 Assalamu alaikum viewers, welcome to virtual university and to your English lesson. In the past few lessons, we have looked at paragraph writing. Now, we shall move forward and look at longer pieces of writing, which consist of several paragraphs. We will look at essay writing in today's lesson and it shall continue for a couple of lessons. The problems we considered in sentence and paragraph writing are also the fundamental problems of longer composition. You have the same problems of unity, of coherence and emphasis. While some topics can be treated in a single paragraph, others require more elaborate development. In longer compositions, we have problems of arrangement. A longer composition such as an essay, it divides itself usually into a number of parts. In what order shall we present them? How much emphasis should be given to each fact? These are some of the problems that one faces in writing an essay. Now, a lot depends on the purpose of your writing. If you are writing primarily to give information, then you need to be as exact as possible. In the interest of clear logical presentation of facts. And if you are writing to describe something or to create an image or a picture, then you shall perhaps put less emphasis upon accurate measurement and more, more emphasis upon suggestive and revealing details. And if you are trying to tell a story, you will have to decide upon the point of highest interest and arrange your material carefully to give your reader a feeling or an illusion of taking part in the action. Writing an essay is not more difficult than writing a paragraph. There is only one difference, length. The principles of organization are the same for both. So, if you can write a good paragraph, you can also write a good essay. Now, we will first look at the process of writing. Writing usually takes place in steps or you can say stages and there are five stages or five steps in the writing process. The first one is getting ideas and there are three ways to get ideas. I shall just quickly mention them and discuss them in detail later on. One is brainstorming, the other is clustering and the third one is free writing. The second step is making a brief outline. The third step is writing the first draft. The fourth is revising what you have written and the last step is proof reading. Right? Now, let us just look at step one. How do you get ideas? I mean, nobody is born with ideas. You get them and you get them from primarily from reading. So, you realize how important reading is in a student's life. You get a lot of ideas from books, from reading journals, from reading magazines. You get ideas by talking to people, by listening to people talk. You pick up ideas all the time when you hear two people arguing over some political event. You listen to different sides of the argument. You get ideas if you watch TV programs, if you listen to, if you watch talk shows, if you watch interviews and you will notice that each person has his own way, his own way of looking at things. One person looks at things from one angle, another person looks at things from another angle. And in the process, it is a learning process. You pick up ideas, you might change your ideas, you might have had different ideas earlier, but you listen to two people talk on the TV, on a TV show, excuse me. And you change your views in the same way, there are a lot of programs on current issues and you will find that as you listen to people, as you listen to interviews, you are getting new ideas. I mean your idea, it is not necessarily that you listen to political talks. You can, if you are interested in sport, you can listen to, you can hear, you can watch programs where important sports personalities are interviewed and you are picking up ideas all the time. So you will get ideas from different sources, but for students, your main source is reading newspapers. There are articles in newspapers and if you read the editorial because you will find the editorial of the newspaper, it sort of clenches the policy of that, the points that is being discussed in the editorial. There are articles in newspapers and I always suggest to my students that for ideas, go to newspapers, go to magazines, go to journals, read books, you get a lot of ideas. Now let us come back to essay writing. Now if you were to write an essay, how would you go about it? There is one very, very easy way and that is brainstorming. You jot down the points or ideas and the details as they come to your mind. Just write them down without putting them in any special order. I am sure you have something to say about anything that you have been given to write on, right? You have your own ideas, just put them down, take pencil and paper and jot down all the ideas that come to you, never mind what order, do not worry about the arrangement, just keep putting them down. Try to accumulate as many details as you can think of. Now this is one strategy of beginning an essay. The first is getting the ideas, jot them down, right? That is called brainstorming. The other strategy is clustering and here you begin by writing your subject or your topic in the center of a blank sheet of paper. Write down the main idea, the main topic, the subject and then as ideas keep coming into your mind you put them down in boxes or in circles, draw circles around those and then you connect those ideas and you will see, oh well this one goes with this one. Now you will see a sample of clustering, do you remember? Some lessons earlier you read a paragraph on my neighbors and the paragraph said that my neighbors those who have just moved in recently are a very noisy family and the main idea was that the neighbors were noisy and the paragraph went on to elaborate. It talked about children playing hide and seek. It talked about the daughter shouting Babaji, Babaji all day long and then it talked about how as night time came loud music bled from the neighbors house. It was either the TV being switched on very loud or it was music from the stereo and then you had that the dogs they also and they played hide and seek at night time and the dogs barked loudly and they also took part in that in their sports. And then in that essay you remember we said the paragraph said it concluded that there is a need for something to be done and it talked about calling a meeting of the neighbors. If you look at the diagram showing clusters this is how you arrange your ideas as they come to you and then you link them. You link one with the other and you will say well this one goes under noise, this one goes under animals, this one goes under neighbors and this is how you go about making clusters. Let us look at the third way and that is free