Developing essay body paragraphs

1. WRITING EFFECTIVE
BODY PARAGRAPHS

2. Effective Paragraph
• An effective paragraph
should be unified,
coherent, systematically
organized and well
developed.
1 • Unified
2 • Coherent
3
• Systematically
organized
4
• Well-
developed
(sufficient
support)

3. Effective Paragraph: The rule of 3

4. • Having gained the readers' attention in the introduction, the
writer must now hold their attention by offering substantial,
interesting, compelling ideas that support, illustrate, exemplify,
or expand the thesis of the essay.
• The body of the essay is, of course, where all the real work is
done.
• Essay body is the main part of your writing where you present
your thoughts and evidence.
• The function of the essay's body is to fully develop the
argument outlined in the introduction.
• Each body paragraph introduces a new idea, for example if you
have developed five ideas in your thesis you should present five
paragraphs in the body.
• Each paragraph within the body of the essay elaborates on one
major point in the development of the overall argument.

5. Introduction
• Conclusion
Paragraph 1
Topic sentence
Supporting point A
Evidence and example for A
Paragraph 2
Topic sentence
Supporting point B
Evidence and example for B
Paragraph 3
Topic sentence
Supporting point C
Evidence and example for C

6. Celebrity culture, then, is a well-established
feature of our mass media. For example, programmes
devoted to celebrities appear daily in the television schedules.
Celebrities are dispatched to jungles or undergo various tests
for our entertainment and we, the viewing audience, are
expected to be fascinated by all of this simply because of the
participation of these so-called celebrities. Television producers
have learnt the lesson that attaching the word ‘celebrities’ to a
programme can produce dividends in terms of higher viewing
figures. Thus, we, the viewers, becomecomplicit with this strategy
because we supply the programme-makers with the audience they
require to justify the making of the programme in the first place.
Basically, if we did not watch the programmes, then they would soon
cease to be made.

7. Those who profit from working and owning shares in
commercial television and radio argue that the BBC enjoys
unfair advantages compared to its rivals. The BBC, they say,
does not have to operate in the open market like
commercial operators do. Unlike them, the BBC is insulated
against failure. Whereas commercial television and radio
must attract audiences so that they can charge appropriate
rates to their advertisers, the BBC need not worry about
ratings quite so much because its revenues are guaranteed
because of the licence fees paid by the general public. The
BBC, however, argues that it has a ‘public good’ mandate which
demands that the organisation makes programmes that serves
the public interest: educational programmes, documentaries,
serious news bulletins and the televising of important public
events.

8. • Regardless of the topic, the bodies of all
essays share two common features: a plan of
organization and a means of moving between
different levels of abstraction— shifting from
general ideas to specific ideas and back
again.

9. Methods of organizing the body of the essay
• After you have narrowed your topic and formulated a thesis, you should have a clear
idea about your subject and how you will approach your essay. Now, it is time to
collect information about your subject and prepare a draft. This is when we start to
think about organization: how will you present the information you have about your
subject?
• Organization is important for two reasons:
• Not only does it help your readers understand the connection between the details of
the essay and your thesis, but also organization itself can help you write the essay in
the first place.
• Planning on a method of organizing your essay will help you determine how to write
it.
• A clear thesis will give your essay purpose and direction, but choosing a pattern of
organization before you draft will ensure that every part of your essay works to
support and develop that thesis.
• Ideas as we first conceive them may pour out of our minds in a seemingly random
fashion, but a reader needs the formality of organization to help him put all of your
ideas together into a coherent pattern.
• So, organizing before you write gives your ideas a structure that you can follow as
you develop your draft; it allows you to articulate, analyze, and clarify your thoughts.

10. • Therefore, organization is a continuous process, and your tentative
organizational plan can change and evolve as you refine your thesis
statement or gather your research.
• As you begin to plan the organization of the body of your essay, think about
the methods you will use to organize the evidence that will support your
thesis. Often the method of organization for academic writing is given to you
in the assignment itself.

