八卦无所不在：（四）坚持原则有多不容易

Gossip Is Everywhere (4): How Hard It Is to Stick to Principles

> By Li Xiaolai · 2009-08-08 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113113424/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/7290.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

<http://english-in-use.com/index.php/636.html>

---

Many years ago, when I was still teaching at New Oriental, I was once the subject of a student complaint; many years later I still [Translator's note: the original writes 我的, literally "my"; 我仍 ("I still") is likely meant; translated by the intended sense] remember the original word for word:

> This teacher doesn't teach vocabulary, doesn't teach grammar, doesn't teach templates and doesn't provide model essays in writing class! I don't know how a teacher like this became a New Oriental teacher! Aren't New Oriental teachers famous for their techniques?!
> [Translator's note: quoted by the author: a student's complaint, not Li Xiaolai's words.]

And in the many years after that, I also stuck to not teaching vocabulary, not teaching grammar, not teaching templates and not providing model essays. I knew that a writing class should be a thinking class; to write clearly you must first think clearly. I knew that the real problem students face is not that they "can't write it out," but that they "have nothing meaningful to write."

Do "dazzling words" really exist in a language? I don't believe it. We never meet an architect who takes friends to visit his building and then suddenly points and shouts: "Look! That brick there…… none before it, none to come after!" Nor can we imagine possibly meeting a famous author who, while reading aloud from his own work, suddenly stops in excitement and shouts, "Look! This word…… none before it, none to come after!" If there really were some word with "none before it and none to come after," probably nobody but he himself could understand it.

Grammar is important, of course, but do I need to teach it all over again? Countless teachers have taught grammar one after another, and without exception they have all ended in failure. Why? Because students themselves don't take grammar seriously; and once students really understand the importance of grammar, grammar books aren't hard to understand at all, are they? If you can't remember it after one reading, read it a few more times; if you still can't remember it after a few more readings, look it up a few more times whenever you meet a problem—could you really fail to sort it out for your whole life? Many people never sort it out their whole lives only because they don't take grammar seriously in the first place.

Are templates useful? Useful. Only, what's useful is not the kind of "universal template" commonly believed in (actually just garbage), but the "powerful patterns" whose might we've already seen before. However, templates can't solve the fundamental problem. Because the prerequisite for using patterns is having enough elements available to organize; people who don't know how to observe, don't know how to accumulate and don't know how to think won't have enough material (the moment it's "for example," all they can do is "for a zample" [Translator's note: a joke in the original: 一个 ("a, one") is swapped in for the "ex-" of "example," i.e. the writer has run out of examples]); what good is even the cleverest template then?

Are model essays useful? Is there any means of learning writing more absurd than memorizing model essays? At most a model essay can serve as a tiny bit of reference for getting started. When countless people memorize one model essay and, in the exam room, write the same thing, what's the probability of not being judged as copying? You don't even need to think with your brain; even thinking with your ass you should know that, right?

But I had to compromise, or else I'd be booed off the stage by the students. What students want is not what they ought to want; this is not entirely their fault—they really don't understand, which is why they want to learn; it's just that at this moment they misunderstand their own situation and mistakenly demand unreasonable solutions. If I were booed off the stage, I'd have no chance to tell the truth and do real work.

Clinton's wife Hillary once said these moving words:

> Good leaders can take the masses where they want to go; great leaders can take the masses where they never thought of going but ought to go.
> [Translator's note: quoted by the author, rendered here from his Chinese; not Li Xiaolai's words. The well-known English line of this kind, "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go, but ought to be," is usually attributed to Rosalynn Carter.]

I had to compromise. But how to compromise? After thinking it over I went to the editors at the publishing house and told them I was willing to provide them with a collection of high-scoring TOEFL model essays. Actually, they had approached me before, and I had turned them down on the grounds that "model essays are fucking useless" [Translator's note: the original writes 有个屁用, literally "have a fart's worth of use"]. They were very surprised at why I'd reversed my attitude, and I didn't explain much. Because the earlier Breaking Through Core TOEFL Vocabulary in 21 Days (《TOEFL核心词汇21天突破》) had sold very well, the editors gave my new book their full support; from submitting the manuscript to publication took only a little over a month (first review, second review, third review, re-proofing)—which counts as "lightning speed."

There was an episode in between. Earlier, in preparing lessons, I had written all 185 prompts in the question bank at the time, and for many of the essay prompts I had written more than one essay. But in the course of discussing it with the editors, we changed our minds and decided to use only about thirty or so of them, because if they were all written by me alone, the line of thinking would be confined to a single routine, which would be bad for readers. So we quickly set up a team made up of 6 foreigners, assigning each person twenty-odd essays, and requiring them to finish a set amount on schedule.

When the first draft came back, one look nearly made me faint with rage: most of the essays had muddled logic and vague supporting details; true, there were no grammar mistakes or spelling mistakes (they were Native Speakers, after all), but they completely failed to meet the scoring standard for a full score. When I sent back revision comments, the foreigners refused, saying "We are Native Speakers!" There was nothing for it; I called these foreigners together for a meeting, explained in detail the public scoring standards of the TOEFL writing exam, and brought out a pile of examples they had written—super exaggerated, unbearable, logically muddled, with unclear details—as evidence. After a full six hours without even eating lunch, everyone calmly accepted the new task: "Redo it until it meets the requirements; pay per essay increased by 25%."

After three months of hassle, the book was finally published. After that, I began, in class, with full confidence and firmness, "not teaching vocabulary, not teaching grammar, not teaching templates and not providing model essays." Of course, after that I was never complained about again. Another thing, not unexpectedly, was that High-Scoring TOEFL Essays (《TOEFL高分作文》) has sold very well all along, not one bit less than the earlier Breaking Through Core TOEFL Vocabulary in 21 Days.

Copyright: © LookMinds. Our own edited text and translation, not a substitute for the original; rights in the original belong to the author and the platform. Please see the original link.