PARAGRAPH WRITING

Before you begin writing, you must know what you are going to say and how you are going to say it.  Once you have your main topic, you must develop it into a thesis.  This means you must put your own slant on it.  For instance, if I were assigned the topic TEACHING ESL, I would have to narrow that to one sentence which states my “slant.”

The sentence might be “I love teaching ESL,” or it might be “Teaching ESL is a challenging job.”  I would write two very different paragraphs if I wrote a paragraph with each thesis.  If I did not know my slant, I would probably write a very disorganized, incoherent paragraph. 

How do you know what your thesis is?  Probably you don’t until you know what your thoughts are on the general topic.  How do you know your thoughts or what you want to say?  Even if you know what you want to say, how do your organize it? 

In my class you are required to do some sort of planning before you write.  You may cluster or outline or use some other technique that works for you.  Clustering is a good way to get your thoughts flowing and to organize as you go. 

 .  Every paragraph (except an introductory one and a concluding one) should have a topic sentence, several main supports – each of which should have details and/or examples.  All of the supports and detail in the paragraph should support the topic sentence.  Remember the umbrella concept.  The topic sentence is the umbrella over the supports.  The supports are the umbrellas over the details and examples.

If you can not “jot down” your topic sentence and at least 3 main supports, you are not ready to write. You should also know what  details and/or examples you will include.  When you know all of these things, then you are ready to write your essay.

Think of three levels:

Level 1  Topic sentence

     Level 2.  main supports

            Level 3. details and examples 

      Level 2.  Main supports

             Level 3. details and examples

You will have only one level 1 (topic sentence) in each paragraph, but you should have several level 2’s (main supports) under it, and each of those should have several level 3’s under it.