% dev 90 4C Writing and revising paragraphs instructor's Annotated Edition ANSWERS: EXERCISE 4.12 Individual response. EXERCISE 4.12 Turning topic sentences into coherent paragraphs Develop three of the following topic sentences into coherent paragraphs. Organize your information by space, by time, or for emphasis, as seems most appropriate. Use repetition and restatement, parallelism, pronouns, consistency, and transitional expressions to link sentences. (You can do this exercise online at ablongman.com/littlebrown.) 1. The most interesting character in the book [or movie] was is the one that I think will serve me 2. Of all my courses,_ best throughout life. 3. Although we in the United States face many problems, the one we should concentrate on solving first is_. 4. The most dramatic building in town is the_. 5. Children should not have to worry about the future. HIGHLIGHTS Section 4c looks at ways to convey the central idea of a paragraph Fully and convincingly to the reader. Developing paragraphs and essays Fully is often difficult for students. One of the important differences between casual conversation and formal writing is the degree to which ideas must be concretely developed in writing. Because stu-denLs arc more experienced in conversation than in writing, they find generalizations much easier to come by than the details, examples, and reasons to support them. All of us must grapple with the student essay or single paragraph thai is largely a succession of generalizations without support or explanation. Part ol the solution to such problem paragraphs is to make student.s aware of readers as a special kind of audience for ideas. Another part is to make them aware of different strategies for developing paragraphs or essays. The ways to develop ideas are infinite, but this section focuses on a limited number. The initial emphasis falls on the use of details, examples, and reasons, which are essential to any more specific method of development. Students are encouraged to follow the standard methods or patterns of development by posing questions about an idea, event, or object in order to uncover concrete information about it. You may wish to ask students to spend time in class or in groups working with sample topics to discover how the methods of development can be used to probe a topic and how the questions reveal different aspects of a topic. This discus- 4c Developing the paragraph In an essay that's understandable and interesting to readers, you will provide plenty of solid information to support your general statements. You work thai information into the essay through the paragraph, as you build up each point relating to the thesis. A paragraph may be unified and coherent but still be inadequate if you skimp on details. Take this example: Untruths can serve as a kind of social oil when they smooth connections between people. In preventing confrontation and injured feelings, they allow everyone to go on as before. General statements ■ needing examples to be clear and convincing This paragraph lacks development, completeness. It does not provide enough information for us to evaluate or even care about the writer's assertions. 1 Using specific information If they are sound, the general statements you make in any writing will be based on what you have experienced, observed, read, and thought. Readers will assume as much and will expect you to provide the evidence for your statements—sensory details, facts, statistics, examples, quotations, reasons. Whatever helps you form your views you need, in turn, to share with readers. Here is the actual version of the preceding sample paragraph. With examples, the paragraph is more interesting and convincing. Untruths can serve as a kind of social oil when they smooth connections between people. Assuring a worried friend that his haircut is 1 Instructor's Annotated Edition •fl dev Paragraph development 4C 91 flattering, claiming an appointment to avoid an aunt's dinner invitation, pretending interest in an acquaintance's children—these lies may protect the liar, but they also protect the person lied to. In preventing confrontation and injured feelings, the lies allow everyone to go on as before. —Joan Lar (student), "The Truth of Lies" If your readers often comment that your writing needs more specifics, you should focus on that improvement in your revisions. Try listing the general statements of each paragraph on lines by themselves with space underneath. Then use one of the discovery techniques discussed on pages 16-26 (freewriting, brainstorming, and so on) to find the details to support each sentence. Write these into your draft. If you write on a computer, you can do this revision directly on your draft. First create a duplicate of your draft, and then, working on the copy, separate the sentences and explore their support. Rewrite the supporting details into sentences, reassemble the paragraph, and edit it for coherence. 