Practice
What Have I Learned About Academic Writing This Week?
In the following video, you will practice identifying parts of a paragraph, determining the main idea, and then practicing brainstorming. We sometimes forget that the purpose of our writing is to be read. That’s why reading and writing are two very closely connected skills with very common features. The paragraph we will present serves both as a way to practice your reading skills by identifying the basic parts of the paragraph which help us understand the text.
The sentences in bold at the beginning and the end of the paragraph below are the topic sentence and the concluding sentences respectively. Everything in between is the supporting ideas. Topic sentences and conclusions are important because they contain the main idea of the text in academic composition. The way to identify the main ideas is by looking for keywords or key ideas that repeat in the topic sentence and conclusion. Take a look at the text and try to identify some of the keywords you see in those two parts. Then, think of and write down the main idea of the paragraph. Pause the video and resume when you are ready.
“ With regards to individuals, the impact that online social media has had on each individual person has clear advantages. Firstly, people from different countries are brought together through such sites as Facebook whereas, before the development of technology and social networking sites, people rarely had the chance to meet or communicate with anyone outside of their immediate circle or community. Secondly, Facebook also has social groups which offer individuals a chance to meet and participate in discussions with people who share common interests. The freedom and flexibility in communication that social media offer is among their biggest advantages.”
Some keywords are advantages, social media, but also concepts like communication, flexibility, freedom, and individuals. Based on the keywords, we identified we can say that the main idea of the paragraph is the advantages of social media in helping people communicate and connect with each other. The body of the paragraph discusses these points very clearly. We can understand what the whole paragraph is about only by reading the topic sentence and the conclusion while the supporting ideas correspond to these parts very accurately. This is something you should aim for in your own writing.
Next, let’s look at an example of clustering: the diagram you see above is a very common, simple example, however, if you want to use this technique when organizing your ideas, there are many different templates you can find with a simple online search. The search term would be mind maps.
Look at the topic and brainstorm a few ideas. Add the main topic in the main bubble and surround it with a few reasons. You don’t need to fill all the bubbles but aim for at least three.
My mind map looks like this, however there is no better or worse way of doing it as long as you cover all the points you can write about. In a regular academic composition, you will have to write about 2-3 points.