ACADEMIC WRITING

I have to remind some of the writers to read the Farsi guidelines I provieded on the top left hand side of the window, under the picture. Most of you are not following the guidelines and, as a result, the same problems are being repeated on and on. PLEASE, READ THE GUIDELINES. There are also some of you who do not read the comments I give on your friends' posts, consequently, you repeat and commit the same errors they did. I do not have enough time to say something several times to several people.

All members of the blog are required to write a paragraph based on "inductive reasoning." To do so, follow these steps:

1. Write a topic sentence with a limited subject and a precise controlling idea about it;
2. Think over your claim, as stated in the topic sentence, and find at least three reasons to substantiate it;
3. To make sure your reasons really work, test each of them by placing the test word "because" between the topic sentence and the specific supporting sentence, which contains your reason. For example, let's consider the following topic sentece: "Using a digital dictionary is much more helpful than a printed one." One reason to support this topic sentence is "One can look up words in digital dictionaries more quickly." Now, to see if this reason really works, we can do the following test: "Using a digital dictionary is much more helpful than a printed one because one can look up words in the digital dictionaries more quickly." However, note that the test word "because" is only in your mind and should not be explicitly stated in the paragraph;
4. Next, arrange your reasons after the topic setence, using some transitional words such as first, second, finally, etc.;
5. Finally, add a concluding sentence to the paragraph through rewording the topic sentece. The following is a very simple paragraph of inductive reasoning, adapted from Mr. Tavakkol's paragraph.

    Using a digital dictionary is much more helpful than a printed one. First, one can look up words in digital dictionaries more quickly. In additon, cross-referring, which is occasionally needed to look up new words, is a really disappointing task in a huge printed dictionary, but with a digital dictionary your distance from other entries is just one click away. More importantly, in many digital dictionaries, you can easily listen to recordings, which show you how to pronounce a word. So, with a digital dictionary, you can enjoy quicksearching, easy cross-referring, and pronouciation recordings.

Good Luck

A. Sultani

  Academic writing, such as research papers, and ordinary writing, like personal letters and diaries, are different with respect to the level of formality. Academic writing is formal. As a result, one cannot use certain grammatical constructions such as "contractions" and "first or second person point of view". For example, contracted forms like "don't", "isn't", "won't" etc. are not usually common in research or term papers. Accordingly, academic writers adopt a third person point of view, avoiding pronouns such "I" and "you" which suggest first and second person point of view, respectively. However, in ordinary informal writing, one can use both contractions and first or second person point of view because they suggest a kind of intimacy which is quite normal in this style of writing. Consequetly, maintaining the formality of adacemic writing is an important point novices should bear in mind. 

Comments on the Grammatical Structures:

1. Your sentence: You can fully imagine how wasteful of time it would be to spend it with a friend who is not sincere, truthful, or trustworthy.
2. My suggestion: You can imagine what a waste of time it is to be with a friend who is not sincere and trustworthy.
3. Your sentence:Once, with a ruthless betrayal of one of my so called friend, whom I shared one of my secret, I really was near to loss my face.
4. My suggestion: Once, one of my so-called friends ruthlessly betrayed a secret I shared with him and I was about to lose face.

Comments on the paragraph:

1. Your topic sentence, I guess, is "honesty is the most important feature to look for in a partner", but it is stated at a distance far away from the beginning of the paragrpah. The other two sentences ocurring before this topic sentence are very general and, as a result, not helpful. Furthermore, since you stated your topic sentence very late somewhere in the middle of the paragraph, you didn't have enouph space to develop it. Consequently, you claimed something which remained unsubstantiated.
2. To support your topic sentence you seem to start a narrative, but you failed to continue it. That one of your friends betrayed a secret of yours is not enouph. In a narrative, you should use specific, concrete words to make your narrative look real and believable. You could name your friend, for example "Amir", mention the time and place, for example "last year at the university of Tehran", elaborate on the secret itself, and explain in what way the betrayal of the sencret harmed you.
3. Writers usually do not say "in my opinion", because it is quite clear that what they write is their own opinion. This is a statement of the obvious.
4. In my second comment about what you wrote on television, I asked you to rewrite it in a different way. Please, do it.
5. Finally, try to rewrite this paragraph with the same topic sentence but develop it through extending the same narrative.

Dear Mr. Tavakkol,

Since we are practicing paragraph writing at this stage, let's just concentrate on paragraph writing which is the cornerstone of essay writing. You are already familiar with paragraph structure which consists of a topic sentence and some supporting statements. Limiting the topic only on how a teacher can help his student, I can rewrite what you have written in the following one paragraph essay:

  In comparison with self-study, learning with the help of a teacher seems to have many advantages. First, a teacher can act as a guide to lead students to shortcuts towards their goal. With no good instructor, they may spend lots of time just for finding a solution to their very simple problems. In addition, a teacher mitigates the pressure on students. If they try to study by themselves, they must be strong-minded enough to keep on while with the persuasion of a teacher, whom they regard as their supervisor, they may be more likely to continue. Last but not least, to study by their own, they may have some problems they won’t be aware of. But, with the guidance of a devoted teacher, they can find out those out-of-sight mistakes.

Dear Mr. Tavakkol,

Thanks for posting to the weblog. Concerning your writing, three points are noteworthy:

1. Grammatically, the sentences are well-formed and punctuated correctly, with the exception that you should have written "people are used to getting maximum information."
2. But, regarding the structure of the information presented in the paragraph, i.e. the unity, I should say that your paragraph is not unified. The problem is that you are trying to put a big foot in a small shoe. In fact, the topic is too big to be developed in this short passage. I suggest you rewrite it in a single paragraph. But, this time write only on the negative impacts of television on family life. And, try to express your core idea about the negative impacts of television in a Topic Sentence at the beginning of the paragraph.
3. I should comment on your diction, choice of words. Instead of "inordinary", which is not common, you could have used "unusual."

Dear Mr. Assadollahi,

If you pay attention to the comments I added to your writing about diet, you will see that your main problem is "punctuation." You do not add a full stop [.] to the end of sentences and do not start a new sentence with a Capital Letter. So in your next piece of writing, please

1. add a full stop to the end of sentences,
2. and, start all sentences with a Capital Letter.

To Mr. Mirkhalili and others,

Please pay attention to the following points:

1. There should be no space between the last word of a sentence and the full stop.
2. Ater full stops (.), commas (,), colons (:), semicolons (;), and othere punctuation marks, there should be a space. As a result, there is a space before the first word of a second sentence.
3. Please pay more attention to spelling. After finishing your first draft, read it carefully once for spelling and once more for grammatical errors.
4. At the beginning of paragraphs, there should be an indentation. In other words, start a line of print or writing further away from the edge of the page than the other lines. All paragraphs should be indented.
5. Word choice is very important. Check the words you are in doubt whether they can be used in your sentence in a dictionary like Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
6. Good Luck 

Dear Mr. Assadollahi,

Let me give a number of comments on your writing:

 

1. It is better for Muslims to say Allah rather than God.
2. Ramadan is the month of Allah
3. All humans are invited to the feast of Allah.
4. “Every year Muslims have diet in Ramadan every day they fast from morning till night”.  There are two sentences above. So, you need a full stop after Ramadan in the following way:

“Every year Muslims have diet in Ramadan. Every day they fast from morning till night”.

5. “Diet”, “morning”, and “night” are not suitable for your purpose. Instead, say “fast”, “dawn”, and “dusk”. Sentence number 5 cab be summarized as below: “Muslims fast from dawn to dusk in this month.”