and welcome back in today's lesson we are looking at writing an article
so this is for all you writers out there who want to get your work published writing
an article might be a very good first step in helping get that objective achieved so
article writing is an excellent thing for professional people to do to try and raise
their profile whether it's publishing it via a website like linkedin putting a link there
um or any other sort of trade specific websites that will provide a platform for you for sharing
your expertise and unique take and unique kind of insight into stuff you know about
so what i'm going to do in this lesson is kind of guide you through a step-by-step
process to creating an article and then in the second half of the lesson we will be looking
at how to transform a rather dreary paragraph into something um much more satisfying to read
so first thing you need to do is choose your subject material it needs to be
something you really know about maybe you have first first-hand experience of it
because you know why should we be reading what you have to say if you don't know about that topic
do it about something you know try and make people think so take an unusual angle
on something rather than just saying what everyone says about something
where are you aiming to get it published because that should influence the way in
which you're going to write it so if it's for a local town website then it's not going to be as
perhaps sophisticated as a phd discussion platform on nuclear physics
then you kind of need to brainstorm your points and i've got a separate lesson on brainstorming
but just write down all the things that you could possibly say
about this topic and then it will be a case of um crossing out uh anything that's repetitive
unnecessary uninteresting nope nope nope oh this is interesting that's interesting
and then maybe expand on the ones that you think sort of pop out as being interesting
the next stage is to sort of plan the order in which you're going to write the points
your first paragraph really needs to have a lot of impact needs to grab the reader's
attention so probably you want to put the most important point there in that first paragraph
but think how the article is going to build from one point to the next there needs to be
a coherent yeah an understandable structure then once you've got your plan um
what what i like to do is actually kind of for each paragraph sort of put sub-points so i'm
going to say this in this paragraph i'm going to say this this this then the next paragraph like
just like three ideas to make sure that when you're actually writing your first draft it's
like you've got a skeleton and you're fleshing it out okay um but the better it will be to read the
better planned it will be from point to point there should be a nice flow uh to the article
this is probably the most difficult bit uh the first draft once you've got something to work
with then it's much easier to sort of play around with it and edit and improve and cut sentences and
um but you've you've got to get you've got to do that difficult step of um you know writing the
first draft and the better the planning the easier that is and the more you know about the subject
the easier it is the more stories you have the more facts at your disposal the easier it is um
you should check that your facts are accurate especially if it's some sort of
um you know article on a particular sort of academic topic or a particular sort of research
topic you do need to make sure those facts are right and then just leave it yep close the file
put the book away um have a break from it for a week before you come back um
you know and then you should find that you have a fresh perspective you can see it again and go
that doesn't make sense there how do i make that make sense i need to rewrite that sentence
there's no link between the first and the second paragraph so i need to find a link there
at some stage you should find a short snappy title for it that's going to get your readers to go ah
yeah yeah i want to read that so i was thinking of writing an article i'm actually a dog owner myself
i was writing thinking of an article that someone who does not like dogs being in
my local town park would write and i was thinking of a title of like
who let the dogs out because that alludes to a song who let the dogs out
um so if you can reference something else or if you can have a rhetorical question
or if you can have some alliteration where you have some repeated sounds like
dangerous daredevils destroy deanery or something deanery being where a dean lives
not sure why they would do that but never mind
so we've taken a break we've come back we've improved it then we're starting to rewrite it
superfluous means some anything above what we need so if we don't need it in there take it out cut it
back make every word count and then when you have finally got it into a place that where you're like
i can't make this any better then if you're part of the writing group that's the point to take
it along to your writing group and read it out although normally they're looking for fiction but
take it to someone who who you trust as being very good at english
who can help you give you some more feedback on your writing
um and then once you've put in any incorporated yeah that means put into
practice any feedback they may have given then you need to submit it send it to that place where you
identified here as being your where you want to get it published send it off
send it off to a couple of different places and then get some feedback from them and then either
improve it or move on to your next article okay let's have a look at some writing so thinking
about writing a kind of article that might be published on um a blog site about professional
interests i thought i'd base this idea for an article on going to a high level conference
but this particular piece here has not followed the advice that i gave on the previous board
whereas saying plan plan plan you can tell that each thought is just kind of like oh what should
i say next and write it yeah it's not paragraphed it's not doesn't expand any of the points
and consequently the person runs out of ideas after just a few sentences
the vocab is not particularly good
the grammar is accurate but it's not written in an interesting style let's have a read
i went to the conference and it wasn't very good why not thought it was going to be interesting
why why did you think that when i arrived i didn't know who to speak to now what the student is doing
here is doing show is doing tell rather than show so they're just presenting information they're not
describing the information i've got a separate video on how to do showing rather than telling
the displays weren't very interesting now the rhythm of each sentence is exactly
the same because each sentence is the same sentence type what we've got
i went to the conference yeah simple so this is this is a compound sentence because we've got two
ideas i thought it was going to be interesting one idea when i arrived i didn't know who to speak to
actually we've got a complex sentence there um because we've got a sub clause the sentence makes
sense without that phrase there the displays weren't very interesting again just a single idea
main clause the displays weren't very interesting a clause is like a phrase with a a verb that
makes sense on its own i thought they could have used technology a bit better again it's
kind of the same length of sentence there wasn't really anything interactive so i left
reading that i'm underwhelmed um there's no there's no descriptive detail the writer
hasn't taken me on a journey anywhere okay so i often work with students to try and improve
their writing and i might guide them into writing a bit more like this now bearing in mind that the
article hasn't been planned and we're trying to transform something quite mediocre by 901 i had
gained two gray hairs waste wasted three euros on lukewarm coffee and to take an oath which means a
um serious promise to never again brave the paris metro before 10 am
so what we have in this sentence is a a rule of three yep so we've got i'm never going to
do this i'm never going to do this and i'm never going to do this again and it instantly kind of
draws you into the writing by 901 hmm why 901 not 9 a.m um and it's quite a complete sentence by 901
this and then before 10 am there's a kind of a symmetry here at 902
so my sentences are linking together 901 902 i pretended now if you look at the vocabulary
capillary um it's higher level lukewarm it's it has more descriptive detail to brave is is quite
a a rare verb to use pretended is not of a verb we use all the time enthralled to be really excited
by again not a very common verb at 902 i pretended to be enthralled by stephen a computer programmer
who i had been unwittingly that kind of means like it's not very good luck paired up with for um
v should be a v in here the cringeworthy break the ice activity so i'm setting a scene
yep i'm taking i'm asking the reader to to imagine this situation i don't just say it
was bad so i left i've got to describe it i've got to make it real for the reader
and then and then i'm probably going to go into my point so what is the point of the article
conferences should be better organized why aren't more resources pumped into them
um and then exploring my list of points in the order i have planned them
okay so in this lesson we've looked at how to write an article yep you gotta
write about what you're interested in um but it you see once once we have this
even though it's not planned we can transform it but that takes you know a bit of skill it takes
um a decent handle on vocabulary it takes a bit of creativity um you know but remember it's not about
just giving information it's about making the reader imagine um how bad or how good something
was as i said i do coach people um with their their writing skills so if you do need any
help in producing a professional article then honeyourenglish.com would be a good place to go
hope this useful this video has been useful to you if you're not a subscriber please consider
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some really good stuff um in the pipeline and have a go now at the quiz on engvid.com just to
sort of summarize what you've learned in this lesson until next time happy writing