SECTION 4 Topic Sentences

As the book progresses, you will be asked to read short, interesting paragraphs to find main ideas and topic sentences. Once you are comfortable with these basic skills, proceed to the passages in the last five sections. This is where you will use your skills to tackle longer passages. 

Choose an essay from one of the collections suggested in the Additional Resources section at the end of the book, or a textbook you use in class. As you read, pay particular attention to paragraphing. When does the writer begin new paragraphs Why Can you identify the topic sentence Do you recognize inductive or deductive formats ... 

As stated earlier, a paragraph is a group of sentences about the same idea. Frequently, a passage will include one or more sentences that stray from the main idea of the paragraph or essay. To improve the cohesion of ideas, off-topic sentences should be deleted or moved to another, more relevant section. Here s how a question about cohesion might be phrased ... 

Write a paragraph about what you ve learned in this section. Begin your paragraph with a clear topic sentence, like I ve learned several reading strategies since Lesson 1 or I ve learned that reading comprehension isn t as difficult as I thought. Then, write several sentences that support or explain your assertion. Try to use at least one vocabulary word that you ve learned in this section. 

Avoid a boring structure. Make the paragraph the unit of composition. It should have a main theme and be introduced by a topic sentence. In technical and other types of writing, it is often desirable to divide a composition into chapters, sections, and subsections with appropriate headings or titles. To improve clarity and provide variety of style, present complex data or information as lists or tables rather than in narrative form. 

For some material it is not useful to construct title sentences as described above. In these cases hierarchical lists, in which the topics are enumerated, are more appropriate. To inform the reader fully about the nature of the material being described, the headings of connected sections that are superior in hierarchy always occur as running heads at the top of each page. 

The planning steps in Section 1 have led you to the next stage in the process, writing a rough draft. You broke down the assignment, brainstormed ideas, focused your topic, developed a tentative thesis, and sketched an outline. All of that work has provided a framework that you can now flesh out with sentences and paragraphs that bring your ideas to your audience. 

The first sentence in the Introduction section should convey the general topic of the paper (I.e., the research area), not the specific work to be reported. 

Passages P3-P6 open the Introduction sections to four key articles cited throughout the textbook. Briefly state the general topic of each article based on only the first sentence. 

The first section of this book focuses on the development of a thesis statement, a declarative sentence that tells your reader what you think about a topic. In other words, it is your opinion. It is also a response to what we have called the topic question. 

This final section focuses on the strategy, craft, and presentation of the academic essay. Chapter 7 describes the most effective way of presenting information about your topic to the reader. Chapter 8 shows you how to evaluate your written work and to improve your use of basic tools such as words, sentences, and paragraphs. Chapter 9 evaluates the essay as a whole and suggests ways that you can improve its style and presentation. 

For the above-mentioned purposes, a questionnaire has been devised, composed of various sections. The first was a free associations exercise aimed to detect the content of the representation and its representation field - i.e. the symbolic and emotional texture relative to the topic. Participants were asked to write, in words or brief sentences, what the stimuli science technology scientisf (in the two Italian forms scienziato and scienziata ) brought to their mind. 

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