If your thesis gives the reader a roadmap to your essay, then body paragraphs should closely follow that map. The reader should be able to predict what follows your introductory paragraph by simply reading the thesis statement. You need to add elaboration and explanation to flesh out the points listed in your outline. Your support (quotes, paraphrases, etc.) will need to answer questions such as "How does my quote support my topic sentence?" Elaboration makes up a large amount of your paragraph, at least two-thirds and is very important to have in order to have a good essay. The body paragraphs present the evidence you have gathered to confirm your thesis. Before you begin to support your thesis in the body, you must find information from a variety of sources that support and give credit to what you are trying to prove.
Without primary support, your argument is not likely to be convincing. Primary support can be described as the major points you choose to expand on your thesis. It is the most important information you select to argue for your point of view. Each point you choose will be incorporated into the topic sentence for each body paragraph you write. Your primary supporting points are further supported by supporting details within the paragraphs.
Tip Remember that a worthy argument is backed by examples. In order to construct a valid argument, good writers conduct lots of background research and take careful notes. They also talk to people knowledgeable about a topic in order to understand its implications before writing about it.
Remember, in college, you are not limited to just three main subtopics that support your thesis statement. Depending on your assignment, you may examine a topic from many angles and have quite a few topic sentences that related to your thesis. In some cases, you may need to select which subtopics most support your thesis and remove some others. Remind yourself of your main argument, and delete any ideas that do not directly relate to it. Omitting unrelated ideas ensures that you will use only the most convincing information in your body paragraphs. Choose at least three of only the most compelling points. These will serve as the topic sentences for your body paragraphs.
Refer to the previous exercise and select three of your most compelling reasons to support the thesis statement. Remember that the points you choose must be specific and relevant to the thesis. The statements you choose will be your primary support points, and you will later incorporate them into the topic sentences for the body paragraphs. Please share with a classmate and compare your answers.
When you support your thesis, you are revealing evidence. Evidence includes anything that can help support your stance. The following are the kinds of evidence you will encounter as you conduct your research:
WRITING AT WORK
In any job where you devise a plan, you will need to support the steps that you lay out. This is an area in which you would incorporate primary support into your writing. Choosing only the most specific and relevant information to expand upon the steps will ensure that your plan appears well-thought-out and precise.
You can consult a vast pool of resources to gather support for your stance. Citing relevant information from reliable sources ensures that your reader will take you seriously and consider your assertions. Use any of the following credible sources for your essay: newspapers or news organization websites, magazines, encyclopedias, and scholarly journals, which are periodicals that address topics in a specialized field. Please see section 10.5 " Evaluating and Working with Sources."
Draft Supporting Detail Sentences for Each Topic Sentence
After deciding which primary support points you will use as your topic sentences, you must add details to clarify and demonstrate each of those points. These supporting details provide examples, facts, or evidence that support the topic sentence.
The following paragraph contains supporting detail sentences for the the topic sentence, which is underlined.
J.D. Salinger, a World War II veteran, suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder, a disorder that influenced the themes in many of his works. He did not hide his mental anguish over the horrors of war and once told his daughter, “You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose, no matter how long you live.” His short story “A Perfect Day for a Bananafish” details a day in the life of a WWII veteran who was recently released from an army hospital for psychiatric problems. The man acts questionably with a little girl he meets on the beach before he returns to his hotel room and commits suicide. Another short story, “For Esmé – with Love and Squalor,” is narrated by a traumatized soldier who sparks an unusual relationship with a young girl he meets before he departs to partake in D-Day. Finally, in Salinger’s only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, he continues with the theme of posttraumatic stress, though not directly related to war. From a rest home for the mentally ill, sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield narrates the story of his nervous breakdown following the death of his younger brother.
Exercise 2 \(\PageIndex\)
Using the three topic sentences you composed for the outline you created in Chapter 5, draft at least three supporting details for each point.
Thesis statement: ____________________________________________
Primary supporting point 1: ____________________________________________
Supporting details: ____________________________________________
Primary supporting point 2: ____________________________________________
Supporting details: ____________________________________________
Primary supporting point 3: ____________________________________________
Supporting details: ____________________________________________
Authored by: GoReadWriteNow. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube license.
