Book: writing to communicate - essay and the short research paper - (Cynthia A.Boardman)
1. The process of writing
Paragraph Organization: topic sentence, the body, concluding sentence
1) topic sentence:
* includes a topic (what you are talking about) and a controling idea (what you are saying a bout the topic).
Ex : Music (topic) plays an impoprtant in my life (controlling topic).
* includes introductory sentence - connection - topic sentence:
Ex: Most high school students have no interst of poetry (introtory sentence). However (connection), using song lyrics, which are a type of poetry, is the good way to teach them the basics of poetic style (topic sentence).
2). The body: contains support for the topic sentence such as explainations, examples, and reasons. there are 2 kinds of support sentence
* major supporting sentences
* minor supporting sentneces
3) The Concluding sentence: summarizing the supportting sentences.
Essay structure: introduce paragraph - body paragraphs - conclusion paragraph
1) introduce paragraph: hook to get reader interested in your essay:
* general to specific: start with a broad topic and narrow it down to a manageable topic
* a shot anecdote: write a person story relates the topic
* a historical introduction: write history of the topic
At the end of the paragraph is the thesis statement: which includes a topic and a controlling idea or showing intent or showing opiniion.
2) Body paragraphs: includes some paragraphs to explain for the topic. At the end of each paragraph, you should has a transition sentence (or brigde) to the next paragraph.
Note 1: avoiding choppy sentences
Idea in sentences an be connected by combining two sentences to make a compound sentence.
By addition of coordinating conjunctions and transitions, sentences are better connected to each other and, therefore, less choppy.
| Adition | chronology | Contrast | Emphasis | Example | Result | |
| Transitions | furthermore in addition moreover | first second third next the after that later on before that, previously | however in contrast, one other words, on the other hand, otherwise | indeed in fact | for example for instance | as a result consequently therefore nevertheless, nonetheless |
| Coordinating conjunctions | and | after before | but yet whereas, while, if, meanwhile | so even though although | ||
Note 2: Using participles as adjectives: the present participle of a verb can be used as an adjective.
Ex: The song interests the teenager (the song is doing an action, interest is a verb can be change by interesting song).
Ex: the song intrigues the teenager ( change: the intrigued teenager)
3) Steps in writing process:
step 1: Understanding the Assignment
step 2: Brainstoeming: What are you writing? What relates? wwhen, wwhere, who... (you can you mindmap)
step 3: Organizing paragraph
step 4: Write a first draft: (walk away from your eassay atleast one hour or even a day. After that you can read your essay with a fresh eye.
step 5: Rewriting
content: - is the thesis statement presented clearly? - do all the body paragraph support the thesis statement?
Organization: - circle a topic, and underline the controlling idea? - do you have topic sentence? do you have concluding sentence? do you have bridge centence?
Conclusion: what elements does the concluding paragraph have? (summary, restatement of the thesis statement, final comment)
Language: has the writer avoided using choppy sentences? Do you think commas and semicolons are used correctly?
step 6: final version
2. The cause and effect essay
Analyze the reason and examine the results.
1) identifying cause and effect
Note 1: problems of oversimplification
Ex: the cause of the acccident was the heavy trafic (it is oversimplisification because there are many reason an lead to the accident ). => one cause of the accident was the heavy trafic.
Note 2: confuse between correlation and causation.
Two evens can have corelation, it is not a cauation.
2) Determining true cause and effect relationship:
ogrannization: 1. introduction 2. (cause 1 -> effect 1; cause 2 -> effect 2; cause 3 -> effect 3) 3. conclusion
Note 1: avoiding stringy sentence:
to avoid stringy sentence, you can replace coordinating coonjunctions by transitions.
Note 2: Collocation (collocation are two or more words that commonly go together.
EX: some phrase (collocation) about cause and effect: (... brought about ...., ...bring forth..., ...gave rise to ..., ... leads to ..., ...result from ...)
Adjective and noun collocations: the immediate cause of the ... , the underlying cause ..., a likely cause of ..., ... desired effect, the full effect of ..., a modest effect on ...
Idiom collocation: ... feel the effect of ..., suffer the consequences of ..., set the foundation for ...
Note 3: avoiding run-on sentences and comma splices
Note 4: commonly confused words: verbs and nouns
Ex: accept something (verb), accept (prep); adapt (v - change to fit with a situation) and adopt (v - acept a suggestion); advice (n) and advise (v); affect (v) and effect (n); used to (modal verb) and be used to (to be comfortable with a situation); convince (v - make someone feel certain that something is true) and persuade (v - make someone decide todo something); imply (v) and infer (v).