Transcript The Paragraph Loom

The Paragraph Loom
Burton Center Writing Workshop
Series
Spring 2010
The Warp and the Weft
• Evidence = warp
• Thoughts, insight,
opinions, ideas = weft
• One without the other
is a meaningless pile of
yarn.
Paragraph Elements
• Unity
• Coherence
– Logical bridges
– Verbal bridges
• Topic sentence
• Evidence
• Signposts and transition sentences
Unity
• If one were looming a rug, then he would not
be able to change colors in the middle of a line
without a big knot in the design.
– The same occurs if you change ideas in the middle
of a paragraph.
• On the other hand, if you never change
paragraphs between ideas, then you lose your
reader.
Coherence
• If yarn in a rug is not tied off somewhere, then
what do you think would happen to the rug?
• The same result occurs when you leave your
thoughts untied to one another, and the reader
gets lost.
– Tie your thoughts and evidence together by keeping
them organized in logical sequence .
– Repeat key ideas and words for a sense of continuity.
– Use transition words or “signposts” and transition
sentences between thoughts and evidence.
Topic Sentence
• Each paragraph’s main idea should be stated
with a topic sentence.
– More experienced writers can place the topic
sentence in various places of the paragraph.
– Beginning writers will find it easier to place the
topic sentence in the beginning of the paragraph.
– Not all paragraphs need topic sentences; if it feels
like you are interrupting a larger idea, then leave
the topic sentence out. You should still be able to
easily summarize what every paragraph is about,
however.
Evidence
• Remember that evidence is embedded into
your paper just as the warp is embedded in a
loom– it does not stand out like the thoughts
of your paper, but without it, any argument
falls apart.
• For every thought expressed, some type of
evidence is expected (a thought already
believed to be true adheres to the adage “that
goes without saying”).
Using Evidence
Types of Evidence
• Examples
• Illustrations
• Statistics
• Quotes and
paraphrases
• Anecdotes (evidence by
story)
• Definitions
Ways of using evidence
• Compare and contrast
• Cause and reason
• Effect and consequence
• Analyze
• Describe
Workshop Activity
• On a sheet of paper or in Word, create two columns
(create a two column table in Word).
• Prewriting: Think about what your favorite food is.
• Write a paragraph designed to convince a friend that
your food is best, aiming to use as many of the
elements of a paragraph that you can remember from
this workshop.
• Switch with a partner; in the second column, identify
as many elements used by your partner in his/her
paragraph as you can by writing the element’s name
out to the side of the line where the element is used in
the paragraph.
Workshop Activity
Example
Contrary to the well-accepted belief,
year-round schooling has no constructive
impact on education. Most year-round
schedules use the 45-15 method: 45 days
of school followed by 15 days off.
Because of this, there are many first and
last days of school. All those transitions
disrupt the learning process. Also, there
is no evidence of higher test scores. Due
to that, many schools that change to
year-round schedules end up switching
back. For example, since 1980, 95
percent of schools that tried the yearround schedule changed back to a
traditional calendar. It is obvious that
changing to year-round schooling does
not help students; therefore, why is the
change necessary?
Topic sentence
Evidence
Coherence: Signpost
Signpost
Evidence: illustration, statistic
Transition sentence
Unity: all information about same idea
• Paragraph example from
http://www.thewritesource.com/studentmod
els/ws2k-summer.htm