PART 1
WRITING
Writing a Paragraph
Language Arts
THE PARAGRAPH
Is A Complete Thought
a paragraph is a sentence or group of sentences that support
one main idea
•
Comprised of a main idea
•
Several supporting sentences
•
Can include facts, references to expert opinion, narrative examples
•
A conclusion summary statement
Ingredients:
The first sentence of your
paragraph is your topic sentence.
• A topic sentence essentially tells what the rest of the paragraph is
about. All sentences after it have to give more information about
the sentence, prove it by offering facts about it, or describe it. For
example, if the topic sentence concerns the types of endangered
species that live in the ocean, then every sentence after that needs
to expound on that subject.
• Topic sentences also need to relate back to the thesis of the essay.
The thesis statement is like a road map that will tell the reader or
listener where you are going with this information or how you are
treating it.
THESIS STATEMENT:
tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the
subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what
to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an
interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The
subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a
thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence somewhere in your first paragraph that
presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the
body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will
persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.
•
Famous Essays: Look at paragraph development!
Define “Gifts”:
http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/e
mersongifts.htm
Define “Jerk”:
http://grammar.about.com/od/shortpassagesforanalysis/
a/harrisjerkstyle.htm
Define “Prettiness”:
http://grammar.about.com/od/shortpassagesforanalysis/
a/vidalprettiness.htm
The “Hook”
Examples:
I hadn't planned to wash the corpse.
But sometimes you just get caught up in the moment. . . .
(Reshma MemonYaqub, "The Washing." The Washington Post
Magazine, March 21, 2010)
Hook 2
• Unrequited love, as Lorenz Hart instructed us, is a bore, but
then so are a great many other things: old friends gone
somewhat dotty from whom it is too late to disengage, the
important social-science-based book of the month, 95 percent
of the items on the evening news, discussions about the
Internet, arguments against the existence of God, people who
overestimate their charm, all talk about wine, New York Times
editorials, lengthy lists (like this one), and, not least, oneself. . . .
(Joseph Epstein, "Duh, Bor-ing." Commentary, June 2011)
Hook 3
• Before the 19th century, when dinosaur bones turned up they
were taken as evidence of dragons, ogres, or giant victims of
Noah's Flood. After two centuries of paleontological harvest,
the evidence seems stranger than any fable, and continues to
get stranger. . . .
(John Updike, "Extreme Dinosaurs." National Geographic,
December 2007)
Cited
http://grammar.about.com/od/developingessays/a/whack-At-YourReader-At-Once-Eight-Great-Opening-Lines.htm