The ManicaPost
Friday Lessons With Uncle Jay
(Continued from last week)
TO begin with, writing is not simply about correction; writing is also about composing (that is why we call this a composition).
Unfortunately, most teachers and learners work on the correction part of the language but have no idea how to teach or learn composing.
The result is that you can get, at best, a piece of writing with good English but, overall, it is poor and messy.
This article will greatly help teachers and students on that task, so producing good and neat compositions will turn into an easy and quick task.
Doubt it?
Keep reading.
When writing a composition, most people just sit and start writing, hoping that ideas will flow in the right direction and trusting that they won’t need to make many changes and readjustments.
Well, that’s certainly a lot of hope and trust, and even if you manage to write it in one go without having to rewrite parts or start it all again, that way is the easiest way to get a messy and poor composition, and it makes it really difficult to come out with an impeccable or even good piece of writing to impress.
But showing how good a writer you can be gets incredibly easier if you follow our eight steps to write a good composition.
The secret for that is just one: plan
In the first part of this article we learnt how to plan and organise your composition into an outline as the best way to guarantee a neat piece of writing and as a good time-saver.
On this second part we will learn how to turn that outline into a composition.
So after explaining steps 1-4, here you will learn steps 5-8. Let us start:
Each point is the seed of a future paragraph (or section or chapter, if it is a long writing).
For every point, think of a few details to explain that idea.
Example: friendly people
people help you
people talk to you in the streets
people invite you to a drink in the bars
4 Closing sentence
The closing sentence is also very important because it must leave your composition closed, finished, so that you can’t say anything else after it.
If the opening sentence is the bottle of perfume and the ideas (and details) are the perfume, then the closing sentence is the cap: If there is no cap, the perfume will evaporate and be wasted.
An open composition is a piece of unfinished work, and not complete.
There are many ways of closing a composition, but the most usual ones are:
1- a restatement of the opening sentence (you say the same idea but using different words)
Example: There is no doubt about it: life in a village is much better than life in a city.
2- a summary of the points (ideas).
Example: With a cheaper life, a close contact with nature, a healthy environment and surrounded by nice people, villages are the ideal place to live.
3- a look to the future.
Example: I really think I should leave the city and look for a nice house in a village as soon as possible.
4- a related thought that grows out of the body (usually a conclusion from the points).
Example: That is why our urban societies are more efficient, but its people are less human.
5- mixed type (a combination of several types of conclusions)
Example: That is why I am planning to move to a village, because life there is much better than in the cities (type 3 + type 1, even the whole sentence can be an example of type 4)
So if you follow this advice, you will find that writing turns easier and the results are much better than when you simply sit and write.
Just remember the bottle of perfume:
The glass: The opening sentence.
Your first sentence, which will contain all the ideas of your piece of writing inside.
The perfume: All the things you have to say.
Don’t let even a drop fall outside the bottle.
The cap: The last sentence in your composition.
The one that will close it and make it a finished piece of work.
Once you have a good outline, you must use it to write your composition, essay or whatever you must write.
Things are now much easier when you know all the time exactly what you have to say, confident that you will never get tangled, blocked or messed up in your writing.
We can also guide you in this second phase (steps 5-8), but that will be in our next article:
5 Title
The most important thing to remember is that a title is not a sentence; it is only one or several words expressing in a very general way the topic (not usually the approach).
Centre the title on the top line of the paper
capitalise the first and last words of the title, as well as the most important words (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs).
Don’t capitalise grammatical words (prepositions, connectors, articles, etc.) except if they start or finish the sentence or they go after a colon (:)
if a quotation appears in the title, use a capital for the first word in the quotation
don’t write a sentence (subject+verb+complements) as a title and don’t finish the title with a stop (.)
don’t underline a title
Example of a good title: Life in a Village
Examples of bad titles:
Life in a village. (no final stop, “Village” needs capitalisation because it is a noun and also the last word)
I prefer to live in a village. (no final stop, “Prefer” “Live” and “Village” must be capitalised; this is a sentence, with subject, verb and a complement, so it’s wrong for a title)
a Village: the Best Place to Live (“A” needs capitalisation because it begins the title, also “The” because it goes after a colon, and titles shouldn’t be underlined)
6 Organise ideas into paragraphs
A composition must be organised in different paragraphs. In formal writing for publication (books, magazines, newspapers, etc) every paragraph must be indented (the first line starts 3-5 spaces more to the right than the rest of the lines).
In other cases it is more common to simply use a double space to separate one paragraph from the next (leave one or two empty lines in between), so you don’t need indentation but paragraphs are also well defined, separated (as you can see in this article).
The paragraphs are used to group ideas into units and must contain more than one sentence.
The first paragraph begins with the opening sentence and it is the introduction, the first contact we have with the topic, so we usually put there the most relevant, shocking or interesting information to catch the reader’s attention or to make them understand the situation.
The last paragraph ends with the closing sentence and it is the conclusion.
Depending on what kind of composition we’re writing, we use the last paragraph to explain the result of the event, the end of the action, the conclusion of our reasoning, the climax of the story, our personal opinion, etc. (In case of doubt, giving your personal opinion on the topic is always an easy way to finish a composition).
We have to choose, from the points we defined in step number 2 (see Part One of this article), which ideas are best for the first paragraph and which are good for the last paragraph.
The rest of the points will go in one or several paragraphs in the middle (in the “body” of the composition).
Every paragraph contains one or several points, but all of them must be talking about the same general idea, and that idea must be a bit (or very) different from the general ideas of the other paragraphs.
That is what makes a paragraph a unit.
Example: We will continue using the same example we proposed for steps 1-4 in our previous article:
Topic- Life in a village
Approach- better than cities
In the first paragraph we start with the opening sentence and then we can talk about the bad things about living in a city.
That way, the good things about a village will later sound even better.
Another paragraph may talk about people and why they make life there better (they’re nice, they know you, care about you and help you).
Another paragraph may talk about life there being more natural (clean air, no pollution, contact with nature, beauty of the landscape, more animals).
And another paragraph may talk about the way of life (everything cheaper, healthy entertainments, more exercise).
The last paragraph is going to end with the closing sentence.
The other sentences in this paragraph may reinforce the closing sentence or it may be one or several points that will help us accept the idea in the closing sentence better.
For instance, if the closing sentence is a look to the future (“I have decided to move to a village”) then the previous sentences in that paragraph may explain that in the last months I’ve been getting more and more tired of cities.
7 Write the composition
Now that you have got your opening sentence, your closing sentence, your points and the organisation of your points into paragraphs, it is time to finally write the composition.
Notice that for most people this step is the only one they actually make, but for a good writer this step is only the unfolding of the whole structure already constructed, so it becomes easy, quick and solidly grounded.
It is very important to use connectors to relate ideas (although, nevertheless, that is why, so, because, afterwards, in the first place, on the one hand, unfortunately, etc.).
But always remember that the English language does not like long complicated sentences, so, as a general rule, use compound sentences but short and with only two or three elements (main clause + subordinate/coordinate clause)
Example of a nice sentence: Cities are getting more and more aggressive, that is why I am thinking of moving to a village.
Example of a clumsy sentence: I don’t like cities because, after all the changes in modern societies, they are getting more and more aggressive and polluted, as everybody can see, although I know that on the other hand, life in a city offers more opportunities for some things such as jobs and entertainments, but the good things don’t compensate for the bad things, so that’s why I’m thinking of moving to a village, since life in a village is much better, natural and healthy than life in a city, especially big cities, which are still growing with more and more new people coming to live there. —multimedia-english.com.
