Writing techniques
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The document provides guidance on effective reading techniques. It suggests previewing a text by skimming key elements like the title, author, date and first paragraph. Readers should actively question what they are reading by forming questions about the content and purpose. When reading, take notes on key points and bibliographic details. After reading, summarize the main ideas in your own words and review your understanding. The document also provides tips for different reading strategies depending on the type of material and depth of understanding required. These include knowing your purpose, how deeply to study based on needs, actively engaging with the text, understanding different formats, and using tools like glossaries for technical documents.
Writing techniques
- 1. Writing Techniques Writing well requires that you learn a variety of techniques used for different writing purposes. We suggest that you learn each of the following writing techniques. Narration The narration technique for writing is used when telling a story. The elements of a story include the setting, time, problem, and resolution to the problem, a main character and often supporting characters. A novel is an example of a long story and a children’s book would be an example of short story. Movie and play scripts are also examples of narrations. Description A description is a simple yet very important writing technique. You will most frequently find descriptions in magazines, books, newspapers and many other forms of writing. The purpose of a description is to help the read use the senses of seeing, hearing, feeling and smelling to experience what the writer experiences. Descriptions help the reader to understand things about which the writer is writing Persuasion The technique of persuasion is used in writing to try and change the reader’s point of view on a particular subject or topic. In this writing technique the writer presents in a compelling format facts and opinions in order to convince the reader. Persuasive writing is most commonly found in editorials, newspapers, magazines and political publications. Exposition The purpose of exposition is to inform, explain, expound or clarify the writer’s ideas and thoughts. While similar to descriptive writing, exposition provides the reader
- 2. greater detail and depth of understanding about the writer’s thoughts and ideas. Expositions are most commonly found in newspapers, magazines and books. Comparison and Contrast The purpose of the writing technique is to show the reader the similarities and differences about a something. Comparison is used to show or explain how what is alike or common. Contract is used to show what is different. When the writer asked to compare and contrast the Civil War with World War II would show the similarities and differences between these two wars. Employing the correct writing technique that helps you accomplish your purpose will enable you to communicate more effective and become a good writer. Reading Techniques Preview Preview the text to be read by skimming it. Skimming is the technique of allowing your eyes to travel rapidly over a page, stopping here and there to register the main idea. When skimming, you should follow the procedure below, adapting it to your purpose • Read the title. • Note the writer's name. • Note the date and place of publication. • Read the first paragraph completely. • Read sub-headings and first sentences of remaining paragraphs. As you read, pick up main ideas, key words (words that tell you who, what, when, where, how many, and how much), and transition markers (words like 'however', 'alternatively', 'additionally', and so on), which suggest the direction of ideas in the text.
- 3. Question Effective reading is active reading. To turn reading from a passive into an active exercise, always ask questions. To do this, you must be clear about the purpose of your reading. If you are reading a text which you will be critiquing in detail, your questions will be different from those you would ask if you were reading a number of texts for background information. If you are gathering material for an essay, formulate some tentative ideas about the approaches you might take, modifying them as you accumulate material. During the preview, note as many questions as you can about the content. For instance, turn headings into questions and try to anticipate possible answers the writer may offer. Always actively look for connections and relationships. Look at the ways ideas are structured and developed. The object of the preview and questioning steps is to determine the writer's thesis, that is, her/his main idea and purpose in writing. As you read, list all the words about which you are uncertain; look them up in the dictionary and write down their definitions. Take notes Some reasons for taking notes are: • to maintain attentiveness as you read, • to focus your attention, • to familiarise yourself with primary and secondary material on a given subject, • to analyze the assumptions and rhetorical strategies of the writer, • To provide you with a summary of the material. Some hints for taking notes:
- 4. • Always record bibliographical details of the text from which you are taking notes. • Write on one side of the paper only. • Leave a wide margin for comments and cross-references. • Use headings, subheadings, and diagrams. • Keep notes brief but full enough to still make sense to you in six months' time. Make sure they're legible. Summarize A summary is a collation of your notes, recording the main points the writer makes. Making a summary from your notes has two main benefits. • It allows you to test yourself on your understanding of the material you have been reading - sometimes it is only when you try to put the writer's ideas into your own words that you uncover difficulties. • It provides you with a compact account of the text for further reference. Review and reflect To capitalize fully on the time you've spent reading an article or chapter, it's important to review and reflect upon what you've read. This enhances your understanding and helps you to commit important facts and ideas to your long- term memory. Here are some review and reflection exercises you may find useful: • Test your understanding of the material by trying to answer your preview questions without referring to your notes. • Write down the meaning and usefulness the material has for understanding other concepts and principles. Indicate what other ideas the material substantiates, contradicts, or amplifies. • Evaluate the text in terms of its informativeness, soundness of argument, relevance, and so on. If you are gathering material for an essay or report,
