1 / 8

Balancing Examples and Explanation in Your Body Paragraphs

Balancing Examples and Explanation in Your Body Paragraphs. Presentation created by Jennifer Maloy. Step 1. Open up your most recent draft of your essay on your computer. Now read through your introduction.

tamasine-mitsuyama
Download Presentation

Balancing Examples and Explanation in Your Body Paragraphs

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Balancing Examples and Explanation in Your Body Paragraphs Presentation created by Jennifer Maloy

  2. Step 1 Open up your most recent draft of your essay on your computer. Now read through your introduction. Highlight the sentence that you think states the main point/argument of your essay. Change the font color of this sentence to purple. If you don’t think your main point/argument is stated in the introduction, try adding a sentence that states this in purple. ***If you have trouble doing this on the computer, print out a copy of your draft and use colored highlighters to complete this activity.

  3. Step 2 Read through your essay one paragraph at a time. Complete steps three and four for each body paragraph (not for introduction or conclusion).

  4. Try to identify the main idea of your paragraph. This might come in the first sentence or maybe somewhere else. Once you identify this, highlight it and change the font to green. If you don’t think you have a main idea, try to write a sentence that states what you want the main idea to be. Step 3

  5. Step 4 • Once you have figured out what the main idea of your paragraph is (or should be, if you didn’t have a main idea), go through the paragraph again and identify two elements of your writing: • DETAILS: These can be specific details from the ad you chose, associations you make with the images in the ad, quotes from the text, observations, or facts. Highlight any sentence with a detail in red. • EXPLANATION: This should be any sentence that explains how your details relate to the main idea of the paragraph or the main point/argument of the entire essay. It can also be any sentence that explains what a detail means or why it is important or that explains why we would make a particular association from an image. Lastly, this can be any sentence that explains what the quotes you chose mean. Highlight all explanation in blue.

  6. Step 5 Compare one of your paragraphs to mine: While this actual ad just has a picture of Kelly Ripa, an oven, and a lot of cakes, this ad also encourages the audience to imagine certain things and make certain associations.It makes me think of the perfect working mom, someone who works all day and then comes home and is able to take care of her kids and bake beautiful desserts for her friends. Many women would look at this ad and see Kelly as an example of a woman who is able to balance a career and a family. Mostly women watch Kelly’s shows, and they probably know she has a husband and children because she talks about them on her show. So when people look at this ad, they might imagine themselves being successful like Kelly, making millions of dollars at her job and still having the time to cook for family and friends. The ad suggests that if a viewer buys the Electrolux oven, which is very high quality, that person will save time and be able to make gourmet food in an expert way. The ad implies that Kelly could come home from work and bake over twenty cakes if she wanted to since she has such a nice oven. It may make a viewer think, “if only I had a better kitchen and better appliances, I might be able to be more like Kelly. I might be able to have the time and energy to cook for my family and friends after a long day at work.”

  7. Step 6 Go through each of your body paragraphs after you have done your highlighting, and ask yourself the following questions: Do each of my body paragraphs have a main idea? Does each main idea help to develop and support my main point/argument? Do I stick to my main idea in each sentence of my paragraph? Do I need to delete or move sentences that do not fit? Do I have a combination of details and explanation in each paragraph? Do I need to add more of one to make sure there is more of a balance? Overall, do I provide enough details and explanation to prove my main point/argument to my reader?

  8. Step 7 Hopefully this activity has helped you to think about your organization of your paper as well as whether you provide enough details and explanation to support your main point/argument. Really work on any body paragraph that doesn’t seem to have a main idea. If you have more than one idea in a body paragraph, try to split the body paragraph up. Also work on any body paragraph that doesn’t include a mix of details and explanation. If you are still struggling, try to visit the CWE to ask for help with some of these things.

More Related