Title

Introduction
...........................................
Thesis Statement
Title
Topic Sentence
Major support
minor support
minor support

Major support
minor support
minor support

The last sentence of an introduction is the thesis statement.

Topic sentence
...........................................
Major support
minor support
Major support
minor support
...........................................
Concluding sentence/ link

Major support
minor support
minor support

Essay writing. From Paragraph to Essay.

Topic sentence
...........................................
Major support
minor support
Major support
minor support
...........................................
Concluding sentence/ link

Concluding sentence

Each body paragraph has a topic sentence and several

supporting sentences.

Concluding sentences for body paragraphs in an essay are

not always necessary, especially when the ideas in
consecutive paragraphs are closely related.

Topic sentence
...........................................
Major support
minor support
Major support
minor support
...........................................
Concluding sentence/ link

Concluding paragraph

The conclusion, like the concluding sentence in a paragraph,

is a summary or review of the main points discussed in the
body. Do not introduce new information in the concluding
paragraph.

1. Read the following texts and analyse the transition from paragraph to short essay:
Paragraph
My uncle Patricio is one of the most interesting
people in my family. He is old and has a wrinkled
brown face. On his arm, there is a tattoo. Patricio has
an intriguing history. He and my mother were born
in a small village in the mountains. When he was
seventeen, he left home to explore the world. Now
he fixes air conditioners in Los Angeles, and during
the winter months, he sometimes comes to visit us
and play the accordion. I love spending time with
my uncle Patricio because he has an intriguing look
and a mysterious past.

Short Essay
My family is full of happy, crazy, and talented people. My aunt Margarita has a
yard full of orphaned pets. My brother Jose is an expert tailor, and my mother
loves to experiment in the kitchen. However, I think the most interesting is my
mysterious uncle Patricio.
Patricio is an elderly man now, with white hair sticking up all over his head.
Beneath his messy hair, he has a wrinkled brown face and powerful dark eyes
that show many emotions. Patricio is tall and skinny, and he wears baggy pants
and a plaid shirt. He has a tattoo of a heart on his arm. The heart has the word
Rosa written across it in red and black letters, but he has never told me who she
is.
Patricio has an intriguing history. He and my mother were born in a small
village in the mountains. When he was seventeen, he left home to explore the
world. On one trip, he went to Siberia for gold. On another trip, he went to
Alaska to work on a fishing boat. Now he fixes air conditioners in Los Angeles,
and during the winter months, he sometimes comes to visit us and play the
accordion.
I love spending time with my uncle Patricio. He has an intriguing look and a
sad and mysterious past. He is also a talented musician. Someday I hope that he
will tell me about Rosa and how he got the tattoo with her name.

Source: Savage, Alice & Masoud Shafiei. Effective Academic Writing 2. The Short Essay. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Introduction

Body paragraph 1

Body paragraph 2

Conclusion

Essay writing. Introductory Paragraph. Thesis Statement.

1. Analyse the following introduction. What is the role of each

sentence?
The Impact of Privatisation on the British Economy
Privatisation is the process of transferring certain industries from state
control to the private sector. In Britain, privatisation began in 1981 with
British Telecom. A number of researchers have examined this issue,
notably Smith (1983) and Wilson (1997). Various other investigations
have explored the subject, especially Jones (1985), Mosk (2001), and
Warlock (2002). As privatisation is increasingly seen as a remedy for
economic ills in many other countries, it is worth examining its impact
in Britain, which was a pioneer in this process.
a) to give your opinion on the subject
b) to define some of the terms in the title
c) to explain which areas of the subject you will deal with
d) to show that the subject is worth writing about
e) to show that you have read some research on the subject
f) to get the readers attention with a provocative idea
g) to show how you intend to organise your essay
2. Evaluate the following thesis statements:
a. This essay is about the Romantic poets.
b. The middle of the eighteenth-century was a period of transition and
experiment in poetic styles.
c. William Blake was born in 1757.
d. William Blake broke away deliberately and violently from the
cultural pattern of his age.
e. William Wordsworth brought a completely new approach to the
writing of English poetry and his objection to over-stylised poetic
diction, his attitudes towards Nature, his choice of simple incidents
and humble people as subjects of his poetry are well known
characteristics of his poetry.
f. Is Samuel Taylor Coleridge a literary figure of immense
signification?
g. Samuel Taylor Coleridge: a literary figure of immense signification.
h. Childe Harold brought its author a dower of fame, which in the next
few years he was to squander to the uttermost.
3. Decide which term needs defining in each of the following titles,
and write a definition for two of them.
a. A Comparative Analysis of the Murder Rate in Countries with and
without Capital Punishment
b. Effective Methods of Treating Post-Natal Depression
c. The Canon and the Leftovers in Literary History
4. In the following introductory paragraphs, the sentences are
scrambled. On a separate piece of paper, rewrite them in the
correct order.
A) (1) Therefore, workaholics' lifestyles can affect their families, social
lives, and health. (2) Because they work so many hours, workaholics
may not spend enough time in leisure activities. (3) Nowadays, many
men and women work in law, accounting, real estate, and business. (4)
These people are serious about becoming successful, so they work long
hours during the week and even on weekends. (5) People who work
long hours are called "workaholics."
B) (1) Because citation is such an obvious surface phenomenon, it has
been much discussed in the academic world. (2) Citations are widely
recognized as being an important and distinctive property of academic
texts. (3) Indeed, there are several theories about the role and purpose of
citations in academic texts. (4) Thus, the presence or absence of
citations allows the casual reader to get an immediate sense of whether a
text is "academic" or "popular".