- 5. decide which points you want to use and think about how you can use them. • Start a reading journal in which you keep all reading, review, and reflection notes. Abstracts, Summaries and Overviews Reading the abstracts or (executive) summaries of articles and overviews of book chapters prepares the mind for the content to follow, and should always be accomplished in advance of reading the article or chapter itself. From this preparatory step, one can generally get a feeling for the familiarity, approach and importance of the reading assignment, as well as its role in the course (e.g., detail technique to be mastered, key concept to be learned, broad phenomena of which to be aware, examples or exemplars of course concepts, events and practices) and relationship with other assigned readings. In many cases, the reading is already familiar to the student and can be scanned. In other cases, all of the pertinent information can be gleaned from the abstract or summary (this applies more to articles and cases than to book chapters), so the article itself may not need to be read at all, or may need only to be skimmed. In other cases, only certain, key parts of the reading need to be addressed in detail, which can limit one to reading only 20-25% of the total text. Students are expected to read the abstract, executive summary or overview of every assigned reading, as an absolute minimum. Figures, Graphics and Tables Figures and graphics represent rich media for communication. A picture contains several hundred thousand pixels, and figures and graphics can summarize and convey much information in a short amount of time. Make sure that you understand every important figure or graphic in an assigned reading; that is, if the figure or graphic appears in a section that you have deemed to be important (see the guidelines above), then you should examine the figure or
- 6. graphic first (i.e., before reading the corresponding text) and attempt to understand it. If you can understand the figure or graphic, you may not need to read the text itself. Tables do not present information with the same richness as figures and graphics, but they are very effective at summarizing the content of substantial text in a short, concise, quickly-perused format. As with the figures and graphics from above, one can also try to understand tables prior to reading the corresponding text. Anticipate Hills and Shift Gears Not all reading requires the same level of effort and attention to detail. Try to anticipate the role and importance of each section in an assigned reading. Much prose is devoted to summarizing background information, detailing alternative considerations in the author's decision-making process, and exploring the ramifications of approaches not taken, decisions not made and events that did not occur. Unless such summaries and considerations are critical to understanding the article, they can generally be skimmed, in which case the reader can "shift to a high gear" for an easy, "downhill run." The background information in many cases and textbook chapters can be approached in this manner. Similarly, many readings are assigned simply to provide exposure to a broad array of programs and acquisition techniques, in which case detailed reading may not be necessary. Alternatively, some information is key to the article, detailed and technical, or must be analyzed in depth. Such an "uphill climb" requires considerable mental power and cognitive processing, so the reader should "shift to a low gear" and work slowly through the reading. A good understanding of the course objectives, requirements and grading criteria can be extremely useful for differentiating between essential and ancillary readings. Reading Teams The ability to summarize and integrate a reading represents a well- acknowledged sign of its understanding. When one person understands a reading, he or she can often convey the key information in much less time than
- 7. would be required for another person to read and glean this same information on his or her own. This time-savings effect can be leveraged through the use of reading teams, as the time savings grow linearly with team size (up to certain communication and learning limits). By dividing responsibilities for ancillary readings among team members, each of which provides a written and oral summary of the readings' key elements, the net reading load can be reduced dramatically; that is, following a summary and discussion of such non-essential readings, team members may not have to read the article at all, or may be able to quickly skim it. However, for essential readings, each team member should also plan to read such essential material in detail; that is, the summary can help, but summaries are not effective for communicating essential details. Once material has been read and understood, summaries can also provide a useful tool for review. Summarization and Inter-relationship Immediately upon completing a reading, one can try to summarize a half-dozen or so key concepts, ideas, points or events. These pertain to the grist of the article, and written summaries provide a useful tool for review. Additionally, one can try to place each article or chapter in relation with the other assigned readings, asking the question: Why is this particular reading here? and How does it draw upon past readings or contribute to future assignments? By drawing a conceptual map of assigned readings, one can often fill-in missing details from a particular article or chapter simply by extrapolating from others with which it is related. Application Application represents another well-accepted sign of understanding. When one can effectively apply the concepts or techniques from assigned readings, for example to case analyses, exams, project briefings and in-class discussions, his or her understanding of the assigned material can increase substantially. When reading an article or chapter, one should ask the question: How will this particular knowledge assist me in completing an assignment of interest or importance (e.g., exam, presentation, meeting, decision)?
