OK so now let's have a discussion about something that's very very important when it comes to writing.
There are some basic foundational elements that you have to follow.
And in this lecture we're going to talk about the foundations of a good paragraph which are made of
unity order coherence and completeness.
These are these are the foundations of creating a very good paragraph.
I think a lot of times students from other countries sometimes you guys don't understand the foundations
of writing in the American way or in the British way or in the Australian way and is not to say that
the American British or Australian ways are correct but those are those are the standards that you are
being judged against.
You're being judged on an American standard or a British Standard.
So you have to make sure that you write your paragraphs under the under those sets of rules right.
So if you're from France or you're from Brazil or China there may be different rules for paragraph writing
in your language.
And if I were trying to write Chinese I would have to write according to those paragraph writing standards.
So in this lecture I'm going to try to explain to you these foundations because many times when I see
students writing essays and I look at their paragraphs the paragraph the paragraph writing is sometimes
just flat out bad because the foundations are not being followed.
And I've always said students that have a strong foundation and strong base are always going to get
very very good scores because they are their base is very strong and that means everything else they're
adding onto it is also going to be very well-written.
All right so let's get started and move into this.
You guys already know what a paragraph is.
Of course it's a series of sentences that are all grouped together around one central topic one topic
right one central topic not five topics.
So when you guys make a big big mistake in your topic sentences by putting in the central topic or two
or three central topics so you put in the central topic and the details and your topic sentence a paragraph
is about one central topic and then you have other sentences that follow directly from that central
topic and that explain that central topic cry.
The four basic elements of a good paragraph are unity order coherence and completeness.
If you have a good paragraph that has these four elements you are going to look very good in the eyes
of a greater right.
So what is Unity.
Unity is where you start with a topic sentence.
All the other sentences support that topic.
They point back to that topic.
Everything is unified around that topic.
Very often when I'm reading writing by students and I'm reading a specific paragraph the paragraph will
start off going down the middle of the road like if you're driving a car and the car is going down the
middle of the road and then suddenly the student turned right and just drives completely off the road
and you've just lost all unity.
All right here's an example of bad unity.
Look at these sentences here.
My favorite day of the week is Monday because that is when we have sport class.
I love how we learn new things in history class right now that may seem funny to you but this is the
kind of stuff that I see and what graders see a lot of times and many students don't realize they're
doing that right.
This topic sentence is about it being his favorite day because of sport class.
That's the central topic.
That means everything must flow from that topic.
You can't talk about other classes.
You can't talk about history class.
Not.
That's not what the central controlling idea is.
Now we have this paragraph which is now corrected.
It has relevance because everything is about sport classes.
Everything is related to that one simple one central theme.
Right we now have very good units here.
Our next basic foundational element of a good paragraph deals with order.
This basically deals with you know you have different types of order.
You know quite a lot of chronology Sard chronology going from most to least important and also logic
you know going in the correct logical order.
One recipe for really scoring low is to have one organized confusing paragraphs because our order is
bad right.
Order allows you to flow from one idea to the next idea which is very very important.
One thing that I want you to do this is a little exercise for you if you can use.
You should be if you can and I know you can't so stop stop the tape.
Now if you were watching this recording stop the tape now take a look at these 12 sentences.
Go grab a piece of paper and then try to put these sentences in the correct order.
You'll be amazed at how many times I read paragraphs as just as bad order.
And so if you can just stop it.
And then when we go to the next slide you can see if you were able to put these into the correct order.
OK.
So I'm about to go to the next slide.
So I'm assuming that you have stopped it and try to put these in order.
You can see how it came out.
Now we have these sentences in the correct order right.
This is how it should flow from beginning to end.
Right.
Understanding order and sequencing is very very important.
And again many times as cultural right.
Understand that.
But you just have to make sure you have the sequence in order things according to the culture that you're
doing the exam for and you're doing this for a British English Australian Now Australia also a way of
ordering that I was talk about coherence.
Coherence is very important and you see U.S. then very specifically mentioned in the grading rubrics
and I'm going to do what on one to talk about coherence briefly here and then I'm also going to do a
separate lecture.
There's only about coherence
here.
We're going to talk about just two primary types of coherence with transition words and also using consistent
verb tenses and point of view.
All right so we know what the transition is a transition is where you have words that are connected
together or phrases that are connected together.
Transitions act like signposts that really points you to the next stage of where the conversation is
moving in the paragraph.
Here is an eye here.
Here verb tenses used incorrectly.
All right we have our first two sentences in the past our last two sentences in the present.
Please don't do that is very easy to make this mistake.
So you have to be mindful and be aware of what you're doing.
Here we have that same paragraph with everything in the past.
This is how you want to be able to write to be able to build your coherence.
Here we have our point of view point of view with consistency.
Our point of view is consistent.
Actually this isn't really about verb tenses.
This is really about point of view consistency in terms of the title headings should be just point of
view consistency is the point of view.
You can see in the first sentence is his.
He he is.
But then we switch to.
I and my right.
You have to keep your point of view consistent.
Finally we have completeness for a complete paragraph.
You need enough information to support the main idea.
Completeness deals with topic sentences or supporting sentences in your concluding sentence.
Write a really good paragraph has excellent completeness so the concept here is strongly written paragraphs
strongly.
S T R O N G L Y S T R O N G L Y.
Strongly written paragraphs will include all four elements described.
Good luck and writing your essay and if you have any questions please let me know and I will be happy
to help you out in any way I can.
Thank you very much.