(WW2) Lesson Topic 3: Beautiful Body Paragraphs

Essays are composed of various parts. Typically, essays have an introduction paragraph, several body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. The introduction paragraph serves to grab your readers and get their attention. Occasionally, writers might use a personal story, called an anecdote, or they might connect their topics to an event in history in order to introduce their essays. Then, the writer ends the introduction paragraph with the thesis statement. Remember that the thesis statement reveals the topic of the entire paper.

What Is a Body Paragraph?

The body paragraphs have a major purpose within an essay—they serve to develop the ideas of the writer in order to support the thesis statement. Remember to focus on only one main idea per body paragraph. Lesson 1 discussed the purpose of support in a paper, and the support appears within the body paragraphs. There are several pieces of a body paragraph that come together to create a well-supported essay.

Every body paragraph must begin with a topic sentence. The topic sentence reveals what the paragraph is about. Remember that the thesis statement reveals what the entire paper will be about, but the topic sentence reveals what the paragraph will be about. A well-supported paragraph could follow the model of S-P-E (State-Prove-Explain).

Read through this small portion of a body paragraph:

Romeo and Juliet are two similar individuals. Both of the teenagers fall in love very quickly. Romeo sees Juliet for only an instant and immediately decides that he wants to marry her. Because Romeo loves Juliet after only knowing her for a moment, they reveal how fast they fall in love.

• Now, look back at the above paragraph. You will begin with a topic sentence. In the portion of the body paragraph above, the topic sentence is "Romeo and Juliet are two similar individuals."
• From this topic sentence, the reader knows that the entire paragraph will be providing details to support the idea that Romeo and Juliet have many similarities.
• Then, you will give your opinion, thought, or idea regarding your topic. The writer claims that both of the teenagers fall in love very quickly. This is a good statement because the writer reveals an opinion or thought regarding how the characters are similar.
• After you create a statement that corresponds to the topic sentence, you must support your statement with proof from the text. In this paragraph, the writer did not use word-for-word information from the text, but the writer did provide proof with an example from the text that revealed Romeo's thoughts.
• Last, you must explain how the proof supports your statement and your thesis. The explanation part of the paragraph ties everything together. Notice in this paragraph that the writer reveals the reasoning as to how the proof supports his claims.

Notice in the outline that the SPE repeats three times. In order to formulate a well-supported essay, a writer must include several pieces of proof and a conclusion sentence at the very end of the paragraph. Therefore, each body paragraph needs to repeat the SPE in order to show support.

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