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

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.

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:

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,

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

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

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)?

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

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

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

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.