W12 Writing Lesson: Transitions

Introduction 

Last week, your Writing Lesson focused on four specific skills you can apply to build an effective counterargument paragraph. To review, building an effective counterargument paragraph requires you to understand:

• The purpose of the counterargument paragraph
• The placement of it within your essay (where it should go)
• How your counterargument should be presented to your reader
• How that counterargument can be effectively refuted

This week, your Writing Lesson will focus on helping you further develop your writing skills through the effective use of transitions.

Before we dive into this week’s Lesson topic, take a moment to review your Persuasive Essay writing assignment due at the end of Week 13:

Now that you have a clear idea of the parameters of this essay, let’s take a look at the positive impact a few carefully-placed words can have on the overall quality of your writing.

Lesson

Whether you realize it or not, you have already learned a lot about the power transitions have to strengthen and shape your writing. All the lessons focused on paragraphs (i.e. the introductory, body, counterargument, and concluding) and their distinctive parts have taught you how to create more effective transitions within your paragraphs. Likewise, all of the lessons focused on quote integration and the counterargument (and things like cue phrases) have taught you how to successfully transition your reader from your own thoughts to the thoughts of others.

You may be wondering right now what the purpose of this week’s Writing Lesson is if you already have such a strong foundation of knowledge and practice in this area-- and that is a great question. To summarize, the purpose of this Writing Lesson is to briefly review:

• The purpose of transitions
• How to use them effectively within paragraphs
• How to use them effectively between paragraphs

Your understanding and application of the principles reviewed in this lesson will go a long way in helping you create an organized and well-written Persuasive Essay.

Purpose

Transitions within the academic essay tend to serve two basic purposes:

1. To alert readers of upcoming shifts in perspective or voice
2. To alert readers of upcoming shifts in arguments or ideas

The first purpose tends to require the use of “within-paragraph” transitions, while the second purpose tends to require the use of “between-paragraph” transitions. Both will be looked at in-depth in the sections below.

Transitions Within Paragraphs

As mentioned above, “within paragraph” transitions tend to serve the purpose of alerting readers to upcoming shifts in perspective or voice. These shifts in perspective can occur in many places throughout the essay, but most often tend to appear during moments of:

• Quote Integration
• Presentation and Refutation of the Counterargument through Cue Phrases

Quote Integration

As you learned in the W08 Writing Lesson, when introducing the words or ideas of another author, it is important that you let your reader know that those words or ideas are not yours. Doing so will not only prevent you from committing plagiarism-- it will also allow you to create an organized and understandable essay. In this essay, your thoughts and the thoughts of others are clearly defined and working together to strengthen the overall thesis or argument of the essay.

ICE Method

To review, one of the most effective ways to transition your reader from your own thoughts to the thoughts of another author within a paragraph is to use the ICE Method. As the W08 Writing Lesson taught, the ICE Method has three basic steps:

• I: Introduce
• C: Cite
• E: Explain

The “I” (Introduce) part of the ICE method is where most of the transitioning takes place. The best way to alert your reader of this kind of shift in perspective and voice is to introduce the source. You do this by ay answering the questions of who, where, and when:

• Who said it (the author)
• Where it was said (in what source it was found)
• When it was said (the general time frame in which it was published)

In the W08 Writing Lesson, you are taught how to properly transition into introducing a new source via an example that supports the following Writing Prompt:

What is a family council and what are two of its benefits?

Returning to this example, imagine for a moment that you did some research and were able to identify two benefits in response to this question-- two benefits that will be covered in two separate body paragraphs:

• Spiritual protection
• Unity

To illustrate how the “I” (Introduce) portion of the ICE method of quote integration serves as a great “within paragraph” transition for your reader, read over the example body paragraph topic sentence below:

One of the primary benefits of holding regular family councils is spiritual protection.

How might you transition from your own thoughts (as expressed in the topic sentence above), to another’s thoughts? This is where the power of the ICE method really comes into play. See it at work in the example below:

W12 The Ice Method at Work: Accessible Document.  Download W12 The Ice Method at Work: Accessible Document. 

Counterarguments- “Cue Phrases”

As you learned in last week’s W11 Writing Lesson, another part of the essay where you will need to transition your reader from your own voice to another person’s voice is in the counterargument paragraph. This is done both in your presentation and refutation of the counterargument through the use of cue phrases. 

Presentation

To review, when first presenting the counterargument to your reader, your “cue phrase” should be located at the beginning of the paragraph (and sentence), like so:

W12 Cue Phrase Example: Accessible Document.  Download W12 Cue Phrase Example: Accessible Document. 

Notice how the use of the cue phrase “Many people” tips the reader off that the views being shared are no longer that of the writer? Also notice how the cue phrase transitions the reader into the counterargument being presented?

To review a list of some basic cue phrases, return to the W11 Writing Lesson on the Counterargument.

