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Файл:Композиция английской письменной речи. Учебное пособие.pdf
Министерство образования и науки Российской Федерации
Сибирский федеральный университет
Ю. И. Детинко
КОМПОЗИЦИЯ
АНГЛИЙСКОЙ ПИСЬМЕННОЙ РЕЧИ
Учебное пособие
Красноярск
СФУ
2017
УДК 811.111(07)
ББК 81.432.1я73
Д382
Р е ц е н з е н т ы:
И. А. Битнер, кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры
английской филологии Красноярского государственного педагогического
университета им. В. П. Астафьева;
Ю. В. Лукиных, кандидат педагогических наук, зав. кафедрой
гуманитарных дисциплин Красноярского института экономики – филиала
Санкт-Петербургского университета технологий управления и экономики
Детинко, Ю. И.
Д382 Композиция английской письменной речи : учеб. пособие /
Ю. И. Детинко. – Красноярск : Сиб. федер. ун-т, 2017. – 140 с.
ISBN 978-5-7638-3657-8
Систематизированы и обобщены теоретические основы композиции
письменного текста. Рассмотрены этапы планирования и написания черновика,
методы сбора материала, правила формулирования темы и ключевого тезиса,
а также способы совершенствования структуры, стиля, лексики, морфологии,
синтаксиса, пунктуации письменного текста.
Подробно представлены наиболее распространенные стратегии
письменного изложения: описание, повествование, описание процесса,
иллюстрация, сравнение, причина и следствие, аргументация. Уделено внимание
деловой корреспонденции, структуре и лингвистическим особенностям
официальных писем. Предложен большой объем практических упражнений для
совершенствования навыка письма на английском языке.
Предназначено для студентов бакалавриата направления 45.03.02
«Лингвистика», а также может быть рекомендовано для широкого круга
читателей, владеющих английским языком и желающих ознакомиться с основами
письменного изложения.
Электронный вариант издания см.: УДК 811.111(07)
http://catalog.sfu-kras.ru ББК 81.432.1я73
ISBN 978-5-7638-3657-8 © Сибирский федеральный университет, 2017
2
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................. 5
1. THE WRITING PROCESS .............................................................................. 6
1.1. Why to write ................................................................................................ 6
1.2. The writer’s environment and habits ........................................................... 7
1.3. The stages of the writing process ................................................................ 8
1.4. The purposes for writing ........................................................................... 11
1.5. The audience for writing ........................................................................... 13
1.6. The qualities of good writing and typical mistakes in writing the essay .. 17
SELF-STUDY: Examining your own process of writing ................................ 19
2. PLANNING AND DRAFTING ..................................................................... 20
2.1. Selection of the subject .............................................................................. 20
2.2. Strategies for gathering information ......................................................... 22
2.3. Organizing the information ....................................................................... 26
2.4. Developing a thesis statement ................................................................... 27
2.5. Writing the first draft ................................................................................. 29
SELF-STUDY: Reflecting on your writing process ........................................ 31
3. REVISING AND EDITING ........................................................................... 32
3.1. What is revision? ....................................................................................... 32
3.2. Preparing to revise ..................................................................................... 33
3.3. Considering the whole essay ..................................................................... 33
3.4. Strengthening paragraph structure and development ............................... 34
3.5. Paragraphs with special functions ............................................................. 49
3.6. Selecting a title .......................................................................................... 54
3.7. Sharpening sentences and words ............................................................... 55
3.8. Hints about editing .................................................................................... 59
3.9. Proofreading your draft ............................................................................. 59
SELF-STUDY: Your own revising practice .................................................... 60
4. DESCRIPTION ............................................................................................... 61
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5. NARRATION ................................................................................................. 71
6. PROCESS ANALYSIS ................................................................................... 79
7. ILLUSTRATION ............................................................................................ 85
8. COMPARISON ............................................................................................... 90
9. CAUSE AND EFFECT ................................................................................... 97
10. ARGUMENTATION .................................................................................. 104
11. BUSINESS CORRESPONDENCE ............................................................ 120
12. PUNCTUATING WORDS AND SENTENCES ....................................... 124
CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 137
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................. 138
4
INTRODUCTION
The handbook is developed in accordance with the programme of the
course English Composition and is primarily aimed at 1
of the direction 45.03.02 Linguistics. The main objective of the handbook is to
help students develop the skills of effective written communication in the
English language.
The material is built sequentially starting with general introduction to the
writing process which involves considering the purposes and audience for
writing, stages for the writing process, methods of gathering and organizing
information, revising techniques. Special attention is paid to the composition of
the written text, means of cohesion and argumentation, principles of paragraph
and sentence building. The students learn how to evaluate the assignment and
choose the appropriate style and format of the text according to the purpose and
the target reader. All the parts are followed by the “Self-study” section where
the students can reflect on their progress. After having learnt the basic principles
of effective planning, drafting, revising and editing the written text, the
handbook presents the main strategies of writing: description, narration, process
analysis, illustration, comparison, cause and effect, argumentation. Each part
consists of theoretical principles of building the specific type of the text,
illustrative material, exercises, and suggestions for individual work. Part 11
focuses on business correspondence, mostly the job application letters and
resumes. The last part is devoted to the punctuation peculiarities in the English
language concentrating on both punctuation in words and sentences. Since this
aspect of the English written communication is often underestimated, it is
essential that the handbook offers a systematized set of principles and a complex
of exercises to develop the punctuation skills.
