比较的话题在书面表达中经常会出现，一些学生深感头疼，其实掌握了如何表达的要领之后，很轻松地就能完成一篇书面表达了。第16单元的Writing部分要求以回复邮件的形式来写一篇小短文。要求对比中国和美国在地区、语言、民族、城市等方面的异同。写作时注意把握以下几个方面：  

1． 本文要求在邮件中描述两个国家， 这样的文章用一般现在时就可以。我们通常先写它的地理位置、面积、人口，然后再根据题目要求来描述其他的方面(民族、风俗习惯、经济文化等)， 通过逐条逐项对比的方式来进行对比。

2． 本文要求比较两个国家， 就要考虑和国家有关的一些单词和句型。比如：the size of, have an area of, cover, lie in, be in, have a population of, the population of ... is, the languages spoken in the country are ... or ..., ... are / is spoken等。

3． 重要的单词、句型确定之后，可以简单地连成句子， 然后变换句式， 避免同一种句式的重复， 最后用适当的连词把句子连接起来，形成一篇短文。在比较事物的短文里常用的词语有： as, like, similarly, while, but, however, compared to等。请参考以下的范文：

Dear Jane,

Thank you for your e-mail. I’m very happy to tell you something about China.

Like the USA, China is also a large country with an area of 9.6 million km2, a little bigger than your 9.4 million km2. However, the population of China is many times larger, nearly 1.3 billion compared to 283 million in your country. Many different languages are spoken in China, such as Chinese, Mongolian and Tibetan. In the USA the main languages are English and Spanish. Both countries have many minority groups. In China, there are 55 minority groups such as Huis, Tibetans, Miao, Yi, etc, while Central Americans, Blacks, Jews are the main ones in the USA. Important cities in the USA are Washington DC, New York and Los Angeles which are either on the east or west coast; the important cities in China are Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing, which are mainly on the east of the country.
I hope this will help you. If you want to know more about China, please tell me and I’ll be glad to hear from you.

Yours,

Li Ming