Back to the Paragraph

I tried to go too fast. We will spend our remaining classes working on the creation of a single, well-constructed paragraph. If you follow a few rules carefully, you will be able to do it.

1) After you have written a few ideas down, make a topic sentence. KNOW that this is your topic sentence, and make every other sentence fall under it's umbrella.

2) Decide if the topic you're writing on is in the past, present or future. If the topic itself is in the past, you may also use other tenses, but you should know that most of your verbs will be past tense.

3) Cover your topic. If your topic sentence is "I like dogs," you have a lot of territory to cover. It's usually better to choose a smaller territory, such as "Cute little dogs make me happy." Or, better, "My cute little dog, Scruff, makes me happy." But whatever topic you have selected, you should discuss its major important aspects. Moving from one aspect to another, you should cover the most important parts of that topic before you are finished.

4) Your conclusion should tell us what the rest of the paragraph means. If your topic sentence was "Little dogs make me happy," then you should have discussed the major ways in which they make you happy. In your conclusion, you should say what this fact will lead to... SO WHAT? E.g., "Pretty soon, I'm going to have to buy a little dog of my own."

5) Remember that our Western style of writing is very aggressive. Your topic sentence asserts that something is true, and all your other sentences (except perhaps the conclusion) tell us why this assertion is true. It's as though your enemy says to your topic sentence "That's a lie!" and you have to prove that what you have said really is true. The conclusion comes after you have proved that the topic sentence is true: it tells us why your assertion is important. If your topic sentence is that lychees are the world's most luscious fruit, we should be hungry for some by the time you're finished. Your conclusion could be: "And I just happen to have some for sale at a very reasonable price."

Here's a sample paragraph, using all these rules:

I have just met the most wonderful woman. Cynthia is a straight-A student, majoring in Biology at National Taiwan University. She plays the piano, the gu chen and the flute, all of them with great virtuosity. She is also an excellent dancer. But what's more, Cynthia is the most beautiful woman I have ever met, with a firm, round body and long, wavy hair. I'm crazy about her, and although she does not yet know my name, some day I am going to marry her.

1) Topic sentence: I have just met the most wonderful woman. (All of the supporting sentences show that Cynthia is "the most wonderful woman".)

2) All of the verbs are in the present tense, except the topic sentence (which is present perfect) one other in present perfect (have...met) and the last, which contains a future element. She is, she plays, she is, she is, I'm ... she does not...

3) We learn many of the important things about her (brains, talent, body), thus "covering the territory".

4) SO WHAT? The author is planning to marry her, because she is so wonderful.

5) If the author is successful, everyone who reads this should agree that she sounds like a very worthwhile girl. If the author is really successful, the reader will want to go meet Cynthia, and possibly compete with the author.

By the way, we need to make more progress on selecting a grammar book.