Consolidation
A The following diagram shows a water treatment cycle. The basic idea behind this plan is to take used water, clean it and have it used again (and so on). Write a description of this cycle in order to persuade your town/city council to investigate the possibility of installing such a system. Consider the following factors when writing:
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the best point to enter the cycle, in order to explain it;
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the need to break down the cycle into stages, and the basis on which the stages might be defined;
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the need to use topic sentences for (a) the whole text and (b) each paragraph within the text;
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the need to vary sentence structure (i.e. simple/compound/complex).
Use the following as your title: 'Why waste used water?'
When your text is finished show it to another student and ask her or him to comment on it, with the relevance, reality and clarity principles in mind.
B It has often been claimed that a poverty cycle exists in society: that, in general, poor parents produce children who will be poor and who, in turn, will produce further children who will be poor, etc. In groups of five discuss this phenomenon. When you feel ready, write an individual text explaining the poverty cycle and stating your own opinions regarding its existence or not. Be sure to support any claims you make.
C In groups of three or four explore the notion of 'cycles', e.g. the seasons, day and night, life and death etc. What 'cycles' do you know? Can they be divided into classes? Can you define a cycle? When you have discussed all the ideas sufficiently, write an individual text on the theme of 'cycles'.
Looking back
Now that you have finished this unit you should be able to follow a text with a cyclical structure, and decide where to begin when writing a description of a cycle. You should be able to write clear and suitable topic sentences. You should recognize different sentence types: simple, compound and complex; and you should know how to use them appropriately. You should also be able to write complex sentences containing relative clauses of different kinds.