11. Time (Chronological)
Order
It separates the subject of the essay into major stages presented in natural time
order.
Definition It explains the term, or the topic, to be defined by situating the term into the class of
objects or concepts to which the term belongs and then enumerating all the differentiating
characteristics that distinguish it from all others of its class. Definitions are often extended
in academic, business, and technical writing by the use of illustrations, examples,
analogies, history, and citations.
Classification It divides the material into major categories and distinguishes between the different
categories by explaining the writer's logic in choosing his categories.
Cause and effect It indicates causal relationships between things and events relevant to the essay's subject.
Comparison & contrast It involves lining up related ideas for a detailed account of similarities and differences. In
this kind of essay it is important to decide whether you will be concentrating on similarities
or differences. In general, the more similar things are, the more you concentrate on the
differences, and vice versa. If you are comparing two works by the same author, or two
love poems, for example, what will most interest you will be the differences between them;
if you are comparing an Anglo-Saxon riddle with a science fiction novel the differences will
be obvious enough that you will want to focus on the similarities.
Order of Increasing
(or Decreasing)
Importance
It arranges paragraphs so that the most important supporting evidence should come last,
thus building support for the essay's thesis. Writers sometimes choose to present the
evidence in a decreasing order of importance, placing the most important supporting
evidence first and finishing with the least important supporting evidence. This decreasing
order of importance is most appropriate in journalism or business writing, where the writer
knows that editors may likely cut paragraphs to fit the available space in the publication or
that readers are likely to want just the central ideas and are unlikely to read all the way to
the end of the document.

12. • You should also take into account that you have to keep unity and coherence in developing
the body of your essay.
• The former means the connection of all ideas to a single topic. So, in your essay, all ideas
developed in the body should relate to the thesis statement. The supporting ideas, on the
other hand, in the body paragraphs should relate to each topic sentence.
• The latter is related to unity. Coherence in an essay means that ideas are arranged in a clear
and logical way so that the reader can easily understand the main points of the essay.
• To achieve coherence in your essay, you can rely on:
 The types of organization (i. e. the methods of body organization),
 Cohesive devices: these are the words and phrases that connect sentences and paragraphs
together, creating a smooth flow of ideas.

13. Chronology Comparison Contrast Addition Examples Cause and effect Conclusion
Before
Likewise
Compared to
Similarly
However And For example Therefore
In conclusion
In summary
Finally
After
As similar as
On one hand Also For instance So
To conclude
Next
On the other hand
But
In addition
In general
Generally
Thus To summarize
Since Yet In fact
In particular
Specifically
As a result
First In spite of Moreover Since
Second Despite
Furthermore
Because
While
In contrast
Although
When
Instead

14. Pronoun references
Two sentences can be connected by the use of the same pronoun. A pronoun takes
the place of a noun or a noun phrase. Pronounces are used to connect sentences
or ideas to one another, and to avoid repetition of the same words. E. g.,
• Barcelona, Spain’s second biggest city and the capital of Catalonia, is a
popular tourist attraction for several reasons. First, the city is ideally
located for both the mountains and the beach. Although it is on the
coast, it is only a couple of hours away from the Pyrenees. In addition,
Barcelona is both modern and historic. There are many stylish hotels. It
has a clean and efficient underground system, and visitors can find a
variety of shops and restaurants, especially in the Eixample area. The
oldest area, the Barrio Gótico, or Bari Gótic in Catalan, is very beautiful
because many of its oldest buildings were protected as areas of the city
were rebuilt or developed. The most interesting thing about Barcelona
may be its Catalan heritage. Approximately 70% of the people living in
and around Barcelona speak Catalan, a Romance language related to
Spanish, and they speak Spanish as well. In addition to the strong
Catalan background, there are large groups of people who originally
came from other parts of Spain such as Andalucía and Murcia living
there. All of this makes Barcelona a great place to visit.

15. Repetition of key ideas
• Another way to connect ideas in an essay is by repeating
important words and phrases. This will help the reader remember
the main ideas in the text. E. g.;
• The liberal- conservative labels parallel the left-right distinction that
grew out of the French Revolution. In France’s National Assembly
of 1789, the conservatives sat to the right of the speaker, and
became known rightists, and the radicals sat at the left and
became known leftists. From then on, it was commonly assumed
that you could place ideological positions somewhere on a list
ranging from the left to the right. This system of classifying political
philosophies is attractive because it seems so tidy. But it is
woefully inadequate, since it is one one-dimensional, whereas the
world is three dimensional. The world today is much too complex
to hold still for the left versus right and the liberal versus
conservative classifications.