一、引语法：引用名人名言、人们熟悉的谚语、格言、俗语、成语等，使文章富于哲理，也可直接引用文章的人物的话语。例如：引用这一名言作为开头，就基本上确定了文章的发展方向。例如：

As the proverb goes, “No one knows the value of health until he loses it.” In other words, nothing is more valuable than health.

 

二、主题句法：文章的一开头就点明全文的主题，然后再围绕这一主题进行发挥。例如：

One of life's pleasures is friendship. And one of life's sorrows is the loss of such a relationship. There are three common causes for lost of friendship: betrayal, boredom, and distance.

文章一上来就点明失去友谊的三种原因，下文分别加以详细地描述和分析。

 

三、数字统计法：引用具体的数字作为文章的开端，使读者对要阐述的问题有更感性的认识，再进一步分析、说明、进入正文。例如：

Look at your watch for just one minute. During that time, the population of the world increased by many eighty-five people. Perhaps you think that isn't too much. In the next hour, more than 5,000 additional people will be living on this planet. So it goes, hour after hour. In one day, there are about 12,000 additional mouths to feed. Multiply this by 365. What will happen in a hundred years?

文章的开端并没有老生长谈说人口问题如何严峻，而是采用生动的数字，给读者留下深刻的印象。在这一基础上，作者在进行论述则势如破竹了。

 

四、提问法：在起始段提出一个或几个问题，引出论点和主题。再解释展开论证。例如：

Should men and women be equal? This a question much talked about by many people. Some hold the opinion that men are superior to women in many ways. For one thing, many a job men do can hardly be done by women, who are physically not strong enough; and for another, most of the world-famous scientists or statesmen are found to be males. Moreover, the whole human society seems to have all along been dominated by men only. Isn't it evident enough to show that men are a lot stronger than women? Hence, the former should enjoy more rights than the latter.

文章开头就提出问题：男女是否应该平等，然后列举出一些人的答案，在进行综合阐述，全文条例十分清晰。

 

五、惊语法：采用令人惊奇、震动的句子开头，引起先声夺人的效果，使文章引人入胜。例如：

If a person has a terrible secret, we may say he had "a skeleton in the cupboard". But the only one I know who has a real skeleton in the cupboard is George Carlton. 

碗橱里面藏着骷髅，令人心惊胆战，不由得想看个究竟。

 

六、定义法：定义法即对说明的事物、现象等下定义，再进入正文。通常是对文章的标题、主题、关键词予以定义，然后再用举例、推理等各种方法进行发挥。例如：

What is health food? Health food is such as improves your health if you take it according to a proper arrangement.

 

七、背景法：介绍文章时间发生所处的背景，即时间、地点、人物，为事物的发展创造条件。例如：

The path led to tiny village perched on the steep side of a mountain. The place consisted of a straggling unmade road which was lined one ither side by small houses. Even under a clear blue sky, the village looked forbidding, as all the houses were built of grey mud bricks.

 

八、人物法：交待文章的主要人物或其他人物，以人物为线索展开故事情节。例如：

My paternal grandmother, who lived with us from the time my parents married until she died in 1980, was the most decisive influence in my life. She sat at the center of our household. Her room —and my mother always saw to it that she had the best room, specious and sunny, with a fireplace if possible—was the place to which we immediately went when we came in from playing or from school. There my father went when he arrived in the house. There, sitting by the fire, erect and intense she listened to us and to all of mother's friends and to our friends. In my early childhood she was also very active—cooking, preserving, growing flowers in the garden, and attentive to all the activities of the country and the farm.

 

九、故事法：通过故事开头，转入正题，再进行说明、议论，能起到引人入胜的效果。例如：

In one way of thinking, failure is part of life. In another way,failure may be a way towards success. The "spider-story" is often told. Robert Bruce, leader of the Scots in the 13th century, was hiding in a cave from the English. He watched a spider spinning a web. The spider tried to reach across a rough place in the rock. He tried six times to span the gap. On the seventh time he made it and went on to spin his web. Bruce is said to have take heart and to have gone on to defeat the English...Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, made hundreds of models that failed before he found the right way to make one. Once he was asked why he kept on trying to make a new type of battery when he had failed so often. He replied, “Failure? I have no failures.Now I know 50,000 ways it won't work.”

文章起始就采用两个著名的故事，说明伟人们如何从失败中吸取经验教训，毫不气馁，走上成功之路。