Hello my name is Nicholas Morton, in this talk we'll be thinking about the main
paragraphs in an essay. What's the best way to approach them? How do you
structure them? What are they for? Those kinds of questions and I'm going
to be giving my views on this. So let's say you've introduced your essay, you've
laid out your introduction, the reader knows where you're going and then
you launch into, let's say you've got between six to eight paragraphs that you
want to include for the main body of your essay, how do you tackle one of
those paragraphs? Okay let's take the question, let's say we're trying to
explain the rise of Adolf Hitler, how did that come about? And in this particular
paragraph, we want to show the influence of the First World War or the memory of
it in Germany in the 1920s, 1930s, and show how that played its part in being
connected to the rise of Adolf Hitler. What we could do is, we could start off
our essay or some of our paragraph by saying, "The rise of Adolf Hitler was
clearly linked to the memory of the First World War."
Job done, tick box. Okay let's try another one, we could start the paragraph, say,
"The First World War was crucial to the rise of Adolf Hitler,
this is shown in the quotation from a history of the First World War, where it
says 'the rise of Adolf Hitler can only be explained with reference to the
memory of the First World War.' Therefore the memory of the First World
War was crucial to the rise of Adolf Hitler." Now I've deliberately started
this talk by giving you two bad examples, the first example is pure assertion,
you're simply stating what you think. That's not particularly helpful, because
simply stating what you think is not an essay, it's not an argument, because the
crucial element to this, the crucial element to a main paragraph
is you supply a reason why, why do you think that? What is the rationale? The
evidence underpinning what you're saying. The second bad example I gave you was
solely dependent on a quote, a quote which simply showed that a historian has
same opinion as you, which is fine, but, you still haven't explained why, you
still haven't justified your point. So a good main paragraph, will typically
do three things: first of all, the paragraph will start by setting out what
it is that this paragraph is going to be dealing with, a mission statement if you
like, and so in a sense starting off a paragraph saying "Memory of the first
world war was important to the rise of Adolf Hitler" isn't a bad opening
because the reader knows exactly where you're headed, you can also in the first
line – it's often a good idea – to show how this paragraph links to the previous
one and so you could do something in the way they introduced it to to show that
linkage, that would also be a good plan. Once you set out your shop in that way,
what you then do typically is to supply your evidence, what are your reasons for
believing the First World War memory was so important for the rise of Adolf
Hitler? And this is where you can bring in primary sources, statistics, you could
discuss the context or the catalogue of events around that time, whatever it is
that proves your argument. The next phase, which can overlap with the previous one,
is where you then discuss this, you may show how your views either draw upon or
even conflict with those of other historians. If you agree with
other historians or if you're drawing upon their ideas obviously that should
be referenced and you can highlight that, but it's good to show that you do have
that sort of, you have been drawing on them in that way. If you disagree with a
historian, again, it's good to say what that historian says, why they say it, and
then, crucially, why you think their arguments need to be changed in some way
or why you think they may be even fundamentally wrong, but it's good to
have that debate so you're not just saying "this is what I think, this is why,"
but also you're joining the bigger conversation on the subject with other
historians. The final part to writing a main paragraph is then
to tie it all together, perhaps with a last sentence, just to remind your reader of
the point you've made, and then perhaps to set up the next paragraph to show
that linkage through to the next part of your essay.
Hope this has been helpful, thank you very much.