Cohesion and Coherence

Cohesion and coherence, or connecting ideas between sentences and paragraphs, are the most important elements of any piece of writing, be it personal, business, or academic. Read the two versions of a report a student hands in to her professor about a conference she went to.  Which one do you think is better and why?  [...]

Metalanguage: Talking to the Reader

I have been told by many of my students over the years that they have problems making their writing flow.  This means that they want the ideas that they put in the text run together smoothly–having a sense of cohesion and coherence (see the link at the end of this post for more explanation of [...]

Main and Supporting Ideas: Part 2

In Part 1, we have looked at main ideas and supporting ideas from the reader’s perspective.  Now we will become the writers ourselves and practice distinguishing main and supporting ideas. Exercise 1 In each group of words, there are a topic and ideas about that topic.  Find the topics and think about why they are [...]

Main and Supporting Ideas: Part 1

In most extended texts, especially in academic writing, a paragraph, essay, article, or book cannot be complete without a main idea.  It is what the paragraph, essay, etc., is all about, and it is exemplified, elaborated, and/or expanded by supporting ideas as we move along in the text.  When someone reads your text, he/she looks [...]

Types of Writing

How many kinds of writing are there that you can think of? What I write most often is a shopping list (lettuce, watermelon, detergent, Kleenex, milk, …).  Is that a kind of writing?  Yes.  The writing I’m talking about mostly in this blog, however, is extended; that is, there are many or at least 3 [...]

What Is Writing?

What do you think writing is? I would tell you what I think it is, but maybe it’s not fair for me to just give you my idea without asking you first.  Just like everything else in life, we all have our own definitions of things around us–what love is, what kind of food we [...]

Are You a Novice or Experienced Writer?

This is a test to help you determine if you are a beginning writer or an experienced one.  There is no right or wrong answer.  Remember, even if you are a novice writer today, your skills can be developed and you may become an experienced writer in no time.   So here’s the test! Which [...]