How to Start Writing an Essay

As you may know, I have recently created a group to help many of you who wish to improve your writing and speaking skills. I have received many questions about the writing process. In a series of posts on #writing, I'll share my experiences on how you can begin, continue and perfect your writing skills. One of the first mistakes many people make, is worrying about form, syntax, paragraph length, etc. However, writing is first and foremost, the expression of ideas. To that end, I would recommend you try free writing.

What is Free Writing?

From Wikipedia:

Free writing has traditionally been seen as a prewriting technique in academic environments, in which a person writes continuously for a set period of time without worrying about rhetorical concerns or conventions and mechanics, sometimes working from a specific prompt provided by a teacher. While free writing often produces raw, or even unusable material, it can help writers overcome writing blocks and build confidence by allowing them to practice text-production phases of the writing process without fear of censure.Some writers even use the technique to collect initial thoughts and ideas on a topic, often as a preliminary to formal writing.

Unlike brainstorming where ideas are simply listed, in freewriting one writes sentences to form a paragraph about whatever comes to mind.

So that is free writing-- to write with no bounds or worries about form, grammar, word choice or what so ever. Try it. It will help you tremendously 🦾

If you need more help, please join our discussion group. Don't forget to invite your friends to our group. Loads of fun with your studies and hope to see you all soon. 


T.me/kaffeekuchen


Cheers🍻

➖ @EngSkills ➖

What’s Brainstorming


Brainstorming is a very important step in the beginning of the #writing process. In a previous post, I discussed how free writing can get you started on writing. Brainstorming is another way to generate ideas and is foundational to development of writing skills. 


Brainstorming refers to the practice of generating ideas and putting them down in concrete form, such as on a piece of paper or in a computer program. You can use brainstorming to force your brain to come up with new solutions to problems or ideas about a product.


Let’s do it together. Here’s how I would start brainstorming if I were to write an essay on the topic of this week’s discussion group: Dating in the Age of Social Media.

I would take a piece of paper and jot down all the words that came to my mind about the topic.


Tinder

Facebook

Social media

Dating apps

Marriage

Love

Bars

Alcohol

Friendship

Library

Meeting people

Spontaneous

Arranged marriage

Marriage for love

Changing partners

Destiny

Happily ever after

Children

Romance

Wooing

Stalking

Profiles

Fake/ doctored profile pictures

Adventure

Superficial


Do not stop until you run out of ideas. There are no wrong words. Write down whatever that comes to your mind. 


The next step is take a look at the words you have written and find connections between them. The easiest way, for me, is to ask simple questions: 


-Does Tinder ever work?

-Can you find the love of your life on Tinder? 

-Why are there so many dating apps? 

-Which dating app is the best for me? 

-Is it ok to change your love partner occasionally? 

-Can you meet someone at the library? 

-Are people who have an arranged marriage really happy?


So I am not stuck any more. My essay is simply the answer to some of these questions. 


In a compare/contrast essay, I can weigh the benefits and shortcomings of dating today as opposed to the era where people did not have smartphones. I can point out, for example, that back then, some people found their partners through the classified ads one printed in daily papers. Hence, social media have made the dating process faster, cheaper and more efficient. That could be one of the main ideas of my essay. In a future post, I will discuss the importance of the thesis statement and how you can write an excellent introductory paragraph.


I hope that you find this post helpful. I will be happy to hear your feedback on this topic. Tell me if you have ever used brainstorming and share any different techniques you use to come up with ideas. If you haven’t already joined our discussion group, it is high time you do that. You can read what others have written on the topic of the week and share your own. Don’t forget to share this post with your friends and invite them to our community. 


T.me/kaffeekuchen


Cheers and hope to see you soon. 



➖ @EngSkills ➖

Immigration

This week, we discuss immigration in our discussion group. If you have problems coming up with ideas, the following questions will help you get started:

When is immigration helpful to a country and when is harmful?

Do you think your country needs more or less immigrants?

What nationalities are most immigrants who come to your country?

What would happen if we erased all country borders and let people live wherever they wanted? Would it be a good or bad thing? Why?

