托福寫作句式：長(zhǎng)短句結(jié)合
英語(yǔ)作文中句子的質(zhì)量往往其長(zhǎng)度的影響。但并不是說所有的句子越長(zhǎng)越好。在寫作中，以簡(jiǎn)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(lái)表達(dá)觀點(diǎn)，如“主語(yǔ)+謂語(yǔ)+賓語(yǔ)”結(jié)構(gòu)：Living in the country contributes to our health;或“主語(yǔ)+謂語(yǔ)+賓語(yǔ)+賓語(yǔ)”結(jié)構(gòu)：Sports teach people the spirit of cooperation;或“主語(yǔ)+謂語(yǔ)+賓語(yǔ)+賓語(yǔ)補(bǔ)足語(yǔ)”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(zhǎng)句善于表達(dá)非常復(fù)雜的邏輯關(guān)系，比較適合用來(lái)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(zhǎng)句和短句的不同功能，在托福寫作中，我們常用短句來(lái)表達(dá)關(guān)鍵信息，尤其是引言段中的thesis statement和正文段的topic sentence，用長(zhǎng)句來(lái)描述引言段中的背景信息和對(duì)正文段的topic sentence進(jìn)行拓展。如果我們能做到這一點(diǎn)，文章中就會(huì)有長(zhǎng)短句交替出現(xiàn)，避免枯燥乏味的問題。比如下面這個(gè)段落中，作者就用一個(gè)短句表達(dá)主題思想，然后用了幾個(gè)長(zhǎng)句來(lái)解釋這個(gè)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.