Yes, it’s Back to Concision, Again (19 of 30): Another ‘Circling Paragraph’
Remember, we are now looking at concision in a bigger way: by looking at the whole paragraph (rather than just at the sentence level). Go to my IELTS Writing Task Two book, Tip 15: ‘Organise Your Paragraphs’, which gives two examples of ‘circling’ paragraphs. These paragraphs just repeat, and repeat, and repeat, the same thoughts, and it’s often messy and confusing, like the picture above. The section concludes by saying ..
These paragraphs do not go anywhere. Look at Task Response IELTS Five = ‘Ideas not developed enough’ and Coherence & Cohesion IELTS Five = May have unclear progression’. We want to move far away from these, right? So, ideas need to be developed and show progress.
Let’s look at another example.
Try making the following paragraph more concise.
Remember, it is not just words, but ideas which we do not want to repeat.
Cut them all out to just leave the main message remaining.
Can you then continue the paragraph in a better way?
Of all the causes of smoking that there are, the main one is people face considerable amounts of pressure. Most people in modern society are under a great deal of stress when they work. This stress comes from many sources, such as their supervisors, colleagues, and also customers. Some people will smoke to release their pressure because it is a much quicker way compared to the variety of other methods in society such as exercise or singing.
[77 words]
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