Does your country have strict immigration laws? Should the laws be less strict or stricter?

What should immigrants know before they can become citizens?

What is the best method to slow or stop immigration? Can immigration ever be completely stopped?

Do you think immigrants to a country work harder than people born in that country? Why or why not?

Do you have any friends or family who are immigrants? How does that affect your view of immigration?

How do immigrants help a country’s economy?

If you haven’t already joined our discussion group, it is high time you do that. You can read what others have written on the topic of the week and share your own. Don’t forget to share this post with your friends and invite them to our community.


T.me/kaffeekuchen


Cheers and hope to see you soon.


➖ @EngSkills ➖

Get the Ball Rolling


Perhaps the most difficult moment in writing is when you stare at the blank paper or the empty screen in front of you. What should you write? In two previous posts on #writing, I explained how we can use free writing and brainstorming to generate ideas. What you read below is a writing sample written by Halima on last week’s discussion group topic, dating in the age of social media. It is a very good example of free writing. I am publishing it with small grammatical corrections. With some work, this piece can become an acceptable #ielts essay. You can read the original submission in our discussion group.


I have never used any dating apps or sites like Tinder; however, I have seen people around me who are using these apps and social media ( Tinder, Instagram, Facebook, Telegram, WhatsApp, etc.) in order to find short-term relationship i.e. connections that last 2 to 3 months maximum. I have yet to see any relationships that one started on these platforms which lasted for more than a year; they usually end in a few weeks or months. People prefer to find a mate who is relatively close-by rather than one who is miles away; it's more convenient to schedule meetings with them and relieve their loneliness, anxiety, stress or above all, their physical desires. Dating apps have both pros and cons. On the one hand, they provide the chance to find your love, explore your love-life without any interference from others because everything is in your personal control. Such an app also provides comfort, in that, one can chat with other people and decide whether they are potentially compatible or not; and if not, easily move on to another candidate. On the other hand, these apps have some disadvantages. For example, most people use them not for finding their partner or love, but only for a one-night-stand. Some consider these apps as online brothels because many groups use them for money. These apps destroy many married lives because they facilitate extra-marital affairs, cheating, lack of loyalty and honesty. But these apps also have connected many hearts together. They provide opportunities to every person to find their partner or lover, whether they are introverted or not. In India people are still very traditional and they use these apps frequently. Here, dating is considered a major sin, but they succumbed to their needs and desire for love.
It might be that arranged marriages are successful at last but it kills two soul and connects them by social norms and pressure. Arranged marriage is full of compromises, especially on the side of women. So these apps give a chance to women to explore online and find their soulmates.




I hope that you find this post helpful. I will be happy to hear your feedback on this topic. Tell me if you have ever used brainstorming or free writing and share any different techniques you use to come up with ideas. If you haven’t already joined our discussion group, it is high time you do that. You can read what others have written on the topic of the week and share your own. Don’t forget to share this post with your friends and invite them to our community.


T.me/kaffeekuchen


Cheers and hope to see you soon.


➖ @EngSkills ➖

Ways to Narrow Down a Topic

In a previous post, I discussed brainstorming. Brainstorming is the process by which ideas are produced using techniques like concept mapping, free-writing, etc. Choosing a topic can be a difficult process when starting an assignment or writing a paper, and brainstorming can be used to choose a topic or narrow down a more broad topic. Narrowing your topic is an important step in the #writing process. 

When to Narrow a Topic

Most students will have to narrow down their topic at least a little. The first clue is that your essay needs to be narrowed is simply the length your professor wants it to be. You can’t properly discuss “war” in 1,000 words, nor talk about orange rinds for 12 pages. 

Steps to Narrowing a Topic

First start out with a general topic. Take the topic and break it down into categories by asking the five W’s and H.

Who? (American Space Exploration)

What? (Manned Space Missions)

Where? (Moon Exploration)

When? (Space exploration in the 1960’s)

Why? (Quest to leave Earth)

How? (Rocket to the Moon: Space Exploration)

Now consider the following question areas to generate specific ideas to narrow down your topic.

