Writing Basics: Easy as 1-2-3

Throughout history, many people in different cultures have attributed special, even mystical powers to the number three. Numerologists call it a powerful number. Maybe they are right. Think of all the different places that three pops up: triangles, pyramids, ABC, the trinity, and so on.

In writing, three is an important number. When you write, you need to keep this principle in mind. The basic unit of writing is the paragraph, which has three parts; introduction, body and conclusion. Essays also have the same three parts. Many colleges ask students to write a five-paragraph, three-part essay as part of their application, with an introductory paragraph, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. So you see, writing is as easy and one, two, three!

Henry David Thoreau, the great American author and naturalist, wrote, "I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society."

Writing Basics: KISS

KISS is an acronym that means "Keep it short and simple." This is a good thing to remember when you are beginning to write. Keep your words short. Try to stick to vocabulary that you already know and not use a lot of big fancy words to impress the reader. You might use the big words incorrectly and confuse your reader. Keep your sentences short, simple, and to the point. If you use long sentences with a lot of commas, the reader might forget the beginning of the sentence by the time he reaches the end! Keep your paragraphs short and on the same topic. Paragraphs should be only a few sentences long, probably not more than ten sentences (like this paragraph!). If you follow the KISS principle in your writing, your readers will be more likely to understand and enjoy what you have written. And that's what it's all about, right?

Writing Basics: Journal Writing

Here is an easy way to improve your writing on a daily basis. Keep a journal. Every day write for 10-15 minutes about whatever you want: what you are doing, thinking about, planning for the future, thinking about the past...whatever crosses your mind. Don't worry about making mistakes, grammar, spelling, etc. Just write. If you want to share your journal with someone,or your instructor, go ahead and do that. That's up to you. If you do it every day, your writing will improve. It takes discipline, but how much do you want to improve your writing in English?

Writing Basics: To Improve your writing, write

Writing is similar to any other language skill (reading, speaking, listening); to improve the skill, you need to practice the skill. For writing, that means writing as much as possible, different types of writing, as often as possible. That's why many writing/composition teachers ask their students to write in a daily journal. It gives students a reason to write every day, about something, whatever they want to write about. And the journal is usually not corrected, or corrected very lightly, by the teacher. If you want to play the piano, practice every day playing the piano. If you want to write well, practice writing every day. And work on improving your writing a little every day, using new words, grammar, expressions, that you have learned. Read what you have written and ask yourself how you could have written it better. Re-write what you wrote making necessary changes. Ask a native speaker to read your writing and give you some feedback about it, and how you could have written it better. To write better, write more often.

Writing Basics: Writing resources

Writers have many resources to help them improve their writing skills. At Ivy Tech Community College, students can go to the new Learning Resources Center for free help with their writing from a qualified writing tutor or instructor. After spending some time with a tutor, students can go to the new library only a few steps away to check out a book, read a newspaper or magazine, or just find a comfortable place to relax and hang out.

One of the best online resources for writers is the Online Writing Laboratory (OWL) from Purdue University, OWL where many resources to help writers can be found. Click on the ESL link on the left-hand side of the homepage to access the ESL resources. Check it out!

Of course, one of your best resources is your writing instructor, who will always be eager to help you improve your writing skills.

Writing Basics: Write about what you don't know

If you are an ESL student, when you first start writing in English, it's good for you to start writing about what you know: your country, classmates, experiences, job, family, and so on. After you become used to writing in English, start writing about what you don't know. Why? This will help you learn to do research, it will help you gain new and valuable knowledge, and it will be fun. It's fun to learn new things, right? And, you will get better grades in your classes!

An easy way to start doing research on a subject that you don't know about, or don't know much about, is to use the Internet. We all have access to the Internet. There is so much information there. But be careful. Not everything that is on the Internet is true or even factual. So choose your sources carefully. Make sure that what you have found on the Internet is not just someone's opinion. If you do use some information you have found on the Internet in your writing, be sure to give the reference so your readers can find where you got the information on the Internet.

