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Writing effective texts

0 Writing is a learned behavior, and as all are,

culturally mediated.

0 Room for improvement.


0 Different expectations from an English audience than
from a Spanish audience.

Writing a good paragraph

0 A paragraph consists of a series of sentences which

develop one main idea, an idea that needs to be

supported with examples or illustrations.

0 It should be uniCied, complete, ordered and coherent.

Writing a good paragraph

0 Begin your paragraph with a topic sentence

(= a statement of opinion or intent, never a fact)

0 The subject should be narrow enough to discuss in one
paragraph; if it is too general, there will be no focus or
controlling idea. ( one or two controlling ideas max.)
0 For example: "Alcala de Henares is a beautiful city." The
subject is Alcala de Henares and the controlling idea is
beautiful city. All the sentences you write after should
support that controlling idea (all of them should illustrate
through examples or descriptions the beauty of the city).
* No other subject, such as location or population should
be included. These factors are irrelevant to the controlling
idea of beauty.

Writing a good paragraph

0 Your paragraph should be complete (the objective is to give

enough support to convince the reader that there is a basis to your

opinion).
0 A good technique is to read the topic sentence and then ask
yourself some questions about it, such as How? Why? Where? and
so forth. In our case, we would probably ask, "Why is Alcala
beautiful? We should give the reader enough examples to show
that there are indeed reasons for saying that it is beautiful.
0 The basic techniques of support are
0 examples
0 facts
0 statistics
0 physical description
0 personal experience

Writing a good paragraph

0 A paragraph should be ordered. Having a logical order

makes your paragraph easier to read and understand. For

example, you can start with a general idea and then
illustrate your point with speciCic examples. Or start with a
question and then provide the answers.
0 The basic orders are:
0 general-to-particular (or viceversa)
0 wide-to-narrow (or viceversa)
0 top-to-bottom (or viceversa)
0 question-to-answer
0 cause-to-effect

0 Imagine you are a camera and follow a progressive

movement and direction, whether physical or logical,

rather than jump around making your reader dizzy.

Writing a good paragraph

0 Your paragraph should be coherent.
0 You can achieve this by using cohesive devices such as logical

transitions, inner sentence connectors, parallel structures, pronouns

that clearly refer to the antecedent, repetition of key words, synonyms
or words from the same semantic Cield.

0 If your paragraph is well written and coherent, you should be

able to mix up all the sentences and someone else would be able
to reconstruct it in the original order.

0 If we are writing about the beauty of Alcala, we should use

synonyms for beauty, harmony, refer several times to

monuments or historic buildings and so forth to remind the
reader that our controlling idea is that of beauty. If we are going
to list monuments, then numerical transitions will help. In other
cases, logical transitions are essential.

Writing a good paragraph

0 Your paragraph should always have a concluding

sentence to signal that the main idea is Cinished and the

next paragraph will develop a new main idea.
0 The concluding sentence should either
0 restate the idea of the topic sentence using other words
0 sum up the points of support
0 give a logical consequence
0 point out how the reader might use the knowledge provided
0 predict the outcome of a situation
0 provide a solution to the problem.

0 In our example, we might want to repeat that Alcala is

attractive or suggest that the reader come to visit and

enjoy the city.

Writing a good essay

0An essay follows similar rules as a paragraph, but

all is further developed.

0If the topic sentence gives us the main idea of the
paragraph, a thesis statement will announce the
main idea of the essay.
0Since an essay is longer, the thesis statement will
contain more controlling ideas. In an essay, these
are called secondary ideas.
0The minimum essay usually has four or Cive
paragraphs: that is, an introduction and three body
paragraphs, each developing a secondary idea of the
thesis. The topic sentence of each one of those
paragraphs will be the secondary idea that is going
to be developed.

Writing a good essay

0The introduction is meant to announce the subject

and catch the reader's attention. It usually ends

with the thesis statement. Good introductory
techniques include:

0 giving background information needed to understand

the subject
0 a rhetorical question or a quote to attract attention
0 an anecdote can also be used to spark the reader's
interest.

0The conclusion can either be added to the last body

paragraph, or, if more complete, it could constitute

its own paragraph. The concluding techniques are
the same as explained for the paragraph, but in an
essay the conclusion is usually longer than one
sentence.

Writing a good essay

0 Writing an essay is a complex process, but by
0 constructing good body paragraphs
0 using sound logic
0 carefully supporting all your claims and opinions
0 taking the audience into account
0 you can achieve clear and convincing essays!