In addition to supporting details, college level paragraphs add quite a bit of explanation and elaboration in body paragraphs. Development of explanation and elaboration is one of the big differences between high school and college-level writing. Rather than just appearing in one paragraph all by itself -- possibly in a conclusion -- explanation and elaboration should appear through your essay. Some sentence stems you can use to help you develop your explanation and elaboration appear in the following list.
One strategy for developing paragraphs fully can be memorized by the acronym PIE. The acronym makes it easy to remember the elements needed to fully develop a paragraph in an academic essay. PIE stands for:
P oint – (also known as the topic sentence). It is the main idea of your paragraph. It:
Information -- (quotes, paraphrases, data, and occasionally personal experience). It is the evidence with which you are working. Information includes:
Never end a paragraph with information!
Explanation/elaboration -- The information that connects you inforamtion to your point, explains and discusses your informaiton and ideas, and connects the paragraph to your thesis.
In a standard deductive paragraph, one sentence of "E" connects your first piece of information to your topic sentence.
Aim for four sentences of explanation after each chunk of "I" in your paragraph.
Questions to ask yourself to help develop your E:
o Why is this important?
o What is the effect of this?
o How does this happen?
o How is the author’s opinion different from your opinion or another author’s opinion?
o Are there any logical fallacies or emotional appeals in the writer’s claim? (If you are arguing against what the writer is saying)
o What is the problem or benefit of thinking about something this way?
In reality, you don't just want just a point, a chunk of information, and explanation. Rather you want to intersperse the information and explanation between the the various reasons that support the topic sentence. Thus, the real structure of a PIE paragraph looks something like this:
P (topic sentence)
E (explanation connects I to the P)
E (explanation of I – minimum 2 – 3 sentences; connection of last piece of I to next piece of I – 1 sentence)
E (explanation of E – minimum 2 – 3 sentences; connection of last piece of I to point of whole paragraph)
**Note: You are not limited to this amount of information or elaboration, but if you develop it well, it should probably be enough for one paragraph.
Identify whether each sentence in the following paragraph is P, I, or E by writing a P, I, or E next to each sentence.
Schools should not prevent students from obtaining lunches even though the administrative records or money is not in place. The effects of doing so are clear in an article that recently appeared on Vox. According to the article, during a recent government shutdown “6,300 low-income kids in six states couldn’t attend their federally funded Head Start preschools,” so the children couldn’t receive the meals they would have normally eaten there (Fernandez Campbell). These children may not get anything to eat, their parents may not eat to ensure their kids do, or it comes out of some other essential area of the parents’ very limited budget. This out-of-touch arguing only makes low-income families’ lives more difficult. Local governments or charitable organizations should ensure these centers stay open even if the federal government doesn’t because the effect on children is detrimental mentally and physically. Even if parents can stay home during the outage, children are in no mood to learn from them if they are hungry, and parents are probably not in the mood to teach when they don’t know where their children’s next meal is coming from. It’s even worse when local school districts themselves don’t serve children’s lunch meals. According to an article in the Democrat & Chronicle, school cashiers routinely refuse to serve food to students if their paperwork isn’t in proper order (Murphy). Lunch shaming – when school districts would not serve subsidized lunch to students because either the paperwork wasn’t processed or the parents hadn’t uploaded their part of the payment online – causes many problems for students. Children aren’t in control of what the adults in a district or their parents do, and they should not have to pay a price with their learning. Students can’t focus in school if they haven’t eaten enough. Because they are uncomfortable and hungry, they are more likely to act out and have discipline problems and they are less likely to learn the lessons of the day. This does not seem to be in line with the mission of schools or in the best interest of students. School districts need to find a better way to manage this and other social situations in order to improve the learning environment.
The following video expands on the idea of elaborating your ideas.
Video \(\PageIndex<1>\)Insightful Analysis. Authored by: GoReadWriteNow. License: All Rights Reserved. License Terms: Standard YouTube
This page most recently updated on June 4, 2020.
