Week 3 — The Paragraph

Welcome to your Week 3 Start Here page.

Why this matters

A nursing student writing a shift note, a line cook explaining a menu change, and a job applicant writing a cover letter all need one point, evidence, and a sentence that says why it matters.

In plain language

A paragraph is where a piece of writing does its real work: it makes one point and proves it. This week you learn to build that kind of paragraph on purpose. You open with a topic sentence (the sentence that states the paragraph's point) and keep every other sentence on that point, which is unity (every sentence serving one idea). Your sentences lead into one another, which is coherence (sentences that hand off smoothly), and they back the point with development (evidence plus an explanation of what it proves). You practice all of it on the running draft's body paragraph about phones in lecture classes, first in a weak form and then in a revised one.

• Already covered: Week 1 gave you the five questions and revision; Week 2 split a text's topic, claim, and support.
• This week: the topic sentence, unity, coherence, and development with PIE and MEAL.
• How they connect: a paragraph's topic sentence is a claim, and the rest is its support.
• Where we're going next: Week 4, Thesis & Essay Structure, scales one paragraph's claim up to a whole essay.

Focus

How do I make one point fully?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] write a topic sentence a reader could answer with "prove it"
• [ ] find the sentence that breaks a paragraph's unity
• [ ] build a paragraph with PIE or MEAL, explanation included
• [ ] run a reverse-outline check on one paragraph

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 3 (about 40 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Work the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and the practice set (about 20 minutes).
3. Do the Writing Studio (about 90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

Checkpoint: turn the running draft's weak paragraph into a claim, evidence, an explanation, and a link.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early if a step snags.

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