Dear Sir/Madam,

I would like to book a double room for the month of August 2002.

I need an air-conditioned room with bath and shower which faces the sea.

I should be grateful if you would confirm my booking as soon as possible.

Please give me an indication of your rates per night including full board.

Should you have no vacancies please could you give me the address of a suitable hotel in your area?

Yours faithfully,
Jennifer O’Brian

Useful phrases

This text was written by Ulrike Schroedter.

Here are some steps to follow on your own. Writing centres can give you further guidance.

Start Large, End Small

Revision may mean changing the shape and reasoning in your paper. It often means adding or deleting sentences and paragraphs, shifting them around, and reshaping them as you go. Before dealing with details of style and language (editing), be sure you have presented ideas that are clear and forceful. Make notes as you go through these questions, and stop after each section to make the desired revisions.

1. First check whether you have fulfilled the intention of the assignment. Look again at the instruction sheet, and revise your work to be sure you can say yes to these questions:
   • Have you performed the kind of thinking the assignment sheet asked for (e.g., analyse, argue, compare, explore)
   • Have you written the genre of document called for (e.g., book review, critique, personal response, field notes, research report, lab report, essay)?
   • Have you used concepts and methods of reasoning discussed in the course? Don’t be shy of using theoretical terms from the course. Also beware of just retelling stories or listing information. Looking at your topic sentences in sequence will show what kinds of ideas you have emphasized. (See our handout on Developing Coherent Paragraphs.)
   • Have you given adequate evidence for your argument or interpretation? Be sure that the reader knows why and how your ideas are important. A quick way of checking is to note where your paragraphs go after their topic sentences. Watch out for repetitions of general ideas-look for progression into detailed reasoning, usually including source referencing.
2. Then look at overall organization. It’s worthwhile to print out everything so that you can view the entire document. Then consider these questions, and revise to get the answers you want:
   • Does your introduction make clear where the rest of the paper is headed? If the paper is argument-based, you will likely use a thesis statement. Research papers often start with a statement of the research question. (Ask a clear-headed roommate or other friend to give you a prediction of what he or she expects after reading only the first few paragraphs of your paper. Don’t accept a vague answer.)
   • Is each section in the right place to fulfil your purpose? (It might help to make a reverse outline: take the key idea from each paragraph or section and set it down in a list so you can see the logical structure of what you’ve written. Does it hang together? Is it all necessary? What’s missing? Revise to fill in gaps and take out irrelevant material.)
   • Have you drawn connections between the sections? (Look again at your topic sentences to see if they link back to what has just been said as well as looking forward to the next point. Find ways to draw ideas together explicitly. Use logical statements, not just a sprinkling of connecting words.)
   • Would a person reading your conclusion know what question you had asked and how you had arrived at your answer? (Again, ask for a real paraphrase.)
3. Now polish and edit your style by moving to smaller matters such as word choice, sentence structure, grammar, punctuation, and spelling. You may already have passages that you know need further work. This is where you can use computer programs (with care) and reference material such as handbooks and handouts. Here are some tips
   • Read passages aloud to see if you have achieved the emphasis you want. Look for places to use short sentences to draw attention to key ideas, questions, or argumentative statements. If you can’t read a sentence all the way through with expression, try cutting it into two or more.
   • Be sure to use spell check. It will help you catch most typos and many wrongly spelled words. But don’t let it replace anything automatically, or you’ll end up with nonsense words. You will still have to read through your piece and use a print dictionary or writer’s handbook to look up words that you suspect are not right.
   • Don’t depend on a thesaurus. It will supply you with lists of words in the same general category as the one you have tried-but most of them won’t make sense. Use plain clear words instead. Use a print dictionary and look up synonyms given as part of definitions. Always look at the samples of usage too.
   • Don’t depend on a grammar checker. The best ones still miss many errors, and they give a lot of bad advice. If you know that you overuse slang or the passive voice, you may find some of the “hits” useful, but be sure to make your own choice of replacement phrases. A few of the explanations may be useful. But nothing can substitute for your own judgement.

A Note on Appearance:

Looks do count. Give your instructor the pleasure of handling a handsome document-or at least of not getting annoyed or inconvenienced. These are the basic expectations for any type of assignment

• Include a cover page giving the title of your paper, the name of the course, your name, the date, and the instructor’s name. Don’t bother with coloured paper, fancy print, or decorations.
• Number your pages in the top right-hand corner. Omit the number for the first page of your paper (since it will be headed by the title), starting in with 2 on the second page.
• Double-space your text, including indented quotations, footnotes, and reference lists. Leave margins of one inch (2.5 cm) on all sides of the page.
• Use a standard font in twelve-point size. For easier reading, don’t right-justify your lines.
• Put the reference list or bibliography on a separate page at the end. (See the handout on Standard Documentation Format: choose your format, then use the examples as guides.)
• Staple your pages; don’t use a bulky binding or cover.

source from: university of toronto

What is an annotated bibliography?

