From Sentences to Text Overview

Taking college courses is all about reading and writing. We started this course by looking at word forms (parts of speech) and how we can group them to create phrases and then different types of sentences. Sentences can also be grouped together to create text: paragraphs and essays. Let's look at some basic information about grouping basic sentences to create a simple text or paragraph.

Basics of Paragraphs

In academic writing, a paragraph is a group of sentences about a single idea or point. Paragraphs can be different lengths in different writing situations. For low intermediate writers, anywhere from 4 to 12 sentences is a good length for a paragraph. Your instructor will make sure you know how many sentences are expected for each writing assignment.


Writing Tasks

Your teacher has given you a writing task. What are you going to do? How do you get started? Before you begin to write, first read the assignment instructions carefully. This way, you know what you should write about. Instructions also include other important information, such as due dates or the number of words/sentences required. When you know everything about the assignment, you can begin working on it.

Writers follow a process to find ideas and then put them into words and sentences to create text. Let's look at what the steps are and why they are helpful.

  1. Brainstorming
    Before you write anything, find some ideas. Let your mind wander, and jot down anything that comes to mind about your topic. You can decide later whether you want to use an idea or not.
  2. Planning
    At the planning stage, you will decide what ideas to keep. You will also decide the order in which you want to present your ideas, and you will make an outline of your writing. Making this outline will save you time later.
  3. Drafting
    After you have made an outline of your paragraph, you are ready to write the first draft. No piece of writing is finished after one draft - you will write at least two. As you write, don't worry about language use - you will focus on spelling, grammar, and punctuation in a later step. The goal here is just to get something on paper.
  4. Revising
    At this stage, you are still focusing on the ideas. Your goal here is to make sure you have a clear piece of writing that contains enough detail about your topic. Check that all the necessary ideas are included, that ideas are presented in the right order, and that there is no unnecessary information in the writing.
  5. Editing
    Now we come to the final draft. By this stage, your ideas are well expressed and in the right order. Your job now is to tidy up the language. Check for spelling, make sure your punctuation is correct, and make sure there are no grammar mistakes. If you do these things, you should have a clear, correct piece of writing.

Source:

Adapted from Washtenaw Community College, https://libguides.wccnet.edu/ld.php?content_id=46127140
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.

Adapted from College Skills INT English, Tania Pattison, https://www.nscc.ca/library/docs/copyright/oer/otb197-01-college-skills-intermediate-english.pdf
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.