english for academic study dr. shakir al-busaltan lecture 3: writing paragraphs

English for Academic Study

Dr. Shakir Al-Busaltan

LECTURE 3:WRITING PARAGRAPHS

Paragraph structure

1. Topic Sentence:

- the first sentence in a paragraph

- it summarises the main idea of the paragraph

2. Supporting Details:

- make up the body of the paragraph

- provide supporting facts, details and examples

3. Closing Sentence:

- the last sentence in a paragraph

- restates the main idea of the paragraph, using different words

- or leads on to the next point

LECTURE :WRITING PARAGRAPHS

Paragraph structure

Example

English staff at the University of Michigan have just published preliminary results of their research on

student writing. The educators used student surveys delivered to first-year students three times during

the year. The surveys asked questions about past writing experiences, enjoyment of the writing

process, and how much time students have for homework. The project was initiated in hopes of

improving the quality of instructing writing and the actual process of writing at the University and at

area high schools. The study found that many high school teachers are unaware of the college writing

process and what is expected of students, and the goal of the research is to change this problem.


Paragraph structure

EXERCISE 1:Re-write the jumbled sentences to create well-structured paragraphs with a topic

sentence, supporting details and a closing sentence.

Water Treatment• The Act applies to any piped water supply that has at least 15 connections or

that regularly serves at least 25 people. The U.S. EPA delegates day-to-day administration of the Act to the states.

• Potable water quality in the U.S. is regulated by the U.S. EPA under authority of the “Safe Drinking Water Act” of 1974 (PL 93–523) and its amendments.

• Regulations include criteria for water composition, treatment technologies, system management, and statistical and chemical analytical techniques.

• The fundamental obligations of the U.S. EPA are to establish primary regulations for the protection of the public health; establish secondary regulations relating to taste, odor, color, and appearance of drinking water; protect underground drinking water supplies; and assist the states via technical assistance, personnel training, and money grants.


Paragraph structure

EXERCISE 1:Re-write the jumbled sentences to create well-structured paragraphs with a topic

sentence, supporting details and a closing sentence.

Water TreatmentPotable water quality in the U.S. is regulated by the U.S. EPA under authority of the “Safe Drinking Water Act” of 1974 (PL 93–523) and its amendments. The Act applies to any piped water supply that has at least 15 connections or that regularly serves at least 25 people. The U.S. EPA delegates day-to-day administration of the Act to the states. The fundamental obligations of the U.S. EPA are to establish primary regulations for the protection of the public health; establish secondary regulations relating to taste, odor, color, and appearance of drinking water; protect underground drinking water supplies; and assist the states via technical assistance, personnel training, and money grants. Regulations include criteria for water composition, treatment technologies, system management, and statistical and chemical analytical techniques.


Two-Dimensional Systems

• These conditions are said to define the state of plane strain.

• Hence, if boundary forces are perpendicular to and independent of this

dimension, all cross sections will be the same.

• In soil mechanics and foundation engineering, problems such as the analysis of

retaining walls or of continuous footings and slopes generally offer one

dimension very large in comparison with the other two.

• In Fig. 20.8 the y dimension is taken to be large, and it is assumed that the

state of affairs existing in the xz plane holds for all planes parallel to it.


EXERCISE 2

Two-Dimensional Systems

In soil mechanics and foundation engineering, problems such as the analysis of

retaining walls or of continuous footings and slopes generally offer one dimension

very large in comparison with the other two. Hence, if boundary forces are

perpendicular to and independent of this dimension, all cross sections will be the

same. In Fig. 20.8 the y dimension is taken to be large, and it is assumed that the

state of affairs existing in the xz plane holds for all planes parallel to it. These

conditions are said to define the state of plane strain.


EXERCISE 2

Bottom Up Placement at Market City — Australia

• A full-scale 13-m high prototype column was built prior to construction and used

to investigate a number of factors including the construction procedures and the

performance of the proposed concrete mix.

• A key feature of the Market City project (a 36-story residential tower over a 10-

story podium incorporating the new Paddy’s Market as well as a range of retail

tenancies and cinemas) is the use of high strength concrete-filled steel tube

columns.

• The combination works well with one of the advantages being the minimization

of moment transfer from the floors into the columns, thus allowing minimum

column sizes to be used.

• The system combined the tube column and parallel beam concepts.

• The concrete was specially formulated to minimize bleeding and was pumped up

from the base of the tube without vibration.

LECTURE :WRITING PARAGRAPHSEXERCISE 3

Bottom Up Placement at Market City — Australia

A key feature of the Market City project (a 36-story residential tower over a 10-

story podium incorporating the new Paddy’s Market as well as a range of retail

tenancies and cinemas) is the use of high strength concrete-filled steel tube

columns. The system combined the tube column and parallel beam concepts. The

combination works well with one of the advantages being the minimization of

moment transfer from the floors into the columns, thus allowing minimum column

sizes to be used. The concrete was specially formulated to minimize bleeding and

was pumped up from the base of the tube without vibration. A full-scale 13-m

high prototype column was built prior to construction and used to investigate a

number of factors including the construction procedures and the performance of

the proposed concrete mix.

LECTURE :WRITING PARAGRAPHSEXERCISE 3

Formal paragraphs: Writing an abstract

An abstract is a paragraph that is a formal summary of a piece of academic

writing such as an article or a thesis. You need to write an abstract when you

submit an article to a journal or when you make a conference proposal.

