Using grammar in writing

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 451.

Task 5

Task 4

Task 3

Study the following sentences and state which of them would make good topic sentences, i.e. which of them could easily be developed to form a paragraph.

a) The planet Venus is 26,000,000 miles away from Earth.

b) Generalizations are very useful in writing.

c) Motor cars are a form of transportation.

d) Recent changes in Egypt have affected women's roles in at least two potentially
important ways.

Though it is not always necessary to begin each paragraph with a topic sentence, it is useful to do so when you are not completely certain of your ability as a writer. The advantage of beginning a paragraph with a topic sentence is that it provides both the writer and the reader with a clear aim, i.e. in the case of a generalization, examples will be required, and in the case of a preview, details will be forthcoming. For example, if the writer produces this as a topic sentence:

There are several parasites which are a danger to human beings, then she or he is committed to producing further text about the topic of parasites of human beings. More than this, the reader will expect the writer to discuss specific parasites, and even more specifically, to discuss parasites which are a danger to human beings, including schistosoma. The specific information about what aspect(s) of the topic will be discussed in the text is known as the main idea. Often, the main idea is found in the topic sentence. In the sentence above, for example, 'parasites' is the topic and 'parasites which are a danger to human beings' is the main idea.

Read the following texts; for each text, write down the topic sentence and put a box around the main idea.

a)

We have only one clue as to how our Universe began. When starlight is passed through a spectroscope the bright spectral lines are displaced towards the red end of the spectrum. This red shift, due to the Doppler effect, tells us that the galaxies are rushing into Space away from our galaxy. One explanation for this is that all matter in the universe started as a single, super-dense mass which exploded. This explanation is known as the 'big bang' theory.

b)

There are two principal requirements for an explosive. First, it must remain stable unless it is struck or ignited, and then, once it is ignited, a chemical reaction must take place to cause heat and a large volume of gas to be produced in a very short time. In gunpowder, for example, the potassium nitrate, KNO₃, combines with the carbon in the charcoal to give carbon dioxide and some nitrogen gas.

c)

All rocks were originally formed during the period when the Earth was molten and then cooled down. A great deal of this igneous (fire-made) rock still exists in its original stage. However, hard though it is, igneous rock breaks up into grains of sand in the course, of millions of years of the action of wind and water, sun and ice. Some of this sand settled at the bottom of the sea and, over the ages, became pressed into hard rock forming strata of sedimentary rocks of varying thickness and composition, such as sandstone and limestone.

In addition to providing the writer and the reader with a clear indication of what the text should be about, the topic sentence also indicates what the text will not be about: for example, if the topic sentence is:

There are several parasites which are a danger to human beings.

you will not expect to find a discussion of, for example, nuclear energy in the text! Using your topic sentence as guide to the rest of your writing helps you follow the third principle of communication.

3 The relevance principle

Keep to your topic and your purpose for writing.

Study the flow diagram and the text. Some of the sentences in the text should not be there: keep in mind the relevance principle, and discuss with a partner which sentences should be taken out.

Insects which transmit disease to man in their bites are called vectors, or carriers. Malaria is an example of a disease of this type. It is transmitted by a kind of mosquito called anopheles. Some diseases are transmitted by tiny water animals. The anopheles mosquito sucks blood from a person with malaria. Once in the stomach of the mosquito, the microbes multiply. House flies transmit microbes on their feet. The malaria microbes pass to the mosquito's mouth, and when the mosquito bites a person the malaria microbes pass into the person's blood. The parasites then enter the person's liver, in which they change and multiply. From there they pass into the blood cells, where they cause the malaria attack. The spread of insect-borne disease can be controlled.

You have been studying various aspects of the grammar of writings sometimes related to sentences and sometimes related to bigger elements of the text. Throughout this book you have seen examples of different sentence types: you have seen simple, compound and complex sentences. If you look back through some of the texts, you should be able to see that simple sentences (sentences with a single subject and a single verb) are used mainly to introduce a new idea, or to emphasize a point. They are less common in writing than in speech, and they often contain a long, complicated subject, for example:

The long-term goals of agricultural production, industrialization and

population control in China are commendable.

Compound sentences (sentences with two or more clauses joined by and, but or or) are also more common in speech than in writing. Compound sentences join together two closely related ideas in a way which indicates that both are equally important, for example:

Western societies have always admired rainforests but have never understood them.

In writing, most sentences are complex sentences, especially in expository writing. This is because using complex sentences allows the writer to indicate a whole variety of relationships between ideas, and not simply list ideas as if they were unrelated (as would happen with a series of simple sentences) or link them together as if they were equally important (as with compound sentences). Here are just a few examples of complex sentences:

1 Switzerland, which is a small country with mountains, pine forests and lakes, is famous
for winter sports, two of which are skiing and tobogganing.

2 Although Switzerland is famous for winter sports, visitors go to Switzerland in the summer
too.

3 China has provided significant aid and technical assistance to other countries, both in
quantity and quality, despite the fact that its annual income per head is less than £200.

4 It is surprising that the Arabian conquest of the Middle East took less than a century
because the settled populations were large, well institutionalized and supported by the
armies of Byzantium and Persia, while the Muslims were far fewer in number and had little
in the way of weapons.

One type of complex sentence which is often found in texts designed to convey information is the sentence which contains a relative clause. A relative clause is a clause which contains additional information relating to the main clause of the sentence, for example:

RELATIVE CLAUSE

Endocrine glands, which secrete into the blood, are found in various parts of the body.

RELATIVE CLAUSE

A level which has the fulcrum between load and effort can be used to compare two masses.

Relative clauses which contain information essential to the meaning or purpose of the sentence are called defining relative clauses. Relative clauses containing information which, although useful, is not essential to the meaning or purpose of the sentence are called non-defining relative clauses. Non-defining relative clauses can be removed from the sentence without changing its meaning or making it ungrammatical, although of course the amount of information will be reduced. The first example on this page is a non-defining relative clause and the second example is a defining relative clause.