Hi. Welcome back to EngVid.com. I'm Adam. In today's lesson, we're going to look at
writing skills. More specifically, we're going to look at transitions. Again, before I begin,
let me tell you IELTS and TOEFL students out there: transitions are very, very important
for you, for the essay section of the test; big points if you use them correctly, few
points if you don't use them, or use them incorrectly. Anyway, let's get into what transitions
are, and look at a few specific ones.
What is a transition? A transition means a change from one idea to another idea. There
are many transitions in English. We use transitions to add information, we use transitions to
show a contrast; "although", "however", etc. We use transitions to show conditions; "if",
"unless". We use transitions to get to a conclusion; "therefore", "thus".
Lots of transitions -- very important, because they can join ideas within a sentence. But even more
so, they can join two paragraphs. So what they do really, is they create flow. Flow is very
important for writing. Flow makes it easier for the reader to follow what you're saying,
and it makes it a little bit more interesting, as well.
To "transition" basically means to bridge. You have two ideas you're connecting. You're
creating a bridge from one idea to the next. Today, we're going to look specifically at
"in addition", "in addition to", "furthermore", "moreover", and "another ______". These are very,
very important transitions, because they help you add ideas -- one idea to another. Again,
very, very important for TOEFL and IELTS, because you're always going to be adding ideas
to one topic. I'll get to that in a minute. The most important thing to remember here,
and where people I find make the most common mistakes. Believe me; I have marked hundreds
of essays for TOEFL and IELTS. Very, very common mistake. What people forget, this basically
means "plus"; you're adding, you're adding two things. You're always adding at least
one idea to another idea, so you will always have two ideas if you're using these transitions.
One of the most common mistakes I have seen on these essays is that people use these words,
I'm the reader, and I'm reading, reading, reading, and I see, "Furthermore...". Furthermore
what? What are you adding to? What are you adding, at all? Then I look around, and I
only see one idea. If I am the IELTS grader, and I'm reading your essay, you just lost
at least one band because of that. Why? Because you made me stop. You made me search for that
second idea that is not there. Be very careful about that. If you're going to use these words,
there must be two ideas. They must be linked, they must have something similar between them,
and they must be pretty close to each other.
"In addition to", "furthermore", and "moreover"; these are all pretty much the same. This one
is probably the most formal, this one is next most, and this is the most common. If you're
going to write a short essay, usually two of these will be enough. Why do you need to
know how to use two? Because you don't want to repeat. You don't want to say "in addition",
and give your idea, "in addition", give another idea, "in addition", give another idea. You
don't want to do that. You want vocabulary variety, so use at least two. For a longer
essay, you can use all three, or four as the case may be. What's interesting about these,
you can use all of these mid- sentence or to join paragraphs. Very important that you
Let's look at some examples on how to use these.
First we're going to look at a sentence
with the transition working inside it. "His laziness caused the company to perform badly
last quarter. Moreover, his attitude toward the board has put his job in jeopardy."
First, let's look at what's going on here. What are we talking about? We're talking about
the person's laziness. What are we adding to this? Remember, here I put "moreover".
I could put "furthermore". I can also put "in addition", but all three would be okay.
We're talking about his laziness. What are we adding to it? Look at the second sentence.
What are the two things we are adding together to get the two whole ideas?
If you said attitude, you're correct. Laziness and attitude -- these are both qualities of
this person. His laziness and his attitude caused the company to do badly, and put his
job in jeopardy. I could rearrange these two sentences into one, but I don't want to. I
want to have this idea, because this is adding to this. I have one idea, I have another idea,
but they're very much connected. We used a word like "moreover", "furthermore", "in addition", okay?
All of these are about the same topic.
Now, when we talk about an essay, when we're joining paragraph to paragraph, you have to be very
careful. The last idea has to join to the first idea of the next paragraph using one
of these transition words. Let's look at that now.
Let's look at an essay and you're joining two paragraphs, for example. My general topic
here is the internet. What I want to say is that the internet is a good thing, very, very
generally. I'm going to use two reasons. I'm going to talk about two reasons, and I'm going
The reason it's good is because it helps connect families and friends. This was my paragraph
before, and this is the last sentence of my paragraph, my body paragraph. "So," conclusion,
"the internet not only helps connect your friends and family anywhere in the world,
it also makes it cheap to do so." That's one good thing about the internet: communication,
networking, social media, etc. Facebook... all that. I want to go to my next paragraph,
and I want to add to this idea, the idea of connection, the idea of communication, as
why the internet is a good thing. "In addition to friends and family...", or "moreover/ furthermore..."
"...the internet provides companies with a larger network, or a larger pool of prospective employees."
I'm still talking about the same thing -- connections, networks -- but I went from personal idea
to business idea, but still within the topic of the internet, still for the reason of communication
and networking. I went with one idea, and the other idea working together for the overall
idea. I hope this makes sense to you, because it's a little bit complicated.
Any topic you take, any essay you write, where you're using one example, or two reasons with
one example, to work together, to support an opinion about a general topic, you can
use these: "In addition to", "moreover, "furthermore".
Let's say you're taking the IELTS, the TOEFL tests, you're writing your essay. You're running
out of time, you're not thinking properly, you're a little bit frazzled, you need a transition
word -- always use "another". For example, "Another reason the internet is good, is because
it provides companies...". This is your go-to transition. When you're stuck, you have nothing
else, you want to switch to the next idea, always use "another reason", but remember, this
is not your first choice, this is your last choice. These are your first choice when you
want to add an idea. But, always good to have this in your back pocket, in case you get stuck,
you pull it out. Ace of spades, etc. -- you're a winner, right?
Lots of examples on www.engvid.com , on the quiz -- go check it out. Also, don't forget
to subscribe to my channel on YouTube. I will see you again soon for more lessons. Thanks.