一致性用英语来表示是Unity，又可译为整体性。英语写作理论十分强调文章的整体性，也就是说一篇文章要有一个明确的核心思想即主旨。同样，每个段落也都应该有各自的中心思想即主题句，文中的各个段落以文章主旨为核心进行阐述和说明，段中的每一句话都要以主题句为核心来论证。这就是体现在英语文章中的一致性原则。

 

1. 一致性原则在段落中的体现

 

英语写作中的一致性原则体现在段落上。一般来说，英语是一个段落一个核心，或者说一个段落只能有一个中心思想，全段各句要围绕这一中心思想展开或铺叙，凡是与中心思想无关的句子都不能出现在段落中，否则就破坏了英语写作中的一致性原则。请看下例：

 

 

 

例1

 

Many of us impose unnecessary limitations upon ourselves. We say, or think, we can’t do something without really checking. We hold ourselves back when we could move ahead. We assume that certain good occupations are closed to us, when they’re really not closed at all. We think we’re NOT OK when we’re really just as good as the next person.

 

例1的中心思想是“我们中许多人的能力被我们自己人为地束缚住了”，后面四句都是围绕这一核心展开的。

 

 

 

例2

 

Of the several typical units in a shopping center, the department store, the five-and-ten cent store, and the drug store deserve special mention. A department store, true to its name, is composed of many departments. Indeed, it is in itself a miniature shopping center, selling virtually every thing but foodstuffs. Men’s and women’s clothing, shoes, hats, furniture, floor coverings, large and small electrical appliances, house wares, sporting goods, books, jewelry, stationery, cameras, records, cosmetics, toys, linens, curtains and draperies, silverware and chinaware—all these and many other items are part of the regular stock of the modern department store.

 

例2的核心内容是介绍百货商店，下面几句都是在讲百货店的售货范围。然而段中的第一句是统率下面三段的核心句。根据第一句，读者可以判断出下面的三段是分别围绕三方面展开。

 

 

 

例3

 

Like the department store, the five-and-ten cent store, or the dime store, offers a great variety of items for sale. But the emphasis is upon smaller items not to be found in the department store and cheaper versions of many of the basic goods the department store has to offer. Here one finds kitchen gadgets, costume jewelry, school supplies, shoe polish, candy and nuts, nails and screws. Contrary to the title of the store, very few items actually cost as little as five or ten cents, but the prices are low, especially for items such as clothing, toys, dishes, and kitchen utensils.

 

例3完全扣住the five-and-ten cent store这一关键词展开。

 

 

 

例4

 

The drug store also sells an amazing variety of goods, a far cry from the pharmacy of other nations, which sells only drugs and medicines. The filling of prescriptions is, of course, one of the basic services of the drug store. The pharmacy department must be operated by a licensed pharmacist,an expert in the compounding of drugs and medicinal ingredients. The pharmacy also sells medications such as aspirin, vitamin preparations, antiseptics and patent medicines not requiring a prescription. Other important parts of the average drug store are the soda fountain, the tobacco stand, the cosmetics counter, and the newsstand. Since the drug store is usually open evenings and Sundays, it is, in a sense, an “emergency store”, where one can buy things needed on sudden notice.

 

例4介绍了美国药店的特点，全段也是一个中心。

 

 

 

例5

 

“Of the good things in life he has about one half those of whites; of the bad he has twice those of whites”, wrote Dr King. Half of all black people lived in poor houses. They received about half as much pay as whites. They had twice as many of their people out of work and twice as many babies dead for lack of proper care. Allowing for their numbers, twice as many black men as whites fought in the war in Vietnam, and twice as many died in that war.

 

例5也是反映英语写作一致性原则比较好的一段，该段以美国黑人与白人不平等为中心思想展开。

 

2. 一致性原则在文章中的体现

 

英语写作的一致性原则不仅体现在段落上，也体现在文章上。一篇文章可能由许多段落组成，但是无论多少段落都要紧扣该篇的中心，偏离这一中心就不符合英语写作的规范。

 

请看下面的文章：

 

 

 

例1

 

There were two widely divergent influences on the early development of statistical methods. Statistics had a mother who was dedicated to keeping orderly records of governmental units (state and statistics come from the same Latin root, status)and a gentlemanly gambling father who relied on mathematics to increase his skill at playing the odds in games of chance. The influence of the mother on the offspring, statistics, is represented by counting, measuring, describing, tabulating, ordering, and the taking of censuses—all of which led to modern descriptive statistics. From the influence of the father came modern inferential statistics, which is based squarely on theories of probability.

 

Descriptive statistics involves tabulating, depicting, and describing collections of data. These data may be either quantitative, such as measures of height, intelligence, or grade level—variables that are characterized by an underlying continuum—or the data may represent qualitative variables, such as sex, college major, or personality type. Large masses of data must generally undergo a process of summarization or reduction before they are comprehensible. Descriptive statistics is a tool for describing or summarizing or reducing to comprehensible from the properties of an otherwise unwieldy mass of data.

 

Inferential statistics is a formalized body of methods for solving another class of problems that present great difficulties for the unaided human mind. This general class of problems characteristically involves attempts to make predictions using a sample of observations. For example, a school superintendent wishes

 

 to determine the proportion of children in a large school system who come to school without breakfast, have been vaccinated for flu, or whatever. Having a little knowledge of statistics, the superintendent would know that it is unnecessary and inefficient to question each child; the proportion for the entire district could be estimated fairly accurately from a sample of as few as 100 children. Thus, the purpose of inferential statistics is to predict or estimate characteristics of a population from knowledge of the characteristics of only a sample of the population.

