One idea, developed honestly. Master the paragraph and the essay is just paragraphs in the right order.
A finalised working thesis and a 3 to 4 point paragraph spine.
Build the unit the essay is made of, the paragraph.
Workbook Ch 8 to 10 & 13, paragraph development (pp. 34 to 39), topic sentences (40 to 43), unity (44), and paraphrasing (57).
A paragraph develops a single idea that supports the essay's thesis, and develops it completely before moving on.
If a paragraph carries two ideas, it owes the reader two paragraphs.
Can you write a single sentence that captures the whole paragraph? If it takes two, you have two paragraphs hiding in one.
The topic sentence states the paragraph's one idea and connects it to the thesis. It is a promise, the rest of the paragraph keeps it.
“There are many factors in Coupang's success.” A label, not a claim.
“Coupang's overnight delivery was possible only because it owned the warehouses its rivals rented.”
Topic sentence, the claim this paragraph proves.
A specific source, statistic, or example.
Your reasoning, how the evidence proves the lead.
A sentence that lands the point and sets up the next.
Lead and Finish are short. Evidence is brief. Analysis is most of the paragraph.
Coupang reset Korean retail through logistics, not price. By 2023 it operated fulfilment centres within ten kilometres of most of the population, enabling next-morning delivery on millions of items. Rivals could match a discount overnight, but they could not conjure a warehouse network in a quarter. The advantage was physical and slow to copy, which is precisely why price wars failed to dent Coupang's share, competitors were fighting on the wrong axis. The lesson is that in Korean e-commerce, distance to the customer became the real currency.
The most common reason a paragraph comes back for revision: it summarises the source for five sentences and analyses for one. Flip it. Your analysis is the paragraph; the evidence just feeds it.
Pull up a paragraph you've already written. Honestly, what is the analysis-to-source ratio?
Paraphrasing proves you understood the source. Quoting only proves you found it. Most of your evidence should be paraphrased.
The exact wording is the evidence, a law, a definition, a phrase so precise that rewording would lose it.
You want the source's finding, not its sentence. Which is almost always.
Quoting and paraphrasing both need a citation. Changing the words does not change whose idea it is.
Understand the idea, then cover the source. If you can't restate it from memory, you don't understand it yet.
Write it in your own structure and words, not a thesaurus swap of theirs.
Compare to the original: different words and sentence shape. Then add the citation.
New words, new structure, same idea, cited. This is the goal.
A few words swapped, the sentence shape kept. Cited or not, this fails.
Their words or structure with no citation. A panel matter, every time.
Patchwriting is the trap honest students fall into. The fix is step one: look away from the source before you write.
Turn each label into a topic sentence that makes a claim your paragraph could prove.
Does it name one idea, and could a reader disagree? If it just announces a subject, climb higher.
Take one source from your annotated bibliography and one point from your outline.
A clean version of this paragraph is what's due next week. Keep it.
Cohesion, transitions & peer review, and your paragraph (Writing #1) is due. We'll make paragraphs flow before you submit.
Week 07 · Next, Cohesion, Transitions & Peer Review · Paragraph due