Adding detail to expand
sentences in writing
One of the stumbling
blocks when it comes to productive skills is, to begin with, coming up with ideas especially for young learners who
are required to sit formal language exams. Assuming that the ideas are there or
discussed in class, the word limit
for the written tasks may constitute another obstacle to a satisfactory
performance. Organisation, accuracy and communicative ability are all very
well, but one must learn how to add detail, how to expand a sentence without repeating
oneself.
There are two ways in which the teacher can help
their students. The obvious one is to provide examples of how to add detail when
correcting a writing task. The second is to highlight detail in texts presented in class. I am going to illustrate
how to do the latter by looking at a text which I used with a group of students
preparing for the Cambridge Proficiency exam (Level C2 for those who might be
unfamiliar with formal exams).
The text, an article published
by BBC on 8 July 2018, focuses on a Spanish woman’s fight to pursue a career as
a military psychologist, to the preparation for which she has devoted two years
of her life, without having her tattoo removed.
I spotted a few details in the text which could be removed without detracting from the content or grammatical construction and
jumbled them asking the students to fill each gap with the right short extract.
I won’t claim that details
can be divided into clear-cut categories, but I will use the text in question
to provide some guidelines as to how one could go about it.
The first detail explains
what the lotus stands for. The reader would have to look it up if it were not
for the relative clause which follows. Therefore, providing definitions for concepts mentioned in writing is one type
of detail.
The second detail refers
to the place where something occurs.
The third detail describes
a condition on which something
happens.
The fourth illustrates a
point with an example.
The fifth one is a second thought for “two years of my
life”.
The sixth one adds a reason why something should be so.
The seventh one qualifies the preceding statement.
The teacher could ask the
students to bear in mind those examples of detail and try to use as many as
would be appropriate in their next writing assignment.
A final suggestion is to
get the students to draw up a list of different kinds of details which have
been highlighted in other texts or which the teacher has added in their writing.
