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Recipe for Opinion Writing
Wednesday, 1 March 2017

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m
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Grip the audience with a brief introduction
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Keep an air of formality, but use occasional colloquial language to engage the audience especially young people
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Organise your thoughts in some sort of sequence or order - signpost
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First person pronouns
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Alliteration for emphasis
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Measured, subtle sarcastic tone
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Opinion Pieces Page 1

Parallelism (Parallel Construction)
Friday, 3 March 2017

2:17 p
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Parallelism is a really effective way to craft sentences
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Here are some more famous examples:
• In the famous speech of Martin Luther King, Jr
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• “My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your
country
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Kennedy
• In the Beatitudes from the book of Matthew in the Bible, they begin with “Blessed are the
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”
• "I don’t want to live on in my work
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" - Woody Allen
• "Today's students can put dope in their veins or hope in their brains
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They must know it is not their aptitude but their attitude
that will determine their altitude
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" - Aristotle
• “My fellow citizens: I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust
you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors
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Figure out what parts (verbs, nouns, adjectives, etc) of the sentence are being compared
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Decide whether they are parallel, i
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arranged or constructed in the same way
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If they are not, make them parallel by making the grammatical construction the same in each
part
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I would rather eat potatoes than to eat rice
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> Global warming is scary, and
affects humans and the environment
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It's harder to do long division than dividing with a calculator
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Opinion Pieces Page 2

Parallelism in Writing
Friday, 3 March 2017

2:46 p
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Parallel sentence elements in grammar are just like parallel lines in geometry: they face the same
direction and never meet
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Parallelism in grammar
is defined as two or more phrases or clauses in a sentence that have the same grammatical
structure
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The How
Here’s a handy trick for testing parallelism: rewrite the sentence for each element that should be
parallel
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A sentence with parallel
construction makes your writing classy
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Effective, classy, and certain are all adjectives
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That makes the sentence balanced, and therefore, parallel
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Read on for the most common parallelism problems you’ll encounter—and
how to avoid them
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In this sentence, practicing and competing are gerunds (verbs functioning as nouns) and “to take” is
an infinitive
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Instead:
Olympic athletes usually like practicing, competing, and eating ice cream sandwiches
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Note that you don’t need to repeat the “to” in each instance of the infinitive form of the verb
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Nouns vs
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Lamb chops is a noun
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Tsk tsk
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or
For dinner we like to grill lamb chops and fry brussel sprouts
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Multiple buses, one train? That’s not going to solve any environmental issues
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More Mismatched Parts of Speech

The detective deftly and with pizzazz outlined how the crime had been committed
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Both deftly (adverb) and with pizzazz (a
prepositional phrase) need to be the same part of speech for this sentence to be properly parallel
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With deftness and pizzazz, the detective outlined how the crime had been committed
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Huh? Unless being a fabulous designer is a recipe for steak, these two actions don’t seem to have
much in common
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He decided to cover the gown in sequins, and to celebrate, he had a steak for dinner
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The possible connections are endless, but for proper parallelism, that connection must be clear to
the reader
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I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging
to me as good belongs to you
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—The Cardigans, “Lovefool”
Easy come, easy go
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Specifically, one with parallel
lines
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You know what they say: you win some, you lose some
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Opinion Pieces Page 4

Example Opinion Piece on Wicked Campers
Wednesday, 8 March 2017

9:11 a
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So, you tell me
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I mean, surely we all
have an inalienable right to be able to walk outside without being visually assaulted, right? Now I'm
not judging, and if you want to Google that stuff in your own time; go ahead
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So, Wicked Campers
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Some
people definitely do: in the last two years there have been numerous protests and petitions directed
at the company, requesting and eventually demanding that they remove the offensive quoteunquote "humour"
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Well isn't this wonderful! We
can celebrate the fall objectification and misogyny! Yeah nah
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Well, then again… maybe it just can't be helped
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And considering that neither the standard nor preoccupation of those has seemed to change since
they were 12… maybe they're just naturally lacking in the mental department
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The quality of his most recent address almost approached that of a oneyear old who has discovered the miracle of phlegm
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This raises the question, where exactly do we, ie
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The public outrage would be near-uncontainable; councils and committees would be
falling over themselves to erase the work and to lay blame; stay-at-home mums with their 2
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You know, I just get the feeling that we might have an issue
with something like that
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"But no!" I hear
you say, "That's censorship! What's on those trucks isn't graffiti, it's artwork! It's freedom of
expression!" Sorry to burst your bubble, but that is not artwork
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Picasso that is artwork
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Wicked Campers is NOT ARTWORK
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Yes I have to admit that a lot of the
graffiti you find around Auckland isn't exactly of Louvre quality either
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Because that's the thing about artwork
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As much bad press we get for being a
nanny state, there is something to be said for keeping our children nice and safe in their cosy little
bubbles
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I guess what I'm saying is: I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed
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Clean is self-explanatory, and even
though green can have some negative connotations there is something to be said for being innocent
on certain subjects
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AUSTRALIA
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Are we going to let ourselves be outdone by
AUSTRALIA? It's just about standards, plain and simple
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This is a democracy (Nay)
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But you're also entitled to your rights
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So whose rights do you value more? Children's or infants'?

Opinion Pieces Page 5



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