(IC) Lesson Topic 2: How to Develop Your Body Paragraphs & Review

Lesson Topic 2: How to Develop Your Body Paragraphs

A hand writing in a notebook with a pen. Your body paragraphs, in any piece of writing, should contain the details that support your thesis. Remember, a thesis is the main idea of your paper and should state your opinion on the topic.

Here are some ways to support your thesis:

  • Explain: provide important facts, details, and examples
  • Narrate: share a brief story to illustrate or clarify an idea
  • Describe: tell how someone appears or how something works
  • Summarize: present only the most important ideas
  • Define: identify or clarify the meaning of a specific term or idea
  • Argue: use logic and evidence to prove something is true
  • Compare: show how two things are alike or similar
  • Analyze: examine the parts of something to better understand the whole
  • Reflect: express your thoughts or feelings about something

In most cases, each main point is developed in a separate paragraph. Remember that specific details add meaning to your writing and make it worth reading. A well-written paragraph often contains three levels of detail.

Level Description Example
1 A controlling sentence names the topic. "If the government has its way, my people will be gone," says a member of the once proud Bushmen tribe.
2 A clarifying sentence provides supporting points. After living in the African Kalahari Basin for thousands of years, members of the tribe are being relocated and modernized by the government.
3 A completing sentence adds details to conclude the idea. Soon, the remaining members of the tribe will have either died out or become assimilated.

 

Integrate Quotations

Integrating quotations into your writing will help to strengthen your body paragraphs. Always choose quotations that are appropriate for your writing.   Quotations should support your ideas, not replace them. Effective quotations can back up your main points or support your arguments.

When you integrate a quotation into a paper, you never want to have the quotation standing alone as a complete sentence. This is called a freestanding quote. Here are several ways to properly integrate quotes:

  1. Introduce the quotation with a complete sentence with a colon. For example: In "Where I Lived, and What I Lived For," Thoreau states directly his purpose for going into the woods: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
  2. Use an introductory phrase, but not a complete sentence, separated from the quotation with a comma. For example: According to Thoreau, "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us."
  3. Make the quotation part of your own sentence without any punctuation between your own words and the quotation. For example: Thoreau argues that "shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous."
  4. Use short quotations as part of your own sentence. For example: Although Thoreau "drink[s] at" the stream of Time, he can "detect how shallow it is."

Notice that there are only two punctuation marks that are used to introduce quotations: the comma and the colon. Note that a semicolon is not used to introduce quotations.

 

Review

Please complete the following self-assessment in order to review the material from this module.

 

 

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