writing. This is also a very useful technique. Here you just write down whatever comes into your mind about the topic. This is continuous writing. You continue writing for some time without stopping. Just put pen to paper and write let us say for 10 minutes and then you stop and then you do not look at your work, do not look at it for some time and go back to it. Now when you are doing this sort of work when you are free writing and you are writing freely do not stop to worry about grammar or spelling. In fact at this stage this should be far away from your mind. You should not worry about punctuation or grammar or spelling. Now that was step one getting ideas, generating ideas to start your essay. Step two is that after you have jotted down the ideas on your paper you prepare a rough outline and your outline is going to be the backbone or the skeleton on which the rest of the writing will be built. It is the skeleton on which you will put the flesh and your outline will show at a glance the point of the paragraph and the support of that point. One glance you will know this is next paragraph I am going to write about this third paragraph a little bit this right. Step two is when you prepare a rough outline and it will help you to see if you need to do more writing to clarify your main point or its support. Now before I forget in your free writing which was part of step one you go back to that writing after some time and then you can add then you will realize oh well I need to add this bit and I need to add that bit. Now in step two you learn how to write we will talk about writing an outline in detail in your next lesson. Here I will just show you an example of an outline. Remember some weeks ago there was this passage on a celebrated a celebrated man who dies the paragraph if you can recall it is talked about how when a celebrated man dies his friends and enemies and all other people how they in a way they write his biography. They do not actually write it but the things that they say about the dead man relates his biography and the outline could have been like this a rough sketchy outline a you talk friends and enemies all the things that his friends would have said all the things that his enemies would have said and then you talk about his school fellows what are the kind of things his school fellows would have talked about of course they would have talked about his childhood days about the pranks and the conversations that he had and then somebody especially his lawyer number C could be what his lawyer has to say about him the lawyer who is looking after his will and some people will talk about the offices that he held all the distinguished offices that he held and all the great things that he takes and then what about his relatives what did his relatives have to say about him his nephews and grand nephews and how they relate accounts of his acts of humanity and his virtues so you have a sample of an outline that was step 2 the third step in writing an essay is that you actually write the first draft this is when you have put all your ideas together you have put them you have sorted them out this will go under this this will go under this these should go there and then you actually begin to write the purpose over here is to develop the content of your document you have the ideas and you begin to develop it so be ready at this stage you should be ready to put in additional thoughts additional details that did not come to your mind earlier again do not spend time correcting words or sentences whatever you got over there retain it but keep adding on to it because you never know words that you might decide to that you remove now you might decide to retain later on so do not cut out anything just keep adding and let it be step 4 is revising and this is the most important part of writing it is a practice that our students do not indulge in they are not encouraged to develop this habit whatever you write revising means that you rewrite build upon what you have written to make it better students tend to hand in what they have written without taking a look at it they expect the teacher to make the correction of course the teacher will correct them but you do your bit you have written something go over it I would rather the student correct his mistakes himself rather than wait for the teacher to do it so revising means that you rewrite build upon what you have written to make it better it is at this stage that you try to get rid of unnecessary material you try to improve on what you are going to retain what you do not want what you feel is irrelevant throw it out cut it out but what you feel that you must retain see if you can improve on it excuse me try to improve on what you feel that you must retain a typical revision means writing one or two more drafts one draft you have written already you revise it leave it go back to it again even if you go back to a piece of writing after say 10 minutes you will find that you want to make changes in it I always feel that there are there is always room for improvement and in writing the more you write the more you will get into the habit of revising what you have written and when you revise you will find that your revision is definitely better than what you have written earlier what you revised what you produced second time is better than what you wrote the first time now here at this stage you insert details that you left out you may put in transition words which would make smoother reading and if you are working on a word processor take out a hard copy so that you can see the entire document at one time step five is proof reading and this is the final stage in the writing process it means checking carefully for spelling grammar punctuation and other mistakes other errors use your dictionary for this purpose proof reading is often hard work and students want to avoid proof reading proofing if proofing is done carefully it will ensure that your written work looks as good as possible now these were the five steps in the process of writing whatever you write you will notice that if you follow these steps the work that you produce will definitely be better there is no single correct way of writing English good writing depends on a set of specific skills and these skills are involved in writing the three skills three skills are involved in writing the first one is skill of communication the skill of putting your ideas across to the reader number two is the skill of organizing organizing your ideas in the shape of sentences and paragraphs and the third skill is the stylistic skill the skill of style achieving the right level of formality or achieving the right tone for your writing now these