审题，是写作的第一步，却经常被大家所忽略。有太多考生只着眼于如何写出漂亮的句子和高级的词汇，而没有搞清写作的本质--考察学生针对某一话题进行准确连贯表述的能力。这也是为什么很多同学虽然英语不弱，在托福考试的独立部分中却只能拿到 fai r或 good 当中较低的4分。那么到底怎样才能更加容易地拿到独立写作的满分呢？

同学们考写作考了这么多年，大多数出题的形式都已烂熟于心，看到题目之后觉得熟悉于是兴冲冲提笔就写，其实，这种看似"熟练"的表象下藏着巨大的隐患--同学们很有可能因为看得太快而忽略某个决定题目意思的关键词。例如：

例1：

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement？ Advertising is the only main cause for people's unhealthy eating habits.

看到这个题目，同学们立刻会开始想，有没有other reasons for unhealthy habits，想出三条如：1. People's tight schedules do not allow them to eat at regular hours； 2. Sometimes people are eager to lose weight or to keep fit so that they go on "endless diets"； 3. Bearing heavy burden both physically and mentally， some consider eating constantly as their most effective stress reliever. 综上所述，advertising is not the only cause.

这个写法看起来非常完备，但其实犯了一个不起眼却严重的错误--题目不是要我们证明it is not the only cause，而是要我们去证明it is not the only main cause。多一个"main"，意思是很不一样的。如果我们只需要证明it is not the only cause，那么找出other causes即可即例1中的写法。但是，如果我们要证明it is not the only main cause，就需要证明other causes that we mentioned are also main causes，这就需要在每一段中加上一些专门的说明。或者，更简单的办法是去证明advertising is not even a cause， 直接在每段的末尾加上advertising与该段所论述的unhealthy eating habit无关的论述即可。If it is not a cause， how can it be the onlymain cause？ 这样一来，就不用通过证明还有其他main cause来反驳了，事实上，证明某种cause是main cause还是挺有难度的，因此笔者推荐同学们用后一种方式进行论述。因此，文章还是disagree，而三段的主题句分别应该是：1、1. People's tight schedules do not allow them to eat at regular hours， and it is obvious that they are too busy to be influenced by advertising； 2. Sometimes people are eager to lose weight or to keep fit so that they go on "endless diets"， and this is more like a result of human nature， the pursuit of beauty， but not advertising； 3. Bearing heavy burden both physically and mentally， some consider eating constantly as their most effective stress reliever， and it is quite clear that no advertising encourages them to do so.