content is also different.

To observe the scenery, you can observe it from a fixed point and a static angle, or you can move the observation point and observe it from a moving angle. The position of observation can be divided into high and low, and the angle of observation can be divided into pitch and anyway. For example, in "She Opera", when I first saw the stage in Zhaozhuang, it was far away and it was dark. I saw that the stage was set up on the open space near the river, blurred with the night and indistinguishable; when the boat got closer, you could You can see that the characters on the stage are moving in red and green colors; no matter how close you are, you can see the appearance of the characters. Another example is the article "Wumen Bridge": "Looking from the boat, a long rainbow seems to appear between the blue sky and clear water. Stopping on the top of Wumen Bridge is like standing in the water. The moisture under your feet is blowing your clothes. , you will feel transcendent and ecstatic. "The feelings will be different if the observation steps are different.

In short, the observation points are diverse. Different observation points will reflect different characteristics of things. But these characteristics are not necessarily the essential characteristics of things. We must carefully select the best observation points, observe from the best angles, and grasp the essential characteristics of things in order to reflect their unique discoveries and in-depth understanding.

In addition, observation should be carried out every day. After the observation, you should carefully keep an observation diary to accumulate the content of the observation.