skills will not come to you at once it is over a period of time after a lot of writing if you do a lot of term papers do a lot of written assignments gradually you will overcome the fear of writing you will learn to put across your ideas to your readers you will learn to organize your ideas give them some shape and you will learn to use the right tone a lot of people think of writing as problem solving they say it is a form of problem solving the writer they say has two tasks before him the writer has the task of generating ideas that is the first one and you as a student also when you have to write assignments you have to generate ideas and the second task is the task of composing those ideas into some sort of shape that is giving structure to those ideas now all writing whether it is journalistic writing or academic writing academic writing is writing a report writing an essay writing an assignment a term paper a term paper or some project work all these things involve writing now all writing has structure there is first the introduction then the main body in which the ideas are developed and third the conclusion so let me repeat all writing has structure and the structure is very simple it is in three parts the introduction the main body and the conclusion let us look at the introduction the introduction is concerned with the topic or the subject of writing in the introductory paragraph you will state the problem or the issue whatever you are writing on in a few general statements right to attract your reader to attract your readers attention and you will write a thesis statement a thesis statement to say how you intend to treat the topic of your essay the thesis statement is just like the topic sentence in a paragraph have you got the point the thesis statement which you will write in your introductory paragraph will state how you intend to treat the topic it is similar to the topic sentence in a paragraph now how would you try to catch the reader's attention so that the reader would want to continue reading now this can be done in a number of ways you can pose a question you can use a quotation an apt quotation mind you you can use a dialogue you can have a striking description or an image in words or you can make a controversial statement a statement that would make your reader sit up and want to read on or you could develop a historical perspective or a background start with the history of whatever you are writing on or you can begin by making an appeal for some action of a change now all these that I said a ways of trying to catch your readers attention you will be very careful you will choose the one that suits your purpose of writing not all of them are suitable right the next thing is the main body the main body of the essay this is the second part of the essay the major part and this is where you develop the main idea with the help of examples and details this part consists of more than one paragraph and each paragraph develops a subdivision of your topic so the number of paragraphs will the number of paragraphs will vary with the number of subdivisions you can organize the ideas either by chronological order or by way of importance just as you did for a single paragraph and the third part of your essay is the conclusion and here in the third and the last part you draw your conclusion there are many ways of ending your composition you could create a feeling of finale a feeling well that all right now it is coming to an end now this may take the form of a summary a summary or a review of the main points discussed in the body of the essay here you may even propose recommendations you may even give your decision right your opinion now we will look at on your screen you will see the diagram and you will see in graphic form what you have learnt today you have the three parts of the essay the first part is the introduction the second part is the main body and the third part is the conclusion now in your introduction you will have a general statement or a number of statements and with those statements you will have your thesis statement the thesis statement in the thesis statement you will you will show how you are going to treat the topic then you move on to the main body now over there on your screen you are just shown three these are three paragraphs it is not necessary that you write three paragraphs in the main body it can move it can be more than three paragraphs it could be five paragraphs six paragraphs it all depends on what your writing what is the purpose of your writing and how much material you got how much content you got it is here that you are going to develop the content of your essay and notice that each paragraph has a topic sentence supporting evidence which could be in the form of illustrations examples facts figures right and then there will be a concluding sentence that is for one paragraph the same pattern you will follow for the next paragraph you will have the topic sentence you will have supporting evidence and you will support your evidence by giving examples by giving facts figures statistics right and you will have a concluding sentence and the same thing will continue till you have said all that you have to say and the third part will be the conclusion and again your conclusion will be either a restatement of what has been said earlier it could be a summary you could summarize the points that you made in the main body and you can add something it is not necessary that you confine yourself to a summary or a restatement it all depends on what you are writing on your topic and your purpose I am sure you have noticed that I keep repeating it is it all depends on the topic of your writing on the topic on the subject of your writing and on the purpose of your writing right and you have to give your opinion or your decision sometimes you are even required to make recommendations if you are dealing with a problem and you would like to recommend that certain steps be taken it is here in this part the third part that you will make your recommendations your suggestions for any action or any steps that have to be taken now I would like you to look at the paragraph the slide on paragraph notice it is the same pattern the topic sentence and then you have got support support support which is in the form of facts figures examples statistics whatever and then you have got a concluding sentence. So, this if you have learned to write a paragraph you will have no difficulty in writing an essay the only difference is of length how you expand your ideas right now in essay writing paragraphs are written and designed to serve as part of a longer composition in a skillfully written essay each paragraph has