No matter what occasion, as long as it is for middle school students, one of my most frequent suggestions is to develop the habit of keeping a diary. Middle school is a critical period in life, and many good habits and bad habits are formed during this period. There are two good habits, once developed, which will benefit you for life. I mean the habit of reading and keeping a diary. Here I just talk about the benefits of keeping a diary. First, a diary is a safe for years. Everyone's life is only once, and life is made up of life experiences every day, every year and every stage. If you love life, you will cherish your own experiences, joys and sorrows, feelings and feelings, because they are what you really have. Unfortunately, all this will inevitably be lost with the passage of time. In order to keep them, people have come up with various methods, such as using photography and video to preserve some scenes in life. However, I think keeping a diary is a better way. The capacity of words is much larger than that of images. By keeping a diary, we seem to put the lost days in the safe, and when the safe is opened one day, these days will reappear vividly in front of us. Memory is unreliable. For a person who doesn't keep a diary, except for some particularly impressive experiences, most of the past events will gradually blur and even sink into the abyss of forgetting forever. On the contrary, if you have a diary as the basis, even the details of many years ago are more likely to be awakened in your memory. In this sense, diaries enrich people's lives. Second, the diary is the secret room of the soul. People living in the world should not only live an external life, such as going to school and interacting with classmates, but also live an internal life. Inner life is not mysterious, but actually a person is talking to himself. You read a book that moved you, you saw a scenery that intoxicated you, you met a person who made you happy or sad, and at these times, you may have some feelings that you don't want or can't tell others, so you can tell yourself with a pen. When you do this, you are writing a diary, and at the same time you are living an inner life. Some people are only used to being with others, talking to others and having nothing to say to themselves. Once they are alone, they will feel bad. Such people are superficial after all. People must learn to listen to their own voices and communicate with themselves, so as to gradually form a deeper inner world, and keeping a diary is an effective means to help us achieve this goal. Third, diaries are faithful friends. We can't live without friends in this world. True friendship enables us to get help in difficult times, comfort in painful times, and always get warmth and encouragement. However, please don't forget that everyone can have a special friend except all his friends, and that is a diary. In a sense, it is your most loyal friend. No one-including your closest friend-is your full-time friend, only a diary can be said to be. Other friends are always busy with their own affairs and can't care about you, but the diary always listens to your call and will never refuse to listen to your story. A person has developed the habit of keeping a diary, but there will still be lonely times, but it will not be unbearable because of the diary. In a society where privacy is protected by law, the loyalty of a diary is that it will not betray you. No matter what you say to it, it is only kept in your heart and will never be made public against your will. Fourth, diaries are the cradle of writers. To be a qualified writer, the basic condition is to have true feelings and be good at expressing them in appropriate language. In this respect, keeping a diary is the best training, because a diary is written for yourself, and a person will never give himself anything empty and false. Diary plays an irreplaceable role in improving writing ability. The role of composition depends largely on the level of teachers. If the teacher's level is low and the guidance is improper, it will even play a bad role. Unlike writing a composition, when writing a diary, you are free to write only what you are interested in, and you don't have to rack your brains for topics that you are not interested in. You can also write in a way that you are satisfied with, whether it meets the requirements of teachers or fixed norms. Writing the subject matter you are interested in according to your own satisfactory way is the main feature of literary creation, so keeping a diary is closer to creation than writing a composition. In fact, many excellent writers start their creation by keeping diaries, and if they want to continue to be excellent, they must always keep a free mind when keeping diaries.
I have said so much about the benefits of keeping a diary. So, can a person get these benefits by writing a diary casually? Of course not. In my opinion, to obtain these benefits, three conditions must be observed. First, insist, especially write every day at the beginning, make up the next day when it is too late, never be lazy, never tolerate yourself, and form a habit. Second, be serious, write down the things and feelings that have touched you seriously, try to find the exact expression, and never be careless or perfunctory, so that the diary written will have the values listed above. Third, it's private, and it's basically hidden from people. In this way, when you write a diary, you can eliminate the interference of other people's eyes, face yourself frankly, and tell the truth in every sentence. Writing here, I have to give a piece of advice to teachers and parents all over the world, because to comply with this third condition, you must have your understanding and cooperation. You must distinguish between diary and composition. Of course, Mr. China can arrange for students to write several diaries and then correct them, but such diaries are actually compositions, but the genre is just diaries. I now advocate that students keep a veritable diary, which means that teachers and parents must respect their privacy, and no one can read it unless the children volunteer. I have heard of such a thing more than once: some children spontaneously keep private diaries, and when parents and teachers find out, they peek or make a surprise inspection. Once they find something that they think is inappropriate, they will accuse and humiliate them. This is downright stupid and barbaric, and it is the destruction of children's growing free mind and independent personality. We should regard children's private diaries as inviolable sacred places for them, and even restrain our curiosity and encourage children not to show them to us. We should believe that the more we respect children's spiritual privacy, the easier it is to cultivate children's qualities such as sincerity, self-confidence and independent thinking, and the more they can grow up healthily mentally. There is no need to worry about being separated from each other. In fact, only in an atmosphere of equality and respect can we have substantive communication with children. There is no need to check the diary to understand the students' Chinese level. Whether a student keeps a diary seriously or not will be reflected in his composition and will be seen by a discerning teacher.