POWER Writing - Write ANYTHING in English Easily (Essays, Emails, Letters Etc.)

1,083,390 views ・ 2017-08-29

Learn English Lab


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Do you often find it difficult to write things?
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Like emails, letters or essays?
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Do you sit down to write something and then realize you don’t know what to write?
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If your answer is yes, then this lesson will help you to overcome exactly these problems
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because I’m going to teach you a very simple trick that you can use to write anything easily,
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quickly and effectively.
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This is a process used by the best writers in the world and it’s called the POWER writing
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method.
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You can use it to write emails for work, essays for your English exam, you can use it for
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letters, business reports, blog posts, stories – basically, anything that you need to write.
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But you might be asking – why is it called POWER writing?
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Well, POWER refers to the five stages of the writing process: Prepare, Organize, Write,
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Evaluate and Review.
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This is the order you will follow and it will allow you to write without getting stuck by
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focusing on one task at a time.
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So let’s start with the first stage – prepare.
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Before you write anything at all, you must prepare for it.
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This is because the reason we often struggle to write is that we don’t have enough ideas
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when we put pen to paper.
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So the most important task of writing is to come up with good points before you write.
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So this is the very first stage – before you write a single sentence, you’re going
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to collect ideas.
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And here’s how you do it: You take your paper and pen (or you can do this on your
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computer if you wish), and you note down anything that comes to mind.
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Don’t criticize your ideas – don’t leave out or discard anything.
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Whatever you get, write it down.
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Don’t worry about organizing your ideas – we’ll do that in the next stage.
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Also, don’t worry about grammar, spelling or punctuation – remember we just want ideas
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so if there are mistakes, no problem.
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And keep doing this until you have no more ideas.
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As an interesting note, this process of coming up with ideas is called brainstorming.
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OK, let’s look at an example of how to do this.
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Let’s say you’re in an English exam, and you have to write an email of complaint.
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Here’s your task: You recently purchased an item online, but you are not happy with
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it.
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Write an email of complaint to the manager of the shopping website: say what you bought,
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why you are not happy with it, and what action you expect them to take.
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So let’s start by collecting some ideas for this.
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So what kinds of things can we buy online?
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We can buy clothes, we can buy computers, phones, books and so on.
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Let’s think of some more specific ideas – I like computers, so let’s talk about
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them.
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You can buy a laptop.
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Actually, you can also buy computer parts like a monitor, a mouse or a keyboard.
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For this task, I’m going to go with a mouse because it’s easy.
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Now if I bought a mouse, what problems might I have with it?
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I think the most common one that people face is with one of the two buttons – let’s
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pick the right-click button, but you can also have trouble with the scroll wheel – that’s
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the wheel in the middle.
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So I bought a mouse and maybe just two days later, the right-click button started having
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problems.
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But I’m going to say that now it’s been a week and the button has just stopped working.
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You can see that I’m just using my imagination.
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I want to add some more details, so let’s say the scroll wheel is also having some problems.
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What problems can it have?
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Well, if I try to scroll in one direction, it actually makes the screen go the wrong
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way.
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So we have our problems now.
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But what do we want the shopping website to do?
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We can say give me my money back – that’s called a refund, or we could ask for a replacement.
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I like that idea.
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Now when they give me a new item, they will want the old one back.
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So I’ll have to return the defective unit.
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That means the mouse that’s not working.
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Alright, we are done collecting ideas.
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And here in just two minutes, we have all the information we need to write our email.
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Notice that as I was brainstorming, I came up with lots of ideas – I collected everything
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that came to mind without leaving anything out.
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And then I expanded on the important ideas.
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It can be very helpful to talk out loud during this stage like I was doing – try to have
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an imaginary conversation and you will find it easier to generate ideas.
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Also, it’s good to use paper and pen for this exercise rather than your computer.
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This way, you can draw a mind map like the one you see on the screen – it can really
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help you to be creative.
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OK, once you have the ideas you need, you move on to the second stage, which is Organize.
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The goal of this stage is to produce an outline for what you’re going to write.
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That is, you’re going to structure your ideas in a logical manner.
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So throughout this stage, you should keep asking yourself this question – “How do
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I guide my reader?”
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Think of yourself as a tour guide – imagine that you’re taking your reader through a
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tour of a great place – that great place is your writing.
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So, what should the reader read first?
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What should he or she read next?
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And what should your reader read last?
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So in this stage, the first thing you do is go to the ideas you’ve collected, and select
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the best ones.
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After that, you take those ideas and arrange them in the most logical sequence.
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So here, we’re back with our ideas for the complaint email.
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It’s easy to see which ideas we want to keep – the mouse, the right-click button
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with its two problems, the scroll-wheel, and the request to replace it.
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When you do this on paper, you can underline the ideas you are selecting.
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So, now, how do we organize these points?
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Well first, I want to say that I bought a mouse online, it has two problems – one
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is that the right mouse button started having issues two days later, or two days after it
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arrived, and now it’s been a week and it’s stopped working completely.
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Then I’d like to mention the scroll wheel.
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It’s making the screen go in the wrong direction.
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And finally, I want the company to replace the mouse, and I can return the defective
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one.
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This is the outline we’re going to follow for this email.
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A good outline should have all the ideas that you need, and it should be well-organized.
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I think this is a pretty good outline, so with this, we move on to stage three – write.
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This is where you’re actually going to put pen to paper.
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That is, you’re going to take the ideas in your outline and write full sentences for
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them.
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Treat this as only your first draft.
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That means, just focus on writing full sentences without worrying too much about grammar, vocabulary,
