Week 3 — One Point, Proven: Rebuilding a Paragraph — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Assignment 3 of the term — diagnose a weak paragraph with a reverse outline, rebuild it so it makes one point and proves it, build a paragraph of your own, and explain the move to someone outside the course.

This week you learned to state a controlling idea in a topic sentence, keep every sentence on that point, make sentences hand off with transitions and old-to-new flow, and develop the point with evidence plus explanation using PIE or MEAL. Last week you found the claim and the support in someone else's text; this week you build that structure yourself. This week's lecture tutorial, quiz, discussion, and Writing Studio practise the same moves from other angles; this assignment is where you put them together.

The task

This week you build paragraphs that make one point and prove it. Your material is an illustrative paragraph written for this course, attributed to no one, about a community library's hours, plus one paragraph of your own. Every sentence and example you submit is your own writing; do not quote any real author this week.

Part A — diagnose and rebuild a weak paragraph. Here is the illustrative paragraph, one sentence per line:

1. "The library's hours are bad."
2. "The library closes at six on weeknights."
3. "The library has two floors."
4. "Many people in our neighborhood work until five or later and need time to get there."
5. "The parking lot was repaved recently."
6. "Library cards are free."
7. "So the hours should change."

First write a reverse outline: beside each of the 7 sentences, note what it says and what job it does. Name the breaker and the two bare facts and say why each fails the find-the-breaker test or proves nothing. Of its 7 sentences, a reverse outline finds 1 breaker and 2 bare facts that prove nothing; say how many sentences carry over into your revision and how you got that number. A PIE paragraph has 4 jobs, and this paragraph already supplies 1 of them, its illustration; say how many jobs your revision must add. Then rebuild the paragraph in 5–7 sentences. Turn the complaint into a controlling idea a reader could answer with "prove it", keep the two useful facts as your illustration, add at least one explanation sentence that says what those facts prove, and close with a link sentence that earns the ending. Use at least one transition that names a real relationship, and place the comma after any introductory element and before any coordinating conjunction that joins two independent clauses. Label each sentence of your rebuild with its PIE or MEAL job.

Part B — build one paragraph of your own. Choose one topic: a four-day class schedule, campus parking, the dining hall's hours, a community library's hours, or a workplace's meeting policy. Write one developed body paragraph of 120–200 words with a topic sentence that states a controlling idea, evidence you observed yourself or can describe plainly (no invented statistics and no quotations), an explanation of what that evidence proves, and a link. Label each sentence with its PIE or MEAL job, then run the find-the-breaker test on it and say in one sentence what you cut or why nothing needed cutting. You are building one paragraph, not a whole essay; next week turns a controlling idea like this into a thesis.

Explain it to a non-expert

A friend who coordinates volunteers at a community garden says nobody reads their email updates past the first line. Write a 3–5 sentence message that tells them, in everyday words, what your Part A rebuild shows about making a paragraph work: one point up front, evidence, and a sentence that says why the evidence matters. Name one honest limit of the advice — for example, that a short notice may not need every part. Explain any term your friend might not know.

For a different, ungraded example, imagine a cousin whose science-fair poster lists results without saying what they mean. Model answer: "Your poster lists the plant heights, but it never says what they show. Try one sentence at the top that says the point, like which light worked best, and one after the numbers that says why they prove it. Judges skim, so the point has to come first. That won't fix a weak experiment, but it will make a good one easy to see."

Use that pattern for your friend, with your own explanation of your rebuild.

Reflect on your revision

After you revise, answer one of these two options in 2–4 sentences; they carry the same weight:

• (a) Which change made your Part A rebuild easier for a skeptical reader to follow, and what in your reverse outline showed you it was needed?
• (b) Which sentence in your own Part B paragraph changed most after feedback, and what job does it do now that it did not do before?

Deliverables

Submit in the assignment entry: the Part A reverse outline, your carry-over count and job count with how you got them, and your rebuilt paragraph with its labels; your Part B paragraph with its labels and breaker check; your message to your friend; and your reflection. Each part may be written, or recorded as audio or video with a transcript; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

How you'll be graded

The full analytic rubric is attached to this assignment in Canvas.

Academic integrity and AI use

The reverse outline, the rebuild, your own paragraph, the message, and the reflection must be your own words. This version of the assignment asks for no chatbot at any step. Do not invent statistics or quotations; describe what you have seen yourself.

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