Problems faced? (Sustaining Life in Space: Problems with space exploration)

Problems overcome? (Effects of zero gravity on astronauts)

Motives? (Beating the Russians: Planning a moon mission)

Effects on a group? (Renewing faith in science: aftershock of the Moon mission)

Member group? (Designing a moon lander: NASA engineers behind Apollo 11)

Group affected? (From Test Pilots to Astronauts: the new heroes of the Air force)

Group benefited? (Corporations that made money from the American Space Program)

Group responsible for/paid for (The billion dollar bill: taxpayer reaction to the cost of sending men to the moon)

Finally, refine your ideas by by considering the S.O.C.R.A.P.R. model.

S = Similarities (Similar issues to overcome between the 1969 moon mission and the planned 2009 Mars Mission)

O = Opposites (American pro and con opinions about the first mission to the moon)

C = Contrasts (Protest or patriotism: different opinions about cost vs. benefit of the moon mission)

R = Relationships (the NASA family: from the scientists on earth to the astronauts in the sky)

A = Anthropomorphisms [interpreting reality in terms of human values] (Space: the final frontier)

P = Personifications [giving objects or descriptions human qualities] (the eagle has landed:  animal symbols and metaphors in the space program)

R = Repetition (More missions to the moon: Pro and Con American attitudes to landing more astronauts on the moon) 

I hope that you find this post helpful. I will be happy to hear your feedback on this topic. Tell me if you have ever used brainstorming or free writing and share any different techniques you use to come up with ideas. If you haven’t already joined our discussion group, it is high time you do that. You can read what others have written on the topic of the week and share your own. Don’t forget to share this post with your friends and invite them to our community.


T.me/kaffeekuchen


Cheers and hope to see you soon.


➖ @EngSkills ➖

Writing and the Legacy of Telegraph


Most universities in the world require the results of an English exam like TOFEL as a prerequisite of admission. Some set a minimum score, say, 90 out of 120. Some, even go further and set a minimum on the writing section, say 22 or 25 out of 30. The business of a university is to produce good researchers. If you cannot write, you are no good. 


What does #writing have to do with Telegraph? The invention of Telegraph shaped the writing style we use today. Telegraph was used at the end of 18th century till the middle of 19th century to send messages from one city to another, one country to the next. As compared to the means of communication we have at our disposal today, Telegraph was both costly and unreliable. 


Picture yourself as an American journalist in Cairo. The year is 1940. There’s a war going on in the world and your job is to report what happens in Cairo to your editor who sits in his office in New York. Time is of the essence. Keep in mind that Telegraph is your sole way of sending words to your newspaper. However, it is very unreliable, meaning the connection can be lost at any seconds. 


These conditions instilled two important virtues of journalistic writing: clarity and brevity. Clarity means that your reader must immediately know what you are talking about, as he/she finishes the first sentence. As the connection may be lost at any moment, journalists learned to include the most important information in the beginning of their messages; hence, even if they did not transmit the entire message, the editor who received it could use some of the information. Brevity requires the journalist to use the least possible number of words to express his message. 


Today we may not be constrained by technology. Nevertheless, the two virtues that the age of Telegraph has left us, brevity and clarity, are still important. Today, people are bombarded with information. Your reader, then, might simply lose interest in your writing, if it does not meet the standards of a good essay. They will simply tune out or stop reading. In a way, it is not any different from losing the connection. 


Remember that a good piece of writing always answer the four “W” question: what, where, when and why. 


Here’s an example from Associated Press: 


BEIRUT (AP) — A huge fire broke out at Beirut’s port Thursday, raising new panic among residents still struggling with the traumatic effects of the catastrophic explosion at the same site last month.

Some sought safety in closed bathrooms or threw open their windows to guard against shattering glass in case of another blast; others piled into cars to flee the capital. No injuries were reported.

Dark smoke and the smell of toxic fumes enveloped Beirut in the evening as army helicopters circled and sprayed water over the orange flames, helping firefighters on the ground.

