唐力力 Transitions.docVIP

Transitions In this crazy, mixed-up, topsy-turvy world of ours, transitions glue our ideas and our essays together. The function and importance of transitions In both academic writing and professional writing, your goal is to convey information clearly and concisely, if not to convert the reader to your way of thinking. Transitions help you to achieve these goals by establishing logical connections between sentences, paragraphs, and sections of your papers. In other words, transitions tell readers what to do with the information you present them. Whether single words, quick phrases or full sentences, they function as signs for readers that tell them how to think about, organize, and react to old and new ideas as they read through what you have written. Transitions signal relationships between ideas such as: Another example coming up—stay alert! or Heres an exception to my previous statement or Although this idea appears to be true, heres the real story. Basically, transitions provide the reader with directions for how to piece together your ideas into a logically coherent argument. Transitions are not just window dressing that embellish your paper by making it sound or read better. They are words with particular meanings that tell the reader to think and react in a particular way to your ideas. In providing the reader with these important cues, transitions help readers understand the logic of how your ideas fit together. Signs that you might need to work on your transitions How can you tell whether you need to work on your transitions? Here are some possible clues: Your instructor has written comments like choppy, jumpy, abrupt, flow, need signposts, or how is this related? on your papers. Your readers (instructors, friends, or classmates) tell you that they had trouble following your organization or train of thought. You tend to write the way you think—and your brain often jumps from one idea to another pretty quickly. You wrote your paper in several discrete