In a world where your iPhone comes with a woman who answers your questions, reads your texts aloud, and gives directions, it may not seem like a big deal that computers are now writing stories．In fact, it is．A software company has essentially taught computers to write short news stories through artificial intelligence．If we can teach a computer the elements of story telling, why can't we teach our students the same thing?

　　Remember the five-paragraph essay? It's still around, still being promoted as if it were a literary form．In fact, it is an unnatural invention, one that must have been produced by academics who don't write much themselves．

　　Writers engaged in the act of trying to say something on paper don’t write artificial thesis statements(中心论点)．They needn't avoid using "I," especially when telling about a personal experience or expressing an opinion．Yet many English teachers forbid the use of our favorite pronoun in expository(说明文)writing．These are the folks who teach kids not to use the same word twice, so that if you've described a box as "small" in paragraph one, it must become "diminutive" if it shows up in paragraph two．

　　Many teachers also disapprove of using dialogue in essays．But why so? The problem with teaching writing as if it were disconnected from speech is that students start to see it simply as an unnatural activity they do in school．And yet we all tell stories and engage in long "he-said/she-said" conversations．

　　If we start from it with students, we can help them see the links that exist between speech and text．Students can learn a lot, for example, by being asked to tell a family story aloud and then to write it down．

　　Daniel Pink, in his bestselling book, "A Whole New Mind" says that American society' s enthusiasm with left-brained rational thinking is finally giving way to a more balanced approach, one where we start to value and reward right-brain thinkers －the artists, the designers, the entertainers－the people who know how to tell stories, the future belongs to the storytellers．

　　So let's give kids an early start．Let1 s help them learn the craft of writing in a way that's natural, expressive, and human．It will be a lot of fun．And if we have to break up a few topic sentences along the way to allow a story to come into being, so be it．And that, dear reader, is my thesis statement．

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