It was unclear what caused the blaze at the port, which was decimated by the Aug. 4 explosion when nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate blew up, sending out a shock wave that killed nearly 200 people and caused widespread damage.


Notice how the article gets more detailed as it progresses. The most important information is always stated in the beginning of the writing. What follows expands on it and facilitates better undressing. That’s the key to writing a good essay: clarity. If you write 250 words, your reader should know what you are writing about after finishing the first 30-50 words. 


I hope that you find this post helpful. I will be happy to hear your feedback on this topic. If you haven’t already joined our discussion group, it is high time you do that. You can read what others have written on the topic of the week and share your own. Don’t forget to share this post with your friends and invite them to our community. 

T.me/kaffeekuchen

Cheers and hope to see you soon. 



➖ @EngSkills ➖

On the Importance of Using Examples in Writing


I rarely post music on my channel. Today was an exception. The two preceding posts are the songs and lyrics ofAc-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positivesong by Bing Crosby. I posted it to use it as an example, to accent the importance of using examples in writing.


In my last post on #writing, I discussed the significance of clarity in essay writing. Here is a simple test to know if you have achieved that goal: if you can summarize your essay in two to three sentences, you have done a good job. Let me try my own medicine. In this piece, I am trying to accentuate the importance of using examples in writing. I will do that by using a song as an example.


Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive
This song has a very simple message: no matter what happens to you in life, try to focus on the positive and do not get bogged down by the negative. Simple.


You've got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative


Accentuate and accent, both used in the song, are two verbs from the same family. Accentuate and accent are synonymous with stress and underline.


The example the song writer has used is a biblical one, namely the story of Jonah and Noah. And it is cleverly stated in the form of a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is one the answer to which is obvious. In other words, the questioner is not looking for the answer.


To illustrate my last remark
Jonah in the whale, noah in the ark
What did they do just when everything looked so dark?


We should note that the audience of this Jazz song are primarily African Americans living in the US. Most of them are frequent church goers. Hence, the story of Jonah in the whale and Noah in the ark are well known to them, as it is well known to Christians around the world. For this reason, no further explanation or expansion is needed here. Rhetorical devices may be exceptional tools in conveying the meaning. For an essay, we may need to expand on our point. Here is the expanded version of the rhetorical question expressed in the song:


Noah did not despair after forty days of wandering in the sea. He stayed hopeful and kept a positive attitude until the dove brought good news.


I hope that you find this post helpful. I will be happy to hear your feedback on this topic. Tell me if you have ever used examples in writing and share any different techniques you use when writing essays. If you haven’t already joined our discussion group, it is high time you do that. You can read what others have written on the topic of the week and share your own. Don’t forget to share this post with your friends and invite them to our community.


T.me/kaffeekuchen


Cheers and hope to see you soon.


➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log
Auto-translated subtitles from auto-generated subtitles

Mark Metcalf learned something new this Monday morning: YouTube not only provides subtitles, but if the subtitles haven't been created in English, it can generate/translate them on the fly – at least for German. Doesn't seem to be available for Chinese yet.

Select 'CC' at the bottom left of the right side of the video window menu bar to auto-generate the German subtitles. Then click on the gear icon and select auto-translate, from which pick English. You should see English subtitles in near real-time.
The results are mind-boggling:  fast as greased lightning and impressively accurate.
Mark tried it out on this interview with the Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča at the Wiener Staatsoper about her role as Kundry in Wagner's »Parsifal«.  Mark noted that the auto-subtitle generator / translator seems to render the character name "Kundry" as "customer".  He's right.
The mixup between Kundry and "customer" is interesting (and understandable).  It's because in most of those cases — when she's not actually saying the name "Kundry" (the high messenger of the Grail in Wagner's "Parsifal") — she's saying the German word "Kundin" (fem. for "customer"), but which also has the secondary meaning of "character".  (Of course, the auto-translator correctly renders German "Charakter" as English "character" when she uses the German cognate!)

