5 Flow Part 2: Use Topic Sentences so Your Prose Flows
Last week, Lydia wrote about how creating a logical progression of ideas enhances the flow of academic writing. For this installment in our series, let’s complicate Lydia’s ideas by adding another strategy you can use to enhance flow: providing strong and well-supported topic sentences.
Topic sentences are one of the most important parts of
academic writing. A well-written topic sentence tells your reader how to
interpret what comes next. A poorly written topic sentence (or a missing one)
will leave your reader confused and uncertain about why you are telling them
what comes next.
The Writing Center is Closed on July 4th
In honor of Independence Day in the United States, the Walden University Writing Center will be closed on Monday, July 4th. We will pick up tomorrow with the next installment in our 5 Flow series, so please enjoy time with your friends, families, and writing groups. Happy Birthday, USA.
The Walden University Writing Center is made up of professional Editors and Instructors who work individually with students and produce cutting edge materials for students to use on-demand for all their writing needs. But not this weekend. They'll start doing all that again on Tuesday.
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The Walden University Writing Center is made up of professional Editors and Instructors who work individually with students and produce cutting edge materials for students to use on-demand for all their writing needs. But not this weekend. They'll start doing all that again on Tuesday.
Never miss a new post; Opt-out at any time
5 Flow Part 1: Create Logical Connections for Flow in Your Writing
You may know how to self-edit for punctuation and proper APA
citation and how to paraphrase previously published material, but how can you
tell if what you wrote really flows? More urgently, what steps are you supposed
to take if your faculty instructor or committee chairperson tells you to revise
to improve “flow”? What are some ways to incorporate that kind of feedback?
While there are many specific guidelines and clear rules for
you to follow for some elements of grammar and style, we are all running after
that elusive quality of “flow” in our writing, and sometimes it’s hard to tell
how to achieve it. Beth Nastachowksi laid out five principles that can help create flow in your writing, the first of which is creating logical connections
between ideas.
Logic and Assignment Goals
How to achieve appropriate logical flow depends somewhat on
the goals of your writing. For instance, in courses you will need to write essays
and research papers to develop a specific thesis and support it with evidence and analysis. In order to achieve logical connections in this type of writing,
you will need to construct a sound academic argument—that means conveying to
your reader how you analyzed the evidence and connecting everything together to argue a point.
In a standard, thesis-driven academic essay, making logical
connections between ideas is central to achieving the purpose of the
assignment. You still need to create logical connections between your ideas,
though, even if you are writing with a different goal. As a scholar, you will
need to learn to support and argue a point, but you will also need to learn to
discuss, explore, explain, reflect, summarize, synthesize, question, and participate
in many other intellectual activities in a logical, scholarly way. No matter
the goal of your writing, make sure the decisions you make as an author always seem
logical to your reader.
Building Connections
As an example, let’s say you are a doctoral student writing a literature review for your dissertation. Your goal in this section is to
summarize and assess current research on your dissertation topic and in your field—this means not only explaining to your reader what other researchers have
said but synthesizing what they said and showing your reader how your dissertation will fit into the academic conversation. How do you make sure you
have synthesized that previous research in a logical way?
Whenever you connect two pieces of evidence together, the
first step is to make sure your reader knows the connection you are trying to
make. If you have a sentence with paraphrased material from one source followed
by a sentence with paraphrased material from a second source, it isn’t
necessarily obvious how those two sources connect. Putting two sentences next
to each other is not enough to show your reader what those sentences have to do
with one another; are you making a comparison? introducing a contradiction? building
the second idea from the first? Rely on transitional words and phrases to
signal to your reader how the different pieces of evidence logically fit
together and when you move from one point to the next. (You will hear more
about transitions later in this flow blog series.)
Keeping Connections Strong
As you make these logical connections clear to your reader,
make sure those connections themselves make sense. Logical fallacies are
examples of ways an author can rely on connections that aren’t really there, or
at least are not as strong as the author thinks. If you visualize logical
connections as the bridges connecting different ideas, a logical fallacy is a
bridge that will collapse when you try to stand on it!