Keep on reading, writing, and learning!

Writing Basics: Sleep on it

Here is a suggestion for the thinking/pre-writing step of writing. Before you go to sleep, think about what you want to write and write your thoughts down. All of them. Then go to sleep. While you are sleeping, your subconscious mind will think about what you wrote down. You may even dream about it. When you wake up the next morning, you will be able to write about you subject, because your mind has been thinking about it for eight hours, or however many hours of sleep you are able to get. You may even wake up suddenly in the middle of the night with a brilliant idea. Keep your list and a pencil by your bedside so you can write down the idea because you may not remember it in the morning. A brilliant idea is a terrible thing to waste!

Writing Basics: Who are your readers?

When you sit down to think about writing anything, a very important step in the pre-writing stage is to think about who you are writing for. If you are journaling or writing in a diary, your audience is you. You will be the only person reading your journal, or maybe your teacher, so you need to worry too much about your readers. For all other types of writing, you need to think about your reader(s)and ask yourself some questions such as:

Who, besides my writing teacher, are my readers?
How much do my readers know about my topic?
What will grab my readers' attention?
What don't they know about my topic? How can I teach them something new?
What do my readers expect from my writing? Do they want to learn something new about the subject, be entertained, find out my opinion(s) about the subject?
What is the educational level of my readers?
Do the readers have any biases or strong opinions about the subject that I should take into account in what I write?

If you take the time to really think through these questions, and have answers for them, you will have a clearer idea of what your readers expect from your writing and be able to organize and shape your writing to be of more interest to them. After all, if you are going to take the time to write something, you want your readers to be satisfied after reading it.

Writing Basics: Thinking and writing

Thinking is the first step of the writing process. Everything (including writing) begins with a thought. This stage of writing is sometimes referred to as pre-writing or brainstorming. Here are some questions you need to ask yourself before you start writing, and have clear answers in your mind. This will make the writing go much better. Don't hurry or skip this step.

What is my topic?
What am I going to write about that topic?
What do I already know about the topic and what research do I need to do?
Who are my readers? Who is my audience?
What do my readers already know about the topic and what might they be interested in learning from me?
How can I grab my readers' attention from the very beginning, whether I am writing a paragraph, essay, article, or book?
What unique perspective can I bring to the topic based on my own knowledge and experience?

After you have answered all these pre-writing questions and jotted down some notes to capture your thoughts, you are ready to start organizing your thoughts in the form of an outline.

Accent Reduction in English: American English

Next month I will begin to teach an American English conversation course in a hospital in Indianapolis. This class is part of a program called American English for Internationals, which is designed to help international physicians, medical researchers, and other healthcare professionals to modify their accents in English to speak more like Americans. This will help them communicate more effectively with their colleagues and patients, and in social situations with neighbors and other Americans they associate with. Modifying your accent in a foreign language as an adult is not easy, but it can be done with practice and patience. Language habits, as with all habits, can be hard to change, but it's worth the effort. Your thoughts?

Present Tense in English

What is referred to as "simple present tense" in English, isn't really present tense at all. See my July 15 blog about tense and aspect in Spanish. Linguists refer to tense as when some event or action happens in time (past, present, future, for example), and aspect as how the event or action happens (habitually, repetitively, continuously, intermittently, etc.) So the the verb in the following sentences is referred to as "simple present tense."

John eats hamburgers.
Sarah plays soccer.

The verb in neither of these sentences refers to the present time, that is, right now, at this moment. Instead, they mean that John usually or routinely eats hamburgers, and Sarah usually plays soccer. So what is called "present simple tense" in English does not refer to the present moment in time, but rather to habitual or routine aspect. The reference to tense, or time, is not specific.

When we want to refer to the present moment in time in English, we use what is called the "present continuous tense," which also includes the aspect that the event or action is continuous, as in the following examples;

John is eating a hamburger right now.
Sarah is playing soccer right now.

In English, as in other areas, things are not as simple as they might first appear.