1. The topic sentence (or two) of an abstract provides a summary of the main

point of the paper and introduces the problem the paper discusses. It also says

why the work is important.

2. After a summary of the main topic/problem/point of the paper, the abstract

provides some detail on how the project was carried out.

3. The abstract ends with what conclusions were reached.

The information provided in the abstract should follow the organization

of the paper/report itself, almost like providing an outline for the reader

in text form. There is generally a word limit, so your writing will have to

be very compact.


Example 1Rheological and 3D DEM characterization of potential rutting of cold

bituminous mastics

Cold recycling with bitumen emulsion represents one of the most attractive pavements

rehabilitation methods. This technique has increased its popularity because it combines

environmental and economical efficiency to the production of bituminous layers of

adequate strength.

The binder matrix obtained from this application is generally represented by mastic of

bitumen, cement and filler. The percentage of these three elements affects the mixture

performance in terms of stiffness, fatigue and rutting resistance as well as durability.

The main purpose of this study is to evaluate how cement and limestone filler contents

affect the rutting response of mastics. Laboratory testing and 3D Discrete Element

Method were performed using different percentages of filler and cement, keeping

constant the overall volume fraction of both compared to the total volume of the mastic

samples.

Temperature sweep and Multiple Stress Creep Recovery tests were implemented to

study the behavior of mastics in terms of permanent deformation by shear stress


Example2Challenges in Analyzing Correlation between Water Infrastructure and

Economic Development

Availability of infrastructure significantly influences the development of regions and

countries, hence theoretical and empirical research on the relationship between

infrastructure capital and economic growth should provide answers to an important

question: increasing the stock of public capital can stimulate economic growth? The issue of

investment in infrastructure is critical as infrastructure development in Romania is

supported by the EU Structural and Cohesion Funds. Channels and models of economic

growth with one factorial variable characterizing the infrastructure will be compared,

analysing their approaches, features and limits.

Also, our case study will present some results for the impact of selected categories of public

infrastructure sectors on the recent economic growth performances in some EU new

member states. Thus, we hope to identify and discuss some conceptual and methodological

challenges of grounding policies of development for various types of infrastructure. For

Romania, we estimate the correlation between water supply and sewerage infrastructure

and economic development indicator GDP per capita, at the regional county level.


Example 3

Do the regional growth effects of air transport differ among airports?

This paper empirically studies the contribution of air transport to regional

economic development in Germany. We find that the scale and direction of output

effects of air services and airport infrastructure differ among airports. These

differences are driven by ‘opportunity costs’ of airport capital and by positive

output effects from air transport connectivity. We argue that the latter impacts

potentially depend on traffic characteristics.


EXERCISE 4

Effect of tension lap splice on the behavior of high strength concrete (HSC)

beams • Also, codes gave another restriction about the percentage of total reinforcement to be

spliced at the same time. Comparatively limited attention has been directed toward the bond between high strength concrete (HSC) and reinforcing bars spliced in tension zones in beams. HSC has high modulus of elasticity, high density and long-term durability.

• In the recent years, many research efforts have been carried out on the bond strength between normal strength concrete (NSC) and reinforcing bars spliced in tension zones in beams.

• Crack pattern, crack propagation, cracking load, failure load and mi span deflection were recorded and analyzed to study the mentioned parameters effect.

• Many codes gave a minimum splice length for tension and compression reinforcement as a factor of the bar diameter depending on many parameters such as concrete strength, steel yield stress, shape of bar end, shape of bar surface and also bar location.

• This research presents an experimental study on the bond between high strength concrete (HSC) and reinforcing bars spliced in tension zones in beams. It reports the influence of several parameters on bond in splices. The parameters covered are casting position, splice length as a factor of bar diameter, bar diameter and reinforcement ratio. The research involved tests on sixteen simply-supported beams of 1800 mm span, 200 mm width and 400 mm thickness made of HSC. In each beam, the total tensile steel bars were spliced in the constant moment zone.


EXERCISE 4

Effect of tension lap splice on the behavior of high strength concrete (HSC)

beams

In the recent years, many research efforts have been carried out on the bond strength between normal strength concrete (NSC) and reinforcing bars spliced in tension zones in beams. Many codes gave a minimum splice length for tension and compression reinforcement as a factor of the bar diameter depending on many parameters such as concrete strength, steel yield stress, shape of bar end, shape of bar surface and also bar location. Also, codes gave another restriction about the percentage of total reinforcement to be spliced at the same time. Comparatively limited attention has been directed toward the bond between high strength concrete (HSC) and reinforcing bars spliced in tension zones in beams. HSC has high modulus of elasticity, high density and long-term durability. This research presents an experimental study on the bond between high strength concrete (HSC) and reinforcing bars spliced in tension zones in beams. It reports the influence of several parameters on bond in splices. The parameters covered are casting position, splice length as a factor of bar diameter, bar diameter and reinforcement ratio. The research involved tests on sixteen simply-supported beams of 1800 mm span, 200 mm width and 400 mm thickness made of HSC. In each beam, the total tensile steel bars were spliced in the constant moment zone. Crack pattern, crack propagation, cracking load, failure load and mi span deflection were recorded and analyzed to study the mentioned parameters effect.


english for academic study dr. shakir al-busaltan lecture 3: writing paragraphs

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