Deconstructing Paragraphs: two examples

One of the first things that I find I need to teach my first year English students is how to construct a paragraph. I had really excellent English teachers in high school, but it seems that the provincial standards for what constitutes satisfactory written work varies widely. (I hope this does not detract from the truly hard work that high school English teachers put in to their efforts ... I'm not sure it's their fault that the standards are so low).

In any case, I often find that my students have difficulty with their writing structure. For many, this might seem petty; however, I often find that without the structure of a decent thesis, followed by clear topic sentences, the rest of the paragraph falters. This leads to formulaic essays in the middle-range, but it often gives a base-line of structure to more talented writers to jump off from. This formula of paragraph-writing is a method I use to get mediocre to moderate writers to get much better, and for the students who put in the effort, the results are enormously rewarding. (The students who are equipped with good ideas benefit from seeing how the structure can emphasize and augment their existing arguments).

In this lesson, I used two sample paragraphs (one about Lethal Weapon, one of my obsessions!) and a topic on travel (which happened to be one of the choices for their first essay). I was thinking here in particular of my students who are visual and spatial-kinesthetic learners: the visual learners see the colours, and the spatial-kinesthetic learners see the shapes and patterns that are formed by the colours, and the construction of the paragraph becomes clearer. (These are not my best paragraphs, so use your own if you like!)

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De/Constructing a Paragraph:

Labelling the parts of a paragraph

Key:

Dark purple: topic sentence and tieback to topic sentence

Light purple: one kind of evidence: a definition or term

Red: another kind of evidence: specific examples

Green: explanation of the evidence (in this case, also linking the term with the examples)

Light grey: summary of previous paragraph (over two sentences in this paragraph, which is not ideal!)

Bold: thesis statement

Note: Your paragraphs will look different from this one, because it is a hybrid of an intro paragraph and a body paragraph.

1)      Your body paragraphs will not have thesis statements, but they do need to tieback to the topic sentence!

2)      Your introductory paragraphs will have a thesis statement, so the tieback is less critical.

3)      Your body paragraphs will have evidence; your introductory paragraphs do not need evidence, but they do need to introduce the topic quickly, as I have done here.

Sample paragraph:

The Lethal Weapon franchise may be the best buddy cop series of the 80s and 90s, but its importance in popular culture is as a pre-cursor to the “bromance” phenomenon of the 2000s. Television and movies about cops who are friends – buddy cops – featured a pair of cops who solved crimes together, often engaging with one another humorously, but always demonstrating the limits of their friendship as posed by traditional masculinity. Early examples of buddy cops include “Starsky and Hutch,” “Beverly Hills Cop,” “Point Break,” etc. Such friends could not be emotional, could not demonstrate their affection for one another – even though such affections often existed – and could not speak to one another about serious personal or philosophical issues, unless under extreme duress. The bromance relationship of the 2000s is different from a buddy cop relationship because the former tests those traditional limits of male relationships, by having more frequent interactions that are emotional or discuss personal feelings. Examples include “I Love You, Man” (as the quintessential bromance), “The Hangover,” “Hot Fuzz,” and “Scrubs.” Often in these examples, there is both comedy and drama in the situations where the male characters are forced to confront their affection for each another; despite being completely platonic, our society has a significant problem with males having emotional relationships with one another. The appeal of the bromance is both the awkwardness of that confrontation, as well as the emotional satisfaction of their genuine moments with each other. The relationship between Riggs and Murtagh in Lethal Weapon has elements of the tension of buddy cops, as they try to maintain the expectations of their masculinity within their relationship. However, over the course of four films, the two men suffer injuries, loss, and near-death experiences which bring them closer together and force them to confront their affection for one another, making Lethal Weapon an early example of a bromance.

Second example:

In this example, I will clearly demonstrate the differences between the intro paragraph and the body paragraph, but I will use the same key as above, so you can see how the construction of the paragraph a) stays the same across all paragraphs b) looks in an essay similar to one you have already done.

               If given the opportunity to travel anywhere in the world, where cost is not a factor, I would choose to go to London, England. People choose to go to England for many reasons; they might choose its historic importance, its arts, its culture, or even its fashion. However, as a student of literature – with an inadvertent focus on the British parts of the English canon – I would go to London with the desire of seeing as much as I can about authors whose lives intersected with that city. I would go on a walking tour of the city, mapping out locations where famous authors lived or died, and where they set their stories. I would go to the Globe Theatre to see a Shakespearean play, and then fast-forward four hundred years to go to the Warner Brother’s Studio Tour of the Harry Potter films. I would want to experience both of these hallmarks of British literature in the places where they were first produced. I would go to the London Film Museum to see an exhibit on James Bond. Finally, I would go to a poetry slam, so I could witness the up-and-coming writers of Britain performing their pieces. Places often define the literature that come from them, in many unexpected ways. Now that I have experienced the literature, I want to experience the literature in the place that it originated from. In this hypothetical trip, I would choose to go on a journey of London, to experience its literature.

               I would go on a walking tour of London to see how British authors experienced the city. Plenty of maps of authors, authors’ houses, and fictional characters already exist, but I would make a new one with an eye to my favourites. I first learned about these maps from Professor Allison Muri’s Grub Street Project, an online database of mapped literature in London. Since then, I have been intrigued by mapping literature. But seeing the maps online or even making them is not enough; I need to go to the city and follow the maps to connect the places in my head and in literature with real places in the world. I want to see how British authors imagined their spaces, and how they lived their everyday lives. I would be able to see both of those things just by witnessing the space as they did. My literary journey of London would be incomplete without a literal journey through London’s literary streets to experience the lives of both authors and characters.

So what did I do in the previous paragraphs?

1)      The topic sentence of the first paragraph clearly sets out the topic, right off the top. It does not have to be a repetition of the thesis statement (and you’ll notice, the thesis statement adds the “because” part, only the word “because” is implied: “to experience its literature”).

2)      The green parts in the intro are explanation.

3)      The blue parts in the intro are what Kevin calls the “table of contents” (I call “signposting”) of the essay: you can see from this list that I will have four different sections based on things I would do, but signposting still has not indicated the argument of the paragraph; the topic sentence will introduce the argument.

4)      The thesis statement is shaded purple to show that it concludes the paragraph and ties back to the topic sentence, but it’s also bolded to indicate that it is the thesis statement. “In this hypothetical trip, I would choose to go on a journey of London, to experience its literature. ”

5)      In the first body paragraph, you discover why I would choose to go on a walking tour of London: “to see how British authors experienced the city.” For this argument, I will need to justify why going there is important to me.

6)      I justify that argument by giving evidence: the Grub Street Project, which first inspired me.

7)      I explain the evidence and how that relates to the topic by saying “seeing the maps online or even making them is not enough.  … . I want to see how British authors imagined their spaces, and how they lived their everyday lives” When you write your second essay, your evidence will be direct quotations from the text (unless you’re talking about some element of form like line spacing or stanzas, but that’s the only exception!)

8)      My concluding sentence does two things: 1) ties back to the thesis (reminds the reader why we’re there): “My literary journey of London would be incomplete” 2) it ties back to the topic sentence: “without a literal journey through London’s literary streets to experience the lives of both authors and characters..”  It might seem a bit repetitive at first, because we’ve essentially just repeated the topic sentence, however, I’ve connected it to the thesis statement simply by saying the journey mentioned in the thesis statement would be incomplete without the actions of the first body paragraph.