Refutation

The W11 Writing Lesson also taught you about the need for “cue phrases” when transitioning to the refutation portion of the counterargument paragraph. To review, The purpose of the cue phrase in the refutation portion of the paragraph is to show the reader that the opposing view is now being responded to; it is to transition your reader from the opposing point of view back to your own. To see how the refutation cue phrase accomplishes this, please revisit last week’s example below:

To review a list of some basic refutation cue phrases, please review the W11 Writing Lesson.

 

Transitions Between Paragraphs

While “within paragraph” transitions serve the purpose of alerting readers of upcoming shifts in perspective or voice, “between paragraph” transitions serve the unique purpose of alerting readers of upcoming shifts in argument or idea. Because one of the core rules of effective paragraph-writing is limiting each paragraph to only one controlling idea (see W02 Writing Lesson: Meet the Paragraph), shifts in argument or idea only tend to happen between paragraphs within the academic essay.

There are literally dozens of transition words to choose from when shifting focus from one idea to another. There are transition words that show cause and effect, contrast, similarity, emphasis, and even sequence. To give you a general idea of the options available to you, below are examples of just a few of those categories and word combinations:

W12 Transition Words in English: Accessible Document.  Download W12 Transition Words in English: Accessible Document. 

With so many available options, you may be wondering how you will ever be able to figure out which word or set of words would work best where.

Guiding Questions

While there are many approaches you could take, for the sake of this Lesson and upcoming Persuasive Essay assignment, let’s take a look at a few basic guiding questions you should be asking yourself as you create your between-paragraph transitions:

• What is the purpose of this paragraph? Is it to introduce, inform, persuade, address an opposing viewpoint, revisit or add emphasis to already discussed ideas?
• Does the idea I’m sharing in this paragraph relate to or support any other idea or argument shared within the essay up to this point?
• Does the idea I’m sharing in this paragraph present a different viewpoint or idea?
• Is the idea I’m sharing separate from or dependent upon other ideas being shared within the essay?

Your answer to these four basic questions should help you more easily identify which categories of transition words might work best at the beginning of each of your paragraphs.

Selecting Appropriate Transitions

In terms of this particular Persuasive Essay assignment and its writing prompts, your answers to the questions above will likely lead you to discover the following:

W12 Selecting Appropriate Transitions: Accessible Document.  Download W12 Selecting Appropriate Transitions: Accessible Document. 

To see the power of an appropriately-used transition in action, let’s return to our writing prompt example from last week. To review, that essay prompt was:

• Do you believe that people have a specific “calling” in life? Why or why not? (W12 Life Skill Lesson)

In response to the prompt question, our thesis statement then became:

• My spiritual and secular study as well as my own life experience has taught me that there is much truth to Thompson and Bunderson’s concept of a life calling emerging, perhaps even multiple times, at crossway of spiritual gifts and need in the world.

Body Paragraph Transitions

In answering the questions above, you likely realized that three body paragraphs will be required in this essay based on its current thesis statement. One body paragraph will focus on “spiritual” findings, another on “secular,” and then finally one supported by “personal experience.”

You also likely realized that the Addition transition word category cannot be applied to the first body paragraph as no arguments have been made yet that can be added to. This means that the first body paragraph would likely benefit most from a transition word selected from the Order category. An example of this in application might look like the following:

Body Paragraph #1 Topic Sentence

Above all, my spiritual study of the scriptures as well as the words of latter-day prophets have supported Thompson and Bunderson’s definition of a life calling emerging at the intersection of spiritual gifts and need in the world.

To see more “between-paragraph” transition words in action, let’s look at what the next body paragraph topic sentence might look like with the added benefit of transition words:

Body Paragraph #2 Topic Sentence

In addition to spiritual, my secular study of the “life calling” also supports Thompson and Bunderson’s unique definition.

To really emphasize the value-add of between-paragraph transitions, let’s look at one final body paragraph example:

Body Paragraph #3 Topic Sentence

Finally, my own life experience has enabled me to learn for myself that the concept of the “life calling” truly does lie at the intersection of gifts and need in the world.

Concluding Paragraph

Since the counterargument paragraph and its cue phrases have already been covered in a previous section, we’ll skip ahead to the concluding paragraph and just briefly touch on the power transitional words and phrases have to shape this important part of the essay. 

As mentioned above, the category of transition words that would most benefit your concluding paragraph is Emphasis. Since one of the main purposes of the concluding paragraph is to revisit ideas shared within the essay, transition words that express emphasis would be a natural fit and value-add. To see the power of this addition, feel free to examine the example below:

Concluding Paragraph Example

Without a doubt, I have come to realize over the years that a life calling is so much more than simply acting on a single moment in time-- it is developing gifts and talents and constantly reassessing what value-add those gifts and talents can bring to the world at that particular moment.

Within-paragraph and between-paragraph transitions are truly the best ways to alert readers to upcoming changes in perspective and voice as well as argument or idea. As you complete your writing practice this week, really try to consider which transition words would best help you create the most powerful and organized experience for your readers.