2 Using a pattern of development If you have difficulty developing an idea or shaping your information, then try asking yourself questions derived from the patterns of development. (The same patterns can help with essay development, too. See pp. 24-25.) You can download the following questions from ablongman .com/littlebrown. When you're having difficulty with a paragraph, you can duplicate the list and explore answers. You may be able to import what you write directly into your draft. ■ How did it happen? (Narration) Narration retells a significant sequence of events, usually in the order of their occurrence (that is, chronologically): Jill's story is typical for "recruits" to religious cults. She was very lonely in college and appreciated the attention of the nice young men and women who lived in a house near campus. They persuaded her to share their meals and then to Important events in move in with them. Between intense bombard- chronological order ments of "love," they deprived her of sleep and sometimes threatened to throw her out. Jill became increasingly confused and dependent, losing touch with any reality besides the one in the group. She dropped out of school and refused to see or communicate with her family. Before long she, too, was preying on lonely college students. —Hillary Begas (student), "The Love Bombers" Examples specifying — kinds Df lies ancf consequences sion may help students see how the process of development can be an act of discovery. You will probably want to stress, however, that the methods of development covered in the handbook are not the only ones writers can use and that most paragraphs use more than a single method. The exercises for this section range from analyzing paragraphs to producing them, and whether used in groups or by students working individually, they encourage students to treat the patterns of development as different ways of viewing a topic. WHAT AND WHY Students from non-Western cultures may be unaccustomed to analysis that involves critical thinking. They may know how to describe an item or text by listing component parts, for instance, but they may not be accustomed to including discussion of why the thing or text is important. A quick way to help these students learn to distinguish between "what" a thing is and 'why" it is important is to ask them the following series ol questions about a Qag: What is the object attached to the tall pole in the quad? (Describe its appearance, give its name, discuss the component colors and shapes.) How does the object work? (How is it attached? How is it raised and lowered? When is it raised and lowered?) Why does it get flown? (This question will lead students into a discussion of the symbolism and meaning oi the Ifag and of its being flown on campus.) 11 dev 92 AC Writing and revising paragraphs Instructor's Annotated Edition THE SUBJECT-OBJECT BOUNDARY Students may find that the subjective-objective boundary is sometimes fuzzy. Even the objective paragraph has judgmental language iike "piercing" in it. Perhaps a way of solving this dilemma is to say that in subjective description, the writer's intention is to interpret experience for readers, while in objective description, the writer's intention is to allow the audience to interpret the reported experiences themselves. As this paragraph illustrates, a narrator is concerned not just with the sequence of events but also with their consequence, their importance to the whole. Thus a narrative rarely corresponds to real time; instead, it collapses transitional or background events and focuses on events of particular interest. In addition, writers sometimes rearrange events, as when they simulate the workings of memory by flashing back to an earlier time. How does it look, sound, feel, smell, taste? (Description) Description details the sensory qualities of a person, place, thing, or feeling, You use concrete and specific words to convey a dominant mood, to illustrate an idea, or to achieve some other purpose. Some description is subjective: the writer filters the subject through his or her biases and emotions. In the subjective description by Virginia Woolf on page 80, the glare of the walls, the impenetrable darkness, the bulge of a great bowl, and the formidable corners and lines all indicate the author's feelings about what she describes. In contrast to subjective description, journalists and scientists often favor description that is objective, conveying the subject without bias or emotion: The two toddlers, both boys, sat together for half an hour in a ten-foot-square room with yellow walls (one with a two-way mirror for observation) and a brown carpet. The room was unfurnished except for two small chairs and about two dozen toys. The boys' interaction was generally tense. They often struggled physically and verbally over several toys, especially a large red beach ball and a small wooden fire engine. The larger of the two boys often pushed the smaller away or pried his hands from the desired object. This larger boy never spoke, but he did make grunting sounds when he was engaging the other. In turn, the smaller boy twice uttered piercing screams of "No!" and once shouted "Stop that!" When he was left alone, he hummed and muttered to himseif. —Ray Mattison (student), "Case Study: Play Patterns of Toddlers" What are examples of it or reasons for it? (Illustration or support) Some ideas can be developed simply by illustration or support—supplying detailed examples or reasons. The writer of the paragraph on lying (pp. 90-9)) developed her idea with several specific examples of her general statements, You can also supply a single extended example: Objective description specific record of sensory data without interpretation Instructor's Annotated Edition Tl dev Paragraph development 4C 93 Topic sentence (assertion to be illustrated) The language problem that I was attacking loomed larger and larger as I began to learn more. When I would describe in English certain concepts and objects enmeshed in Korean emotion and imagination, I became slowly aware of nuances, of differences between two languages even in simple expression. The remark "Kim entered the house" seems to be simple enough, yet, unless a reader has a clear visual image of a Korean house, his understanding of the