In my ninth-grade writing class last year, I met a cowboy who saved his town, a strict father who demanded his son earn straight A's, and a modern-day Juliet who died of heartbreak after her parents rejected the love of her young life. ore than once, I found myself wondering just how my students, who'd created these people, knew their subjects so well.
去年我在九年級寫作課上遇到了一位拯救了小鎮(zhèn)的牛仔、一位要求兒子門門拿A的嚴父，還有因父母拒絕她青梅竹馬的愛情而心碎身亡的現(xiàn)代版朱麗葉。不止一次，我都在想，這些由我的學生們塑造的人物，他們究竟是如何如此了解自己的創(chuàng)作對象的。

But things were different for their first essay, which was about the question: “Why is writing important? Most of the essays filled less than one page, and few contained a sentence that could be interpreted as a thesis statement. I was shocked. Then I realized that the problem was the question itself. They could have written pages on the necessity of computers, but writing, in and of itself, simply didn't strike them as important. This would have to change.
然而，他們第一篇關于“為什么寫作重要？”的論文卻大相徑庭。大多數(shù)論文連一頁都未滿，鮮有能提煉出明確論點的句子。我深感震驚，隨后意識到問題出在問題本身——他們本可洋洋灑灑論述計算機的必要性，但寫作本身竟未引起他們重視。這種狀況必須改變。

As a new unit started, I asked everyone to write a persuasive piece on a health-related topic of their choice. This time they found the exercise much more interesting. For the next two assignments, a personal.narrative unit followed by a creative-writing workshop, I only required that the piece meet the specifications of its genre and that it contain a thesis. The results were staggering. The students took on diverse topics and turned in stories, 10 to 20 pages each, with characters that broadened my view and touched my heart.
新單元啟動時，我要求每位學生就自己感興趣的健康相關主題撰寫一篇說服性文章。這次他們覺得這項練習有趣得多。接下來的兩個任務——個人敘事單元和創(chuàng)意寫作工作坊——我僅要求文章符合體裁規(guī)范并包含論點。成果令人驚嘆：學生們選取了多樣化主題，提交的故事每篇長達10至20頁，其中的人物拓寬了我的視野并觸動了心弦。

I walked into class believing that writing is important as a means of communication. However, my students demonstrated something more important to me. When the final bell rang in June, I walked away with a yearbook full of messages about writing’s most powerful significance the ability to connect people, to put us in another's skin, to teach us what it means to be human.
我走進課堂時認為寫作作為溝通手段至關重要。然而我的學生們向我展示了更為重要的東西。當六月的最后一聲鈴響時，我?guī)ё吡艘槐緦憹M留言的紀念冊，里面闡述了寫作最深刻的含義——它能連接人心，讓我們設身處地，教會我們何為人性。