Hello and welcome my friends to the sixth lecture of our writing course.

In this lecture, our teacher will talk about the following ideas:
Chronological order
Logical division of ideas/order of importance
Comparison/contrast
The lecturer's speech:
Good morning everyone. We talked about the procedures of making your
essay or paragraph more coherent.
What are these ways to make our writing more coherent?
1. The first method involves repeating key nouns
2. The second way involves using pronouns that refer back to key
nouns.
3. The third way is to use transition signals to show how one idea is
related to the next.
4. The fourth way to achieve coherence is to arrange your sentences
in logical order.
We learned that writing our ideas in some kind of logical order is
necessary to achieve coherence.
You have to know that there are three common kinds of logical orders in
English:
1. Chronological order
2. Logical division of ideas
3. Comparison/contrast.
Let's move to page 57 and discuss the first kind of logical order which is
the chronological order…
Chronological order
Chronological order, therefore, is a way of organizing the ideas in a
paragraph in the order of their occurrence in time.
Chronological order is used for something as simple as a recipe and
for something as complex as a history book. In academic writing,
chronological order has many uses. One of the primary ways you
might use it is to write a historical narrative about the subject of a
term paper.
However, chronological order is not just used for historical
narratives; it is also used in business, science, and engineering to
explain processes and procedures. For example, chronological order
would be used to explain how to take a photograph, how to perform a
chemistry experiment, or how to set up an accounting system.
Thus, according to this type of order, you need to follow the time
sequence of events when following the chronological order.
Page 59
Transition Signals for Chronological Order
Transition signals are especially important in a chronological paragraph.
You have to be very clear about the sequence of events: Did one event
happen before, at the same time as, or after another event?
Chronological transition signals include the following:

Page 61
Let's talk about the second type of logical order which talks about the
logical division of ideas.
Logical Division of Ideas/Order of Importance

Logical division is one of the most common ways to organize ideas in

English. When you use logical division, you group related ideas
together and discuss each group, one after the other.
The above lines are the definition of logical division of ideas /order of
importance.
Transition Signals for Logical Division of Ideas
Transition signals used in logical division include many that you already
know.

Transition Signals for Order of Importance

If some of your points are more important than others, you can indicate
their relative importance by using these transition signals:

(Note: the teacher is just reading, assuming that you all know what she is
reading)
Page 63:
Topic Sentences for Logical Division of Ideas/Order of Importance
The topic sentence of logical division and order of importance
paragraphs often indicates the number of groups the topic is divided
into:
 Gold, a precious metal, is prized for two important characteristics.
 Inflation has three causes.
The topic sentience may even tell what the groups are:
 Gold, a precious metal, is prized not only for its beauty but also
for its utility.
 Inflation has three causes: an increase in the supply of paper
money, excessive government spending, and unrestrained
consumer borrowing.
The topic sentence for order of importance differs only in that it may
contain an order of importance transition signal.
 Gold, a precious metal, is prized not only for its beauty but, more
importantly, for its utility.
Page 64:
Two Topic Sentence Tips:
Here are two tips to help you write topic sentences for logical division
and order of importance paragraphs:
1. Use a colon {:} in front of the names of the groups.
For example:
In one shocking week of 1997, the world lost two remarkable women
who, although they lived very different lives, shared a common
compassion for the sick and injured : Princess Diana of Britain and
Mother Teresa of India.
In the above topic sentence, we used the colon to introduce the two
entities: Princess Diana of Britain and Mother Teresa of India.
2. Use paired (correlative) conjunctions when there are only two
groups. Paired conjunctions are both . .. and . .. ; not only . ..
but also . .. ;either . .. or . .. ; neither .. , nor. ...
Remember that paired (correlative) conjunctions follow the rule of
parallelism. If you put a noun after the word both, you must put a noun
after the word and. If you use a prepositional phrase after not only, you
must use one after but also.
For example:
Gold, a precious metal, is prized not only for its beauty but also for its
utility. (Prepositional phrases)
In the above example: we used the prepositional phrase ''for its beauty''
after 'not only'; therefore, we must use a preposition phrase after 'but also'
as well.
Let's move to the last kind of logical order which is comparison/contrast.
Comparison/contrast
Comparison/contrast involves analyzing the similarities and
differences between two or more items.
As with the other kinds of paragraphs, the keys to writing a
comparison/contrast paragraph are to put the ideas in some kind of
order and to use appropriate transition signals.
The content of a comparison/contrast paragraph can vary. Some
paragraphs emphasize similarities, while others emphasize
differences. You can also discuss both similarities and differences in
one paragraph if you don't have many points to discuss.
Thus, this kind of order helps us to organize our ideas when we compare
two things to find the similarities and differences between them. If your
essay talks about the similarities and differences between two things, you
have two choices of organizing your paragraphs:
1. Some paragraphs discuss the similarities; after that, some
paragraphs discuss the differences.
2. You can mix the similarities and differences in one paragraph.
Transition Signals for Comparison/ Contrast
COMPARISON TRANSITION SIGNALS

CONTRAST TRANSITION SIGNALS

Ok, that is everything for today. See you next week…
Done by: Moussa Al-Rashed
Scanned by: Ahmad Jawad