its own proper place just as each word has its proper place in a coherent emphatic sentence. Now, when you are writing if you revise your work you will realize that oh this paragraph should not be over here this paragraph should come earlier. So, in your in step 4 where you revise after you have written your essay go back and look at the paragraphs look at the order in which the paragraphs are coming and you might want to change their position that this paragraph paragraph a should not be there it should be where paragraph c is and when you are revising you can make all these changes just as there is a problem of transition from one sentence to another within the paragraph. So, there is some problem when dealing with a group of paragraphs. So, you can see that writing an essay is essentially the same as writing a paragraph it has the same problems the problems of transition the problem of unity the problem of coherence and the problem of emphasis. So, when you are writing you can juggle with your paragraphs in your when you revise your paragraph c which one sometimes we do not realize it, but when you revise we realize that paragraphs ought to be shifted and you can do that and as you can see a writing an essay is essentially the same as writing a paragraph the difference is of length. Now we will just check your understanding of the material presented in this lesson and I would like to check your understanding and there are a number of questions let us see if you can handle them. Number one writing is a skill that can be learned with practice is this statement true or false writing is a skill that can be learned with practice true or false yes it is a skill that can be learned with practice. So, it is a true statement number two an effective paragraph is one that a makes a point b provides specific support c makes a point and provides specific support d none of the above. So, what is an effective paragraph an effective paragraph is one that makes a point and provides specific support. So, it is statement number c that is correct number three the sentence that states the main idea of a paragraph is called the topic sentence. Now is this statement true or false it is a true statement because the sentence that states the main idea of a paragraph is called the topic sentence. Question number four pre writing strategies can help a writer find a a good angle to write about b a good main point to make about the topic c enough details to support the main point d all of the above. Now look at that question again pre writing strategies what can they do they can help the writer provide a good angle it is from the points that he notes down a good main point to make about the topic it can provide enough details or does it provide all of the above and if you recall it is all of these points number five in the early stages of the writing process you should not be concerned with spelling punctuation or grammar in the early stages in the early stage of the writing process you should not be concerned with spelling punctuation or grammar is this a true statement or a false statement and you know that it is a true statement. Number six a brief plan of the paragraph or composition is known as an outline true or false a brief plan of the paragraph or composition is known as an outline true or false it is true number seven your first concern when you start writing should be a spelling b content c grammar d punctuation. Now out of those four things which should be your first concern and your first concern should be content number eight two common ways of organizing a paragraph are using a chronological order and order of importance two common ways of organizing a paragraph are using a chronological order and order of importance is this a true statement or a false statement it is a true statement number nine the words first next then also another and finally are known as signal words they are also called transition words true or false is this statement true or false yes it is a true statement number ten the purpose of proof reading is to check for errors errors in grammar in punctuation in usage in spelling and all of these now what is it that you do when you are proof reading when you are proof reading you check for errors and you check for errors in all four areas you check for errors in grammar you check for errors in punctuation you check for errors in usage and you check for errors in spelling right you you even check your sentences the way your sentences have been constructed. So, the purpose of proof reading is to check for errors in all all of these areas that I that are mentioned over there so how many points did you get correct I hope and you should have got all ten correct now in today's lesson you looked at essay writing you looked at the different parts of the essay the introduction the main body and the conclusion right and you looked at the paragraph as well and you noticed that it is the same technique that is followed the same technique that you followed in writing a paragraph you follow it while writing an essay right if you can write a paragraph a good paragraph you can also write a good essay in your essay you have to develop the contents the contents could be developed in a matter of four paragraphs five paragraphs six paragraphs ten paragraphs now if you remember I set you some work that was to write a paragraph on some topics and the topics that were given you were arranged marriages population explosion in Pakistan and computers I asked you to write a paragraph now I would like you to write an essay you can write choose one of the three topics write an essay and I would like you to follow the five steps that were outlined for you earlier step one storming brainstorming you can follow any one of the techniques that I mentioned free writing clustering brainstorming get your ideas if you if you can read up on any of these topics jot down those ideas and then make a rough outline see how you arrange your ideas right after that write the first draft after you have written the first draft leave it for some time then revise it then rewrite it take out the bits that you think are unnecessary or irrelevant add in what you think is required then revise it and the last stage would be that you would proofread it in the last stage you will check for spelling mistakes for grammar mistakes for punctuation mistakes for usage and spelling mistakes right and show these essays to your instructor because we are approaching the end of the course and sometime in your exam later on we might ask you to write an essay so write on any one of these topics and show your essay to your instructor that is all for now see you next time Allah Hafiz.