Today’s lesson is on one of the most important principles of academic writing: unity. We are going to explore some ways to make paragraphs unified. The PPT for this lesson can be found here.
1. Principles of unity
These are the important pointers you want to keep in mind when considering unity within your paragraphs;
-unity = all material is clearly relevant to an essay's main point (thesis statement)
-unity within a paragraph = only one main idea is discussed
-the topic sentence of each paragraph contains the main idea; every supporting sentence within a paragraph should directly explain or prove the main idea
2. In-class writing
Form a group of 2 or 3 people. Then, write a paragraph describing the discrepancies between “your dream college life and your actual college life at UIUC”. Bare these points in mind when writing your paragraph
- Is there a clear thesis statement that gives the topic of my paper and my idea about that topic?
- Is all the material in the paper relevant to my thesis?
- Is all the material in each paragraph relevant to the topic sentence of the paragraph?
- Are the relationships between ideas clear?
- Make sure you upload your work to Dropbox.
3. In-class editing
Revise other group’s paragraph and give them comments for improvement. (E.G., Group 1 revise Group 2’s, Group 2 revise Group 3’s.. and so on). Use this checklist to record your initial response then type it out.
