Paragraph Development

The adequate development, unity, and coherence in the paragraph can be achieved through:

1. A natural or easily recognized order.

2. Transitional words and phrases.

3. Repetition of key words.

4. Substitution of key words by pronouns and vice versa.

5. Parallelism.

· Ordering of information

1. The order of time – most important for narrative essays. You arrange the events in chronological order.

2. The order of space is important for describing physical objects and places. You describe it from left to right, from top to bottom, from inside to outside, etc.

3. Logical order is important for classification essays, where the ideas should be arranged logically – either from the least important to the most important or vice versa.

· Transitional Devices

To achieve coherence in writing, you must use such devices as transitional words and phrases, key words, parallel constructions and substitute the key words by synonyms and pronouns and vice versa.

Task 5

Read the following excerpt. Underline the transitional devices. Fill in the table that follows the text to divide all transitional devices into five categories.

Thansitional words are special glue that holds a paragraph or an essay together. These devices lead the reader from sentence to sentence and smooth the gaps between them by indicating their relationship. If this glue is missing, the piece of writing will sound choppy or childish, even if every sentence in it responds to the topic. However, transitions can not substitute topic unity: like most glues, they are most effective when joining similar objects, or, in this case, similar ideas. For example, in an essay describing differences and similarities of universities and community colleges in the USA, no transition can bridge a gap created by the inclusion of a sentence concerned with civil losses in World War II. In other words, transitions can call attention to the topic relationships between sentences, but they cannot create such relations.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 853