Cairo University

Faculty of Engineering

Department of Structural Engineering

Gen 600: Technical Writing
Spring 2014 2015

First Assignment: Topic and Thesis Statements

(Due: April 9th, 2015)
Problem No. 1:
The following paragraphs do not have a topic sentence; reconstitute the topic sentences and
start with them in your answer. Note that your proposed topic sentence should assume the
conventional sentence form of topic + comment.
Practice allows you to spot the flaws in a presentation and eradicate them. It enables you
to work on making smooth transitions from section to section, instead of awkward stops
and starts. And practice gives you an idea of how long your presentation will take, if it's
too long. All of these benefits promote greater self-confidence, which in turn leads to a
more convincing, emphatic, effective style of delivery.
Systems thinking is a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that has been
developed over the past 50 years. It originated in the field of systems dynamics to make
the patterns clearer and to help us see how to change them effectively. Systems dynamics
is an offshoot of systems engineering. It was first developed by Jay Forrester as industrial
dynamics in the 1950s and 1960s and is still widely practiced around the world today.
Problem No. 2:
a) The following sentences are not ordered. Rank the sentences to fit into an effective
paragraph. Start with the topic sentence (there is one in the sentences below).
Sentence No.
1
2
3
4
5
6

Sentence
When readers are able to visualize in this way, they understand and control
texts at a much deeper level.
One of English-teaching objectives is showing how language affects text
features and arrangement.
Crucially when a reader has this understanding, language is perceived not as
a set of rules but as a set of options used for constructing a variety of
meanings.
It is this understanding that is fundamental to reading comprehension
The ability to visualize the features of a text , and how those features are
arranged is vital to understanding when reading.
This control comes through visualizing a text type and understanding how
writers construct meaning through arrangement of text features.

b) What is the way-to-begin (WTB) used for this paragraph?

c) Define one ways-to-develop (WTD) used in this paragraph.
d) Develop this paragraph to have a mixed development of process and general-tospecific.