Entry 6: Well Written Paragraph

Well Written Paragraph: Parts of a Paragraph - English Academic Writing Introduction

TOPIC SENTENCE

• ·         First off start with a topic sentence, this topic sentence must be related to the main subject.
• ·         A good formula to write a good essay is to write about an interesting topic and give your opinion about it.
• ·         The topic sentence should not be overly detailed.

BODY

• ·         The body of the essay will contain the supporting details and the supporting arguments for the topic sentence.
• ·         The arguments or details can be ordered either by order of importance or chronologically.

CLOSING SENTENCE

• ·         The closing sentence has two functions:

a)- Reminding the audience of the essay topic and

          b)- Giving audience extra information about the topic

2)- Topic setences and paragraphs:

a)- (TS) There are two broad theories concerning what triggers a human's inevitable decline to death.

The first is the wear-and-tear hypothesis that suggests the body eventually succumbs to the environmental insults of life. The second is the notion that we have an internal clock which is genetically programmed to run down. Supporters of the wear-and-tear theory maintain that the very practice of breathing causes us to age because inhaled oxygen produces toxic by-products. Advocates of the internal clock theory believe that individual cells are told to stop dividing and thus eventually to die by, for example, hormones produced by the brain or by their own genes. (from Debra Blank, "The Eternal Quest" [edited]).

b)- (TS) Many Politicians deplore the passing of the old family-sized farm, but I am not so sure.

I saw around Velva a release from what was like slavery to the tyrannical soil, release from the ignorance that darkens the soul and from the loneliness that corrodes it. In this generation my Velva friends have rejoined the general American society that their pioneering fathers left behind when they first made the barren trek in the days of the wheat rush. As I sit here in Washington writing this, I can feel their nearness. (from Eric Sevareid, "Velva, North Dakota")

c)- (TS) We commonly look on the discipline of war as vastly more rigid than any discipline necessary in time of peace, but this is an error.

The strictest military discipline imaginable is still looser than that prevailing in the average assembly-line. The soldier, at worst, is still able to exercise the highest conceivable functions of freedom -- that is, he or she is permitted to steal and to kill. No discipline prevailing in peace gives him or her anything remotely resembling this. The soldier is, in war, in the position of a free adult; in peace he or she is almost always in the position of a child. In war all things are excused by success, even violations of discipline. In peace, speaking generally, success is inconceivable except as a function of discipline. (from H.L. Mencken, "Reflections on War" [edited]).