Chapter 5: Career Management
31 Writing
Before you write
In this section, we will practise writing a paragraph about the past. You will have many occasions to do this in the workplace. Here are a few topics you may need to write about:
- A description of what you did on your shift as part of a shift log
- A description of an accident or an incident at work as part of a report
- A description of your duties at your last job as part of a cover letter for a job
- A description of what you did to improve your skills as part of a performance review form
The paragraph
- Do the following:
- Read the sentences below carefully.
- The sentences are not in order. Think about how best to rearrange the sentences to make two well-organized paragraphs.
- There is one sentence that is not relevant. Find it.
After Tara left, I read for a while.
After my walk, I sat by the river for some time to rest.
At around ten, I drove to a nearby park and walked for an hour.
First, I had my shower and breakfast.
I admired how beautiful everything looked. I had a lovely day yesterday.
I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
I was very happy to see her and invited her home. It was a lazy but beautiful day.
It was my friend, Tara.
There were some empty cans floating in the water. We chatted for hours and cooked dinner together. We enjoyed the dinner on my deck and watched the beautiful sunset.
When I got back to my car, I heard someone shout my name.
When I got up, it was warm and bright outside.
A co-worker called 911.
A short while later, an ambulance arrived and the paramedics took him to the hospital.
He had on his safety boots and gloves, but he did not have on his safety glasses.
He was in a lot of pain.
Igor lost the sight in his left eye.
My friend Igor learned about safety the hard way.
The doctors worked hard to save his eye but were not successful.
The terrible experience taught him to always follow safety procedures and requirements carefully.
The machine was new and shiny.
Two months ago, he was working on a machine.
- Discuss how the sentences should be arranged in your opinion. What words in the paragraph helped you decide. How did you select the topic sentence? How did you select the concluding sentence?
- Rewrite each of the above sets of sentences to make a well-organized paragraph. Develop and practise your typing and formatting skills by using a computer to produce your paragraphs. Indent the first line.
Editing a paragraph
The following paragraph has errors in grammar, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling. Rewrite the paragraph with no errors. Develop and practise your typing and formatting skills by using a computer to produce your paragraph.
I worked very hard to improve my writing skills on my own first, I wrote a minimum of 150 words in my joornal everyday. I wrote about my day or something special I did or see I also write a summary of too short newspaper articles twice a week. In addision, I used the audio from the listen exercises in my e-textbo