Teaching the Academic Body Paragraph in Content-Based Instruction

초록

Although most writing books intended for college-level students discuss elements and styles of a body paragraph, e.g. the topic sentence and comparison/contrast, they overlook one area that distinguishes the academic writing that many undergraduate courses expect students to be familiar with: how and where to incorporate information from class readings in body paragraphs. Based on the qualitative analyses of students’ writing using the action research framework proposed by Kemmis and McTaggart (1988), this paper presents a four-step organizational scheme of academic body paragraphs, illustrates it with a student example, and provides a lesson plan for a college ESL/EFL writing class using Content-Based Instruction. Also discussed are how to write topic sentences from the thesis statement, what to avoid in topic sentences, and how to create cohesion between body paragraphs with simple, yet effective, transitional words or phrases in topic sentences.

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