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spelling or punctuation.
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Just go with the flow and write out some sentences.
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You can come back and correct the mistakes later.
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Now, if you’re writing in an exam, then you need to try to write correct sentences
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in your first draft because you don’t have time, but in all other situations, leave the
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corrections for later.
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Sometimes, as you’re writing, you might think of some additional ideas to include
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or you might want to remove something or move ideas around, that’s OK – it’s a natural
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part of the process.
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Alright, let’s go back to our outline and write some full sentences.
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So here I have the outline that we created (I’ve added a few words here and there to
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make it easy to understand).
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The first point I want to mention is my purpose for writing.
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So I can take this idea and put it in a sentence like this: “I am writing to complain about
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a computer mouse I purchased recently from your webpage.”
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There are some mistakes in this sentence, but that’s on purpose.
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Don’t worry about them for now.
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OK, so just like this, we need to take all of the other ideas and put them in sentences.
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I’m going to show you my first draft in a moment but I want you to think about how
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you would write sentences for these ideas.
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Pause the video, think about it then play the video again and check.
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Alright, here it is.
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You might notice that there are errors in grammar, spelling and punctuation, and there
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also some poor word choices.
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That’s OK (we can come back to them).
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Remember that we’re only trying to produce a first draft here.
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But you can already see that our email is coming together nicely.
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And now that we have a draft, we move on to the next stage – evaluate.
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This is the stage where you check your work.
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This is also called proofreading.
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There are four things you need to look at: vocabulary, grammar, spelling and punctuation.
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First, you check if you have used the right words to express your ideas.
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Then you check to see if there are any grammatical mistakes you need to correct.
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After that, you check if you have spelled all the words correctly, and finally you look
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at your punctuation (that is periods, commas, question marks etc.) and make any corrections
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that are necessary.
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Alright, we’re back to our first draft.
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Before I make any corrections to this, I want you to try doing that.
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There are a total of eight errors in this email – two in vocabulary, two in grammar,
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two in spelling and two errors in punctuation.
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Stop the video, try to correct them, then play the video again and check.
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OK, let’s talk about vocabulary and word choice first.
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In the first line, I’ve said ‘webpage’ – this should be website.
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Because a webpage is just an individual page – the company is the website.
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And in the very last line, I’ve said ‘delivery guy’.
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This sounds a little casual, and also the person delivering the replacement might be
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female.
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So it’s more professional to say ‘delivery person’.
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These are the changes I made in word choice.
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Let’s talk about grammar – Notice I’ve written ‘the scroll wheel have started’
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– ‘scroll wheel’ is a singular noun, so it should be ‘has’.
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And where we make the request for the replacement, it says ‘if you could sent’ – it should
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be ‘send’.
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Let’s move on to spelling.
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The first error is ‘writing’ – it has an extra ‘t’.
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And the second is ‘immediately’ which is missing the ‘e’.
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And finally, let’s look at punctuation – the first error is that there is a period (or
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full-stop) missing after completely.
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And then, after ‘I would appreciate it’ there is a comma which should not be there.
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How many of these errors did you identify – let me know in the comments.
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Now, as I was reading this draft, I realized that in a real email, you would give details
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of your order.
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So I quickly came up with some imaginary order details and put them and the end (before the
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closing).
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And I also thought it would be useful to say “see order details below” in parentheses
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(or round brackets) right at the beginning.
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So here we have our final draft, and it looks pretty good to me.
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So now, we go on to the final stage – review.
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OK by now, you will have a pretty good piece of writing that’s almost ready to go out
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into the world.
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But before that, it’s always a good idea to go over it one final time to make sure
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that it reads well.
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You do this to check that what you have written has the intended effect on the reader (that
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is the effect that you want).
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If you’re in an exam situation or you’re writing a quick email at work, all you need
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to do is just give it a read before you hand in your paper or hit the send button.
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But if you have time, or if you’re writing something longer (like a report or a story),
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then the best practice is to not review it immediately.
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This is because after you finish writing, your mind will still be full of the same ideas.
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Instead, you should leave it and come back to it the next day (or, at least, after a
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few hours).
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This way, you will look at it with a fresh pair of eyes and it will be easier to notice
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any last-minute corrections that you need to make.
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When you review, it’s good to read it out loud and not just silently in your head, so
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you can check if your writing sounds natural.
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And finally, if you can, ask someone else to read it and give you their feedback (just
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don’t do this in an exam).
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If you’ve gotten this far, then congratulations, you have now used the POWER writing process
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to easily, quickly and effectively produce a written work.
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Now, in this lesson, I showed you how to do this with an email but remember that this
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process works in the same way for anything that you need to write.
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Alright, let’s do a quick recap of what we’ve learned in this lesson.
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You begin the writing process with the Prepare stage.
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This is where you collect or brainstorm ideas.
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You then organize your ideas into an outline that you can use to write.
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Then you go on to the Write stage where you expand your outline into full sentences and
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produce your first draft.
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After this, you Evaluate or proofread the draft to correct any errors.
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Finally, you review what you’ve written to see if it reads naturally and make sure
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it’s fully ready to go out into the world.
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Once you get good at applying the POWER writing process, you will find that writing anything
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is easier, more systematic and more enjoyable than ever before.
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Alright, if you liked this video, give it a thumbs-up by hitting the like button.
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If you’re new to my channel, subscribe by clicking the subscribe button to get my latest
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lessons right here on YouTube.
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Happy learning and I will see you in another lesson soon.
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