How to write a perfect paragraph:
Understand what a paragraph is: A paragraph is a series of sentences. These sentences include a topic sentence, and a series of supporting sentences.
Part 1: Topic sentence
The topic sentence is the overall idea you want the paragraph to communicate. In other words, the topic sentence is the purpose of the paragraph, or the reason for the existence of a paragraph:
Topic Sentence Example:
Drawing on her experiences as an English teacher overseas, Eleyna was able to identify the difficulties students from different countries and cultural backgrounds have.
Topic sentence’s job: To define the purpose of the paragraph.
Part 2: supporting sentences
The ‘other’ sentences in the paragraph (other than the topic sentence) are supporting sentences. These sentences provide the support for the topic sentence. Without them the topic sentence is weak, and an undeveloped idea. They are the necessary content to complete a paragraph.
Therefore, if our topic sentence is as follows:
Eleyna is an effective language teacher because she is able to identify the difficulties that students from different countries and cultural backgrounds have, which is a skill she developed after having spent several years teaching English in various countries.
The supporting sentences could be as follows:
For example, she knows that Northeast Asian students often pronounce /r/ as an /L/, making the word “rice” sound like “lice”. She also knows that Spanish speaking students from Mexico often replace the soft /sh/ sound, as in the word shower, with a hard /ch/ sound, which makes it sound like “chower”. This special knowledge allows her to address these language learning impediments early.
The whole paragraph would therefore be:
Eleyna is an effective language teacher because she is able to identify the difficulties that students from different countries and cultural backgrounds have, which is a skill she developed after having spent several years teaching English in various countries. For example, she knows that Northeast Asian students often pronounce /r/ as an /L/, making the word “rice” sound like “lice”. She also knows that Spanish speaking students from Mexico often replace the soft /sh/ sound, as in the word shower, with a hard /ch/ sound, which makes it sound like “chower”. This special knowledge allows her to address these language learning impediments early.
Your topic sentence can go at the beginning of the paragraph, or it could go at the end of the paragraph, which also works well, as you will see below:
Eleyna knows that Northeast Asian students often pronounce /r/ as an /L/, making the word “rice” sound like “lice”. She also knows that Spanish speaking students from Mexico often replace the soft /sh/ sound, as in the word shower, with a hard /ch/ sound, which makes it sound like “chower”. This special knowledge allows her to address these language learning impediments early. Thus, Eleyna is an effective language teacher because she is able to identify the difficulties that students from different countries and cultural backgrounds have, which is a skill she developed after having spent several years teaching English in various countries.