C) (1) During this period, children separate themselves from their

parents and become independent. (2) Teenagers express their
separateness most vividly in their choice of clothes, hairstyles, music,
and vocabulary. (3) The teenage years between childhood and adulthood
are a period of growth and separation.
5. Identify the type of introductory paragraph (general to specific,
anecdote, quote, definition, historical/ contextual overview) and
analyse the thesis statement:
A. Without contraries is no progression, wrote William Blake in The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and his Songs of Experience do not
simply represent the corruption of innocence by the immoral forces of
society, but show the inevitable distortion and sadness that systematized
empirical philosophy imposes on life, and through which the road to the
ultimate wisdom lies. The true vision cannot come to the innocent, for
innocence by its very nature is easily led astray, nor can it come to those
who acquiesce in the distortions of experience; those distortions must be
known and transcended. There is, that is to say, no road back to
innocence, only a road forward through experience to a comprehensive
vision. The poems in Songs of Experience are clearly the product of
evolutive disillusion, however temporary, as they present an
overwhelmingly sad picture of what man has made of man.
B. In an 1862 article in the Brooklyn Standard, Walt Whitman
imagined Brooklyns prominence among the cities of the world. At the
time of his writing, Brooklyn was the United States third largest city. In
an earlier article in the six-month series entitled Brooklyniana,
Whitman envisioned among future generations a widespread interest in
the narratives of Brooklyns diverse inhabitants, their stories of daily
life, personal chronicles and gossip, and most of all their authentic
reminiscences and memoirs of urban life. Whitman was prescient.
Although it is no longer its own city the consolidation into Greater
New York City occurred in 1898 Brooklyns inhabitants and
landscape are a recognizable and iconic element of twentieth-century
American arts and letters.
C. The term modernism, central to English-language criticism of early
twentieth-century literature at least since Laura Riding and Robert
Graves published their Survey of Modernist Poetry in 1927, has
continually widened in scope. Contemporary scholars often describe
modernism, understood as a cosmopolitan movement in literature and
the arts reflecting a crisis of representation, as having arisen in Europe
in the middle of the nineteenth century and developing up to, and even
after, the Second World War. However, even such a wide-ranging
account as the collection that Malcolm Bradbury and James McFarlane
edited in 1976, Modernism: A Guide to European Literature, 1890
1930, today seems strangely limited in its historical timeframe.
Modernism now seems to be an extensive movement, whose roots go
back well over a century and whose effects are still being felt today.
7. Choose one of the following thesis statements and write an
introductory paragraph. (You are allowed to make small changes.)
a. The short story as a genre is the best test for a writers literary skills.
b. Rock music incorporated influences from classical music, jazz, and
other musical styles.
c. Those poets (Burns, Blake, Chatterton) who wrote in the middle
and later years of the eighteenth century came too early to be
definitely included in the school of Wordsworth and Coleridge, but
in their work they are often as romantically inclined as any of their
great successors.
Sources. These exercises were taken or adapted from: Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature. Jordan, R. R.
Academic Writing; Nadell, Martha. "Writing Brooklyn." The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of New York. Oshima, Alice
& Ann Hogue. Introduction to Academic Writing. Savage, Alice & Masoud Shafiei. Effective Academic Writing 2. The Short
Essay.