An-Najah Staff

Abstract: The major concern of this paper is to teach the “how”: how to start on writing, how to think, how to progress, how to organize ideas and how to put pen to paper. It will discuss the major sequential steps of writing a paragraph and justify each step, and an empirically tested critical analysis exercise will be incorporated. In the process, technical ways of presenting, organizing and developing a Ist draft-paragraph mainly through the concepts of paragraph division and unity, transition and transitional phrases, connection and connectors, logical progression, contrast and opposition, language variation, comparison and specific details will be addressed. Together with highlighting the commonly ignored critical thinking skills, all these issues have an internal appeal and relevance to EFL teaching across the globe as they focus on a new systematic technique to teach writing and refining the writing style via arguing certain guidelines, and it adopts a pragmatic approach. Some guidelines of a good writing style will be elaborated and supported by examples with the purpose of utilizing them in developing a Ist draft. Pedagogic conclusions will then be drawn. The paper is divided into four parts: introduction, systematic approach, suggestions for a good writing style and conclusions, and it proceeds within a pragmatic (communicatively-based) framework.