Part Two
Paragraph Development
Preview
Part Two introduces you to paragraph development and gives you practice in the following common types of paragraph development:
Providing Examples
Explaining a Process
Examining Cause and Effect
Comparing or Contrasting
Defining a Term
Dividing and Classifying
Describing a Scene or Person
Narrating an Event
Arguing a Position
After a brief explanation of each type of paragraph development, student paragraphs illustrating each type are presented, followed by questions about those paragraphs. The questions relate to the standards of effective writing described in Part One. You are then asked to write your own paragraph. In each case, writing assignments progress from personal-experience topics to more formal and objective topics; some topics require simple research, and the last assignment in each section asks you to write with a specific purpose and audience in mind. At times, points or topic sentences for development are suggested, so that you can concentrate on (1) making sure your evidence is on target in support of your opening idea, (2) providing plenty of specific supporting details to back up your point, and (3) organizing your supporting material clearly.
7 Introduction to Paragraph Development
Nine Patterns of Paragraph Development
Traditionally, writing has been divided into the following patterns of development:
• Exposition
Examples Comparison and contrast
Process Definition
Cause and effect Division and classification
• Description
• Narration
• Argumentation
In exposition, the writer provides information about and explains a particular subject. Patterns of development within exposition include giving examples, detailing a process of doing or making something, analyzing causes and effects, comparing and contrasting, defining a term or concept, and dividing something into parts or classifying it into categories.
In addition to exposition, three other patterns of development are common: description, narration, and argumentation. A description is a verbal picture of a person, place, or thing. In narration, a writer tells the story of something that happened. Finally, in argumentation, a writer attempts to support a controversial point or defend a position on which there is a difference of opinion.
The pages ahead present individual chapters on each pattern. You will have a chance, then, to learn nine different patterns or methods for organizing material in your papers. Each pattern has its own internal logic and provides its own special strategies for imposing order on your ideas. As you practice each pattern, you should remember two points:
• Point 1: While each paragraph that you write will involve one predominant pattern, very often one or more additional patterns may be involved as well. For instance, the “Good-Bye, Tony” paragraph that you have already read (page 50) presents a series of causes leading to an effect—that the writer will not go out with Tony again. But the writer also presents examples to explain each of the causes (Tony was late, he was bossy, he was abrupt). And there is an element of narration, as the writer presents examples that occur from the beginning to the end of the date.
• Point 2: No matter which pattern or patterns you use, each paragraph will probably involve some form of argumentation. You will advance a point and then go on to support your point. To convince the reader that your point is valid, you may use a series of examples, or narration, or description, or some other pattern of organization. Among the paragraphs you will read in Part Two, one writer supports the point that a certain pet shop is depressing by providing a number of descriptive details. Another writer labels a certain experience in his life as heartbreaking and then uses a narrative to demonstrate the truth of his statement. A third writer advances the opinion that good horror movies can be easily distinguished from bad horror movies and then supplies comparative information about both to support her claim. Much of your writing, in short, will have the purpose of persuading your reader that the idea you have advanced is valid.
The Progression in Each Chapter
After each type of paragraph development is explained, student papers illustrating that type are presented, followed by questions about the paragraphs. The questions relate to unity, support, and coherence—principles of effective writing explained earlier in this book. You are then asked to write your own paragraph. In most cases, the first assignment is fairly structured and provides a good deal of guidance for the writing process. The other assignments offer a wide choice of writing topics. The fourth assignment always requires some simple research, and the fifth assignment requires writing with a specific purpose and for a specific audience.
Important Considerations in Paragraph Development
Before you begin work on particular types of paragraphs, there are several general considerations about writing to keep in mind. They will be discussed in turn.
Knowing Your Subject
Whenever possible, try to write on a subject that interests you. You will then find it easier to put more time into your work. Even more important, try to write on a subject that you already know something about. If you do not have direct experience with the subject, you should at least have indirect experience—knowledge gained through thinking, prewriting, reading, or talking about the subject.
If you are asked to write on a topic about which you have no experience or knowledge, you should do whatever research is required to gain the information you need. Chapter 18, “Using the Library and the Internet,” will show you how to look up relevant information. Without direct or indirect experience, or the information you gain through research, you may not be able to provide the specific evidence needed to develop whatever point you are trying to make. Your writing will be starved for specifics.
Knowing Your Purpose and Audience
The three most common purposes of writing are to inform, to persuade, and to entertain. As already noted, much of the writing you do in this book will involve some form of argumentation or persuasion. You will advance a point or thesis and then support it in a variety of ways. To some extent, also, you will write papers to inform—to provide readers with information about a particular subject. And since, in practice, writing often combines purposes, you might find yourself at times providing vivid or humorous details in order to entertain your readers as well.
