Study English Grammar » paragraphs

Making your writing skill better

Study English Grammar — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 11:11:38 +0000

The three main components of your writing structure are grammar, usage of words and style of the writing. It is also important that as you are writing you should try to make it as reader friendly as possible. This is because unless the reader understands what you write there is no point of writing at all. You may have an idea that clear sentences and paragraphs are enough for a good piece of writing. But it has been seen that it is not. There are a lot of other things which you need to keep in mind. It is important that you give attention to the idea which you present and the structure of the document.

The way your present your ideas should be well structured. This means the main idea of the document should have a natural flow and information should not crop just like that. This creates a hitch in your writing and the writer is not able to sail through the piece smoothly. It is important that you break your writing into sections and subsections so that the focus of the reader does not get lost. This way they are able to get your idea in a better manner.

It is a good idea to use headers and sub-headers in the page. This... Read more...

Usage of Linking Words English

Study English Grammar — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:28:06 +0000

In English language, linking words are those which join clauses within the sentence. There are also linking words that join ideas across sentences and paragraphs. These are something called ‘text organizers’ because they make the organization of what we say or write. They are more common in writing or formal speech. Linking words are very much important for the writing to be clear and natural. Linking words are also called conjunctions. Generally, a sentence cannot begin with conjunction. The word ‘because’ is the well-known example for conjunction. From to a famous saying ‘A sentence cannot begin with the word because since it is a conjunction’. Only in rare cases a sentence will begin with these words. Linking words differ in three ways and they are as follows:

Position in the sentence: Some linking words generally form a link between the clauses and it is not good to start a sentence with these types of words. Example: because, such as, and, until. As said earlier, another type of linking words form a link between sentences and these words ... Read more...

General Principles of Writing an Essay

Study English Grammar — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:32:06 +0000

Writing an essay requires planning and organization. It is not enough to look at the question, and then start writing your answer. You need to think about the wording of the question: most questions pose a problem of some sort! Which you have to debate. The key words here are Discuss, Account for, How far, words that signal that you need to provide evidence and analyze the material. You also need to plan your answer so that you don’t simply put down some loose thoughts as a way of starting. It’s much better to spend some time generating your ideas and then organizing them into an essay 1 rather than pouring out everything you know. You need, then, to think about the shape, and even rhythm, of your answer.

This, however, is the kind of general, perhaps not always very helpful, advice that people will offer to you over and over again. So let’s be rather more specific. One of the most useful rules in writing an essay, indeed possibly the best tip of all, is the ‘rule of three’. It is a rule that can be made use of in constructing an essay as a whole, in constructing a paragraph, and even in relation... Read more...

Essay Writing – Rule of Three

Study English Grammar — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:15:54 +0000

Such a method seems to be readily applicable to a scientific experiment, where there is usually a set order for doing things, but is it going to have any relevance for an essay on, say, the life of Florence Nightingale? We think it is again a good idea to think in terms of ‘a rule of three’. The temptation in writing about someone’s life in a history essay might be just to produce an endless list on the lines of ‘she did this, then she did this, and then she did this’. But if we divide the core of the essay into three stages we start to impose a shape on the raw material; we begin to have an idea of the argument, of setting the issue up, pushing the issue along, and then seeing where we arrive. The essay immediately begins to acquire some shape and direction, and this is true even before we have considered what we are going to include in each section of the essay. In an essay on Florence Nightingale, we could follow the eight-paragraph format we described above. An introductory paragraph might give a very brief outline of her life. The first stage of the essay (paragraphs 2 and 3) could describe the con... Read more...

Constructing a Paragraph In Essay Writing

Study English Grammar — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:59:55 +0000

Far too many students have very little idea quite where they are heading in any paragraph of an essay, but the fact is that every paragraph can and should be tightly, and even self-consciously, organized. Just as an essay as a whole sets up an issue, deviances, and arrives somewhere, so each paragraph of an essay needs to locate itself, advance, and arrive somewhere new.

If you look back at the opening paragraph of a Thackeray essay in the last section you should be able to see that it conforms to this pattern. It actually consists of three sentences which fulfill these three functions. In a rather similar way, this opening paragraph of an essay on Mary Kinsley, a Victorian traveler and writer, and the problem of ‘place’ starts with a ‘topic’ sentence that locates the issue, then advances by elaborating on that, finally arriving somewhere new. We have marked (/) the three steps of the paragraph:

The life and works of Mary Kingsley illustrate the different relationship men and women often experience towards ‘place’. / For men, the image of home is likely to suggest security, confidenc... Read more...