小作文 - An Essay
前言
笔者最近在整理各种文件时，无意中又打开了本科时期的留下的文件夹，在其中，我看到了一些曾经写过的一些小文章，怀念的感觉不禁油然而生。虽然此时回望，这些小文章无不体现了本人拙劣的写作水平，某些文章更是处处透露出应付差事的目的，但是无论如何，他们也算是承载了我的小小一段青春时光，于是，与其让其尘封在硬盘里，最终烟消云散，不如将其记录于此，供未来的自己回看消遣。
话说在前，这些文字于本人也是某种程度的黑历史，因此对于懂得写作的人恐怕更是难以入眼，如果此文不幸被写作大佬看到，还请多多包涵，如果可以，尽量关闭页面，连看也别看的好……
言归正传，这一篇是本人在大二第二学期写的，是《英语语法与写作II》这门课的一次作业。
这门课可以说是除文学课以外，本人收获最多的一门课。当然坦白来说，正如教授第一节写作课就提出的：写作是没法教的，因此上完这节课，本人的写作水平很难说有什么长足的跨越。然而在学习过程中，通过各类阅读、欣赏以及思考，我的确看到了通过文字操弄他人思想的一些技巧、明白了文字的力量、 也见识了足以成为“不朽”的文字的样貌。所以尽管本人此生可能没有机会创造出那样的文字，至少也算是知道了好的写作作品应该是什么样的。
又扯远了，回到正题。这篇文章要讨论的论题是：历史的最大好处是证明了现在与过去的人类本质是相同的。这其实是一个很庞大的命题，无论正反观点，都可以有诸多的切入点以及论证法。在写这篇文章时，本人选定的观点是对原论题的修改，在写作思路上，本人用的是演绎法(Deductive Reasoning)，写作结构上，主要用的是二分法(Dichotomy)，说人话就是分别从精神和物质两方面，分别论证不同历史阶段的人类的异同：现在的人与过去的人在精神层面确实有相同点，但在物质层面则差异很大，综合来说，并不能说非常相似。
现在回看，整体的写作结构其实还是挺整齐的，然而对于进行二分后的精神物质两方面，论证力度还是差了挺多的，这也是这篇文章的一大硬伤。同时，文章开头对于原议题的批判分为两部分，然而第二部分并未在后续展开，也属于废笔了。
题目
The main benefit of the study of history is to dispel the illusion that people living now are significantly different from people who lived in earlier times.
An Essay
The statement above actually holds 2 opinions, the one is that people nowadays are not significantly different from people who lived in earlier times and the other is that history studying’s main benefit is to help people understand that. However, people nowadays do have tons of differences to the people lived in earlier times, and dispelling an illusion alone seems too simple to be even called the benefit of history learning, let alone the main benefit.
Speaking of the differences between people living in different eras, we can look through it from two perspectives: the physical living condition and the spiritual living condition. For the perspective of physical living condition, it is obvious that with the development of modern technologies, our life have been changed a lot. There are literally thousands of new things coming around every day, which indicates that modern techs’ influences have been pervasive. The most obvious facts are that nowadays we have smart phones, personal computers, electricity and so on, and all those above are far beyond the imagination of people who lived in earlier times.
For the perspective of people’s spiritual living condition, however, we may find out that people may have not changed much. The discovery in Archaeology indicates that the human who lived 10000 years ago have the same brain volume as the people nowadays, which means that human’s thinking pattern might not have changed since the day human race first appears. And the study of history also shows that human is always likely to make same mistakes at the turning points of history. So we can say that people now both have similarities and differences with the people who lived in earlier times, and we can’t draw conclusion that we are significantly different from earlier people.
Although history does make people understand the similarity through the development of human race, we can’t say that it is the main benefit of history learning. Actually, history is a prolonging discipline which acts as a recording and interpretation of a series of historical events of human progress. It is an inheriting, accumulation and extension of culture. It also acts as track of human civilization. The purpose of history is to constantly discover the real past, to talk about it with materials, and to make it possible for people to discuss it in reality. So we can say that the similarities between people in different times are just some discoveries in the study of history.
So, instead of saying that ‘The main benefit of the study of history is to dispel the illusion that people living now are significantly different from people who lived in earlier times.’, I prefer to say that ‘Though time passes, people living now still have many things alike, and that is one of the discoveries of history learning.’