Topic Development

1. Topic Development

2. There are three main skills being tested by these questions on the ACT: • To know how to sharpen the focus of a paragraph • To delete a sentence to establish a purpose • To add a sentence to establish a purpose

4. Tutorial #1: Know how to sharpen the focus of a paragraph • Identify the focus of a simple essay, applying that knowledge to add a sentence that sharpens that focus or to determine if an essay has met a specified goal.

7. Tutorial#2: To delete a sentence to establish a purpose • Delete material primarily because it disturbs the flow and development of the paragraph

10. Tutorial#3: To add a sentence to establish a purpose • Add a sentence or phrase to accomplish a fairly straightforward purpose such as illustrating a given statement.

13. Editing Application • DIRECTIONS: • Some of the following sentences can be used to write a unified, coherent paragraph. Some prevent the paragraph from being unified by giving information that does not relate to the main idea. • Read the sentences carefully to decide in which order the useful ones should be written to tell a clear, interesting story. Then, in the space provided, write them in paragraph form.

14. Dickinson then realized that she probably would not be famous in her own lifetime. • When she was thirty-one, Dickinson sent four of her poems to a well-known writer, Thomas Higginson. • She continued writing. • After Emily’s death, her sister Lavinia found 900 poems in these little packets. • Dickinson wrote poetry from the time she was a girl. • Emily Dickinson in her later years wore nothing but white. • In 1862 alone she wrote 366 poems. • Emily Dickinson was an American poet born in 1831 in Worcester, Massachusetts. • She asked Higginson if her poems “breathed.” • It is difficult to get poems published today as well. • Dickinson organized all her poems in packets of four to six sheets each, folded and tied together with twine. • Herman Melville is another important writer who was not fully appreciated during his lifetime. • He wrote back saying that she had talent, but that her poems were a little strange and that magazines wouldn’t want to publish them. • Today, a hundred years after her death, Emily Dickinson is considered, one of the most important writers of the nineteenth century. • “The Belle of Amherst” was a one-woman Broadway show based on the life of Emily Dickinson.

15. THINKING EXERCISE • Now, go back and identify each sentence that you did not use and write those numbers below. Next to each number, write an explanation for why you did not that sentence.