An annotated bibliography gives an account of the research that has been done on a given topic. Like any bibliography, an annotated bibliography is an alphabetical list of research sources. In addition to bibliographic data, an annotated bibliography provides a concise summary of each source and some assessment of its value or relevance. Depending on your assignment, an annotated bibliography may be one stage in a larger research project, or it may be an independent project standing on its own.

Selecting the sources:

The quality and usefulness of your bibliography will depend on your selection of sources. Define the scope of your research carefully so that you can make good judgments about what to include and exclude. Your research should attempt to be reasonably comprehensive within well-defined boundaries. Consider these questions to help you find appropriate limits for your research:

• What problem am I investigating? What question(s) am I trying to pursue? If your bibliography is part of a research project, this project will probably be governed by a research question. If your bibliography is an independent project on a general topic (e.g. aboriginal women and Canadian law), try formulating your topic as a question or a series of questions in order to define your search more precisely ( e.g. How has Canadian law affecting aboriginal women changed as a result of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? How have these changes affected aboriginal women? How have aboriginal women influenced and responded to these legal developments?).
• What kind of material am I looking for? (academic books and journal articles? government reports or policy statements? articles from the popular press? primary historical sources? etc.)
• Am I finding essential studies on my topic? (Read footnotes in useful articles carefully to see what sources they use and why. Keep an eye out for studies that are referred to by several of your sources.)

Summarizing the argument of a source:

An annotation briefly restates the main argument of a source. An annotation of an academic source, for example, typically identifies its thesis (or research question, or hypothesis), its major methods of investigation, and its main conclusions. Keep in mind that identifying the argument of a source is a different task than describing or listing its contents. Rather than listing contents (see Example 1 below), an annotation should account for why the contents are there (see Example 2 below).

Example 1: Only lists contents:

McIvor, S. D. (1995). Aboriginal women’s rights as “existing rights.” Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme 2/3, 34-38.

This article discusses recent constitutional legislation as it affects the human rights of aboriginal women in Canada: theConstitution Act (1982), its amendment in 1983, and amendments to the Indian Act (1985). It also discusses the implications for aboriginal women of the Supreme Court of Canada’s interpretation of the Constitution Act in R. v. Sparrow (1991).

Example 2: Identifies the argument:

McIvor, S. D. (1995). Aboriginal women’s rights as “existing rights.” Canadian Woman Studies/Les Cahiers de la Femme 2/3, 34-38.

This article seeks to define the extent of the civil and political rights returned to aboriginal women in the Constitution Act(1982), in its amendment in 1983, and in amendments to the Indian Act (1985).^* This legislation reverses prior laws that denied Indian status to aboriginal women who married non-aboriginal men. On the basis of the Supreme Court of Canada’s interpretation of the Constitution Act in R. v. Sparrow (1991), McIvor argues that the Act recognizes fundamental human rights and existing aboriginal rights, granting to aboriginal women full participation in the aboriginal right to self-government.^**

^*research question
^**method & main conclusions

The following reading strategies can help you identify the argument of your source:

• Identify the author’s thesis (central claim or purpose) or research question. Both the introduction and the conclusion can help you with this task.
• Look for repetition of key terms or ideas. Follow them through the text and see what the author does with them. Note especially the key terms that occur in the thesis or research question that governs the text.
• Notice how the text is laid out and organized. What are the main divisions or sections? What is emphasized? Why? Accounting for why will help you to move beyond listing contents and toward giving an account of the argument.
• Notice whether and how a theory is used to interpret evidence or data. Identify the method used to investigate the problem/s addressed in the text.
• Pay attention to the opening sentence(s) of each paragraph, where authors often state concisely their main point in the paragraph.
• Look for paragraphs that summarize the argument. A section may sometimes begin or conclude with such a paragraph.

Assessing the relevance and value of sources:

Your annotation should now go on to briefly assess the value of the source to an investigation of your research question or problem. If your bibliography is part of a research project, briefly identify how you intend to use the source and why. If your bibliography is an independent project, try to assess the source’s contribution to the research on your topic.

