托福寫作句式：長短句結(jié)合
英語作文中句子的質(zhì)量往往其長度的影響。但并不是說所有的句子越長越好。在寫作中，以簡單句為代表的短句能夠給人留下比較深刻的印象，比較適合用來表達觀點，如“主語+謂語+賓語”結(jié)構(gòu)：Living in the country contributes to our health;或“主語+謂語+賓語+賓語”結(jié)構(gòu)：Sports teach people the spirit of cooperation;或“主語+謂語+賓語+賓語補足語”結(jié)構(gòu)：The development of public transportation makes travel convenient. 而以復(fù)合句結(jié)構(gòu)或復(fù)雜句結(jié)構(gòu)(包括名詞性從句、形容詞性從句和副詞性從句)為代表的長句善于表達非常復(fù)雜的邏輯關(guān)系，比較適合用來解釋不同現(xiàn)象間的關(guān)系，如：Many teenagers complain that they try to communicate with their parents and are eager to get some advice from them; however, it is always futile to do so.
由于長句和短句的不同功能，在托福寫作中，我們常用短句來表達關(guān)鍵信息，尤其是引言段中的thesis statement和正文段的topic sentence，用長句來描述引言段中的背景信息和對正文段的topic sentence進行拓展。如果我們能做到這一點，文章中就會有長短句交替出現(xiàn)，避免枯燥乏味的問題。比如下面這個段落中，作者就用一個短句表達主題思想，然后用了幾個長句來解釋這個思想。
Children in modern society become more difficult to understand than 50 years ago. Children acquire a lot more new information and ideas from various resources, such as mass media and the Internet. However, their parents always cannot accept those ideas, because they always have a stereotyped mind and are reluctant to take novel concepts. Therefore, generation gap becomes huger between parents and children in modern society, which impedes the communication between parents and the children.