英语单词大师：Writing Prompt for Teens

 AA:   I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: encouraging high school students to write about the issues they want the next U.S. president to address.

RS:   That is the aim right now of the National Writing Project, a federally funded effort to improve writing and learning in American schools. Elyse Eidman-Aadahl is the director of national programs. ELYSE EIDMAN-AADAHL: "We wanted to give teachers an online writing and publishing opportunity that they could tailor to their local curriculum and use as a way to help students use writing to think through their learning about the issues that were at stake in this current election. And so we now have close to six hundred schools participating.

"And in each one of those, teachers are approaching it with their students slightly differently. It could be a science teacher who's investigating science and environmental issues and will help students write about those issues. It could be an English language teacher who's having students pick the topics that are of most interest to them and make a persuasive¹ case for them.

"In all those cases, the young people are not writing to pick their candidate, so much as what they are doing is they are talking about the issues that matter to them as young people because it's their future. And so we've titled the project actually 'Writing Our Future.'"RS: "And this letter really is a persuasive letter. It's a letter illustrating² someone's ideas and wanting the president to listen."ELYSE EIDMAN-AADAHL: "That's exactly right. And persuasion³ is so much about two things, I think. It's about having a point and being clear about your point and your evidence for it, and also having an audience and thinking about how to tailor that argument to make it something that will be persuasive to an audience.

"So in addition to the candidates, who we hope will be reading it, along with members of Congress and congressional staffs, the Web site that will publish these essays and letters will be read broadly by the public. So we're hoping that giving this sense of a broad audience will really be a reason for young people to be thoughtful, to research, to write and revise and revise, to try to make that persuasive piece as broadly communicative as possible."RS: "How are you going to get these letters out to the public?"ELYSE EIDMAN-AADAHL: "Well, first off, of course, we do have to get letters in and on the Web site. So that certainly is step one. Actually, in addition to press coverage⁴ that we will have primarily here in the U.S., we also are going to be identifying letters especially by geographic⁵ region and we are going to be sending them to congressional offices.

"We're also having a second campaign where we're supporting people to read the letters and then make multimedia⁶ and video projects based on what they read in the letters. And we'll be using the letters and those bits of video to tour around the country, to hold community events, so the people can again hear the kinds of topics and issues that young people have written about."AA: "Now, after the election, do you have any plans for what to do with this Web site, with all the letters?"ELYSE EIDMAN-AADAHL: "It's a good question! In addition to the video work and sharing those letters with people regionally, we want to see what's there, because there may be so many different things that we could do. There could be a way to pull them together by topic or other structure to provide readers for young people, so that they can see samples of high-quality student writing while they themselves are learning to become writers."RS:   Elyse Eidman-Aadahl at the National Writing Project, which is sponsoring "Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future" for students age thirteen to eighteen. Eighteen is the U.S. voting age. The deadline for teachers to register is this Friday, September twelfth, at nwp.org. That's nwp.org.

AA:    Elyse says she would welcome contributions from teachers of English abroad. And so would we. Here is a chance for young people to practice persuasive writing. We'll post letters we receive on our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster, and we'll read some on the air. We'll also forward them to the National Writing Project for possible inclusion on their site.

RS:   Our address is [email protected]. Or click on Contact Us at voanews.com/wordmaster. Be sure to include your name and age and also your mailing address if you would like to receive a VOA souvenir. Next week we'll talk more about the work of the National Writing [email protected]. Or click on Contact Us at voanews.com/wordmaster. Be sure to include your name and age and also your mailing address if you would like to receive a VOA souvenir. Next week we'll talk more about the work of the National Writing Project.

AA:   And that's WORDMASTER for this week. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

AA:   I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: encouraging high school students to write about the issues they want the next U.S. president to address.

RS:   That is the aim right now of the National Writing Project, a federally funded effort to improve writing and learning in American schools. Elyse Eidman-Aadahl is the director of national programs. ELYSE EIDMAN-AADAHL: "We wanted to give teachers an online writing and publishing opportunity that they could tailor to their local curriculum and use as a way to help students use writing to think through their learning about the issues that were at stake in this current election. And so we now have close to six hundred schools participating.

"And in each one of those, teachers are approaching it with their students slightly differently. It could be a science teacher who's investigating science and environmental issues and will help students write about those issues. It could be an English language teacher who's having students pick the topics that are of most interest to them and make a persuasive case for them.

