READING & WRITING

• Art is the use of creativity, skill, and imagination to create something that's beautiful or emotionally expressive.
• Narration means telling a real or fictional story or account.
• A narrative usually follows a chronological order, which means you must take into account all the time the correct sequence of events.
• In writing a narrative, you must be conscious of your point of view or the perspective the narrative is told.
• Description plays an important role to clarify the nature of people, places, and things.
• The kinds of words we used to describe how your subject looks, smells, sounds, feels, or even tastes are likely called sensory languages.
• Description also involves how will you arrange the details to provide an image of the scene, the person, or the object you are trying to describe in your text.
• Objective description - the writer presents an impartial and actual picture of the subject without any biases and personal impression on the subject.
• Subjective description - the writer gives his/her personal impression of what is observed, often used in making fiction stories.
• Definition - provides concise but exact meaning of unfamiliar words and explains special meaning for familiar words (technical words and concepts).
• Informal definition - can be denotation or connotation.
• Denotation - the literal or primary meaning of a word that you can find in a dictionary.
• Connotation - the secondary meaning of the word and not necessarily included in the dictionary.
• Formal definition - consists of three important parts: species (word) + genus (class) + differentiae.
• The word is the name of the object, process or concept defined. This is usually followed by "is" and "are." The class is the name of which the objects belong. Differentiae refers to a distinguishing mark or characteristic.
• Classification - used when a writer needs to sort out or arrange subjects or groups or categories based on their common and shared characteristics.
• Classification is done by stating first with the general idea expressed in the thesis or topic sentence, followed by supporting details mentioned in the supporting sentences.
• Exemplification - also known as illustration, is the most common and effective pattern to explain an idea or point. In developing this paragraph, the writer develops a general statement: the topic sentence, with one or more examples to support it.
• Exemplification - In making this paragraph, one must remember the different transitional expressions in writing effective paragraphs: for instance, namely, to clarify, to illustrate, for example, in short, as an example.
• Persuasion - intends to convince readers to do or believe in something. Many writing genres such as critiques or reviews, reaction papers, proposals, advertisements, and brochures make strong use of this to state opinions and influence others. Knowing how to write it allows you to express your personal conviction or opinion about an issue or topic and make the readers agree with or adopt your conviction or opinion.
• Comparison and Contrast - this pattern organizes ideas based on how events, places, people, things, and concepts are similar to or different from one another. There are two ways on how ideas can be arranged: separately which involves describing one item first followed by the second item; or side by side, which means discussing both items based on each point of comparison.
• Cause and Effect - this pattern of development organizes details based on the cause, the reasons, and the results or consequences of a certain phenomenon.
• Problem and Solution - this pattern has two parts: the problem and the solution.
• Problem and Solution - The writer presents the problem and some facts or reasons why it is a problem. The closing statement or conclusion highlights the connection between the problem and the solution.
• Well-written texts are examples of effective writing.
• The messages well-written texts impart are clear, logical, and well-developed.
• Organization - means that the writer must consciously arrange and classify ideas to achieve logical order and clarity in writing.
• Organization entails that the ideas in writing must be interconnected with one another. The logical order of ideas in writing is highlighted in organization. It begins with the writer thinking of general subjects and turning them into the narrowed down topics.
• In writing a story or an essay, it is necessary to identify the sequence of events from the beginning to end because a strong organization comprises proper paragraphing and logical order of presentation of ideas.
• Deductive organization - starts with the general ideas followed by the specific details.
• Inductive organization - means that the writer must start with the particular or specific ideas leading to the general idea. Normally, the inductive way is used when your audience are considered newbies to the topic.
• Coherence - refers to the rhetorical aspects of writing, which include developing and supporting your argument, synthesizing and integrating readings, and organizing and clarifying ideas.
• To achieve coherence, a good paragraph must have unity or oneness of idea. Sentences in a paragraph are unified and directed by a topic sentence.
• Parallelism - means that ideas of the same nature must be expressed in the same grammatical structures.
• Cohesion - means unifying ideas by binding words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs, thus, shows relationships and smooth text flow.
• To achieve good cohesion, you need to know how to use cohesive devices, certain words or phrases that serve the purpose of connecting two sentences, usually by referring back to what you have previously written or said.
• Transitional devices are used to sustain the smooth flow of your ideas so that readers can easily comprehend what you are writing.
• It is wise to be prudent when conveying your ideas through written expression.
• Miscommunication occurs if the writer haphazardly chooses words without considering his or her readers.
• The formality of the language one uses should depend on how formal the situation is and how the writer and the reader are related to one another.