Читать книгу Writing: B2+ - Els Geyte Van - Страница 18

The longer your piece of writing is, the more important it is that you guide your reader through it. You can do this by telling them about the structure (signposting), by using language that shows that the different aspects of your writing relate to each other (cohesion) and by distinguishing clearly between paragraphs (paragraphing).

Let’s have a look at how a student did this in a short piece of writing. (He has made several mistakes, which are discussed below.)

Glossary

cohesion N-UNCOUNT If you write with cohesion, you use language that shows that the different aspects of your writing relate to each other, fit together well, and form a united whole.

distinguish (distinguishes, distinguishing, distinguished) VERB If you distinguish one thing from another or distinguish between two things, you show, see, or understand how they are different.

guild (guilds) N-COUNT A guild is an organization of people who do the same job or activity.

This essay will look at how young people can be encouraged to vote in two main ways.

Firstly, the government should devise campaigns to inform them and increase their awareness of the importance of voting.

To start with, these campaigns should be as informal as possible and use electronic media such as blogs, websites or any other means that are accessible to that generation. Later on, the medium could also include newspapers and posters.

In addition, the contents of the campaigns should include the fact that voting is the right of every citizen, and state the benefits of voting such as the ability to choose the right representative for a particular area. It is also important to inform the young citizens that it is easy for them to vote.

Finally, after all the campaigns are done through the many information channels, the government may also promote voting by educating people in colleges, student guilds and other student organizations.

In conclusion, by taking these approaches, hopefully more young people will vote.

The student has indicated in the first sentence that there are two approaches he will discuss (but he could have made it clearer that these are media campaigns and educational programmes). He uses linking words to indicate the structure of his discussion: ‘Firstly’ and ‘Finally’ introduce the two areas he will discuss. He also uses other linking words.

Many students have been taught that linking words are very important, but some use these types of words too often. This is the case in this example. ‘In addition’ could be crossed out without it affecting the meaning: ‘the contents of the campaigns’ gives more information about a topic that was already raised, which is a natural thing to do, so the reader does not need to be told there is a link. It is also a bad choice of linker: it does not introduce an additional idea, but a more specific one. Here the linking words are all used at the beginning of a paragraph, making the text sound very repetitive (if you read it out loud, you will notice the pattern repeating). To sum up, linking words can be helpful to guide the reader, but you should only use them if they are necessary; make sure you use an appropriate one, and vary their place in the sentence.

Some of the words refer to other words in the text:

 the pronouns ‘them’ and their’ in the second sentence refer to ‘young people’ in the first sentence

 ‘these campaigns’ in the third sentence refers back to the campaigns mentioned in the second sentence, and ‘that generation’ refers back to ‘young people’

 the article ‘the’ in ‘the medium’, ‘the campaigns’ and ‘the young citizens’ indicates that these ideas have already been mentioned.

We can group some of the words mentioned, to show how a number of ideas are developed throughout the text. There are words related to the areas of:

 youth: young people, that generation, young citizens

 education: campaigns, inform, awareness, contents, fact, information channels, educating, contents, colleges, student guilds, student organizations

 media: blogs, websites, medium, newspapers, posters, information channels

 voting: vote, citizen, choose, representative

Visually, a space has been left between each paragraph. This is the right thing to do, although indents are also acceptable. In this short piece of writing, there was no need to have so many paragraphs. For example, the one that begins with ‘To start with’ develops the idea from the previous paragraph and should have been part of that one.

Glossary

indent (indents) N-COUNT An indent is the space at the beginning of a line of writing when it starts further away from the edge of the paper than all the other lines.

Exercise 4

Cross out the unnecessary and/or incorrect linking words in the paragraph (taken from an IELTS-type essay). Do not make any other changes.

It is widely believed that the internet is making our lives easier than they were in the past. Furthermore, the internet is used as a consultation method for solving many problems. On the one hand, many people use the internet for consulting others who are in a different location, for example, teachers, physicians and community researchers. Moreover, there are social networking sites such as Facebook to communicate with old friends, and so you can get together with them and other people you have not seen in a long time. The internet has also led to an increase in opportunities for face-to-face communication and people can talk with each other at any time and anywhere. At last, people with disabilities can use the internet to help overcome obstacles so that they have better access to education and other services.

Exercise 5

Underline the pronouns in this text and think about how they are used to connect the ideas in the text.

Internet users can get information any time they need it via their internet connection. When the internet was first introduced, its feature was to share information. As time has gone by, more functions and tools have been added. These include blogs, which allow users to share their comments and opinions, and social networks, which enable people to pass on messages quickly.