Argumentative Essay - Use Transition Words

So you've been told that your SA needs more flow. Well, how can an argument be strengthened by creating flow through the use of transition words? In this lesson, you will learn how to strengthen your argument by creating flow throughout the essay using transition words. See, in an essay, you have paragraphs and those paragraphs each cover a topic. And the topics are supported by evidence. And the evidence all ties back to the topic, but remember the evidence also has a tie to each other. It can't just be all these separate islands out there on their own. But the problem that some writers have is that they write sentences that stand alone and do not connect to each other. So what you end up with is a whole type of choppiness throughout the essay where one idea is given. And then the next idea. And then the next idea, they never actually tied together. A well written essay, it should be a nice, smooth read with a beginning point and an end point. Let's review the steps that we're going to use to create the flow through the use of transitions. First, we're going to identify the places in your essay that jump from one idea to another. That type of choppiness. We want to eliminate we want to add transition words or phrases to connect those ideas and finally then we're going to reread to be sure the ideas flow for the reader. So here I have a paragraph out of my essay. So I need to start thinking to myself, how do I find areas where my essay lacks flow? Well, I need to keep in mind here that the transition words are going to go in between sentences. So where one sentence ends and then the next one is going to begin. And it's going to offer us a little bridge. It's going to act as a little bridge here. To make sure that there's going to be better readability. So let's take a look between the first two sentences. Could it be improved? I'm going to offer that as an area of concern. Where I might be able to add a transition. How about here? Here and here. Notice each sentence I want to take a look at, noticing if I can improve flow. So here I have two of my sentences. And I need to ask, what are some transitions I can use to improve flow between these sentences? Because I want them to feed off of each other. Here's a list and other point next and additionally. So let's see, will another point work here? Lunch is served on healthy and another point the healthy now, how about next served unhealthy next? No. Served on healthy additionally. All right, I think additionally is going to work here. So let's see how this looks when it's put into the essay. All right, it's going to go right at the beginning there. So in total here, it's going to look like this. All right. Nice. But I don't want to stop there, so I need to ask, how do I revise my SA to include better transitions? Well, voila, magic a TV right here. Ironically, additionally, in fact, and as a result, now some of these are more advanced. But you can also use transitions like another point or finally those types of things. Because no one wants to read an essay where it's just all these rigid type of sentences. Also no one wants to read if you use the same transitions over and over again, like next, next, next, next, next. It just gets very boring. It gets old real fast. And it's actually going to hurt your argument because they're not going to think you know what you're talking about. But it's always good to know a lot of different transition words, so we can avoid repeating the same ones. So here's some common ones. How about additionally? Another example is remember these aren't just words they can also be phrases. For example, furthermore. In contrast, in fact, lastly, moreover, next and similarly, I can't say, wow. So maybe I should just stick to writing it. But even while making this list, I just thought of finally. Finally, we're almost done with the common transitions list, and me trying to say the last word on that list. But there's many others that you could probably come up with on your own. Let's review the steps for using transitions. How about identify places in your essay that jump from one idea to another? The second step we took, then we added the transition words and phrases to connect those ideas. And finally, we had to reread to be sure the ideas flowed for the reader. In this lesson, you learned how to strengthen your argument by creating flow throughout the S 8 using transition words.