Although this handbook is mostly aimed at Linguistics students, it can be
interesting for everybody who knows the English language on the Upperintermediate level and would like to understand the basic principles of the
written text composition or improve their writing skills.
st
year bachelor students
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1. THE WRITING PROCESS
1.1. Why to write
Although electronic devices have made some writing unnecessary, the
written word flourishes both at university and in the world of work. To start
with, there is an important difference between writing and talking. In everyday
conversation, you make all kinds of points, or assertions. You say, for example,
“I hate my job”; “Sue’s a really generous person”; or “That exam was unfair.”
The points that you make concern such personal matters as well as, at times,
larger issues: “A lot of doctors are arrogant”; “The death penalty should exist for
certain crimes”.
The people you are talking with do not always challenge you to give
reasons for your statements. They may know why you feel as you do, or they
may already agree with you, or they simply may not want to put you on the spot;
and so they do not always ask “Why?” But the people who read what you write
may not know you, agree with you, or feel in any way obliged to you. If you
want to communicate effectively with readers, you must provide solid evidence
for any point you make. An important difference, then, between writing and
talking is this: In writing, any idea that you advance must be supported with
specific reasons or details. That is why writing offers very real advantages to
both writers and readers:
1. It gives writers time to reflect on and research what they want to
communicate and then lets them shape and reshape the material to their
satisfaction.
2. It makes communication more precise and effective.
3. It provides a permanent record of thoughts, actions, and decisions.
4. It saves the reader’s time; we absorb information more swiftly when we
read it than when we hear it.
Many people will expect you to write for them. At university you may be
asked to write reports, memos, research papers, and essay exams. Job hunting
usually requires you to write application letters. And once you are hired, writing
will probably figure in your duties. You might be asked to discuss the capabilities
of new computer equipment, report on a conference you attended, or explain new
6
safety procedures to supervisors or staff. The ability to write will help you earn
better grades, land the job you want, and advance afterwards in your career.
Furthermore, writing ability yields personal benefits. You might need to
defend a medical reimbursement claim, request clarification of an inadequate set
of directions, or document a demand for replacement of a faulty product. Skill in
writing will help you to handle these matters.
As you can see, we usually write in response to situation. This situation
often determines the purpose and audience of your paper as well as its content,
style, and organization. We do not, then, write in isolation but rather to
communicate with others who have an interest in your message. To do an
effective job, you will need to understand the different situations that can
prompt a piece of writing and respond accordingly.
1.2. The writer’s environment and habits
On your journey from kindergarten to university, you have probably had
to produce dozens of stories, book reports, and themes on a wide variety of
subjects. But if you are like many student writers, you may not feel as if you
have learned much from this experience. The assignments were so divergent, the
writing experiences so inconsistent, and the results so unpredictable that you
may still feel like a beginner. Indeed, most beginning writers are so preoccupied
with completing an assignment that they rarely think about how they did it, the
process they used to produce it. If you were asked to describe the characteristic
features of your writing process, you would probably begin by identifying your
writing habits – those conditions and tools you believe you must have whenever
you write.
Some of these writing habits are formed by chance. If you produced a
paper you were proud of by secluding yourself in a quiet room, inscribing neatly
shaped words in a spiral notebook with a soft-lead pencil, then you may be
convinced that you need isolation, silence, and primitive tools to perform
successfully. But chance could have ordained that you produced that same paper
seated at the kitchen table, surrounded by family conversation, banging out your
sentences on a portable typewriter. If so, you might believe that to write
effectively you will always require a comfortable environment, reassuring
noises, and efficient machinery. Indeed, after a time some writers look upon
their writing habits as rituals, procedures to be followed faithfully and regularly
each time they write. They wear the same flannel shirt, or choose the same
background music, or sharpen an entire box of pencils before they begin.
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Although many writing habits are formed by coincidental patterns of
cause and effect and are sometimes perpetuated by ritual, most are chosen,
almost unconsciously, to conform to a writer's other personal habits.
Exercise. Most people have developed special habits or idiosyncrasies
when they write. Using the following questions as a guide, compile a list of your
writing habits.
1. What particular experiences or people helped you form your writing
habits?
2. Do your writing habits resemble your other work habits? Do you see
any relationship between the way you write and the way you might make a piece
of furniture, cook a large meal, or practice your favorite sport? Make a list of
similarities and differences.
3. What kind of physical environment do you need in order to write
effectively? Do you need the silence and solitude of your own isolated study or
the sounds and activity of a more communal space such as the kitchen or the
library? What happens to you when you are forced to write in a “hostile”
environment?
