EFFECTIVE PREWRITING TECHNIQUES FOR PARAGRAPH WRITING, Study notes of English Language

Download EFFECTIVE PREWRITING TECHNIQUES FOR PARAGRAPH WRITING and more Study notes English Language in PDF only on Docsity! EFFECTIVE PREWRITING TECHNIQUES & PARAGRAPH WRITING  “Writing is easy. You just open your veins and bleed.”  —Red Smith, Sportswriter Prewriting is any activity that helps you create, develop, and organize ideas for writing. WHY BOTHER WITH PREWRITING? 1. To find a definite direction for your writing assignment 2. To help organize your ideas before trying to write your first draft 3. To build off of ideas and think of new ones QUESTIONS TO ASK YOURSELF WHEN BEGINNING A WRITING ASSIGNMENT 1. Were you given a topic, or can you choose one? 2. What is the purpose of this assignment? Are you informing, persuading, analyzing, entertaining, or summarizing for your readers? 3. What are the five W’s of the assignment? Who? What? When? Where? Why? BRAINSTORMING Brainstorming is a technique where you record every idea that comes to mind that relates back to the topic. HELPFUL HINTS  Be comfortable and in a space with good lighting. You’ll think best when you’re in a pleasant environment.  Eliminate distractions. Stay focused and record everything.  Make lists of all the ideas that come to you. Don’t worry about trying to write in complete sentences.  Just capture your ideas quickly.  Brainstorm by having conversations with other people. Bounce ideas off of a friend, or raise a topic of conversation with a group of people.  Brainstorm while reading. Annotate and interact with the text (use sticky notes if you need to) to capture your reactions, commentary, and own ideas. Brainstorming can make it easier both to think of a good topic and to start finding supporting evidence and examples. Mind Map/CLUSTERING Clustering is a technique where you map out your thinking using circles and lines to display “branches” of your ideas. It is a great way to show how many ideas can connect to one central idea and can also help you prioritize and organize your ideas for use in your writing. HELPFUL HINTS  Draw a circle and write your central idea in the middle.  Branch off by drawing a line and creating another circle. Note an idea which relates back to your central idea. Continue the process. o How do all your ideas connect to one another? What do the new additions make you think of? What is another aspect of the overall topic? FREE WRITING Free writing is a technique which asks users to write without stopping for a short period of time (approximately ten minutes is a good goal) to allow ideas to flow freely. HELPFUL HINTS  At this stage, grammar, punctuation, etc. doesn’t matter. Don’t let those concerns distract you.  This process focuses on getting down all of your ideas on paper quickly.  When you free write, you don’t have to use complete sentences or paragraphs, as long as you understand what is being written.  Allow yourself to think more about the subject and develop more ideas. If your ideas dry up in one direction, start off in another. Note making & Summarising Note making and summarizing is a crucial skill that helps us in academics. The function of notes is to filter the important information and help us retain it. It also makes it easier for us to refer to the important points in future.  Importance- Note making & summarising  It transforms the entire set of information into a manageable size.  It includes the key points which make it more readable.  It helps in better understanding of the concept. Conclusion: the final section; summarizes the connections between the information discussed in the body of the paragraph and the paragraph’s controlling idea. Coherence In a coherent paragraph, each sentence relates clearly to the topic sentence or controlling idea, but there is more to coherence than this. If a paragraph is coherent, each sentence flows smoothly into the next without obvious shifts or jumps. A coherent paragraph also highlights the ties between old information and new information to make the structure of ideas or arguments clear to the reader. Along with the smooth flow of sentences, a paragraph’s coherence may also be related to its length. If you have written a very long paragraph, one that fills a double-spaced typed page, for example, you should check it carefully to see if it should start a new paragraph where the original paragraph wanders from its controlling idea. On the other hand, if a paragraph is very short (only one or two sentences, perhaps), you may need to develop its controlling idea more thoroughly, or combine it with another paragraph. A number of other techniques that you can use to establish coherence in paragraphs are described below. Repeat key words or phrases. Particularly in paragraphs in which you define or identify an important idea or theory, be consistent in how you refer to it. This consistency and repetition will bind the paragraph together and help your reader understand your definition or description. Create parallel structures. Parallel structures are created by constructing two or more phrases or sentences that have the same grammatical structure and use the same parts of speech. By creating parallel structures you make your sentences clearer and easier to read. In addition, repeating a pattern in a series of consecutive sentences helps your reader see the connections between ideas. In the paragraph above about scientists and the sense of sight, several sentences in the body of the paragraph have been constructed in a parallel way. The parallel structures (which have been emphasized) help the reader see that the paragraph is organized as a set of examples of a general statement. Be consistent in point of view, verb tense, and number. Consistency in point of view, verb tense, and number is a subtle but important aspect of coherence. If you shift from the more personal "you" to the impersonal “one,” from past to present tense, or from “a man” to “they,” for example, you make your paragraph less coherent. Such inconsistencies can also confuse your reader and make your argument more difficult to follow. Use transition words or phrases between sentences and between paragraphs. Transitional expressions emphasize the relationships between ideas, so they help readers follow your train of thought or see connections that they might otherwise miss or misunderstand.