Episode 84 How To Structure Your Writing In English For Better Results!

Yesterday we read an article from Engoo about the Bermuda Triangle. You can find the article here: https://engoo.com/app/daily-news/article/mysterious-disappearances-what-is-the-bermuda-triangle/wD9Zqj44Ee2vY1NCE3_HmA I also discussed the various ways that you could use the Engoo website to help develop your English skills. Today we will focus on the writing in this Engoo article. * How did they structure the article? * Was there a reason for this structure? * And can we learn something from this structure that we could apply to our own writing? The episodes I mention in today's podcast about writing emails are Episodes 18, 19, 20. They look at how to construct the beginning, middle and end of your business email. You can find these all in the Writing Practise Playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFQsVeNBN7k&list=PL6eu7BlE1AJT6LWkf9G1eUZLVwIK6FAJO 1. We need to think about why are we writing this thing? What is the point of what we're writing? This will help us decide what is the best structure and what kind of vocabulary and techniques we can use. For example, if we're writing an update email then we don't need to tell a story, we just need facts, figures and dates, we need to be clear and concise. However, if we want to tell a ghost story then our storytelling is much more important, knowing who, where, what and how are much more important, we can be more creative and we can use longer sentences. 2. What is our title?The title is very important. It can be used in a few ways. We might just want to tell people what this will be about. We could, like with this article, use it to give information and to create intrigue and curiosity. Sometimes we just want to gain attention. You might not need a title, however, even if you're writing an email, you usually want to have something in the subject line so they know why they should open your email. 3. Introduction In most things there will be some kind of introduction, this might be the same as the beginning, it could come before the beginning. It should just briefly introduce the topic you will write about. It is common, for example in presentations, to use this structure: Tell them what you're going to tell them Tell them Tell them what you've told them The first thing is your introduction and the last is your conclusion. 4. Beginning You might want to start with a story. In this case we begin with a story that explains (to those who've never heard of the Bermuda Triangle before) why this place is interesting. For those of us who know the place it makes us interested again. We might want to give some history about the place that will explain why people should be interested or give them some information they might never have heard before. 5. Middle We're probably going to have some kind of explanation or discussion about the topic we have introduced here. We might give some more information or we might discuss the information and talk about different ideas or options. 6. End Here we want to finish in some way. Maybe we want to solve the problem or provide an interesting ending to our story. We might explain some new evidence that explains everything or tell a story about our own experience that changed our opinion. 7. Conclusion This is usually a short paragraph that completes the writing. It might just be a summary of what you've covered in the writing. It might state a final opinion that we have developed from the article. It shouldn't introduce any new ideas though. Additional Vocabulary Whet's our appetite - idiom - literally means it makes us want to eat something, we use it more to say it makes us interested in something, creates some curiosity Vessel - a kind of transport, could be a plane or a ship usually Sets the scene - idiom - used when we want to prepare our audience for something