• Are you interested in the way the source frames its research question or in the way it goes about answering it (its method)? Does it make new connections or open up new ways of seeing a problem? (e.g. bringing the Sparrow decision concerning aboriginal fishing rights to bear on the scope of women’s rights)
• Are you interested in the way the source uses a theoretical framework or a key concept? (e.g. analysis of existing, extinguished, and other kinds of rights)
• Does the source gather and analyze a particular body of evidence that you want to use? (e.g. the historical development of a body of legislation)
• How do the source’s conclusions bear on your own investigation?

In order to determine how you will use the source or define its contribution, you will need to assess the quality of the argument: why is it of value? what are its limitations? how well defined is its research problem? how effective is its method of investigation? how good is the evidence? would you draw the same conclusions from the evidence?

Keep the context of your project in mind. How is material assessed in your course or discipline? What models for assessing arguments are available in course materials?

Various kinds of annotated bibliographies:

Annotated bibliographies do come in many variations. Pay close attention to the requirements of your assignment. Here are some possible variations:

• Some assignments may require you to summarize only and not to evaluate.
• Some assignments may want you to notice and comment on patterns of similarity and dissimilarity between sources; other assignments may want you to treat each source independently.
• If the bibliography is long, consider organizing it in sections. Your categories of organization should help clarify your research question.
• Some assignments may require or allow you to preface the bibliography (or its sections) with a paragraph explaining the scope of your investigation and providing a rationale for your selection of sources.

Some language for talking about texts and arguments:

It is sometimes challenging to find the vocabulary in which to summarize and discuss a text. Here is a list of some verbs for referring to texts and ideas that you might find useful:

account for	clarify	describe	exemplify	indicate	question
analyze	compare	depict	exhibit	investigate	recognize
argue	conclude	determine	explain	judge	reflect
assess	criticize	distinguish	frame	justify	refer to
assert	defend	evaluate	identify	narrate	report
assume	define	emphasize	illustrate	persuade	review
claim	demonstrate	examine	imply	propose	suggest

 

The evidence indicates that . . .	The article assesses the effect of . . .
The author identifies three reasons for . . .	The article questions the view that . . .

source from: university of toronto

Critical Reading: What is It?

To read critically is to make judgements about how a text is argued. This is a highly reflective skill requiring you to “stand back” and gain some distance from the text you are reading. (You might have to read a text through once to get a basic grasp of content before you launch into an intensive critical reading.) THE KEY IS THIS:

• don’t read looking only or primarily for information
• do read looking for ways of thinking about the subject matter

When you are reading, highlighting, or taking notes, avoid extracting and compiling lists of evidence, lists of facts and examples. Avoid approaching a text by asking “What information can I get out of it?” Rather ask “How does this text work? How is it argued? How is the evidence (the facts, examples, etc.) used and interpreted? How does the text reach its conclusions?

How Do I Read Looking for Ways of Thinking?

1. First determine the central claims or purpose of the text (its thesis). A critical reading attempts to assess how these central claims are developed or argued.
2. Begin to make some judgements about context . What audience is the text written for? Who is it in dialogue with? (This will probably be other scholars or authors with differing viewpoints.) In what historical context is it written? All these matters of context can contribute to your assessment of what is going on in a text.
3. Distinguish the kinds of reasoning the text employs. What concepts are defined and used? Does the text appeal to a theory or theories? Is any specific methodology laid out? If there is an appeal to a particular concept, theory, or method, how is that concept, theory, or method then used to organize and interpret the data? You might also examine how the text is organized: how has the author analyzed (broken down) the material? Be aware that different disciplines (i.e. history, sociology, philosophy, biology) will have different ways of arguing.
4. Examine the evidence (the supporting facts, examples, etc) the text employs. Supporting evidence is indispensable to an argument. Having worked through Steps 1-3, you are now in a position to grasp how the evidence is used to develop the argument and its controlling claims and concepts. Steps 1-3 allow you to see evidence in its context. Consider the kinds of evidence that are used. What counts as evidence in this argument? Is the evidence statistical? literary? historical? etc. From what sources is the evidence taken? Are these sources primary or secondary?
5. Critical reading may involve evaluation. Your reading of a text is already critical if it accounts for and makes a series of judgments about how a text is argued. However, some essays may also require you to assess the strengths and weaknesses of an argument. If the argument is strong, why? Could it be better or differently supported? Are there gaps, leaps, or inconsistencies in the argument? Is the method of analysis problematic? Could the evidence be interpreted differently? Are the conclusions warranted by the evidence presented? What are the unargued assumptions? Are they problematic? What might an opposing argument be?

