Parts of a Paragraph - English Academic Writing Introduction

Hi, my name is Alex, and welcome to this lesson on the parts of the paragraph.

This lesson is largely intended to help those of you who are preparing to get into a North

American university, or if you are preparing to write the TOEFL test.

Now, the parts of a North American paragraph, or, you know, those of you who are looking

to get into university, university professors are looking for a specific kind of structure.

This is that structure.

It is actually, can be considered much different than other cultures.

For example, in Chinese culture, where an essay would largely be a long story, or sometimes

just a long paragraph, there is much more of a formula in the North American style.

So first of all, pretty basic, you start off with a topic sentence.

What are you writing about?

What is your subject?

And a good formula for following, or for writing an effective topic sentence would be to come

up with an interesting topic, give your opinion on it, say something interesting about it.

Don't make it overly detailed, that's what the body is for.

So in your body, this is the heart of your paragraph.

So this is where you give all of the supporting details, the supporting arguments for your

topic sentence.

So there are two ways that you can order the details.

First way is by order of importance.

What you feel is going to make your, if you're writing an argumentative essay, what is going

to make your arguments really, really stand out?

What is the one part of your argument that is strongest?

Secondly, chronology.

Chronology refers to the ordering of events.

So you might be writing an essay describing how to change the oil in your car.

So you would write, obviously, in a specific order, that, how to change the oil in your

car.

Okay, finally, we have the closing sentence.

Now the closing sentence has two functions.

First of all, you're reminding the audience what you're writing about, so you're kind

of restating your topic sentence, and you're also keeping them thinking, giving them a

little extra.

So you want to kind of restate the topic sentence, but in a different way, and keep your audience

thinking.

Okay, now let's look at an example.

Okay, so now that we've talked about the parts of a paragraph, let's look at an example of

a paragraph that would be very acceptable in North American universities, or even on

your TOEFL test.

So remember, the first thing that we talked about was starting off with your opening sentence,

or your topic sentence.

So today we want to talk about the city of Toronto.

So my topic sentence is, "The city of Toronto has many wonderful attractions."

So right away, the reader's attention is caught, they know we're going to be talking about

Toronto, and we're going to be talking about its attractions.

Now we have to get into the body, or the details of the paragraph.

So let's look at our first sentence.

I'm just going to walk off for a minute here so you can see better.

Now it says, "The most notable site is the tall and majestic CN Tower.

Secondly, Toronto has many restaurants because of its culturally diverse communities.

Finally, Lake Ontario provides an incredible view for visitors."

Okay, so as you can see from those sentences, we get more information about the topic.

So we get very, very solid, concrete details, and we get it in a specific order.

So I would say this is probably an order of importance.

So first, I want to focus on the CN Tower as being a major part of Toronto's attractions.

Secondly, I want to focus on its food, its restaurants, and thirdly, more on its views,

so Lake Ontario.

Finally, we have the closing paragraph.

So remember, the goal of the closing paragraph is to keep readers thinking once they finish

reading, and to also restate the topic.

So let's look at the closing paragraph, or the closing sentence, I apologize here.

So it says, "These qualities make Toronto a very attractive city for tourists."

Okay, so basically, again, I'm restating the topic sentence, but in a different way, and

I'm adding a little bit something to it.

So while my topic sentence talks about Toronto having many wonderful attractions, my closing

sentence keeps people thinking by saying, "These things make Toronto a wonderful city

for tourists."

Okay, so I hope this will help you out in your academic writing, as well as on your

TOEFL test.

Thanks again for listening.

For a test on this, please check out engvid.com.

My name is Alex McCart, I'll see you later, take care.