sentence is not complete. When a Korean says he is "in the house," he may be in his courtyard, or on his porch, or in his small room! If I wanted to give a specific picture of entering the house in the Western sense, I had to say "room" instead of house—sometimes. I say "sometimes" because many Koreans entertain their guests on their porches and still are considered to be hospitable, and in the Korean sense, going into the "room" may be a more intimate act than it would be in the English sense. Such problems! —Kim Yong Ik, "A Book-Writing Venture" Sometimes you can develop a paragraph by providing your reasons for statin" a general idea: Single detailed example — Topic sentence Three reasons arranged • in order of increasing drama and importance There are three reasons, quite apart from scientific considerations, that mankind needs to travel in space. The first reason is the need for garbage disposal: we need to transfer industrial processes into space, so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place for our grandchildren to live in. The second reason is the need to escape material impoverishment: the resources of this planet are finite, and we shall not forgo forever the abundant solar energy and minerals and living space that are spread out all around us. The third reason is our spiritual need for an open frontier: the ultimate purpose of space travel is to bring to humanity not only scientific discoveries and an occasional spectacular show on television but a real expansion of our spirit. —Freeman Dyson, "Disturbing the Universe" 68 What is it? What does it encompass, and what does it exclude? (Definition) A definition says what something is and is not. specifying the characteristics that distinguish the subject from the other members of its class. You can easily define concrete, noncontroversial terms PARAGRAPH COHERENCE Students sometimes have the idea that "next to" means "connected to" as far as coherence goes; this is emphatically not the case. Take a paragraph like this one and have studenls mark the coherence devices used; or sabotage a paragraph by removing or disguising the coherence devices, and ask students to put them back in. 11 dev 94 4C Writing and revising paragraphs Instructor's Annotated Edition COMPUTER ACTIVITY Students might complete the dralt ol their paragraphs and e-mail them to a revision partner for comments and suggestions hefore reworking them. It is important for students to recognize that a well-developed paragraph generally emerges from successive drafts. You can dramatize this process by posting student paragraphs at various stages of revision on the class network and holding discussions about strategies for developing each example further, in a single sentence: A knife is a cutting instrument (its class) with a sharp blade set in a handle (the characteristics that set it off from, say, scissors or a razor blade). But defining a complicated or controversial topic often requires extended explanation, and you may need to devote a whole paragraph or even an essay to it. Such a definition may provide examples to identify the subject's characteristics. 11 mav also involve other methods of development discussed here, such as classification or comparison and contrast. The following definition of the word quality comes from an essay asserting thai "qua lily in product and el ion has kvtmv a vanishing element of current civilization": In the hope of possibly reducing the hail of censure which is certain to greet this essay (I am thinking of going to Alaska or possibly Patagonia in the week it is published), let me say that quality, as I understand it, means investment of the best skill and effort possible to produce the finest and most admirable result possible. Its _ presence or absence in some degree characterizes every man-made object, service, skilled or unskilled labor—laying bricks, painting a picture, ironing shirts, practicing medicine, shoemaking, _ scholarship, writing a book. You do it well or you do it half-well. Materials are sound and durable or they are sleazy; method is painstaking or whatever is easiest. Quality is achieving or reaching for the highest standard as against being satisfied with the sloppy or fraudulent. It is honesty of purpose as against catering to cheap or sensational sentiment. It does not allow compromise with the second-rate. —Barbara Tuchman, "The Decline of Quality" — General definition Activities in which quality may figure . Contrast between quality and nonquality EXTRA EXAMPLE Division: Face f^ £yes 1 Nose 1 Mouth Pupil Nostrils Lips Iris Bridge Tongue Cornea Teeth 1 1 Teeih Molars Incisors Bicuspids ■ What are its parts or characteristics? (Division or analysts) Division and analysis both involve separating something into its elements, the better to understand it. Here is a simple example: A typical daily newspaper compresses considerable information into the top of the first page, above the headlines. The most prominent feature of this space, the newspaper's name, is called the logo or nameplate. Under the logo and set off by rules is a line of small type called the folio line, which contains the date of the issue, the volume and issue numbers, copyright information, and the price. To the right of the logo is a block of small type called a weather ear, a summary of the day's forecast. And above The subject being divided Elements of the subject, arranged spatially Instructor's Annotated Edition II dev Paragraph development 4C 95 the logo is a skyline, a kind of advertisement in which the paper's editors highlight a special feature of the issue. —Kansha Stone (student), "Anatomy of a Paper" Generally, analysis goes beyond simply identifying elements. Often used as a synonym for critical thinking, analysis also involves interpreting the elements' meaning, significance, and relationships. You identify and interpret elements according to your particular interest in the subject. (See pp. 157-63 for more on critical thinking and analysis.) The following paragraph comes from an essay about soap operas. The analytical focus of the whole essay is the way soap operas provide viewers with a sense of community missing from their own lives. The paragraph itself has a narrower focus related to the broader one. The surface realism of the soap opera conjures up an illusion of "liveness." The domestic settings and easygoing rhythms encourage the viewer to believe that the drama, however ridiculous, is simply an extension of daily life. The conversation is so slow that some have called it "radio with pictures." (Advertisers have always assumed that busy housewives would listen, rather than watch.) Conversation is casual and colloquial, as though one were eavesdropping on neighbors. There is plenty of time to "read" the character's face; close-ups establish intimacy. The sets are comfortably familiar: well-lit interiors of living rooms, restaurants, offices, and hospitals. Daytime soaps have little of the glamour of their prime-time relations. The viewer easily imagines that the conversation is taking place in real time. —Ruth Rosen, "Search for Yesterday" ■ What groups or categories can it be sorted into? (Classification) Classification involves sorting many things into groups based on their similarities. Using the pattern, we scan a large group composed of many members that share at least one characteristic— office workers, say—and we assign the members to smaller groups on the basis of some principle—salary, perhaps, or dependence on computers. Here is an example: Topic and focus: how "liveness" seems an Extension of daily life Elements: Slow conversation Casual conversation Intimate close-ups Familiar sets Absence of glamour Appearance of real time In my experience, the parents who hire daytime sitters for their school-age children tend to fall into one of three groups. The first group CLASSIFICATION PRACTICE Other topics to be classified might include car models, job categories, types of music, and local restaurants. (You might want to bring in the Yellow Pages for the last topic.) EXTRA EXAMPLE Classification: Great Dane, Terrier \ / DOGS Morgan, Arabian ~ \ / HORSES, Siamese, Tabby \ / CATS Guernsey, Holstein \ / ,cows Topic sentence 'QUADRUPEDS' I MAMMALS 11 dev 96 4C Writing and revising paragraphs Instructor's Annotated Edition COLLABORATIVE LEARNING TEAM CLASSIFICATION Ask teams of students to compile the group of sentences or facts from an area ihey know well (for instance, sports, business, entertainment, social groups, or activities). Have the groups exchange sets of sentences and then attempt to assemble litem into paragraphs, When the paragraphs are written, the "expert" collectors should critique the perspective each offers. includes parents who work and want someone to be at home when the children return from school. These parents are looking for an extension of themselves, someone who will give the care they would give if they were at home. The second group includes parents who may be home all day themselves but are too disorganized or too frazzled by their children's demands to handle child care alone. They are looking for an organizer and helpmate. The third and final group includes parents who do not want to be bothered by their children, whether they are home all day or not. Unlike the parents in the first two groups, who care for their children whenever and however they can, these parents are looking for a permanent substitute for themselves. —Nancy Whittle (student), "Modern Parenting" Three groups: Alike in one way (all hire sitters) No overlap in groups (each has a different attitude) Classes arranged in order of increasing drama How is it like, or different from, other things? (Comparison and contrast) Asking about similarities and differences leads to comparison and contrast: comparison focuses on similarities, whereas contrast focuses on differences. The two may be used separately or together to develop an idea or to relate two or more things. Commonly, comparisons are organized in one of two ways. In the first, subject by subject, the two subjects are discussed separately, one at a time: Consider the differences also in the behav- 1 Subjects: rock and ior of rock and classical music audiences. At a J classical audiences rock concert, the audience members yell, whis-tie, sing along, and stamp their feet. They may even stand during the entire performance. The better the music, the more active they'll be. At a classical concert, in contrast, the better the per-' formance, the more still the audience is. Members of the classical audience are so highly disciplined that they refrain from even clearing their throats or coughing. No matter what effect the powerful music has on their intellects and feelings, they sit on their hands. —Tony Nahm (student), "Rock and Roll Is Here to Stay" In the second comparative organization, point by point, the two subjects are discussed side by side and matched feature for feature: Rock audience Classical audience The first electronic computer, ENIAC, went into operation just over fifty years ago, yet the differences between it and today's personal computer are enormous. ENIAC was enormous _ _ Subjects: ENIAC and personal computer Instructor's Annotated Edition