Some Practical Tips

1. Critical reading occurs after some preliminary processes of reading. Begin by skimming research materials, especially introductions and conclusions, in order to strategically choose where to focus your critical efforts.
2. When highlighting a text or taking notes from it, teach yourself to highlight argument: those places in a text where an author explains her analytical moves, the concepts she uses, how she uses them, how she arrives at conclusions. Don’t let yourself foreground and isolate facts and examples, no matter how interesting they may be. First, look for the large patterns that give purpose, order, and meaning to those examples. The opening sentences of paragraphs can be important to this task.
3. When you begin to think about how you might use a portion of a text in the argument you are forging in your own paper, try to remain aware of how this portion fits into the whole argument from which it is taken. Paying attention to context is a fundamental critical move.
4. When you quote directly from a source, use the quotation critically. This means that you should not substitute the quotation for your own articulation of a point. Rather, introduce the quotation by laying out the judgments you are making about it, and the reasons why you are using it. Often a quotation is followed by some further analysis.
5. Critical reading skills are also critical listening skills. In your lectures, listen not only for information but also for ways of thinking. Your instructor will often explicate and model ways of thinking appropriate to a discipline.

source from: university of toronto

Do you read your sentences out loud after you write them? It is a good idea to do this. Writing that reads easily and sounds conversational is easier to understand. When we talk, we vary the length of our sentences. Some of our sentences are long and exciting and seem to go on forever until it is time for us to finally stop and take a breath. Some are short and sweet. A wise English poet once said, “Variety is the spice of life.” Remember this advice as you write your stories, essays and letters.

How to add Sentence Variety

There are a number of ways to add variety to your writing. Imagine yourself cutting up a sentence into individual words and placing them in a paper bag. Now shake it up! Did you do a little dance? Great. Now lay out your sentence and experiment. Can you make two sentences out of one? Can you put your sentence back to front? Try turning your sentence into a question. Or, if you think your sentence is too short, you may want to add another sentence to it. If you have a really important point, perhaps a famous person has said something similar. In other words, there may be a quote you can use to strengthen your writing.

Sentence Types

Before we look at sentence variety, let’s review the 4 main types of simple sentences. Simple sentences contain one clause.:

1. Declarative sentence (most common): The sky is blue.
2. Interrogative sentence: Why is the sky blue?
3. Exclamatory sentence: The sky is blue now! (It was black just a minute ago.)
4. Imperative sentence: Don’t go outside! (It’s pouring rain.)

More advanced types of sentences are “compound” (combining two sentences with a conjunction) and “complex” (using at least one dependent clause and one independent clause). To create these sentences you need to know how to use conjunctions, adverbial phrases, prespositional phrases, conditionals and noun phrases.

Simple sentences: The boy wanted to go outside. He had to eat his pizza first.
Compound: The boy wanted to go outside but he had to eat his pizza first.
Complex: Although the boy wanted to go outside, he had to eat his pizza first.

Sentence Patterns

The most common sentence pattern that writers use is sentence-verb-object (SVO). This is how beginners write. For example:

• The boy ate pizza.
• I play soccer.
• Homework is boring.

There are many ways to rewrite SVO sentences. Let’s play with this sentence:

• The boy ate pizza.

1. Turn it into a question:
   Do you know what the boy ate? Pizza.
2. Turn it into a passive sentence:
   The pizza was devoured by the boy. (You could use “eaten” but here “devoured” gives a better reason for placing the pizza first.)
3. Turn it into an exclamatory sentence:
   The boy ate pizza again!
4. Combine it with your next sentence:
   The boy wolfed down the pizza and then ran outside to play.
5. Use a transitional phrase:
   Even though the boy ate the pizza, you could tell that he wanted to be outside playing.
6. Start with a participle:
   Eating the pizza, the boy watched his friends playing outside.
7. Place modifiers in different places:
   The pizza, which was a huge pepperoni slice, was devoured by the boy.
   Wolfing down his pizza, the boy barely noticed the pepperoni on it.
   The boy ate the large pepperoni pizza as quickly as possible.
   Although he wanted to keep playing, the boy rushed in and wolfed down his pizza lunch.
   As fast as he could, the boy ate the pizza.

Sentence Length

Avoid using sentences that are all the same length. Short sentences are powerful. Combine short sentences with long sentences to make your writing flow more naturally. Your most important sentences should be clear and concise. Keep them short. Descriptive sentences can have more length, but you should read them out loud to make sure that they flow naturally.

Example of a paragraph with poor sentence length:
The boy’s mother called him inside for dinner. The boy ate his pizza. He was very hungry. He didn’t want to eat, though. He wanted to play outside with his friends.

Example fix: The boy’s mother called him inside for dinner. It was pizza. Even though the boy was hungry and pizza was his favourite meal, he wanted to stay outside and play. He wolfed the pizza down and ran back outside.

