3.2 Giving examples
In Week 4 you saw that to fully explain a point it is useful to illustrate it by adding an example. To help the reader notice the sentences containing examples and to distinguish them from sentences containing a point or an explanation, writers use a range of linking words and phrases, such as these:
- for example
- for instance
- is an example
- is a case in point
- one example is
- such as (Note that ‘such as’ can only be used to link information within and not between sentences.)
- is illustrated.
Activity 6
Timing: Allow approximately 10 minutes
Fill the gaps in the sentences below by inserting one of the listed linking phrases. Sometimes more than one phrase can be used.
| for example | is illustrated |
| as an example | is a case in point |
| one example | such as |
Interactive feature not available in single page view (see it in standard view).
Answer
- Technology often involves devices or tools, but it also includes social innovations. For example/for instance, a book can be thought of as a technology for sharing ideas, or a meeting between people as a technology for sharing experience to solve a problem.
- In this book, farming is used as an example of a technology that involves tools, knowledge and effective organisation of people in order to work.
- From a social science perspective migration provides an interesting example of how large-scale social forces impact upon individual lives. The experience of Barack Obama is a case in point. His parents, and also the young Obama, migrated across the world.
- This complexity is illustrated by the following case study.
- If migrants feel that their ancestral language negatively affects their life chances, they may encourage children to use only English. One example is that of a poor community of Yiddish-speaking immigrants in the early twentieth-century Cape Town.
- Some sciences, such as chemistry and physics, tend to be based within laboratories.