Hey! Professor Hitch here! And today, I want to talk to you about body paragraph structure
using a clever acronym ... T.R.E.E.S. ... T.R.E.E.S. stands for topic sentence, reason,
evidence, explanation, and a "so what?" or transition. As to topic sentences, that would
be the first sentence of your paragraph, but really, it's so much more than that.
Your topic sentence should be declaring the topic of your whole paragraph,
not just linking to the next sentence in your body paragraph. Additionally,
your topic sentence should link in some way back to your thesis statement. An easy way to create
that link is by using one or more words from your thesis statement inside your topic sentence. This
is a sentence that should be written by you, which means please do not quote as a topic sentence.
Additionally, questions do not work well as topic sentences as they're somewhat ambiguous
in nature and don't always do a great job of presenting the topic of your paragraph
the next sentence. Reason should be written by you as well. If your topic sentence is a broad,
general statement of the topic of your paragraph, your reason is that additional elaboration or a
more specific view on your topic once you've provided some reason which supports both
your topic sentence and your thesis statement, you're going to need to provide some evidence.
Some students, when they see this part of the body paragraph structure, will ask the question,
"Do I really need evidence? What if the point I'm making is pretty obvious?" Here's what I
would say about that: although you may feel that the point you're making is very obvious,
you cannot assume that your reader will agree with you. When in doubt, provide evidence.
This would be the sentence where you take an outside source and insert it into your
essay. After evidence, you have explanation ... Let's pause right there for a second!
Let me tell you first what explanation is not! Explanation is not simply repeating the evidence,
it's not restating the evidence, it's not summarizing the evidence.
If all you're doing for explanation is telling me again what your evidence is then you've messed up.
Your explanation should be something that adds value to your evidence: why is this a credible
source? how does this factor into your argument? how does this move your argument forward?
You should be adding value to your evidence with your explanation. After the explanation
comes a "so what?" Your "so what?" is a larger, more broad statement that connects your paragraph
back to your thesis statement and back to your main argument. If you are arguing a point about
changing the legal drinking age, you would like to change the legal drinking age from 21 years old
down to say 18 years old, and the point that you're making in a specific body paragraph
is that if somebody is old enough to join the army they're old enough to drink,
a example of a "so what?" sentence might be something like: "we trust our youth to make
responsible decisions when joining the army. Why can we not trust them to make responsible
decisions with drinking?" Technically, that's two sentences, but it does pose a larger question
about how a specific piece of evidence relates to a larger topic. You may not feel that your
paragraph has a larger "so what?" It may be a relatively small point that you're trying to make.
Whether or not you include a "so what?", the very last sentence
of your body paragraph should be some kind of smooth transition that takes the reader to the
next topic. The smooth transition can sometimes be very boring. It can sound something like,
"However, this is not the only reason why the legal drinking age should be lowered."
Although it may sound boring, it plays a crucial function in making sure that your
reader doesn't lose their place while reading through your essay. It supports
flow and is a generally positive thing to have in your body paragraphs. There you go! That's five,
possibly six sentences that you can add to any body paragraph. Some of you who've gotten this far
might be wondering, "Only five or six? What if I want to write a longer paragraph?"
That's absolutely acceptable! There are two approaches to that. Approach "A" would be adding
additional sentences for each of these different parts. One topic sentence, that's mandatory,
but you might write two reason sentences, two evidence sentences, two explanations,
and so on. Another approach that you can take would be to repeat this structure more than once.
One topic sentence again, but then you can repeat R. E. E. as many times as you feel necessary.
Those are both completely acceptable ways to expand this body paragraph structure.
One final question that some of you watching this may have is, "Do I have to follow this structure?"
I'm here to tell you today you actually don't ... You might feel robbed if you've
made it this far in the video because you've been listening
patiently to me explaining the T. R. E. E. S. body paragraph structure, but just hold on.
This structure is a lot like training wheels. If you're not sure how to approach a paragraph,
it's a really useful tool. This is something that you can go back to in almost any circumstance, and
therefore, it's a worthwhile thing to learn. But this is not the only way to write body paragraphs.
If you think you have a better idea, if you think you have a better approach, you're welcome
to give it a shot. Just keep in mind that the T. R. E. E. S. acronym is there for a reason.
Most body paragraphs, really, all good body paragraphs, start with a topic sentence, provide
some kind of reason, some kind of evidence, and do eventually end with a smooth transition.
As long as you're hitting the major points of the structure,
the exact way in which you approach your essay writing is completely up to you. Well, there you
go! That's the T. R. E. E. S. body paragraph structure! I hope you found this helpful!