Good Writing

Five Elements of Good Writing
Critique Essay Five Elements of Good Writing, produced by False, Solomon, Clabeaux. Heinle, 2010, is a teaching unit of five lesson plans that has addressed to help students to identify the importance of the audience, clarity, unity, and coherence in academic writing. According to the authors, those are the most important elements in good writing that allow students to develop the ability to write clear and accurate text. This handout was applied in English as a Second Language low advanced Writing and Grammar students of College of Marin (California), most of them appear to have achieved secondary education and many have had post secondary or college education. There are also a number of working professionals in this group. These students were interested in improving their English to advance in their works and to have a greater comfort and success in communicating with other English speaker. The first aim of this guide was allow the students to recognize the purpose of good writing, and realize that the five elements of good writing help them to make good paragraphs. Through different techniques applied for Teaching English as a Second Language, the students were able to write purposes statements; also they were able to identify the type of sentences (topic, supporting and concluding) to begin a deeper understanding of principles of good writing. Therefore, Identify the purpose is a determinant factor in good writing, even more because students at this level often have the tendency to write in generalities, without the controlling idea, and this usually results in unfocused paragraphs. So there is a need to emphasize the importance of clear purpose in writing. Another important element in good witting is the audience. ESL students were able to comprehend the importance of writing to a specific audience by answering these questions: “Who is the audience we write for? What does it mean when we use the word “person” when talking about writing?” .Thus, students had to know what formality means, and the language used in normal everyday speech are informal, while language used in academic writing is more formal. Formality also has to do with voice, that third person is more formal than first person; the third person voice is what is most often used in academic writing. Therefore, in order to communicate to the audience successfully, students should state a purpose for their writing, which will make them better writers. Good writing also means being able to produce clear, grammatical and logical arguments. The five elements of good writing guide gives several exercises to develop Clarity in ESL students: by giving details, choosing precise words, and descriptive phrases. These strategies are very useful in order to make texts easier to understand. Unity is another very important characteristic of good writing given in the unit. According to different experts in Good Writing a paragraph unity means that one paragraph is about just only one main topic. Therefore, all sentences (the topic, supporting, and the concluding sentence) have to be related with one main topic. If the paragraph contains a sentence or some sentences that are not related to the main topic, then this paragraph "lacks of unity," or the sentence is out off topic. The text has to be coherent, easy to follow, and each paragraph has to be related to the main thesis. The last element of this unit is coherence. ESL students understood the concept of logical order and how to enhance the reader's perception of it. They also developed the importance of the repetition of key words, and finally they gained familiarity with transitional words and phrases in order to make a smoothly text.

To sum up, it is very important to develop the ability to write good texts. This guide was designed to give teachers the sources to apply in ESL students some basic advice to help them with their written work. Five elements of writing were studied and practiced to improve their writing skills in order to make better text. These elements were: the audience, clarity, unity, and coherence. Even though these elements are important in good writing; there are others important elements suggest by other authors not included in this unit. Price, Glanville (2002) recommend other important techniques to improve writing skills such as: Use sources to back up arguments, give accurate references, quoting and citing, and avoid plagiarism among others. These elements should be applied too in ESL students in order to obtain the excellence in writing. Good writing should not be just only in the academic field, also in whatever subject and career, it is necessary to write clearly and appropriately.