Essential Elements of Paragraph Writing

Learn to write Chapter II: The paragraph Lecture 1: The basics Paragraph

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Basic requirements • Unity • Coherence • Completeness Paragraph

Unity Study the following paragraph: • My father is very strict with his children, especially me. He won’t let me out of the house unless I’ve done all my homework. Frankly, I don’t care whether I go to school or not. School is such a waste of time. There aren’t any good jobs, anyway. My mother doesn’t agree with my father. They quarrel a lot. Sometimes I wish they would get a divorce, but then who would I live with? Paragraph

Unity Study the following paragraph: • My father’s face is rough. His complexion is leathery and wrinkled. There are large pores in the skin that cover his nose and cheeks. His nose, broken twice in his life, makes him look like a boxer who has lost too many fights. His mouth, unless he smiles, looks hard and threatening. His chin is massive and angular. Shaved or not, my father’s face is rugged. Paragraph

Unity Topic sentence • To make a paragraph unified, first, you should provide atopic sentence with a definite controlling idea. • Everyone knows what a dictionary is. • There are many reasons why Americans move every year. • The students in the class come from different parts of the country. Paragraph

Unity Topic sentence Changing a tire Changing a tire is simple. Fragment Be grammatically correct China's off-shore oil exploitation is increased by 20%. Self-evident China's off-shore oil exploitation has experienced tremendous changes. Can be expanded Paragraph

Topic sentence Unity To play any kind of musical instrument, one needs to know something about the instrument. too broad To play any kind of drum, one requires a good sense of rhythm. • To play a piano, one needs to spend much time practicing finger exercises. Be specific Paragraph

Topic sentence Unity - Be grammatically correct - Can be expanded - Be specific p.94 Exercise Two Paragraph

Supporting sentences Unity • After providing a good topic sentence, you should then select all the information about your subject to support the controlling idea. p.95 Exercise Four Stick to the subject. Paragraph

Coherence Study the following paragraph: • Because the Club Tropic is located in a remote place, this caused many inconveniences among some vacationers. The quality of the food was poor. People wanted a choice of entertainment in the evening. Most of us spent too much time together day after day. People expected to be able to go out for a meal if they felt like it. Paragraph

Coherence Study the following paragraph: • Because the Club Tropic is located in a remote place, this caused many inconveniences among some vacationers. Many people expected to be able to go out for a meal if they felt like it, but the club’s location far from populated areas made that impossible. To make matters worse, the quality of the food was poor. The isolated location also forced people to spend all their time together – day after day. By evening nearly everyone was ready for a choice of food, entertainment, and company. Paragraph

Coherence 1. Arrange your paragraph in the structure of parallel and subordinate ideas. • A good vacation means different things to different people. • For some, the best vacation is the one that takes them away from home. • For others, a chance to stay at home is the best vacation. Paragraph

Coherence 1. Arrange your paragraph in the structure of parallel and subordinate ideas. • For some, the best vacation is the one that takes them away from home. • They long for new sights, new sensations. • A trip to the beach or the mountains refreshes the city dwellers. Paragraph

Coherence 1. Arrange your paragraph in the structure of parallel and subordinate ideas. • For others, a chance to stay at home is the best vacation. • These folks want the ease and restfulness of familiar surroundings. • They like lying around the house in old clothes. • They enjoy working in the garden and talking to the neighbors. Paragraph

Coherence 1. Arrange your paragraph in the structure of parallel and subordinate ideas. • A good vacation means different things to different people.For some, the best vacation is the one that takes them away from home. They long for new sights, new sensations. A trip to the beach or the mountains refreshes the city dwellers. For others, a chance to stay at home is the best vacation. These folks want the ease and restfulness of familiar surroundings. They like lying around the house in old clothes. They enjoy working in the garden and talking to the neighbors. Paragraph

