"The best way to test people 's writing ability is to get
them to write." (Hughes, 2001:75)
HOW TO WRITE GOOD PARAGRAPHS
Learning to write good paragraphs requires students to master four following steps. The first step is that the students should learn how to write a topic sentence. In a paragraph, the topic sentence often comes at the first sentence. It states the main ideas of the paragraph. The topic sentence consists of a topic and controlling ideas. Next, students should learn how to write supportive sentences. These sentences come from the controlling ideas of the topic sentence. Students should give examples, statistics, facts, or quotations to explain or to modify the topic sentence. After that, they learn how to make their paragraphs united and coherent. In this step, keep in mind that all the ideas in the paragraph just support one main idea, the topic of the paragraph. In addition, the students should use some transitional signals to construct their writings smoothly. Finally, they should learn how to write a concluding sentence which often comes last in the paragraph. They can summarize all what they have discussed in the paragraph or restate the topic sentence in different ways. In short, when students follow these steps, they can produce good academic paragraphs.
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HOW TO WRITE A GOOD ESSAY
Learning how to write a good essay is very important for students. The reason to write an essay, not a paragraph, is that the topic is too complex to be discussed in only one paragraph. A form of an essay is similar to that of a paragraph, but every part of it is longer (Hogue & Oshima, 2006). Therefore, students should learn how to write the introductory paragraph, the body of the essay, and the concluding paragraph.
First of all, the introductory paragraph begins with a general statement in order to introduce the topic to the readers. And then the other sentences, one after another, should be narrowed down the topic to a specific area. Particularly, the shape of the introductory paragraph looks like a triangle which ends with the thesis statement at the last sentence of the lowest angle.
 After completing the introductory paragraph, students should learn how to organize the body of the essay with several paragraphs. Each paragraph of the body should begin with a topic sentence or the main idea. Yet, there must be some supporting sentences to prove the main idea by giving examples, facts, reasons, or statistics (Hogue & Oshima, 2006; Baugh, 1992). Normally, each of the body paragraphs ends with a concluding sentence.
The final part of an essay is the concluding paragraph which tells the readers that the essay is to end. In the concluding paragraph, students should summarize the main points which are discussed in the body of the essay, or they can rewrite the thesis statement in different ways. In addition, students can give some of their own comments, their strong beliefs or their messagesto the readers to remember what they would like to convey in the essay.
In conclusion, in order to write a good essay, students should be clear about the techniques of writing an introductory paragraph, the body of the essay which includes several paragraphs, and the concluding paragraph which closes up their writing. The more the students keep up these steps of writing an essay, the better quality of their writing will be.
References
Baugh, L. S. (1992). How to write term papers and reports. Lincolnwood: VGM Career Horizons.
Hogue, A., & Oshima, A. (2006). Writing Academic English. New York: Longman.
Hughes, A. (2001). Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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