Closure

(Using Developing Reading Skills Unit 1’s Word Usage Exercise as an example)

 

Closure gives a sense of completion to a point. It is the last step, an essential step in the structure of the central idea. Closure is provided by adding an idea (expressed in a clause or in a sentence) at the end of a passage; this idea is the essential last step in a line of reasoning. Closure is not a closing sentence. The closing sentence performs the function of summarizing and reminding; it is not essential to the central idea.

Here are examples of answers that need closure:

T-F statement: 9. There is going to be a construction boom in metropolises in the industrialized West around the year 2000.

Student’s answer: There won’t be a construction boom in metropolises in the industrialized West around the year 2000. In the more developed countries of North American and Europe the growth trend has been away from urban clusters.

The following sentences can be added to provide closure:

If population growth in these countries’s cities decreases, the need for new construction is likely to decrease. More likely than a construction boom is a construction bust.

T-F statement: 10. Chicago is a good example of this.

Student’s answer: Chicago is a good example of the forecast that there won’t be a construction boom in metropolises in the industrialized West. The city won’t be among the top 25 population agglomerates in the world by 2000.

The following clause (added to the end of the last sentence above) provides closure:

...by 2000, and construction will logically, therefore, decrease rather than increase.

T-F statement: 11. There will be 0.2 percent fewer people in the world in 2000.

Student’s [verbose] answer: There will not be 0.2 percent fewer people in the world in 2000. There will be 0.2 lower rate of increase in population. The article tells us that the world population now is growing by 1.8 percent a year, but by 2000, the rate is expected to drop to 1.6 percent as individual women have fewer children in their lifetimes. So we can see the rate of increase in the world’s population will lose speed.

For closure, replace the last sentence in the answer above with this sentence:

Though the rate of increase may slow, there will still be an increase.