Department of English
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
2202111
English I
Writing Assignment 1 (Examples) Discussion
Writing Test 1 (Illustration/Examples Paragraph) (20 points, 1 hour, in class) Choose one of the following topics and write a paragraph of ten to twelve sentences with examples that illustrate your chosen prompt. It is useful to take a few minutes before writing to formulate a clear, focused, and engaging topic sentence to begin your example paragraph, and outline/organize vivid examples to illustrate and support that topic sentence. Give your piece a title if you like.
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Overall Paragraph
A good paragraph
should be clear and interesting. In these writing assignments you are
evaluated in the following three areas that make for clear and interesting
written communication of your ideas.
Content
Thesis:
Recall
that in your writing supplement, a thesis or a topic sentence is defined
as a complete sentence that states the main idea of the paragraph, and
that, for the purposes of this course, "the paragraphs you write...will
always begin with a topic sentence." A paragraph contains one main idea,
that main idea is stated or announced in the topic sentence. Whatever
you call the topic sentence—some might call it a thesis statement, a
thesis, a controlling idea, an idea, a topic, a point, or an argument—it
has the same function: that of grounding the paragraph with one limited
coherent idea, expressed in the form of a complete sentence.
General
comments about thesis:
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Student
thesis 1: The first sentence of the paragraph is a question,
not a topic sentence. It is also very broad and vague. It
does not tell the reader specifically enough what the entire
paragraph will be about. We do not know the direction or
scope of the body of the paragraph from this sentence.
How is good or bad? |
Student
thesis 2: There is no question mark at the end of this
sentence, but again it is a question. A question is not a
good topic sentence because it is usually not informative
enough to show the paragraph's main idea, its scope and
direction, and sometimes also its stance or viewpoint. This
beginning question could lead to a paragraph about toys,
about admirable characteristics, about looking right, or
about freshman activities like film night. It is too unclear
to function as a good topic sentence.
Have you ever seen the movie named "Toy Story." |
Student
thesis 3: This topic sentence, though intriguing, begins a
narrative rather than an examples paragraph.
Once when I was in high school, classmates looked at me and said "What are you doing?" and stared at me making a pizza from modeling clay." |
Student thesis 4: This is an interesting sentence that is "carefully worded to express a limited main idea." Unfortunately it is a good topic sentence for a reasons paragraph (Why is a particular freshman activity worthwhile?) rather than for an examples paragraph (Worthwhile freshman activities at Chula). For an examples paragraph, you want to give many examples of freshman activities. You can use the multiple activities given to illustrate the range of possibilities, to clarify that there are worthwhile first year activities at Chula, not only boring, nonsensical or painful ones, or to allow your readers to see for themselves whatever idea you want to point out with the array of example activities. Regardless of how you limit or narrow down your topic sentence from the topic prompt, your paragraph should provide several activities. That is, your topic sentence should allow for illustration with three or more examples of worthwhile freshman activities.
What
this topic sentence announces is examples of reasons
why one activity is worthwhile rather than examples
of activities that
are worthwhile. So, it is not quite what the prompt is
asking for.
Joining in
Latin dancing in "CU Freshy Game" is one of the most
worthwhile freshman activities at Chula because health,
unity and friendship are what I got from this activity. |
Student
thesis 5: This student has narrowed down the topic from
"worthwhile freshman activities at Chula" to "worthwhile
freshman activities at Chula that are clubs." She has a
stance; she claims that the kind of worthwhile freshman
activities at Chula has to do with student organizations.
So, this topic sentence is good in that it has a clear focus
that is more limited than the topic prompt and there is a
well-defined scope: she is only going to discuss student
clubs. The emphasis on the sentence, however, is on "being a
great way to fulfill..." rather than on variety of clubs.
We
might quibble that this is an ambiguous topic sentence: it
can announce a reasons paragraph that is trying to convince
the reader with evidence that answers the question "Why is
joining clubs a worthwhile first year Chula activity?" or it
can announce an examples paragraph that is illustrating
different worthwhile clubs with examples that answer the
question "What clubs are worthwhile first year Chula
activities?" We might also object that clubs are not
exclusively freshman activities; students of all years can
join. So, it is not answering the prompt which asks
specifically for freshman activities. These are valid
comments. The problems with the topic sentence would be
somewhat clarified in the paragraph body if the examples the
student gives focuses on clubs rather than on reasons. The
student goes on to identify academic clubs, sports clubs,
and music clubs as her main examples. This is fine. But her
discussion of each example should illustrate how these club
activities are especially useful for first year students,
thereby keeping the focus on the clubs as worthwhile freshman activities.
Joining clubs would be a great way to fulfill your first year at Chula. |
Student thesis 6: A simple turn of the phrase gives just enough twist to make this topic sentence interesting.
If you think what Chula freshmen do in university is just studying then going home to read books, I can tell you that you are wrong. |
Student
thesis 7: Despite its awkward phrasing and uninspired
simplicity, this is a topic sentence that is clear, on
topic, and proper in its announcement or anticipation of
examples to come. We read this sentence and we know that the
paragraph is going to be about how to look good, and we
expect what follows to be examples of looking well that is
very simple to achieve.
Being people that have a good looking is very easy to do. |
Examples: The examples in your paragraph should develop the topic sentence.
Student
examples 1: These are examples that illustrate ways of
playing with one toy rather than examples of childhood toys
as the prompt demands.
For example, I could be a doctor
and my Barbie doll would be my patient. Sometimes I could
be a hair stylist or a designer. |
Organization
Logical
Order: As
we discussed in class and as the writing supplement indicates, a good
paragraph has a logical flow. For this illustration paragraph writing
assignment, this means that the examples you give to illustrate your
topic sentence needs to be organized in some logical order. You might
give examples of less time consuming freshman activities to more time
consuming (but rewarding) activities, or provide examples of your
best-loved childhood toys in chronological order, or present examples of
good habits from qualities that are more concrete to more abstract.
Comments: |
Unity:
Everything
in the paragraph--from the topic sentence to the examples to the
conclusion--should hang together and be on topic in a coherent and
consistent way. This is called unity.
Comments: |
Grammar
Agreement:
Subject-verb
agreement, noun-pronoun agreement
Comments: |
Further Reading
Chin, Peter, et al. Academic
Writing Skills Student's Book 1. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2012.
Print.
Last
updated
August 1, 2013