On Writing One-Paragraph Essay
Published on Nov 18, 2015
A short guidence for writing one-paragraph essays of different organizational patterns
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PRESENTATION OUTLINE
ON WRITING ONE-PARAGRAPH ESSAY
THEY ARE JUST LIKE REGULAR ESSAYS, ONLY IN ONE PARAGRAPH
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ONE-PARAGRAPH ESSAYS ARE SOMETIMES USED...
- In business communications
- For answers to critical reading questions
- For exam questions in almost any class
COMPONENTS
- Topic sentence (main idea)
- Supporting ideas (+examples)
- Concluding sentence
- Transitions
ORGANIZATIONAL PATTERNS
Photo by Chris Smith/Out of Chicago
Cause and effect
One cannot write for very long without having to explain why smth happened or why it is true or false. There are numerousu strategies for developing causes or reasons. The simplest is to ask the question Why? - and then to supply the answer
If, then, the language of the original colonists was merely the English of England, why does ours differ somewhat from theirs today?Three reasons can be offered. First, the people of Great Britain in the seventeenth century spoke different local dialects. What we now consider to be standard English for England developed from the language of London and the nearby counties. But the settlers of America came not only from that region but also from many others. New England was settled largely from the eastern counties. Pennsylvania received a heavy immigration from the north of Ireland. English as it came to be spoken in New England and much of Pennsylvania thus naturally was not the same English that developed as the standard in England. For instance in what we consider typical British English of today, the final has been lost. It is, however, partially preserved in General American, possibly because the Scotch-Irish of the eighteenth century preserved that sound, as they still do in Ireland. A second cause for the difference between the two countries lies in mere isolation. Language is always changing. When two groups of people speaking the same language are separated and remain incomparative isolation, change continues in the language of both groups, but naturally it does not continue in the same direction and at the same rate with both of them. The languages thus tend to become different. Third, the language in the United States has been subjected to various influences that have not affected the language in Great Britain: the environment, the languages of other early colonists andof later immigrants. George R. Stewart
Effects or consequences are handled much the same as reasons. But now the topic idea is regarded as causing the consequences discussed in the remainder of the paragraph.
If the moon were suddenly struck out of existence, we should be immediately appraised of the fact by a wail from every seaport in the kingdom. From London and from Liverpool we should hear the same story — the rise and fall of the tide had almost ceased. The ships in dock could not get out; the ships outside could not get in; and the maritime commerce of the world would be thrown intodire confusion.
Robert Ball
Robert Ball
Often, a topic entails several effects, not just one, as in the following case (see notes)
Thirdly, I worry about the private automobile. It is a dirty, noisy, wasteful, and lonely means of travel. It pollutes the air, ruins the safety and sociability of the street, and exercises upon the individuala discipline which takes away far more freedom than it gives him. It causes an enormous amount of land to be unnecessarily abstracted from nature and from plant life and to become devoid of any natural function. It explodes cities, grievously impairs the whole institution of neighborliness, fragmentizes and destroys communities. It has already spelled the end of our cities as real cultural and social communities, and has made impossible the construction of any others in their place. Together with the airplane, it has crowded out other, more civilized and more convenient means of transport, leaving older people, infirm people, poor people and children in a worse situation than they were a hundred years ago. It continues to lend a terrible element of fragility to our civilization, placing us in a situation where our life would break down completely if anything ever interfered with the oil supply.
George F. Kennan
George F. Kennan
More often cause and effect are more intimately related. Many Things are simultaneously causes and effects, as when the result you expect an action to have is the reason you do it.
In fact, the automobile, which was hailed as a liberator of human beings early in this century, has become one of our jailers. The city air, harbor-cool and fresh at dawn, is a sewer by 10. The 40-hour week, for which so many good union people died, is now a joke; on an average day, a large number of people now spend three to four hours simply traveling to those eight-hour-a-day jobs, stalled on roads, idling at bridges or in tunnels. Parking fees are $5 to $10 a day. The ruined city streets cost hundreds more for gashed tires, missing hubcaps and rattled engines.
Frequently cause and effect compose a chain: A gives rise to B, B to C, and so on. Thus B would be both the effect of A And the cause of C.
For many teenagers, there are numerous negative factors that can lead them to give up on their education and drop out of school. The first cause is that many teenagers lack positive role models in their lives. The lack of an encouraging adult in their lives can cause them to think negatively about themselves and it does not allow them to live up to their full potential. Also, the lack of a positive role model can cause them to get involved with the wrong kind of people and activities. When students get involved in these types of negative situations, they usually don't focus on school. This can lead many impressionable young children to give up on their education. Another factor that cause a student to give up on school is a lack of determination. If they're not determined to graduate, it can be very difficult for them to stay in school. Many students find it difficult to stay focused on school when they when they feel that getting an education is useless. Some students only attend school because they are forced to and they are not there to further their education. The third and final factor is peer pressure. Many students give into pure pressure very easily. If the pure pressure is negative, this can lead them into drugs and alcohol. The drugs and alcohol can cause them to drop out very easily because that is the only thing that they are focused on and it can easily ruin a child's life.
