"THE PARAGRAPH"

“THE PARAGRAPH”

1. Please define what is a paragraph.

A paragraph consists of several sentences that are grouped together.This group of sentences together discuss one main subject.

2. What are the three main parts of a paragraph?

The topic sentence, body sentences, and the concluding sentence.

3. Identify some characteristics of the topic sentence.

Usually comes at the beginning of a paragraph; that is, it is usually the first sentence in a formal academic paragraph. Not only is a topic sentence the first sentence of a paragraph, but, more importantly, it is the most general sentence in a paragraph. What does "most general" It means that there are not many details in the sentence, but that the sentence introduces an overall idea that you want to discuss later in the paragraph.

4. Identify some characteristics of the supporting sentences.

They are called "supporting" because they "support," or explain, the idea expressed in the topic sentence. Of course, paragraphs in English often have more than two supporting ideas. The paragraph above is actually a very short paragraph. At minimum, you should have at least five to seven sentences in your paragraph.

5. Identify some characteristics of the concluding sentence.

In formal paragraphs you will sometimes see a sentence at the end of the paragraph which summarizes the information that has been presented. This is the concluding sentence. You can think of a concluding sentence as a sort of topic sentence in reverse.

6. Write one topic sentence for each of the following topics:

Your hometown. = My hometown is famous for several amazing natural features. First, it is noted for the Wheaton River, which is very wide and beautiful. Also, on the other side of the town is Wheaton Hill, which is unusual because it is very steep.

A place you would like to travel to. = Brazil is a great place to spend a year as an exchange student. When I was seventeen years old, I applied to be an American Field Service exchange student. I was very proud and excited when I was chosen, but I never realized how much that year would influence the rest of my life. From the moment I got off the plane in Rio de Janeiro, I felt like a new person. At first I was nervous about speaking Portuguese, but the Brazilians soon helped me to feel at ease. Before I left my home, I had been shy and quiet. In Brazil I became much more confident and outgoing. Most importantly, I had thought I would become an engineer. In Brazil I learned to love music and realized I wanted to become a professional musician.

Another topic of your own choosing = Fiction, like food, is of different nutritive values. Some is rich in protein and vitamins; it builds bone and sinew. Some is highly agreeable to the taste but not permanently sustaining. Some may be adulterated and actually harmful to our health. Escape fiction is of the latter two sorts. The harmless kind bears frankly on the face of it what it is. It pretends to be nothing else than pleasant diversion and never asks to be taken seriously. The second kind masquerades under the appearance of interpretation.

It pretends to give a faithful treatment of life as it is, perhaps even thinks that it does so, but through its shallowness it subtly falsifies life in every line. Such fiction, taken seriously and without corrective, may give us false notions of reality and lead us to expect from experience what experience does not provide.

7. Choose one of the above topics and write ONE complete paragraph about it. You should use a good topic sentence and adequately detailed supporting sentences. Do not forget to write down a concluding sentence.

SCIENTISTS HAVE LEARNED TO SUPPLEMENT THE SENSE OF SIGHT IN NUMEROUS WAYS. In front of the tiny pupil of the eye they put, on Mount Palomar, a great monocle 200 inches in diameter, and with it see 2000 times farther into the depths of space. Or they look through a small pair of lenses arranged as a microscope into a drop of water or blood, and magnify by as much as 2000 diameters the living creatures there, many of which are among man’s most dangerous enemies. Or, if we want to see distant happenings on earth, they use some of the previously wasted electromagnetic waves to carry television images which they re-create as light by whipping tiny crystals on a screen with electrons in a vacuum. Or they can bring happenings of long ago and far away as colored motion pictures, by arranging silver atoms and color-absorbing molecules to force light waves into the patterns of original reality. Or if we want to see into the center of a steel casting or the chest of an injured child, they send the information on a beam of penetrating short-wave X rays, and then convert it back into images we can see on a screen or photograph. THUS ALMOST EVERY TYPE OF ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION YET DISCOVERED HAS BEEN USED TO EXTEND OUR SENSE OF SIGHT IN SOME WAY.