Your audience will be primarily your instructor and sometimes other students. Your instructor is really a symbol of the larger audience you should see yourself writing for—an audience of educated adults who expect you to present your ideas in a clear, direct, organized way. If you can learn to write to persuade or inform such a general audience, you will have accomplished a great deal.
It will also be helpful for you to write some papers for a more specific audience. By so doing, you will develop an ability to choose words and adopt a tone of voice that is just right for a given purpose and a given group of people. In this part of the book, then, there is an assignment at or near the end of each chapter that asks you to write with a very specific purpose in mind and for a very specific audience.
You will be asked, for example, to imagine yourself as an employee writing a description of a new job opening at your workplace, as a graduate of a local high school advising a counselor there about a drug problem, as an aide at a day-care center preparing instructions for children, as an apartment tenant complaining to a landlord about neighbors, or as a travel agent providing suggestions for different kinds of family vacations. Through these and other assignments, you will learn how to adjust your style and tone of voice to a given writing situation.
Using a Computer
If you don't yet write on a computer, it's time to start. In today's world, word processing is an essential mechanical skill, just as effective writing is a vital communication skill.
The computer can be a real aid in the writing process. You can quickly add or delete anything, from a word to an entire section. You can “cut” material and “paste” it elsewhere in seconds. A word-processing program makes it easy to set margins, space lines, and number pages. It can also help you check your spelling, your grammar, and to some extent your style. And at any point during your work, you can print out one or more copies of your text.
Word processing is not hard to learn. Just as you don't need to know how a car works to drive one, you don't need to understand how a computer functions to use it. With a few simple keystrokes under your belt, you can begin. You do not even need to own your own computer. Nearly every college has at least one computer center, complete with rows of computers and staff members to provide assistance. Free classes in word processing may be available as well.
Tips on Using a Computer
• If you are using your school's computer center, allow yourself enough time. You may have to wait for a computer or printer to be free. In addition, you may need several sessions at the computer and printer to complete your paper.
• Every word-processing program allows you to “save” your writing by hitting one or more keys. Save your work frequently as you work on a draft. Work that is saved is preserved by the computer. Work that is not saved is lost when the file you are working on is closed, when the computer is turned off—or if there's a power or system failure.
• Keep your work in two places—the hard drive or disk you are working on and a backup disk. At the end of each session with the computer, copy your work onto the backup disk. Then if the hard drive or working disk becomes damaged, you'll have the backup copy.
• Print out your work at least at the end of every session. Then you'll not only have your most recent draft to work on away from the computer; you'll also have a copy in case something should happen to your disks.
• Work in single spacing so you can see as much of your writing on the screen at one time as possible. Just before you print out your work, change to double spacing.
• Before making major changes in a paper, create a copy of your file. For example, if your file is titled “Worst Job,” create a file called “Worst Job 2.” Then make all your changes in that file. If the changes don't work out, you can always go back to the original file.
Ways to Use a Computer at Each Stage of the Writing Process
Following are some ways to make word processing a part of your writing. Note that the sections that follow correspond to the stages of the writing process described in Chapter 2, pages 17-45.
Prewriting
If you're a fast typist, many kinds of prewriting will go well on the computer. With freewriting in particular, you can get ideas onto the screen almost as quickly as they occur to you. A passing thought that could be productive is not likely to get lost. You may even find it helpful, when freewriting, to dim the screen of your monitor so that you can't see what you're typing. If you temporarily can't see the screen, you won't have to worry about grammar or spelling or typing errors (all of which do not matter in prewriting); instead, you can concentrate on getting down as many ideas and details as possible about your subject.
After any initial freewriting, questioning, and list-making on a computer, it's often very helpful to print out a hard copy of what you've done. With a clean printout in front of you, you'll be able to see everything at once and revise and expand your work with handwritten comments in the margins of the paper.
If you have prepared a list of items, you may be able to turn that list into an outline right on the screen. Delete the ideas you feel should not be in your paper (saving them at the end of the file in case you change your mind), and add any new ideas that occur to you. Then use the cut and paste functions to shuffle the supporting ideas around until you find the best order for your paper.
Word processing also makes it easy for you to experiment with the wording of the point of your paper. You can try a number of versions in a short time. After you have decided upon the version that works best, you can easily delete the other versions—or simply move them to a temporary “leftover” section at the end of the paper.
Writing Your First Draft
Like many writers, you may want to write out your first draft by hand and then type it into the computer for revision. Even as you type your handwritten draft, you may find yourself making some changes and improvements. And once you have a draft on the screen, or printed out, you will find it much easier to revise than a handwritten draft.
If you feel comfortable composing directly on the screen, you can benefit from the computer's special features. For example, if you have written an anecdote in your freewriting that you plan to use in your paper, simply copy the story from your freewriting file and insert it where it fits in your paper. You can refine it then or later. Or if you discover while typing that a sentence is out of place, cut it out from where it is and paste it wherever you wish. And if while writing you realize that an earlier sentence can be expanded, just move your cursor back to that point and type in the added material.