"In all those cases, the young people are not writing to pick their candidate, so much as what they are doing is they are talking about the issues that matter to them as young people because it's their future. And so we've titled the project actually 'Writing Our Future.'"RS: "And this letter really is a persuasive letter. It's a letter illustrating someone's ideas and wanting the president to listen."ELYSE EIDMAN-AADAHL: "That's exactly right. And persuasion is so much about two things, I think. It's about having a point and being clear about your point and your evidence for it, and also having an audience and thinking about how to tailor that argument to make it something that will be persuasive to an audience.

"So in addition to the candidates, who we hope will be reading it, along with members of Congress and congressional staffs, the Web site that will publish these essays and letters will be read broadly by the public. So we're hoping that giving this sense of a broad audience will really be a reason for young people to be thoughtful, to research, to write and revise and revise, to try to make that persuasive piece as broadly communicative as possible."RS: "How are you going to get these letters out to the public?"ELYSE EIDMAN-AADAHL: "Well, first off, of course, we do have to get letters in and on the Web site. So that certainly is step one. Actually, in addition to press coverage that we will have primarily here in the U.S., we also are going to be identifying letters especially by geographic region and we are going to be sending them to congressional offices.

"We're also having a second campaign where we're supporting people to read the letters and then make multimedia and video projects based on what they read in the letters. And we'll be using the letters and those bits of video to tour around the country, to hold community events, so the people can again hear the kinds of topics and issues that young people have written about."AA: "Now, after the election, do you have any plans for what to do with this Web site, with all the letters?"ELYSE EIDMAN-AADAHL: "It's a good question! In addition to the video work and sharing those letters with people regionally, we want to see what's there, because there may be so many different things that we could do. There could be a way to pull them together by topic or other structure to provide readers for young people, so that they can see samples of high-quality student writing while they themselves are learning to become writers."RS:   Elyse Eidman-Aadahl at the National Writing Project, which is sponsoring "Letters to the Next President: Writing Our Future" for students age thirteen to eighteen. Eighteen is the U.S. voting age. The deadline for teachers to register is this Friday, September twelfth, at nwp.org. That's nwp.org.

AA:    Elyse says she would welcome contributions from teachers of English abroad. And so would we. Here is a chance for young people to practice persuasive writing. We'll post letters we receive on our Web site, voanews.com/wordmaster, and we'll read some on the air. We'll also forward them to the National Writing Project for possible inclusion on their site.

RS:   Our address isAA:   And that's WORDMASTER for this week. With Rosanne Skirble, I'm Avi Arditti.

1 persuasive   

adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的

参考例句：

• His arguments in favour of a new school are very persuasive.他赞成办一座新学校的理由很有说服力。
• The evidence was not really persuasive enough.证据并不是太有说服力。

2 illustrating   

给…加插图( illustrate的现在分词 )； 说明； 表明； （用示例、图画等）说明

参考例句：

• He upstaged the other speakers by illustrating his talk with slides. 他演讲中配上幻灯片，比其他演讲人更吸引听众。
• Material illustrating detailed structure of graptolites has been etched from limestone by means of hydrofluoric acid. 表明笔石详细构造的物质是利用氢氟酸从石灰岩中侵蚀出来。

3 persuasion   

n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派

参考例句：

• He decided to leave only after much persuasion.经过多方劝说，他才决定离开。
• After a lot of persuasion,she agreed to go.经过多次劝说后，她同意去了。

4 coverage   

n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖

参考例句：

• There's little coverage of foreign news in the newspaper.报纸上几乎没有国外新闻报道。
• This is an insurance policy with extensive coverage.这是一项承保范围广泛的保险。

5 geographic   

adj.地理学的，地理的

参考例句：

• The city's success owes much to its geographic position. 这座城市的成功很大程度上归功于它的地理位置。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Environmental problems pay no heed to these geographic lines. 环境问题并不理会这些地理界限。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法

6 multimedia   

adj.多种手段的，多媒体的；n.多媒体

参考例句：

• Multimedia is the combination of computer and video technology.多媒体是计算机和视频技术的结合。
• Adam raised the issue of multimedia applications and much useful discussion ensued.亚当提出了多媒体应用的问题，从而引发了许多有益的讨论。