Introduction: Connecting Your Learning

While you might not be required to write the typical five-paragraph essay in an information technology department, you will be expected to effectively write and communicate information. For example, you may need to write a report detailing specific processes or project outcomes and expectations for a proposal requested by a manager. Effective communication is the lifeblood of any organization. In this lesson, you will learn about how to write an effective paragraph.

Focusing Your Learning

Presentation

If you open a dresser drawer or a kitchen cupboard, you may find the drawers and shelves organized by content. For example, you might have a sock drawer and t-shirt drawer, a spice shelf and a medicine shelf. Why is this? Some might argue that the desire to group like things together is innate, but mostly organization just makes sense. It creates clarity. When you go to the sock drawer, you know you are going to find socks, and when you are looking for salt, you will find it on the spice shelf.

You probably know what a paragraph looks like in a written work. It is an organized grouping of lines offset from another grouping of lines. But why is it formatted this way? A writer groups a series of lines together to show that they are related. Just as the salt belongs on the spice shelf, certain sentences belong in certain paragraphs.

Focused paragraphs can be divided into three steps.

Step 1: Topic Sentence

• Focus your paragraph with a topic sentence.
• If the paragraph is part of an essay, the topic sentence should focus the paragraph as well as support the thesis.
• This sentence is your main idea, and all other sentences included in this topic sentence must fit under its umbrella.

Step 2: Supporting Details

• Develop your paragraph with supporting details.
• You can further break down this step into examples and explanation. Also, notice "details" is plural. Two examples are always better than one.
• For each example that you provide, you will want to explain how it supports your topic sentence.

Step 3: Concluding or Transitional Sentence

• Depending on the purpose of your paragraph, you will either write a concluding sentence or a transitional sentence.
• If your paragraph is part of a whole essay, you will write a transitional sentence that links to the next paragraph.
• If you are writing only a paragraph, your last sentence is a true concluding sentence.
• In both instances, the concluding sentence should give a sense of completion by drawing together the support to emphasize your focus or topic sentence.

Practice

Make sure that you read On Paragraphs.

View the following: Writing Structured Paragraphs The Writing Center (Select Writing Paragraphs, located under the PowerPoint heading.)

Now it is your turn to practice. Complete the following practice activity.

In the required reading, you learned that a topic sentence contains both a main idea (the general topic of the paragraph) and a controlling idea (your specific stance on that subject). For the following prompt, write a topic sentence that includes these key elements. If needed you can refer to the example paragraph, How does technology affect your everyday learning?

Prompt: How does technology shape the way you think?

Summarizing Your Learning

Unorganized writing leads to chaos and confusion. Organized writing is clear, and clear writing is understood. Being understood is the first priority in effective communication.

For more information on writing effective paragraphs visit the following Web sites:

University of Ottawa Writing Centre, Writing Paragraphs

University Writing Center at Texas A&M, Paragraph Construction

Assessing Your Learning

Now that you have practiced, it is time to show what you know. Complete the assignment below.

1. Prewriting: Writing an Effective Paragraph

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