tailieunhanh - Write better essays in just 20 minutes a day part 13

The six prewrit¬ing strategies explained below may be used both to generate new ideas and to clarify those you already have. Some strategies are better suited to a longer writing process such as the college admissions essay, while others may be adapted for when you have just a short period of time to complete an essay, as with the SAT. | ------------------------------- REVISING PARAGRAPHS -------------------------------------- Revising Individual Paragraphs To check the paragraphs that make up your essay you ll need to examine your writing with a stronger lens than the one you used to for big-picture issues. You will be determining whether each paragraph has just one main idea whether there are adequate transitions between paragraphs and if your introductory and concluding paragraphs fulfill their distinct purposes. One Controlling Idea A paragraph is a group of sentences about one idea. That idea should be stated in a topic sentence which is typically the first or last line. Topic sentences not only guide your reader but they also link the sentences in the paragraph together by stating the idea that they all relate to. If you can t locate a topic sentence should the main idea be stated in one instead of implied by your examples If there is a topic sentence does each sentence relate to it In the lying with silence essay each paragraph contains only one main idea except for the sixth paragraph. Here the writer describes the lie and its consequences in one paragraph. It would be more effective to dedicate another paragraph to the consequences. The revised paragraphing then looks like this topic sentences are in bold I m guilty of silent deceptions too. Last year I discovered that my friend s boyfriend was seeing someone else. I kept quiet about it because I didn t want to hurt my friend. A few weeks later someone else told her about the two-timing and I told her I knew about it. She couldn t believe that I deceived her like that. She felt just as betrayed as if I d lied to her face about it. Her boyfriend s deception ruined their relationship. My deception destroyed our friendship. Relevance If you ve identified more than one idea in a paragraph you should probably break it into two paragraphs. But before you move text make sure each idea is clearly related to the thesis. If it s not it needs to be .