Some of the more common types of logical fallacies you will
want to avoid include things like circular reasoning, hasty generalizations,
and non sequiturs. The thing to remember about logical fallacies is that they
can seem to make sense at first, but when you look deeper, the connection
disappears. That is why is it useful to review the types of common logical
fallacies so you know what to watch out for in your own drafts.
Think of including logical connections in your writing as
drawing a map for your reader. As you read over your own work, make sure you
ask yourself, “Will my reader know how I got from here to there? Will they be
able to follow that same path?” If you use sound logic and clear language to
signal the connection between ideas, it is easier for your reader to get to
where you want them to go! And those are the first steps in creating flow!
This is the first part in a five-part blog series. Tune in next week for our next strategy for enhancing flow in your academic writing: Using Topic Sentences.
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Strategies for Enhancing 'Flow' in Your Academic Writing: 5 Part Blog Series
We are proud to announce the start of a five-part series on this blog that addresses one of the most commonly asked-about topics here in the Walden U Writing Center: How do I make my writing flow?
Two years ago, Writing Instructor extraordinaire Beth wrote a post for the Writing Center blog on the topic of creating flow. We knew our readers were interested in understanding and practicing these important skills, but we had no idea how quickly Beth's post would reach Greatest Hits status. Since that time, "Five Ways to Create Flow" continues to be one of our most viewed posts, our Instructors and Editors continue to receive questions related to flow, and our WritingSupport@waldenu.edu inbox continues to fill up with requests for more instruction on flow.
With that in mind, it is with great excitement that we announce our upcoming blog series. Starting on Monday, June 27th, we will revisit Beth's post and go into much greater detail about each of the five strategies cited in the post. For tips on how to enhance your writing's flow by using these strategies, click each link below to check out each part in our series:
Stay tuned. And let us know how we can help you become a better writer.
The Walden University Writing Center Blog is seven years old now and is a precocious, curious, and unpredictable bundle of joy. Consisting of the efforts of a revolving team of professional Writing Instructors and Editors, the blog combines healthy doses of wit, humor, advice, and reflection on topics sure to appeal differently to writers everywhere.
Never miss a new post; Opt-out at any time
Two years ago, Writing Instructor extraordinaire Beth wrote a post for the Writing Center blog on the topic of creating flow. We knew our readers were interested in understanding and practicing these important skills, but we had no idea how quickly Beth's post would reach Greatest Hits status. Since that time, "Five Ways to Create Flow" continues to be one of our most viewed posts, our Instructors and Editors continue to receive questions related to flow, and our WritingSupport@waldenu.edu inbox continues to fill up with requests for more instruction on flow.
With that in mind, it is with great excitement that we announce our upcoming blog series. Starting on Monday, June 27th, we will revisit Beth's post and go into much greater detail about each of the five strategies cited in the post. For tips on how to enhance your writing's flow by using these strategies, click each link below to check out each part in our series:
- Create Logical Connections
- Use Topic Sentences
- Transition with Words, Sentences, and Paragraphs
- Write With Concise Prose
- Vary Sentence Structure
Stay tuned. And let us know how we can help you become a better writer.
The Walden University Writing Center Blog is seven years old now and is a precocious, curious, and unpredictable bundle of joy. Consisting of the efforts of a revolving team of professional Writing Instructors and Editors, the blog combines healthy doses of wit, humor, advice, and reflection on topics sure to appeal differently to writers everywhere.
Never miss a new post; Opt-out at any time
Learning the Language of Academic Writing
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Recently, my husband and I enrolled in a local Somali
language class to better communicate in the heart language of some of our
friends. In our first class, the teacher told us his immigration story and gave
us some background on Somali culture and customs. We then learned the Somali
alphabet. Later we learned a few general greetings: What is your name? Magacaa? My name is… Magacaygu waa… and so on.
As we moved forward in the difficult and rewarding process of language learning, I couldn’t help but think about the parallels between learning a language and learning the “language” of academic writing. Here are a few of my observations. Do any of these ring true in your own experience?
As we moved forward in the difficult and rewarding process of language learning, I couldn’t help but think about the parallels between learning a language and learning the “language” of academic writing. Here are a few of my observations. Do any of these ring true in your own experience?
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