Language Interpreters and Translators

From the beginning of time there has been a need for someone to help people who speak different languages to understand each other; this is what language interpreters and translators do. I work as a freelance English-Spanish interpreter and translator. You might wonder what the difference is between interpreters and translators.

Interpreters work with spoken language. When two or more people need to communicate but don't understand each other because of language differences, the interpreter acts as an intermediary. Example: Juan and Bill need to talk about something. Juan speaks Spanish, but not English. Bill speaks English, but not Spanish. So they find an interpreter who speaks both English and Spanish to help them understand each other. Juan says something in Spanish to Bill and the interpreter tells Bill what Juan said in English. Bill replies to Juan in English and the interpreter tells Juan what Bill said in Spanish. And so the conversation can continue because of the interpreter. Professional interpreters play this role in a variety of settings in courts, hospitals, schools, businesses, government agencies, wherever language differences create a barrier to communication.

Translators, on the other hand, work with written language. They translate legal documents and agreements, books, pamphlets, Web sites, anything that is written in one language that needs to be translated into another language.

Because of the modern global economy and business and political dealings between people from different countries, there is an increasing need for interpreters and translators to facilitate communication. Many companies and individuals offer interpretation and translation services in different languages for different purposes. To be a professional interpreter or translator an individual needs to be very fluent in at least one other language besides his or her native language. This is referred to as the interpreter/translator's language pair; Spanish and English, in my case. There are courses and training programs for interpreters and translators and tests for certification in different types of interpretation and translation. One basic principle that both interpreters and translators follow is that their role is to act as a conduit for communication, adding, omitting or changing nothing in the process.

This might sound simple, but it can be difficult and challenging work, given the nuances of languages and cultural aspects of communication. For me it has been challenging, enjoyable and rewarding.

Words, Words, Words

I am a language teacher (Spanish and English) and I am also a translator and interpreter of the same languages. Translators deal with words. Some people say that there are only three things you need to know about a word; its meaning(s), pronunciation, and how it is used in a sentence (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.) But it's not that simple.

Words have many different aspects that need to be taken into account when learning a language or translating the words into another language. I will use the English word lovely as an example. Aside from the word's basic meaning (beautiful), pronunciation (lovely is made up of five separate sounds, two syllables, with the stress on the first syllable), and how it is used in sentences (as an adjective), all of which can be found in a good dictionary, there are other aspects of the word lovely that we need to be aware of. Following is a discussion of some of these aspects.

Connotations. Most words have connotations, which means that they can imply subtle emotions, feelings, and relationships to other words. Some connotations of lovely, are that it is usually used to described beauty in women ("She's a lovely woman" but not "He's a lovely man")and situations and cultural things(It's a lovely sunset.") Lovely has the feeling of softness. You might say that a painting or work of art is lovely, but you would probably not say that a car was lovely, no matter how beautiful the car was.

Differences of degree. Lovely is often described as a synonym for pretty or good looking or gorgeous. But for most people, these words would represent different points on a beauty "scale." A woman described as lovely would rank higher on the beauty "scale" than one described as pretty or good looking, but lower on the scale than one described as gorgeous. There are probably no true synonyms because of these small differences in meaning and usage.

Level of formality or register. Some words have a more formal, quaint, or "old fashioned" feel when you use them. Lovely is one of those words. Most teenagers and young people probably don't use the word lovely very much for this reason. They might prefer to use a more "modern" word like hot when describing a lovely woman.

Usage. Most words in English can be used equally by men or women. But there are certain words, like lovely, that are more commonly used by females than males. Men usually don't say lovely. Some other words that are used more often by women than men are divine, adorable, delightful, and sweetie.

Intonation reflecting attitude. Most words' meanings can be changed by the intonation used to pronounce them. If you say, "Well, that's just lovely !" stressing the word lovely and saying the sentence with a sarcastic tone of voice, you don't mean lovely at all. What you mean is that something is a mess, or a problem.

Most words are not as simple as they first appear. So we need to be careful with the way we use and translate them.