Sentence Variety: Writing Challenge:

How many ways can you rewrite, expand, reorder, reword these ten boring sentences?

1. The sky is blue.
   Example:
   Blue skies like these make my day.
   There isn’t a cloud in the sky.
   It’s a clear day.
   You won’t get a finer day than today.
   The sky is as blue as the sea.
   Have you ever seen such a blue sky?
   What a fine day!
2. I am sick.
3. I have school tomorrow.
4. My room is small.
5. Andrea is busy.
6. There’s nothing to do.
7. It’s cold in this house.
8. I don’t want to be late.
9. I’m hungry.
10. It’s Wednesday.

Punctuation is the system of symbols (. , ! – : etc) that we use to separate sentences and parts of sentences, and to make their meaning clear. Each symbol is called a “punctuation mark”.

The Value of Punctuation An English teacher wrote these words on the board:woman without her man is nothing The teacher then asked the students to punctuate the words correctly. The men wrote the top line. The women wrote the bottom line.

Summary of Punctuation Marks

Click on the link for each punctuation mark to find out more.

Punctuation Mark	Name	Example
	full stop or period	I like English.
	comma	I speak English, French and Thai.
	semi-colon	I don’t often go swimming; I prefer to play tennis.
	colon	You have two choices: finish the work today or lose the contract.
	hyphen	This is a rather out-of-date book.
	dash	In each town—London, Paris and Rome—we stayed in youth hostels.
	question mark	Where is Shangri-La?
	exclamation mark	“Help!” she cried. “I’m drowning!”
	slash, forward slash or oblique	Please press your browser’s Refresh/Reload button.
	backslash	C:\Users\Files\jse.doc
	double quotation marks	“I love you,” she said.
	single quotation marks	‘I love you,’ she said.
	apostrophe	This is John’s car.
	underline	Have you read War and Peace?
	underscore	bin_lad@cia.gov
	round brackets	I went to Bagkok (my favourite city) and stayed there for two weeks.
	square brackets	The newspaper reported that the hostages [most of them French] had been released.
	ellipsis mark	One happy customer wrote: “This is the best program…that I have ever seen.”

In English, we do not use capitals letters very much. We use them mainly for the first letter of sentences, names, days and months as well for some abbreviations. In addition, of course, we always write the first person pronoun as a capital I.

It is not usual to write whole sentences in capitals. A sentence or paragraph written in capitals is extremely difficult to read. Did you ever see a book or newspaper written completely in capitals? Of course not! We cannot easily read large amounts of text in capital letters. Lawyers know that capital letters are difficult to read. That is why some legal texts are written completely in capitals.

• Adding -er/-est
  quick, quicker, quickest, happy, happier, happiest, hot, hotter, hottest…
• Adding -ing/-ed
  work, working, worked, stop, stopping, stopped…
• Adding -ly
  loud, loudly, happy, happily, terrible, terribly…
• Adding -s
  dog, dogs, church, churches, wife, wives…
• -ible or -able
  accessible, visible, dependable, networkable…
• -ie- or -ei-
  friend, fiend, feint, freight…

  English and American English
  colour, color, practise, practice, tyre, tire…

The four language skills are related to each other in two ways:

• the direction of communication (in or out)
• the method of communication (spoken or written)

Input is sometimes called “reception” and output is sometimes called “production”. Spoken is also known as “oral”.

Layout of minutes

Minutes of meetings usually include:

Minutes of the last meeting
Matters arising from the last minutes
The agenda of the meeting itself
Any other business (AOB).

Minutes also show who is responsible for carrying out action. In a column on the right-hand side, you can put the person’s initials in bold to show that he or she will perform the action.

Reporting what was said

When you take minutes of a meeting, it is useful to report the ideas, rather than every sentence. To do this, you need to use a variety of speech verbs.

Here’s a list that you might find useful:

suggested = “CA suggested raising the budget.”

promised = “MB promised to find out more.”

discussed = “Three issues were discussed.”

decided = “It was decided to delay action until the next meeting.”

agreed = “Everyone agreed on the proposal.” “LS agreed to get further information.” “Everyone agreed with the chairman.”

brought up = “The issue of pay was brought up.”

mentioned = “RJ mentioned the possibility of extra funds.”

reported = “The Sales Manager reported on the results of the trade fair.”

asked = “The Chairman asked to see a copy of the report.”

wondered = “DM wondered if there would be extra funding.”

recommended = “Five strategies were recommended.”

explained = “SB explained the reason for the delay.”

emphasised = “TA emphasised the necessity of a new product range.”

stressed = “RR stressed his commitment to the project.”

complained = “TM complained about the delays.”