Cairo University Department of Structural Engineering

Faculty of Engineering Gen 600: Technical Writing

Spring 2014 2015

First Assignment: Topic and Thesis Statements

(Due: April 9th, 2015)

Problem No. 1:

The following paragraphs do not have a topic sentence; reconstitute the topic sentences and

start with them in your answer. Note that your proposed topic sentence should assume the

conventional sentence form of topic + comment.

Practice allows you to spot the flaws in a presentation and eradicate them. It enables you to work on making smooth transitions from section to section, instead of awkward stops

and starts. And practice gives you an idea of how long your presentation will take, if it's

too long. All of these benefits promote greater self-confidence, which in turn leads to a

more convincing, emphatic, effective style of delivery.

Systems thinking is a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that has been developed over the past 50 years. It originated in the field of systems dynamics to make

the patterns clearer and to help us see how to change them effectively. Systems dynamics

is an offshoot of systems engineering. It was first developed by Jay Forrester as industrial

dynamics in the 1950s and 1960s and is still widely practiced around the world today.

Problem No. 2:

a) The following sentences are not ordered. Rank the sentences to fit into an effective paragraph. Start with the topic sentence (there is one in the sentences below).

b) What is the way-to-begin (WTB) used for this paragraph? c) Define one ways-to-develop (WTD) used in this paragraph. d) Develop this paragraph to have a mixed development of process and general-to-

specific.

Sentence No. Sentence

1 When readers are able to visualize in this way, they understand and control

texts at a much deeper level.

2 One of English-teaching objectives is showing how language affects text

features and arrangement.

3 Crucially when a reader has this understanding, language is perceived not as

a set of rules but as a set of options used for constructing a variety of

meanings.

4 It is this understanding that is fundamental to reading comprehension

5 The ability to visualize the features of a text , and how those features are

arranged is vital to understanding when reading.

6 This control comes through visualizing a text type and understanding how

writers construct meaning through arrangement of text features.