4. What kind of tools do you prefer? Do you prefer composing with a
special kind of pencil or pen, or do you prefer composing at a typewriter or word
processor? What happens to you when you are forced to use an "alien" writing
implement? What other special tools do you require – paper, pencil sharpener,
eraser, correction fluid, scissors, tape, dictionaries, thesaurus?
5. When do you write best – early in the morning or late in the evening?
How long can you write at one sitting? What kind of reasons do you give
yourself to stop working? What kind of rewards do you give yourself for
finishing a piece of writing or a specific portion of it? How long does it take you
to recover your train of thought once you have been away from a writing project
for several hours or days? How do you re-establish contact with what you were
thinking?
1.3. The stages of the writing process
Whatever your writing habits are, they are simply the enabling conditions
that allow you to begin and pursue your writing process. These habits are the
physical and psychological scenery for the central action – the intellectual
procedure you perform as you move through a series of stages to produce a
piece of writing.
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Most writing tasks require us to plan and gather data and reflect on our
own and others’ experience, then to draft and think it all through again as we are
working. When we have a draft (second, third, forth, and on up) that really
embodies all of our thoughts on the subject and says what we want to say, then it
is time to improve it for the reader. Writing is a process that includes several
different activities. Although these are usually called the “stages”, they are not
as separate or linear as that term might suggest. Learning to write is a matter of
learning about the stages and about efficient methods of working through each
stage and combining them into an efficient process. We are going to investigate
the stages in the writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing.
Prewriting
Prewriting is the term given to all of the activities that prepare us to write
a first draft. These generally include defining the writing task, gathering
material, and planning the first draft. Defining the writing task means clarifying
for ourselves why we are writing (i.e. the purpose) and what our particular
audience requires.
Gathering material may be as simple as recalling information or
impressions we already have in our heads or as complex as reading everything
in print on our subject or interviewing everyone involved in an event.
As soon as we have a writing task and some background information, we
begin to generalize. Then we look for more data, which either supports our
original generalization or prompts us to change or refine it. Thus, while we
gather the facts we are beginning to plan the first draft. We are deciding what
we will say and probably making notes about the order in which we will present
various ideas and their support. Armed with these notes – which are often no
more than a rough list – we are ready to try a first draft. Actually, there is no
single point at which we should move from prewriting to drafting. Some people
begin drafting as soon as they have gathered most of their material. They explain
that drafting helps them see more clearly how their ideas fit together. Other
people draw up elaborate and detailed plans before they begin drafting. Neither
system is better than the other. Each of us just has to discover what works best
for us. The early drafter, however, has to be willing to write many drafts,
starting over until he or she comes to the right generalization and an effective
organization. This might be called the trial-and-error method.
Obviously, we prewrite differently for different tasks. The technique that
helps us gather information for one task may be no help at all with another.
Drafting
First drafts are made to be thrown out or at least buried beneath revisions,
but they are an important part of the writing process. drafts serve two purposes:
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(1) they allow us to put all of our material on paper, and thus to see it all at once
as we never could in our heads; (2) by putting all of our material before us, they
enable us to evaluate it. As we draft we put our thoughts and our supporting data
into words, sentences, and paragraphs, and we can see and hear it all together for
the first time. if our writing task is relatively simple one, the first draft may be
close to what we want and may need only some fine-tuning. But with more
complicated writing tasks, the first draft often brings to light some real or
apparent contradictions or leaps in logic, or suggests to us that material should
be added or rearranged. We may then be able to go right to a second draft in
which we make the needed adjustments, or we may have to gather some more
data or go back and think the subject through again. First drafts are never
wasted, even if they end up in the trash. They serve to help us clarify our ideas
and our means of presenting them.
Revising
To revise is to see again. When our ideas have been shaped into a draft,
they are before us, and we can evaluate them. Of course, we have been
reconsidering and making changes as far back as prewriting stage, and our ideas
and the way we present them have been getting clearer. But once we have a
draft, we can put more of our energy into clarifying and improving.
From this point on, we can concentrate on the effectiveness with which
we present our writing. Here we are focusing entirely on our readers. Will they
be able to follow the train of thought? Is there any chance they could fail to see
how a sentence or paragraph follows from the one before it? Will they
understand all the words? Is there anything they might object to? Developing
this ability to imagine an audience’s reaction is essential to learning to write
effectively. We all need someone else’s opinion on some of the things we write,
even after we have become quite good at revising on our own.
Editing
It is both demanding and rewarding to think through a subject and to work
out strategies that will present it most effectively to a reader. Compared to these
activities, making sure that the words are correctly spelled and that the sentences
are correctly constructed and punctuated may seem to be minor considerations.
It does make sense not to worry about these things until the last draft.
Although sentence construction, spelling, and punctuation are the last
details writers tend to, these “surface features” are what the readers encounter
first. The words as they appear on the page are all the writers have to
communicate their ideas to the readers. Generally readers suspect that writers
who are careless or uninformed about small things are likely to be careless and
uninformed about big things – like their ideas and opinions.
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