 

例1是一篇说明文。该文第一、二、三段分别从三个方面对统计学作了简要介绍。

 

 

 

例2

 

I was very disappointed not to be able to go to the jazz concert last Friday. The announcement in the paper said that you could buy tickets at the theater box office in Richland Hills any day between 10:00 and 4:00. Since I worked from 9 o’clock to 5:30, the only time I could go to the theater was during my 45-minute lunch break. Unfortunately, the theater is on the other side of the town, and the bus service between my office and Richland Hills is not very good. But if you are lucky, you can make the round trip in 45 minutes. Last Monday, I stood at the bus stop for fifteen minutes waiting for a bus. By the time I saw one come around the corner, there was not enough time left to make the trip so I gave up and went back to the office. The same thing happened on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday. On Thursday, my luck changed. I got on a bus right away and arrived at the theater in exactly twenty minutes. When I got there, however, I found a long line of people at the box office. I heard one man say he had been waiting in line for over an hour. Realizing I would not have enough time to wait in line, I caught the next bus and headed back across the town. By Friday I realized my only hope was to make the trip by taxi. It was expensive, but I felt it would be worth it to hear the concert. The trip by taxi only took 10 minutes, but it felt like an hour to me. When I got to the theater, I was relieved to see that nobody was waiting in line. The reason, I quickly discovered, was that they had already sold all the tickets.

 

例2是一篇叙事文，全篇围绕着作者的一次经历展开，与此无关的都没出现在文章里。

 

 

 

例3

 

 

 

Ｐens

 

 

 

Small as it is,  the pen has changed the course of history, shaped the destiny of nations, facilitated the commerce of peoples, imprisoned the elusive thoughts of man, recorded events， carried news, and done more work for mankind than all other tools or weapons.

 

Progress without it would have been almost impossible. The invention of the wheel and screw, the introduction of steam-power, the use of electricity, all these have changed the lives of millions; but the pen has done more. It has removed mountains. It has prepared the way for all advancement. Whatever plans have been drawn up, whatever laws formulated, have come from the pen.

 

Today the pen is more highly esteemed than ever. The typewriters clicking in every continent are the drudges, the pen is the aristocrat, governing all and giving the final flourish. In the past the pen did all the work, for all writing intended to last for any length of time was valid only if written with pen and ink. The lawyers took up their pens and wrote the law of the land from the days when papyrus was first used to the day Magna Carta was compiled, and for 500 years after. The most famous letters in the world were written with a pen; and it was with a pen that the greatest thinkers of all time wrote down their thoughts.

 

The Law and the Prophets, the four Gospels, the letters of St Paul, how should we have had these today had they not been preserved for us by the pen? To the pen we owe The Pilgrim餾 Progress, Paradise Lost, The Canterbury Tales; and it was with his pen that Shakespeare shook the world.

 

The servant of the greatest, the pen is the slave of the humblest. The serving maid and schoolboy may drive it as they will.

 

Behind all we do today is the pen. We cannot sign a cheque or write a letter or buy a house or complete a business transaction without our pen. The editor stirs’ the world with it, the student would fail to pass his examination without it, a deed is worthless till our name is written with pen and ink, though the signature is there it becomes irrevocable. For the stroke of a pen is legally binding, and few things are more thrilling or mysterious.

 

With a stroke of the pen Bradshaw sent Charles Stuart to the block. Queen Elizabeth took up her pen and signed a document, which hurried Mary Queen of Scots to her tragic end.

 

Queen Victoria saved a life with her pen, for, when the Iron Duke gave her a death warrant to sign she wrote Pardoned, so giving a bad soldier a chance to make good. When the Declaration of American Independence was signed John Hancock was the first to write his name. “There, (said he)I guess King George will be able to read that.”

 

Our coming into the world is recorded with pen and ink. Before we have been at school a day our name is enrolled with a pen. We cannot be married till we have signed the register. A pen records our death.

 

The next time we take up our pen to write let us remember that we hold in our hand the most powerful instrument mankind possesses.

 

例3这篇文章有十个段落，如果认真阅读一下就可发现段段都有各自的核心，只要出现与该中心有差异的观点或事例，作者马上就另起一段，而每一段又都是围绕全文的中心“笔”展开的。

 

以上各例无论是以段为例，还是以篇章为例，都体现了一致性原则。

 

下面给出几篇一致性原则体现较差的学生例文。

 

   

 

例4

 

Watching TV has become a very common activity in every family. It has become a necessity to some modern young people. And it is also an easy way to fritter away retired people’s time. By watching news report, people can know recent social events and important affairs of homeland and the world, or are attracted by a TV play. However, watching TV cannot take place of reading and outdoors activities.  But in brief, watching TV has already been a part of modern life.

 

在例4中，作者对英语一致性原则可能了解不多或掌握不好。根据第一句和最后一句我们可以推测作者的中心思想是“看电视已成为每个家庭最常见的活动”，第二句、第三句基本扣住中心思想展开，但是到画线句，作者就开始偏离中心了，However后带的内容应另起一段阐明。这种情况的出现会影响对全文的理解，使该段段意表达不清。

 

 

 

例5

 

Today the computer is widely used in the society. It is used in offices, homes and universities and so on. Using computers, we can work efficiently. And it costs us less time to do things more than before. So the job can be done by few people. Thus the rest persons can work in other departments. More and more people want to learn how to use computer with the development of society. In a word, the computers become popular.

 

例5全段有两个核心，一是电脑广泛应用，二是电脑所带来的效率。作者在第一、二句写电脑的广泛应用，后面几句连续写效率，没有把握住一致性原则，因而使读者不明白文章到底想说什么。所以，没有掌握好一致性原则，就不能做到表达清楚。

 

从以上正反两方面的例子我们可以得出这样的结论：学习和掌握一致性原则是英语写作的基础。