Toefl exam Essentials

Winning Formula: Order of Importance
The locations of your introduction and your conclusion are
obvious. However, you need a pattern, or structure, to
organize the ideas in the body of your essay. Because the
prompts on the writing exam ask you to take a position on
a subject, you are essentially developing a brief argument
in your essay. And the most effective strategy for making
an argument is to organize your ideas by their importance,
or rank. Order of importance can arrange ideas in two
ways:
• by increasing importance (least important
idea
→most important idea).
• by decreasing importance (most important
idea
→least important idea).
Either arrangement is appropriate. However, if you
develop your essay by increasing importance, you present
your least important idea first and save your strongest idea
for last, making a greater impact in your conclusion.

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