Coherence 2. Achieve coherence of a paragraph through connecting language • To get the most out of his textbooks, a student should follow several steps very carefully. First, he should make a preliminary survey of each book to get a general idea of what the book contains. Second, he should read for deeper understanding and formulate questions as he reads. Next, he should make notes of the major points of each chapter. Afterthat, he should test himself to sure that he can answer questions likely to be raised in class and in examinations. Finally, he should review his notes and reread any parts of the book that are unclear to him. Paragraph

Coherence 2. Achieve coherence of a paragraph through connecting language • Repeated key words and phrases • Parallel grammatical structures • Transitional markers Paragraph

Coherence 3. Use the following basic ways to organize ideas: • Time order • Space order • Order of climax. Paragraph

Coherence Time order • The life of Grandma Moses proves that a person is never too old to develop his or her talents.As a child, Anna Moses loved to draw; she often made pictures with berry juice when paint was scarce. When she eventually married and had a large family, she found little time to paint. Years later, with her children grown, she began to knit pictures with yarn, but her fingers ached, and she returned to her first love, painting. She was seventy years old! An art dealer saw her pictures in a local drugstore and bought them. Grandma Moses, as she was called, soon became famous, with her paintings of simple country life exhibited throughout the world. She continued to paint until her death at 101. Paragraph

Coherence Space order • As usual, Sid had put his room in order before leaving.On the left wall, the shiny oak bookcase was neatly arranged, magazines in stacks and books in rows. The bed was against the far wall, its striped sheet carefully turned down over a wool blanket and two striped pillow piled against the head board. To the right stood a round oak table with two chairs facing each other, as if waiting for Sid and a friend to return. Paragraph

Coherence Order of climax • It was graduation day at the college, and faces beamed with pride. Teachers vigorously shook hands with their students, delighted that so many had successfully completed the program. Even prouder were relatives of the graduates. They had encouraged wives, husbands, sons, and daughters who, tried and discouraged, had threaded to leave college. But proudest of all were the graduates. Many had returned to school after years in the world of work. They had toiled at their jobs, gone to school at night, and cared for their families – this day made all the sacrifices worthwhile. Paragraph

Completeness Study the following paragraph: • Every Saturday morning, 14th Street is alive with activity. Peddlers sell many different things on the street, and storekeepers try to get customers inside their stores. There are all kinds of people on the streets. Paragraph

Completeness Study the following paragraph: • Every Saturday morning, 14th Street is alive with activity.Peddlers line the sidewalks, selling everything from cassette tapes to wigs. Trying to lure customers inside, the shops blast pop music into the street or hang brightly colored banners announcing “Grand Opening Sale” or “Everything Must Go”. Shoppers jam the sidewalks, both serious bargain hunters and families just out for a stroll, munching chili dogs as they survey the merchandise. Here and there, drunks and panhandlers乞丐hustle for handouts, taking advantage of the Saturday crowd. Paragraph

Completeness Your paragraph is complete when it fully covers a limited topic to achieve your purpose. • Introduction: make the topic sentence clear. • Discussion: supply concrete and relevant details. • Conclusion: refer to your main point stated in the introduction. p.95 Exercise Five Paragraph

Completeness • Generally speaking, English is a difficult language for me to learn. Paragraph

Completeness • Generally speaking, English is a difficult language for me to learn. For example, vocabulary is a problem. Sometimes, several words like “thin”, “slender”, “skinny”, or “slim” has almost the same meaning. How can you tell which word to use? Pronunciation is hard also. My tongue will not make sounds such as “the”, “g”, and “k”. Furthermore, writing presents a whole group of different obstacles: grammar, word order, and spelling. These are only some of the difficulties I have with this language. Paragraph

Homework • Read it:《奠基篇》p.26-29. • List the supporting details you may include in a paragraph based on the following topic sentences: • Yesterday was one of those awful days for me when everything I did went wrong. • There are a number of ways for us to keep fit. • Warning: delayed work will not be accepted Paragraph

Essential Elements of Paragraph Writing