- 8. Summary Many of the techniques above appear to be obvious and self-evident. If you already find yourself reading at a rate that reflects several hundred pages per hour, then you probably have little to gain from guidelines such as these. Otherwise, as you read, ask yourself: Am I preparing for, summarizing and integrating the reading? Do I understand the figures? Does this particular article or chapter represent ancillary or essential reading? Am I utilizing the leverage of reading team mates? How will this particular reading be useful? Reading Strategies Strategy 1: Knowing what you want to know The first thing to ask yourself is: Why you are reading the text? Are you reading with a purpose or just for pleasure? What do you want to know after reading it? Once you know this, you can examine the text to see whether it is going to move you towards this goal. An easy way of doing this is to look at the introduction and the chapter headings. The introduction should let you know whom the book is targeted at, and what it seeks to achieve. Chapter headings will give you an overall view of the structure of the subject. Ask yourself whether the book meets your needs. Ask yourself if it assumes too much or too little knowledge. If the book isn't ideal, would it be better to find a better one? Strategy 2: Knowing how deeply to study the material Where you only need the shallowest knowledge of the subject, you can skim material. Here you read only chapter headings, introductions and summaries. If you need a moderate level of information on a subject, then you can scan the text. Here you read the chapter introductions and summaries in detail. You may then speed read the contents of the chapters, picking out and understanding
- 9. key words and concepts. At this level of looking at the document it is worth paying attention to diagrams and graphs. Only when you need detailed knowledge of a subject is it worth studying the text. Here it is best to skim the material first to get an overview of the subject. This gives you an understanding of its structure, into which you can fit the detail gained from a full, receptive reading of the material. SQ3R is a good technique for getting a deep understanding of a text. Strategy 3: Active Reading When you are reading a document in detail, it often helps if you highlight, underline and annotate it as you go on. This emphasizes information in your mind, and helps you to review important points later. Doing this also helps to keep your mind focused on the material and stops it wandering. This is obviously only something to do if you own the document! If you own the book and find that active reading helps, then it may be worth photocopying information in more expensive texts. You can then read and mark the photocopies. If you are worried about destroying the material, ask yourself how much your investment of time is worth. If the benefit you get by active reading reasonably exceeds the value of the book, then the book is disposable. Strategy 4: How to study different sorts of material Different sorts of documents hold information in different places and in different ways. They have different depths and breadths of coverage. By understanding the layout of the material you are reading, you can extract useful information much more efficiently. Reading Magazines and Newspapers: These tend to give a very fragmented coverage of an area. They will typically only concentrate on the most interesting and glamorous parts of a topic - this helps them to sell copies! They will often
- 10. ignore less interesting information that may be essential to a full understanding of a subject. Typically areas of useful information are padded out with large amounts of irrelevant waffle or with advertising. The most effective way of getting information from magazines is to scan the contents tables or indexes and turn directly to interesting articles. If you find an article useful, then cut it out and file it in a folder specifically covering that sort of information. In this way you will build up sets of related articles that may begin to explain the subject. Newspapers tend to be arranged in sections. If you read a paper often, you can learn quickly which sections are useful and which ones you can skip altogether. Reading Individual Articles: Articles within newspapers and magazines tend to be in three main types: • News Articles: Here the most important information is presented first, with information being less and less useful as the article progresses. News articles are designed to explain the key points first, and then flesh them out with detail. • Opinion Articles: Opinion articles present a point of view. Here the most important information is contained in the introduction and the summary, with the middle of the article containing supporting arguments. • Feature Articles: These are written to provide entertainment or background on a subject. Typically the most important information is in the body of the text. If you know what you want from an article, and recognize its type, you can extract information from it quickly and efficiently. Strategy 5: Reading 'whole subject' documents When you are reading an important document, it is easy to accept the writer's structure of thought. This can mean that you may not notice that important information has been omitted or that irrelevant detail has been included. A good way of recognizing this is to compile your own table of contents before you open
- 11. the document. You can then use this table of contents to read the document in the order that you want. You will be able to spot omissions quickly. Strategy 6: Using glossaries with technical documents If you are reading large amounts of difficult technical material, it may be useful to photocopy or compile a glossary. Keep this beside you as you read. It will probably also be useful to note down the key concepts in your own words, and refer to them when necessary.