#1 Writing an article | Podcast para aprender inglés

And we're live, I think, hopefully. So welcome, everybody, to our first podcast in English from Trainlang. So we're going to speak a little bit of English and a little bit of Spanish. Hopefully more English than Spanish. So let's go to Spanish. My name is Rodrigo and I am here with Matthew. Hi, Matthew. Hey, Rodrigo, hello. Nice to be here with you. Thank you for joining me today.

So my name is Rodrigo or Rodrigo, if you pronounce it in Spanish. And I am originally from Uruguay, but I live in Argentina. and I've been teaching English for over 10 years now. What can you tell us about you, Matthew? Okay, so I'm originally from London. But when I was small, I moved to the northeast of England, a place called Newcastle. And I've been teaching English the same as you, more or less, Rodrigo, for about 10 years.

And I should mention that now I live in Spain. That's great. That's great. So, well, what is the purpose of this podcast? What is the purpose or end of this podcast? We are going to discuss today or talk about articles. How to write an article. And why that is important.

How to write an article and why it is important. So, let's begin with answering this question. What is an article? What can you tell us about this, Matthew? What is an article? Yeah, it's a great question, Rodrigo. So an article can be a piece of information about, for example, maybe sports. Football, maybe hobbies like cooking or anything that the writer has an opinion about that he thinks is interesting and would like to share.

Right. That's perfect. Great. So this leads us to the next question, which is where can I find an article? So where do you read articles, Matthew? I guess normally, Rodrigo, I read them on my tablet. And you can find many online. But there's also other places too. Maybe, for example, a newspaper. Yeah, that's great. Good. So you can find them in printed paper and you can find them online.

So I, for example, usually use read articles in my phone. So I usually Google some information I want to find. and then I find lots of articles that I can read about them. For example, I get a lot of articles about sports. And because I like tennis, so I get a lot of articles about tennis on my phone and about football as well. How about you, Matthew?

Similar to you, Rodrigo. I like sport. So I read a lot of articles about football. But also recently, I've started reading articles about technology. And in particular... computers trying to learn a little bit more about those that's great that's great i love technology too so we can find articles basically anywhere right So the next question is, if I am writing, for writing an article, how long should it be? What do you think? Yeah, that's another good question, Rodrigo.

we need to remember that our article should have an introduction, a main body, and a conclusion. Also, we want to keep it interesting so that the reader doesn't get bored. So we don't want the article to be too long. It has to be just the right length to keep the person interested. Definitely. definitely good so the the length yeah how long it is could vary then it can be a very short one or a very long one

That's right. Yes, indeed. Some articles are really short and you can read them in a few moments. Others take longer. Right. Good. So you were talking about the structure of the article, yeah?

So we could say that the first thing that an article needs is a good title, yeah? Because that's the first thing that you see before reading the article. So we could say that... Yeah, the title has to be very interesting, right? That's a really important point, Rodrigo, you're right. Because if the title is interesting, maybe funny, or perhaps a play on words?

It catches our attention and makes us interested. We want to read and find out. Right. A play of words. That's very interesting. That's great. So not only the title should be interesting, but the entire article, right? Especially the introduction, I think. Because after the title, the first thing you read is the introduction. If it's not interesting, then I'm not going to continue reading that article. No, that's very important, Rodrigo. Maybe we could use some rhetorical questions.

Or perhaps the writer could give his own opinion about something which engages us as we think about our opinion. Right, right. That's great advice, Matthew. So we talked about the title, then the introduction, the first paragraph. What comes next? You mentioned something? Right, so then we have the main body of the article. and here where the writer will present perhaps one or two of his main arguments maybe if he's talking about something let's say football

He might say something positive or something negative and then develop that. Great. Very good. So that's a very important part then. And what's next? What's the last step? The last thing is the conclusion where you bring everything together and conclude the article, maybe with an opinion or a suggestion or an idea. Great. All right. So we've got it then. That's an article.

What about the language that we use in there? Perhaps we could mention a few things. For example, the use of adjectives and adverbs is very important to... give it some life, right? Yeah, you're right, Rodrigo. So using all kinds of adjectives gives it colour and makes the reading interesting, brings it to life. It's very important. Also, maybe it's not such a formal way of writing, like a report or a business letter. We could use informal speech to keep it friendly.

All right, that's great. That's great advice. Okay, Matthew, so I think we've covered all the topics. I'm not sure if we have any comments. live or if anybody is watching this live our our first podcast perhaps if you have any questions you can type them there in the comments and if you don't then I'm going to try to summarize, summarize, resumir all of this content in two or three minutes. So, all right.

right now we have no comments so let's give it a go then i'm gonna try and go for it hey rodrigo thank you matthew

So let's talk then about how to write a good article. And the first thing we need to answer is what is an article? So, an article is a piece of writing that you use to express your opinion and also to entertain the readers. That's very important. We have to entertain the person who is reading and inform them. Where can we find an article? Well, basically everywhere. You can find articles online. You can find them in magazines, in newspapers, anywhere.

What is the structure of an article? Well, it has four basic parts. The first one is the title. Then we need a good introduction. Then a body, which can be two, three, four paragraphs. And finally, a conclusion. So let's talk about those. The title is very important, so it has to be catchy and interesting. The person who's reading will read first the title, and if they don't like it, then...

they're not going to read your article. Then we have the introduction, the first paragraph. And that has to be interesting too, because if... the first paragraph is not interesting, then I'm not going to read that anymore. So the first paragraph needs to catch my attention. Then we have the body. And the body has to be informative. So we need to give most of our information out in this part. And again, it has to be interesting. Finally, we have the conclusion.

So this last paragraph needs to give a closure to the article. Our final ideas and opinions. And the reader... has to leave or finish reading this article and say, that gave me something to think about. And of course, it has to be fun. So let's take a look at some... tips on how to write an article. This article is taken from our campus, so you can read it in our campus in level five.

It's an article about this woman, June, who loves going trekking with her family. So tip number one is to use informal language. and to ask the readers some direct questions or rhetorical questions. And we have an example in the first paragraph. Do you want to know why? a very good question to get the reader's attention. And then some examples of informal language are contractions. Remember contractions?

For example, in the first paragraph, we have don't. Instead of do not, we use don't. And then we have a very nice expression in paragraph three. I am enjoying every minute. That's a very nice expression to bring life to the article. And finally, we have tip number two. Include adjectives. and adverbs. Let's look at some examples. Look at paragraph one. That sounds quite normal. That's an adverb. We could say that sounds normal.

and that's okay but we add this adverb to give it more emphasis and life that sounds quite normal then in paragraph number three we have a couple more uh very nice sentences with adjectives and efforts for example simply breathtaking so those are very two two very interesting adjective and adverb in there simply breathtaking and then there is a nice adjective trekking crazy people trekking crazy so these two tips will help your articles

come to life. All right, Matthew. So there I did my best to summarize. You did really well. Great job. That was a masterclass. Thank you very much. That's very nice of you.

So that's it. That's our podcast of today. Hopefully, we'll see everybody around for the next one. See you all later. Thank you, Matthew, for joining me. Thank you, Rodrigo. Goodbye everyone. Goodbye.