It's fascinating to me that the same sort of informal usage of "customer" as "character" occurs in English:

(informal) A person, especially one engaging in some sort of interaction with others.
a cool customer, a tough customer, an ugly customer
1971, Herman Wouk, chapter 52, in The Winds of War:
Pug could just see Slote's pale face under his fur hat. "I don't agree with you on that. He's a pretty tough customer, Hopkins."
2020 January 2, Philip Haigh, “Ten eventful years and plenty of talking points”, in Rail, page 54:
This switch led to Philip Hammond becoming the Transport Secretary and he quickly proved to be a tricky customer, asking questions about rail spending and reining it back whenever possible.
(Wiktionary)

It was simply overwhelming for me to listen to Madame Garanča speaking German rapidly with nuanced emotion / emphasis / intonation and watch the corresponding English instantaneously fly across bottom of the screen.

Selected readings

* "Dubbing and subtitles" (10/21/21)
* "Why we all need subtitles now" (1/20/23)
* "Subtitles matter" (4/29/22)
* "The state of speech-to-text" (11/11/23)

➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log
Persophone Muslim population in China

https://t.co/6qX4TK1llD
In 1405, the 5th karmapa of Tibet visited Emperor Yongle of China, upon the latter's invitation. A scroll of painting was produced to depict he event. The commemorative texts on the scroll are in five languages: Chinese, Hui (Persian), Uyghur, Tibetan, and… pic.twitter.com/SuX1rlv5Yg
— Iskandar Ding (@iskdin) April 1, 2024
video

N.B.:  Persophone ("Persian-speaking"), which is very different from, and pronounced quite differently than, Persephone

* (Greek mythology) A minor deity, the queen of the Underworld/Hades, and goddess of the seasons and vegetation. Originally named Kore/Core, she is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter; and the wife of Hades. Her Roman counterpart is Proserpina.
* (astronomy) 399 Persephone, a main belt asteroid.
* (rare) A female given name from Ancient Greek.
* (science fiction) The tenth planet, orbiting beyond Pluto.

(Wiktionary)

Selected readings

* "Ask Language Log: Syriac Christian tombstone inscription from Mongol period East Asia" (2/11/24) — also from Iskandar Ding
* "A Persian word in a Sinitic topolect" (3/10/20)

➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log
Get around

One needs to be careful when using a phrasal verb that has a wide range of possible meanings.  For example, if you're corresponding with a woman who travels a lot and you comment, wishing to commend her mobility, "You sure do get around a lot", she may be offended and retort, "Are you saying that I'm sexually promiscuous?"
get around

Verb

get around (third-person singular simple present gets around, present participle getting around, simple past got around, past participle (UK) got around or (US) gotten around)

1.
1. To move to the other side of (something, such as an obstruction) by deviating from a direct course or following a curved path. The tide was too high, and we couldn't get around the rocks. There's no trail going through. We can't get around to the lake. We'll get a good view of the mountains when we get around the bend.
2. (figuratively) To avoid or bypass an obstacle. Tax consultants look for ways to get around the law.
3. To circumvent the obligation and performance of a chore; to get out of. How did you get around having to write the executive report? My brother always gets around cleaning his room himself.
4. To transport oneself from place to place.
*
*
How's he gonna get around without a car?

Granny uses a wheelchair to get around.

* To visit numerous different places.
*
* (slang) To be sexually promiscuous. Wow, she really gets around.
* Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see get,‎ around.
(Wiktionary)

Can't be too cautious.
Selected readings

* "Prepositionssss…" (9/2/11)
* "English Verb-Particle Constructions" (7/26/17)

➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log
New horizons in word sense analysis

Today's xkcd:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/organ_meanings_2x.png

Mouseover title: IMO the thymus is one of the coolest organs and we should really use it in metaphors more."
Like all aspects of word meaning, such metaphors come and go. For example, batshit (in the metaphorical meaning "nonsense" or "crazy") came into use in the middle of the 20th century, presumably via confluence of the older "bats in the belfry" phrase and the proliferation of other (and older) metaphorical "fecal compounds". And medicine has long since left the science of humorism behind, but we've inherited a metaphorical residue when we use phlegmatic to mean "calm, sluggish", or bilious to mean "irascible".