Revising
It is during revision that the virtues of word processing really shine. All substituting, adding, deleting, and rearranging can be done easily within an existing file. All changes instantly take their proper places within the paper, not scribbled above the line or squeezed into the margin. You can concentrate on each change you want to make, because you never have to type from scratch or work on a messy draft. You can carefully go through your paper to check that all your supporting evidence is relevant and to add new support here and there where needed. Anything you decide to eliminate can be deleted in a keystroke. Anything you add can be inserted precisely where you choose. If you change your mind, all you have to do is delete or cut and paste. Then you can sweep through the paper focusing on other changes, such as improving word choice, increasing sentence variety, eliminating wordiness, and so on.
If you are like many students, you will find it convenient to print out a hard copy of your file at various points throughout the revision. You can then revise in longhand—adding, crossing out, and indicating changes—and later quickly make those changes in the document.
Editing and Proofreading
Editing and proofreading also benefit richly from word processing. Instead of crossing out or whiting out mistakes, or rewriting an entire paper to correct numerous errors, you can make all necessary changes within the most recent draft. If you find editing or proofreading on the screen hard on your eyes, print out a copy. Mark any corrections on that copy, and then transfer them to the final draft.
If the word-processing package you're using includes spelling and grammar checks, by all means use them. The spell-check function tells you when a word is not in the computer's dictionary. Keep in mind, however, that the spell-check cannot tell you how to spell a name correctly or when you have mistakenly used, for example, their instead of there. To a spell-check, Thank ewe four the complement is as correct as Thank you for the compliment. Also use the grammar check with caution. Any errors it doesn't uncover are still your responsibility.
A word-processed paper, with its clean appearance and attractive formatting, looks so good that you may think it is in better shape than it really is. Do not be fooled by your paper's appearance. Take sufficient time to review your grammar, punctuation, and spelling carefully.
Even after you hand in your paper, save the computer file. Your teacher may ask you to do some revising, and then the file will save you from having to type the paper from scratch.
Using Peer Review
In addition to having your instructor as an audience for your writing, you will benefit by having another student in your class as an audience. On the day a paper is due, or on a day when you are writing papers in class, your instructor may ask you to pair up with another student. That student will read your paper, and you will read his or her paper.
Ideally, read the other paper aloud while your partner listens. If that is not practical, read it in a whisper while he or she looks on. As you read, both you and your partner should look and listen for spots where the paper does not read smoothly and clearly. Check or circle the trouble spots where your reading snags.
Your partner should then read your paper, marking possible trouble spots while doing so. Then each of you should do three things:
1 Identification
On a separate sheet of paper, write at the top the title and author of the paper you have read. Under it, put your name as the reader of the paper.
2 Scratch Outline
“X-ray” the paper for its inner logic by making up a scratch outline. The scratch outline need be no more than twenty words or so, but it should show clearly the logical foundation on which the essay is built. It should identify and summarize the overall point of the paper and the three areas of support for the point.
Your outline can look as follows.
Point:
Support:
1.
2.
3.
For example, here is a scratch outline of the paper on page 195 about a new puppy in the house:
Point:
Support:
1.
2.
3.
3 Comments
Under the outline, write the heading “Comments.” Here is what you should comment on:
• Look at the spots where your reading of the paper snagged: Are words missing or misspelled? Is there a lack of parallel structure? Are there mistakes with punctuation? Is the meaning of a sentence confused? Try to figure out what the problems are and suggest ways of fixing them.
• Are there spots in the paper where you see problems with unity, support, or organization? (You'll find it helpful to refer to the checklist on the inside front cover of this book.) If so, offer comments. For example, you might say, “More details are needed in the first supporting paragraph,” or “Some of the details in the last supporting paragraph don't really back up your point.”
• Finally, make note of something you really liked about the paper, such as good use of transitions or an especially realistic or vivid specific detail.
After you have completed your evaluation of the paper, give it to your partner. Your instructor may provide you with the option of rewriting a paper in light of this feedback. Whether or not you rewrite, be sure to hand in the peer evaluation form with your paper.
Doing a Personal Review
1 While you're writing and revising an essay, you should be constantly evaluating it in terms of unity, support, and organization. Use as a guide the detailed checklist on the inside front cover of this book.
2 After you've finished the next-to-final draft of an essay, check it for the sentence skills listed on the inside front cover. It may also help to read the paper out loud. If a given sentence does not sound right—that is, if it does not read clearly and smoothly—chances are something is wrong. Then revise or edit as needed until your paper is complete.
A new puppy can have drastic effects on a house.
Keeps family awake at night
Destroys possessions
Causes arguments