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Okay.

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So now let's have a discussion about something that's very, very important.

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When it comes to writing, there are some basic foundational elements that you have to follow.

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And in this lecture, we're going to talk about the foundations of a good paragraph, which are made

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of unity or coherence and completeness.

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These are the these are the foundations of creating a very good paragraph.

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I think a lot of times students from other countries, sometimes you guys don't understand the foundations

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of writing in the American way or in the British way or in the Australian way.

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And it's not to say that the American, British or Australian ways are correct, but those are those

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are the standards that you're being judged against.

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You're being judged on an American standard or a British standard.

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So you have to make sure that you write your paragraphs under the under those sets of rules.

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Right.

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So if you're from France or you're from Brazil or China, there may be different rules for paragraph

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writing in your language.

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And if I were trying to write Chinese, I would have to write according to those paragraph writing standards.

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So in this lecture, I'm going to try to explain to you these foundations, because many times when

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I see students writing essays and I look at their paragraphs, the paragraph, the paragraph writing

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is sometimes just flat out bad because the foundations are not being followed.

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And I've always said students that have a strong foundation, a strong base, are always going to get

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very, very good scores because they are their base is very strong.

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And that means everything else they're adding onto it is also going to be very well written.

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All right.

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So let's get started and move into this.

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You guys already know what a paragraph is.

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Of course, it's a series of sentences that are all grouped together around one central topic.

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One topic, right?

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One central topic, not five topics.

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Some of you guys make a big, big mistake in your topic sentences by putting in the central topic or

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two or three central topics.

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So you put in the central topic and the details in your topic sentence.

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A paragraph is about one central topic, and then you have other sentences that follow directly from

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that central topic and that explain that central topic.

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Right?

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The four basic elements of a good paragraph are unity, order, coherence and completeness.

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If you have a good paragraph that has these four elements, you are going to look very good in the eyes

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of a greater right.

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So what is unity?

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Unity is where you start with a topic sentence.

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All the other sentences support that topic.

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They point back to that topic.

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Everything is unified around that topic.

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Very often when I'm reading, writing by students and I'm reading a specific paragraph, the paragraph

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will start off going down the middle of the road.

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Like if you're driving a car and the car is going down the middle of the road, and then suddenly the

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student turns right and just drives completely off the road and you've just lost all unity.

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All right.

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Here is an example of bad unity.

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Look at these sentences here.

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My favorite day of the week is Monday, because that is when we have sport class.

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I love how we learn new things in history class.

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Right now that may seem funny to you, but this is the kind of stuff that I see and what graders see

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a lot of times.

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And many students don't realize they're doing that right.

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This topic sentence is about it being his favorite day because of sport class.

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That's the central topic.

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That means everything must flow from that topic.

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You can't talk about other classes.

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You can't talk about history.

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Class is not that's not what the central controlling idea is.

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Now we have this paragraph which is now corrected.

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It has relevance because everything is about sport classes.

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Everything is related to that one simple, that one central theme.

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Right.

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We now have very good unity here.

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Our next basic foundational element of a good paragraph deals with order.

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This basically deals with, you know, you have different types of order, you know, chronological

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chronology, sorry, chronology, going from most to least important and also logic, you know, going

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in the correct logical order.

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One recipe for a really scoring low is to have unorganized, confusing paragraphs because your order

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is bad.

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Right.

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Order allows you to flow from one idea to the next idea, which is very, very important.

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One thing that I want you to do, this is a little exercise for you.

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If you can, you you should if you can.

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And I know you can.

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So stop.

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Stop the tape.

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Now, you're watching this recording.

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Stop the tape now and take a look at these 12 sentences.

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Go grab a piece of paper and then try to put these sentences in the correct order.

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You'd be amazed at how many times I read paragraphs, and it just has bad order.

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And so if you can just stop it.

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And then when we go to the next slide, you can see if you are able to put these into the correct order.

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So I'm about to go to the next slide.

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So I'm assuming that you have stopped it and tried to put these in order so you can see how it came

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out.

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Now we have these sentences in the correct order.

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Right.

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This is how it should flow from beginning to end.

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All right.

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Understanding order and sequencing is very, very important.

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And again, many times that's cultural, right?

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I understand that.

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But you just have to make sure that you have the sequence in order things according to the culture that

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you're doing the exam for and you're doing this for a British English Australian.

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I'll include Australia also way of ordering.

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Now let's talk about coherence.

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Coherence is very important.

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And you see you see that very specifically mentioned in the grading rubrics.

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And I'm going to do I'm going to I'm going to talk about coherence briefly here and then also going

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to do a separate lecture that's only about coherence.

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Here.

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We're going to talk about just two primary types of coherence with the transition words and also using

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consistent verb tenses and point of view.

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All right.

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So we know what a transition is.

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A transition is where you have words that are connected together or phrases that are connected together.

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Transitions act like signposts that really point you to the next stage of where the conversation is

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moving in the paragraph.

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Here is an here is here.

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Our verb tense is used incorrectly.

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Right.

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We have our first two sentences in the past.

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Our last two sentences in the present.

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Please don't do that.

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It's very easy to make this mistake.

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So you have to be mindful and be aware of what you're doing.

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Here we have that same paragraph with everything in the past.

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This is how you want to be able to write, to be able to build your coherence.

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Here we have our point of view.

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Our point of view with consistency.

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Our point of view is consistent.

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Actually, this isn't really about verb tenses.

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This is really about point of view consistency in terms of the title heading.

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It should be just point of view.

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Consistency is the point of view.

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You can see in the first sentence is his he he is.

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But then we switch to I and my right.

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You have to keep your point of view consistent.

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Finally, we have completeness for a complete paragraph.

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You need enough information to support the main idea.

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Completeness deals with your topic sentences, your supporting sentences, and your concluding sentence.

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Right?

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A really good paragraph has excellent completeness.

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So the big concept here strongly written paragraphs, strongly stro in gl y, stro in gl y.

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Strongly written paragraphs will include all four elements described.

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Good luck in writing your essay and if you have any questions, please let me know and I will be happy

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to help you out in any way I can.

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Thank you very much.