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Off the top of your head, what do you remember having been taught about the topic sentence?
I should have listed this request down in the education forum, but I was afraid it might have been overlooked.
My freshmen have been working on increasing their writing fluency this year. Although we work on nitty-gritty grammar problems (and mysteries), these students haven't had to worry about writing topic sentences. However, we will focus very much on formal essay paragraph structure during February, and I'm trying to figure out lots of different ways to approach this most certainly dreaded terrain in which the students must discipline their thinking.
The topic sentence is taught in a variety of sometimes contradictory ways. I've been surfing the Web all morning and have found several contradictions, which are actually fun to come across. But one thing is evident: topic sentences are here to stay and professors are frustrated when reading papers in which students have written poorly-constructed topic sentences. One writer on the Web wrote that topic sentences are like traffic signs through the terrain of an essay. I thought that was pretty good. Highway markers may have been an even better image.
Anyway, if any of you could jot down a thought or two about what you recall about learning to write a clear topic sentence, I will read here with interest and will report to my freshmen the writers on 'the word board,' as I refer to it, have written.
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Joined: Jan 2001
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Carpal Tunnel
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Dear WW: while hoping to avoid being nonPC, do you remember
the old Afro-American preacher's description of his sermons:
"I tells 'em what I'm going to tell them, I tells them, and then I tells 'em what I told 'em."
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Carpal Tunnel
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what do you remember having been taught about the topic sentence?
1.) That it's the first sentence in the paragraph.
2.) That it tells the reader what the rest of the paragraph will be about.
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> what do you remember... Nuthink, I am afraid, Miss ~ my edumification was probably scandalously remiss in such structural post-facto analysis. Since it still means little to me now apart from Jackie and Bill's clues, my lookup tells me this: The topic sentence is a sentence that sets out the main idea or topic of a paragraph. It is often the first sentence especially when arguing a point where it may well be followed by further information, examples etc.. If the writing is exploring a point, it frequently comes as the last sentence, drawing a conclusion from the argument.http://www.usingenglish.com/glossary/topic-sentence.htmlIt seemed a pretty clear description without being overly precriptive about positioning and so on - what think others?
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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When I said it's the first sentence in the paragraph, I was thinking of the students she'll be teaching: ones who, by and large, have very little knowledge of "official" English. That is indeed what I first learned; it was only later, after we had mastered the idea, that it was explained to us that being first wasn't always necessarily so.
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addict
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addict
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For me, the best way to understand topic sentences was to see really good examples in action. You should also talk about the different kinds of TS -- a TS that presents an already mentioned point for further inspection versus the "change of direction" TS ("Another way that the author demonstrates this is through..."). I think mastering the latter is particularly important. My essays always were criticized as making abrupt transitions or jumping from point to point until I mastered that type of TS.
[EDIT] Oh, another thing I just remembered. It really helped me when a teacher told me to write the whole essay first, then add in the TSs at the end. This can also help clear up more meta- structural problems with the overall essay. Of course, this is only a reasonable approach if the writing is being done on a computer, but perhaps you could just have them leave a few lines blank at the start of each 'graf to fill in a TS later (Jackie is right about the "put it first for now, get tricky later" theory).
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Carpal Tunnel
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a teacher told me to write the whole essay first, then add in the TSs at the end.
Yeah, kinda like writing the opera first and the overture after everything else has been written.
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Carpal Tunnel
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yeah, I allus write the mission statement once I've got the marketing report drafted ;)
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We strive to competently administrate mission-critical technology while continuing to dramatically restore principle-centered content for 100% customer satisfaction
Thanks, bro, that saved hours of sweat! :)
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