Hey there it's Wendy from Worldwidespeak.
Hope you're doing well. Today we're going
to talk about paragraph structure basic paragraph
structure, and this video is geared towards English
language learners, but even if you're not an English
language learner
and you need to know about paragraph structure,
this is the video to watch.
Now you can see here that I have an image of a box,
and you're probably wondering why I have that image
when i'm talking about paragraph structure,
but I want you to keep in mind
that a paragraph, like a box, contains something.
And like when you're moving, you put like items
into boxes so that you can
find them easily when you get to your
next destination. And a paragraph does the
same type of thing. It contains you know one type of
information, so it's really easy for the reader
to follow your writing.
Let's take a look at how this is done.
Alright, it's important that we know what a paragraph
is. When it comes to writing in English,
a paragraph is made up of a bunch of
sentences that talk about one
central idea. Your paragraph
stays focused on one thing
so that it's easier for the reader to
follow your writing. Also the paragraph has three parts.
The parts are topic sentence,
supporting detail sentences,
and a concluding sentence.
So the paragraph talks about one thing,
and it has three pieces.
Okay
So we really need to pay close attention
to that first thing i just mentioned, and that
was that a paragraph is a group of sentences.
It's made up of
sentences that talk only about one
central idea. This is crucial for you to understand
so that you can write a paragraph
that's clear and cohesive when you begin
writing in English.
Now right now I would like you to pause the video and
take the time to read these two paragraphs. We're going to
take a look at what this paragraph cohesion or
unity looks like.
Okay. Thanks for taking the time to read
those two paragraphs.
As you can see in the first paragraph,
I talk about how talented my dog is that
she can roll over, and she's super fast.
She can chase squirrels, and she's really
smart because she learned how to
fetch the newspaper at the end of the
driveway and bring it back
when she was just a puppy.
So the only thing I'm talking about in that first
paragraph is my awesome dog and how talented she
is. So it's super easy for the reader to
follow along because I'm just talking about one thing.
Well now if we take a look at that
paragraph right below me, the second
paragraph, this paragraph has some problems. As you
can see, it starts out really well.
You know it's talking about um my dog
and how talented she is again how she can roll over.
Then it starts talking about her um toy that she likes
Okay that's a little uh different than talking about how
talented she is, but it's still about the dog so
it's okay. It's not great um, but then I start talking about
my brother, and I'm confused
because why are you talking
about- why am I talking about my brother if the
central idea of the paragraph is about my dog?
So now I'm as a reader I'm I'm confused because you've
I've put the my brother in there and
then I'm reading about my brother
thinking oh maybe it has something to do with my dog,
but then I read further and I talk about my sister
and beaches in California and now I'm
it's a disaster. I'm completely lost as a
reader. There's there's too many things going on
in this paragraph. I'm talking about my dog.
I'm talking about my brother.
I'm talking about my sister wanting to move to California.
Help! That is too confusing.
So if you take a look at these two
paragraphs, you can see why it's so important
to have one idea per paragraph. When you look at that
paragraph where i just talk about my dog, it's
super easy to read. It just has a nice
flow to it. The reader doesn't
um get confused.
Oh but in the next
paragraph, that one right below me,
that's super confusing because
the writing is all over the place. The
paragraph isn't contained in um with with just one
topic. It's the dog, the brother, the sister, the beach.
That slows a reader down,
causes them to have to reread because they're
confused and they lose interest or they just stop
reading all together. Remember the box at
the beginning of this video?
It's containing just one
thing. Your paragraph like the one just about
my dog it just contains one thing.
When we try to put too many
different things in one box,
what happens? Well the box typically
overflows or possibly breaks.
The same thing with our paragraphs.
Keep it focused on one central idea.
Okay so we talked about
unity in your paragraph or keeping it
focused on one central idea, and we saw a good
paragraph and a confusing paragraph.
Now let's take
a look at the actual parts of the paragraph,
the structure of the paragraph.
Remember there were three parts:
the topic sentence, the supporting detail sentences,
and the concluding sentence.
Now from the good paragraph
in the last slide,
the topic sentence was about my dog and how talented she was.
The subject of the for the paragraph is my dog
and the one thing I'm going to focus on about my dog
is how talented she is, right?
That's the controlling
idea. That focuses your paragraph on one specific thing.
Now the supporting detail sentences
are the sentences that are the meat of
your paragraph because with words they
describe the talents of the dog to create a
picture in the mind of the reader,
and it these sentences support the topic by
showing in complete detail what this looks like.
And remember these are your
reasons and your examples.
And in the paragraph that I did on my dog
I some of the exam- examples were that
she was fast because she could catch
squirrels, and she was smart because she could
um she learned how to fetch the
newspaper when she was a puppy, right?
And then we have we end the paragraph
with a concluding sentence that
restates the topic sentence it reminds the reader
what the topic was (and that was my dog),
and we talk about how talented she was
but we just use different words so that we're not too
repetitive. Okay so what does the basic structure,
the basic paragraph structure, look like
when you're writing your sentences. My
students would always say to me:
Wendy, how many sentences does my
paragraph need to be?
And I would say:
well as many as it takes
for you to explain your topic in complete detail
And they don't like that answer, but it
is true. There's not
a set number of sentences, but when you're beginning
sometimes it helps to have a number in
mind. And so if you were writing
sentences for a basic paragraph,
you'd have a topic sentence, a supporting
sentence, another supporting sentence,
and you'd have a bunch of supporting
sentences. And then you'd have a concluding sentence.
So, that's you know one, two,
three, four, five, six, seven... that's about
eight sentences there.
Um that's probably your bare bones
paragraph. Now remember, keep that image
of the box in mind. You have all these sentences here,
and they all need to be on one topic.
And so it needs to be nice and
contained in one topic that's really focused so
it's easy for your reader to read.
Now let's say we take this
basic paragraph structure: topic sentence,
supporting sentences,
and concluding
sentence, and we apply it to the paragraph that I
wrote. Remember the dog paragraph about my dog
who is so talented? So if we're looking at this paragraph
and we're applying the structure of the paragraph,
it looks like this:
Topic sentence: "My dog is extremely talented."
And that's in blue.
And then all of the supporting sentences
are in orange. And then the last sentence of the
paragraph is the concluding sentence. This is your
basic paragraph structure,
and hopefully this will help you
visually to see how we structure this when we write
in English. That we have the topic sentence,
we have the supporting sentences, and
then we have a concluding sentence.
Okay my friends. There you have it: the basic
paragraph structure in English.
Remember we're only going to focus on
one thing per paragraph like the good paragraph
about my dog, not the bad paragraph or the confusing
paragraph that talked about my brother and my sister and beaches in California
and my dog. That was a disaster.
We're only going to focus on
one thing, and then you need the three pieces
of the topic sentence, the supporting sentences,
and the concluding sentence, and that's it.
Now you have the formula. You know
how to write a basic paragraph in
English. You can do this. As always, thank
you so much for taking the time
to learn with us. We truly appreciate it
when you watch our videos.
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Best of luck in your writing. Take care.