Ways to add variety to our essays

Writing has been my hobby since I got into contact with languages in school. Frankly speaking, I write more English than Malay and Chinese. I seem to be fascinated by English because there is enough vocabulary for any situation.

In this post, I like to share with readers how you can break the monotony of your essay. To achieve this end, you have to know a lot of words which carry the same meaning in case you want to use them for variety. Besides, you must delve into phrasal verbs and know most of them so that they come in handy for you when you want to express the same idea after having used a verb for it. Let us look at one paragraph which I will compose offhand as an example.

1 For the time being, the computer is still indispensable to most of us. 2 We need to use this gadget to get our work done. As it can speed up our chore, it serves as a time-saver. 3 Besides, we can store data in the hard disk to be retrieved later. 4 Computers have found their way into factories, offices and schools because they are a great help at these places. 5 They help to expedite work in factories keep customers’ information and act as good teaching aids for students. 6 Most school-going children like to lay their hands on this modern invention for they are able to look for information need for their school projects through the Internet, play video games and communicate with their cyber friends. 7 In short, this sophisticated device has become part and parcel of our lives.

In the above paragraph, I use ‘the computer’ for the first time, ‘this gadget’ for the second and ‘this modern invention’ for the third and ‘this sophisticated device’ when I want to refer to it again. Similarly, ‘speed up’ is my first choice while I use ‘expedite’ subsequently to mean the same thing. ‘As’ appear in my third sentence to mean ‘because’ and ‘for’ is used to bear the same meaning in the sixth sentence. The use of ‘store’ and ‘keep’ is intended to bear the same appear in the third and fifth sentence respectively. The word ‘indispensable’ and ‘part and parcel of our lives’ are meant to carry the meaning of ‘cannot do without’.

So much for ways to add variety to our essays.