Recent applications of "deep learning" to the analysis of semantic change will open another chapter in the adventure that I described in my 2011 Henry Sweet Lecture, "Towards the Golden Age of Speech and Language Science":

For the sciences of speech and language, the 21st century promises to bring the kind of progress that the 17th century brought to the physical sciences.

Our telescopes and microscopes, our alembics and Pneumatical Engines, are today's vast archives of digital text and speech, along with new analysis techniques and inexpensive networked computation.

However, the scientific use of these new instruments remains mainly exploratory and potential. There are several critical problems for which we have at best partial solutions; and like our 17th-century predecessors, we need to unlearn some old ideas on the way to learning new ones.

Focusing especially on Henry Sweet's own interests in phonetics and in the history of English, this talk will discuss some of the barriers to be overcome, present some successful examples, and speculate about future directions.

Some recent papers (and code) on corpus-based semantic change analysis:

Dominick Schlechtweg et al., "SemEval-2020 task 1: Unsupervised lexical semantic change detection", 2020.
Sinan Kurtyigit et al.,  "Lexical Semantic Change Discovery", 2021.
Francesco Periti and Stefano Montanelli, "Lexical Semantic Change through Large Language Models: a Survey",  2024.

➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log
Regional claims on "yeah no / no yeah"

For some reason, people from different social groups in different regions all over the world believe that saying (things like) "yeah no" and "no yeah" is their special thing.
Maybe it's a New York thing:

#newyorkersbelike pic.twitter.com/ShW7SXq016

— Kevin B (@guaritopapi) January 14, 2019
Or maybe it's part of "How to Speak Midwest":

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Today I'm gonna teach you how to speak Midwestern.
First thing you need to learn is the ABCs,
which in the midwest is the yeah-no-yeah.

But really, it's a feature of California English?

Or maybe it's Australians (Erin Moore, "Yeah-No: A Discourse Marker in Australian English" Honours thesis, Department of Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, 2007; and other publications).

Or uneducated British millennials from Bristol…

Or maybe it's U.S. young people in general ("Yeah no", 4/3/2008):

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/llog/YeahNo.png

Or Afrikaans and South African English.

Also the analogous phrasing in Romanian, Russian, and no doubt many other languages…

And "Yeah, no, well, in fact 'yeah no' is pretty much the thematic idiom of NPR."

Wikitionary has an entry citing Australia, New Zealand, California, and Upper Midwestern U.S.

➖ @EngSkills ➖

Language Log
B"H

I received a communication with that at the top.  I had never seen it before and had no idea what it meant.  So I looked it up, and this is what I found on Wiktionary:

Phrase

B"H

1.
1. (Judaism) b'ezrat hashem (Transliterated form of ב״ה, written at the top of documents).
“With the Help of God.” A common phrase used by Jews and non-Jews when hoping for good fortune and God’s support for a better tomorrow.

1.
1. (Judaism) baruch Hashem
As the name of a constituent college of the City University of New York system and the financier-statesman whom it honors, "baruch" is fairly well known in English, though not many non-Jews would realize that it means "blessed".  "B'ezrat" is not so well known in English; it means "help".

Hashem (Hebrew: הַשֵּׁם⁩‎ haššēm, literally "the name"; often abbreviated to ה׳‎ [h′]) is a title used in Judaism to refer to God.  (Wikipedia)

With conflict in the Middle East intensifying, I can understand why people might be prompted to use this expression, B"H, now.
Having determined that B"H means "with the help of God", I immediately thought of Arabic "Inshallah" (and many variant forms), which means "if God wills" or "God willing".  I know many non-Arabs and non-Muslims who use this expression, some of them aware of what it means.

"Deo volente" was also in my mind.
Selected readings

* "Under God an Idiom?" (6/16/04)
* "Out with Under God" (6/16/04)
* "'Under God' as 'Inshallah'" (6/20/04)
* "'(Next) Under God,' Phrasal Idiom" (6/20/04)

There are half a dozen other Language Log posts on "under god", for fairly obvious reasons.

➖ @EngSkills ➖