Transitional Phrases for cause:
- For/with clause
- Because (of)/due to
- since/as
Transitional Phrases for effect:
- so/therefore
- but
- as a result
- lead to/result in
- consequently
- thus
Comparison and contrast
Comparison treats two subjects of the same nature, as does contrast; but the former shows how the subjects are alike, while the latter focuses on how they differ. But despite this difference, comparison and contrast work in the same way, and we consider them together
Because they involve at least two subjects and offer severalpossibilities of emphasis, comparison and contrast pose problems of focus. For one thing, you must decide whether to deal only with similarities or only with dissimilarities, or to cover both. The topic sentence must make your intention clear to readers
Examples of topic sentences:
1) The difference between a sign and a symbol is, in brief. . .
2) It is a temptation to make a comparison between the nineteen twenties and the nineteen sixties, but the similarities are fewer than the differences.
A second decision of focusing concerns the subjects. Will you concentrate on one subject or treat both equally?
If you are comparing (or contrasting), say, New York and Los Angeles, you have three possibilities of focus: New York, Los Angeles, or both. Avoid being straightforward.
If your chief concernis, say, New York:
In many ways New York is like Los Angeles.
If it is both places:
In many ways New York and Los Angeles are alike.
When you compare or contrast any two subjects, which we can call A and B, you do so with regard to specific points,which we’ll call 1, 2, 3.
Now you may proceed in two ways — organizing around A and B
or
around 1, 2, 3.
Thus in contrasting New York and Los Angeles you might devote the first half of the paragraph (or an entire paragraph) to New York and the second half (or a new paragraph) to Los Angeles. In each section you would cover the same particular points and in the same order, say, climate, cultural facilities, and nightlife.
Conversely, you might prefer to make climate, cultural facilities, and nightlife the primary centers of your organization, devoting a paragraph or portion of a paragraph to each and discussing how the two cities differ.
Neither way of proceeding is necessarily better. Organizing Around A and B stresses each subject in its totality. Organizing around 1, 2, and 3 emphasizes particular likenesses or differences. It all depends on what you want to do.
The Following case the writer elected to organize around A and B here Western civilization and Eastern (see notes):
Americans and Western Europeans, in their sensitivity to lingering problems around them, tend to make science and progress their scapegoats. There is a belief that progress has precipitated wide-spread unhappiness, anxieties and other social and emotional problems. Science is viewed as a cold mechanical discipline having nothing to do with human warmth and the human spirit. But to many of us from the nonscientific East, science does not have such repugnant associations. We are not afraid of it, nor are we disappointed by it. We know all too painfully that our social and emotional problems festered long before the age of technology. To us, science is warm and reassuring. It promises hope. It is helpingus at long last gain some control over our persecutory environments, alleviating age-old problems not only physical but also, and especially, problems of the spirit.
F. M. Esfandiary
F. M. Esfandiary
In the next example, on the other hand, a historian contrasting Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth century organizes not around the broad categories of Roman and Reformer, but rather around the specific differences that set them at war (see notes):
The Catholic believed in the authority of the Church; the Reformer, in the authority of reason. Where the Church had spoken, the Catholic obeyed. His duty was to accept without question the laws which councils had decreed, which popes and bishops administered, and so far as in him lay to enforce in others the same submission to an outward rule which he regarded as divine. All shades of Protestants on the other hand agreed that authority might err; that Christ had left no visible representative, whom individually they were bound to obey; that religion was the operation of the Spirit on the mind and conscience; that the Bible was God’s word, which each Christian was to read, and which with God’s help and his natural intelligence he could not fail to understand. The Catholic left his Bible to the learned. The Protestant translated the Bible, and brought it to the door of every Christian family. The Catholic prayed in Latin, and whether he understood his words or repeated them as a form the effect was the same; for it was magical. The Protestant prayed with his mind as an act of faith in a language intelligible to him, or he could not pray at all. The Catholic bowed in awe before his wonder-working image, adored his relics, and gave his life into the guidance of his spiritual director. The Protestant tore open the machinery of the miracles, flung the bones and ragged garments into the fire, and treated priests as men like himself. The Catholic was intolerant upon principle; persecution was the corollary of hiscreed. The intolerance of the Protestant was in spite of his creed. In denying the right of the Church to define his own belief, he had forfeited the privilege of punishing the errors of those who chose to differ from him.
James Anthony Froude
James Anthony Froude
Transitional Phrases for comparison:
- similar(-ity; -ly) to
- as well as
- alike
- equal(ly)
- in the same way
- likewise
- same
- lust like/as
Transitional Phrases for contrast:
- although
- however/nevertherless/but
- as opposed to
- at the same time
- by contrast/in contrast to
- conversly/differently
- despite/in spite of
- etc.
