Why Key Words Will Open Doors for You-Podcast

Why Key Words Will Open Doors for You-Podcast

Ok. Imagine your favorite song. If that's tough for you, imagine a song that has recently been stuck in your head. Now ask yourself, what's the first thing you think of? If you're like me... If you're like most people, you thought of the part that they repeat, whether you focused on the beat, the riff, or the lyrics. In the music business, they call that part of the song the chorus. In this podcast, I am going to take a lesson from the music business. I'm going to explain how to use key words in order to keep your audience focused on your message and to keep yourself focused on that message. First, however, I need to provide you with some warning. This podcast is based on my experience as a student, a writer, a reader, and a teacher. I am going to offer you some advice, much like Tiger Woods might offer advice about hitting a golf ball. However, like hitting a golf ball, advice isn't much good without practice. Learning to apply my advice to specific writing situations will take work, just like learning from this podcast will. I can tell you what to do and why to do it, but learning how to do it means considering how to apply this advice to your situation. You are a specific student with a unique language background, writing for a specific professor in a specific discipline on a specific topic. Listening to this is an investment. Learning from this requires a larger investment. When you apply it, you will need to think about all the specifics of your own writing situation. For the next few minutes while listening, you will need a pen, some paper, and a place where you can be distraction free. [Pause] Writing has its origins in speech making. To understand this, lets imagine what it was like in the past. In 500bc, in order to make a complicated point, it was impossible to write it down and publish it in the newspaper. All writing was done by hand, on fragile paper, and trying to write a hundred identical letters to pass around would have been dreadful. So the intelligent guys in 500bc decided they needed to gather a large group of people together and speak to them all at once about the topic. It would save time, money, and a whole lot of ink stains on togas. But speaking presented a second problem. People tend to jump around to different topics while they talk without noticing. A conversation about Michael Jordan quickly changes into a comparison between Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan. Or how about this example. When a couple has a fight, sometimes a fight over dirty dishes turns into a fight about sleeping too late, obnoxious friends, and watching too much sports. (I confess. I'm talking about myself here). When the couple fights, the phrase "dirty dishes" will stop appearing in the conversation rather quickly. When my girlfriend and I fight, after about the first minute, she will never bring up what started it again. She starts bringing up other things that the first thing reminds her of. I believe that my experience is typical. Topic jumping is common in conversation, but it makes it impossible to make any complicated point. This was a problem for our friends in togas, so they made an informal rule which is still followed. A speech should be about one thing. It can be a big, complicated thing, but it should be about one thing. So they invented a trick to keep themselves on topic. In English class, we call it a thesis, and they insisted that it be referred to at the beginning and the end of the speech. But that wasn't good enough. They found out that it was very hard to stay on topic for ten minutes if they only stated the topic in the first and last minute. So they came up with something called topic sentences. They insisted that every new point, every new section, begin with a statement of how that section relates to the main idea. And one crucial part of topic sentences is key words. (The other parts of topic sentences will be covered in later podcast.) Here is the part where you will want to get out the pen and write this down. Take, for example, the thesis that says, "Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time." The key word for that thesis is greatness. A paper with that thesis should never stray from the topic of greatness for for long, and an easy way to make sure of that is to make sure the word greatness comes up in many of the topic sentences. Notice. I didn't say every single topic sentence. It is perfectly appropriate to have parts of your paper provide background information, but most of it should stay focused around a few key words. If your thesis doesn't seem to have key words, search the instructor's assignment sheet. Instructors try to let you know what they want as clearly as they can. They choose their words carefully, so using those key words are a great idea. So let's imagine that you have picked a key word from your thesis or the assignment sheet. You work hard for a couple of hours, and you write a paper about Frankenstein, but it is very late. You aren't sure if you stayed on topic. In 30 seconds, you can use the find function on microsoft word for the exact words of your thesis. An on topic paper will find the key words throughout the paper and in several topic sentences. To summarize my first point. You have only two things to remember. Use the key words from your thesis in most of your paragraphs. Particularly be sure to use them in topic sentences. This small effort is a way to be certain you don't drift off-topic. Going off topic means failing an assignment. That, by itself, should be motivation enough to think about key words while writing. But there is another advantage. Key words will keep your audience from forgetting your topic. Speakers aren't the only people that have trouble staying on a topic. Your audience will also have trouble staying on topic. Many of them will internally react to what you say. They may be confused, agree, disagree, or simply be reminded of something else. They may think of other people who have written on this topic, or they might start to wonder what they are going to have for dinner that night. This drifting is as natural and switching topics is, and when they bring their attention back to your paper, the key word acts like a memory aid. Seeing the word "greatness," brings the attention of the audience back to your thesis, and helps them easily recall what you have already said about greatness. Seeing the word "excellence" does not have the same effect on the audience. When the reader can recall your main idea consistently throughout a paper, it creates the impression that the writing was well planned, and that the writer carefully thought out what was being said. Have you got that? Using a single, simple trick while writing will keep your paper from going off topic and give the impression that you have carefully planned your paper in advance. The first benefit is that you wont go off topic and fail your paper. The second benefit is that is makes your audience more likely to trust what you have to say. So take out a paper you are writing. Look at the thesis statement. Underline what the key concepts are. Then make sure you use those keys. Those keys will open the door to your readers trust, and they will keep you from getting locked into a terrible predicament. Basics: Use key words from your thesis or the assignment sheet to stay on topic and to keep your audience focused.