Yes, it’s Back to Concision, Again (28 of 30): Another ‘Circling Paragraph’

Remember, we are now looking at concision in a bigger way: by looking at the whole paragraph (rather than just at the sentence level). Go to my IELTS Writing Task Two book, Tip 15: ‘Organise Your Paragraphs’, which gives two examples of ‘circling’ paragraphs. These paragraphs just repeat, and repeat, and repeat, the same thoughts, leaving the reader trapped in a maze (like the picture above). The reader wants to go somewhere, not in circles. The section of the book concludes by saying ..

These paragraphs do not go anywhere. Look at Task Response IELTS Five = ‘Ideas not developed enough’ and Coherence & Cohesion IELTS Five = May have unclear progression’. We want to move far away from these, right? So, ideas need to be developed and show progress.

Let’s look at another example.

Try making the following paragraph more concise.

Remember, it is not just words, but ideas which we do not want to repeat.

Cut them all out to just leave the main message remaining.

Can you then continue the paragraph in a better way?

The first reason for compulsory military service is that unemployed people can learn useful skills. By joining the services, citizens are trained for free. Aside from the skills of teamwork and responsibility, some young people have the chance to fly a helicopter, which even helps their careers after they leave the services. In addition, individuals who are uneducated also can become competent when doing a military job, because of developing skills. Consequently, governments can solve the problems of high youth unemployment.

[81 words]

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