ARTICLE WRITING - WRITING EXAM

Features of an article

•Eye-catching heading

•Develop an idea or point of view (could be balanced or one-sided)

•Express your personal opinions but also include facts

•Be entertaining, lively and engaging

•Conversational style to relate to reader

•Use personal pronouns to include the reader (you, your, we, our)

•Can use anecdotes, descriptions, reported speech

•Use adverbials (clearly/in fact/without a doubt/ undoubtedly) to help reader to follow your argument

Useful vocab

Phrases to introduce facts

•People (sometimes) claim that … but I feel that ...

•It is often said/argued that ... However, it seems to me that ...

•It is a fact that ...

•Over the past few months/years, it seems that …

•Recently, we have all become concerned that …

•Nowadays, we are all realising that ...

•In the past, people used to …, but now ...

•These days, it seems that ….

To expand sentences, use:

•Which, who, where, whose

•In which case, which may require, which would mean, where we could, who would be

able to, which would enable us to, whose help has enabled us to

•Translating para = in order to, to, so that, enabling

Connectives to start sentences:

•Despite / In spite of (gerund, that fact that, noun/pronoun)

•However,… (yet can also be used to mean however to link sentences)

•Whereas / Although (within a sentence with two separate clauses)

•In addition to this... Furthermore… Moreover…

Abverbs to make your argument clear

•Obviously/Clearly

•Undoubtedly

•Without a doubt/ Undoubtedly

•Needless to say

•Firstly/Secondly/Thirdly/Finally

Use conditional tenses

• If you (present), you could / it would

•3rd conditional (regrets)  = If there had been, it would have________

•Had we known that… we could have been able to ….

•If only (the government would … , there was), there would be …

Anticipating the counter argument

•According to some people, … However, I think that …

•Some may argue that … whereas I firmly believe that …

•It can be argued that …

•Although I agree that … I disagree that ..

Sequencing (for anecdotes)

•At first / To start with/In the beginning, ...

•Then/Next/After that, ...

•Finally/In the end, ...

•At last, ...

Simultaneous events

•Meanwhile/In the meantime,

•In the middle of all this, ...

•During all this time, ..

Sudden or unexpected events (anecdotes)

•Out of the blue, ...

•Without any warning, ...

Rapid events

•As quick as a flash, ...

•In a matter of seconds/minutes, ...

•In no time at all, ...

•In retrospect, ...

•With the benefit of hindsight, …