Thread by @raulpacheco

One of the components of writing that my students struggle with the most is CREATING PARAGRAPHS. This thread is intended to serve as a showcase of various frameworks and methods to craft good paragraphs.

As I always do, I'm going to use examples of other scholars' writing.

I had intended to write this thread a while ago but reading this article by Anindita Sarkar really cemented in me the importance of showing how to write good paragraphs.

The paragraph I highlighted has a central idea: to understand water access you need a gendered lens.

In this paragraph, Sarkar outlines the core idea of her paragraph, by sequentially and carefully making her argument:

1) everyday practices of women accessing water are defined by physical/economic access, but also mediated by the social spaces within which these women operate.

Note how Sarkar starts with her first idea and then carefully provides scaffolding for her argument - explaining the characteristics of social spaces, the gendered nature of water fetching, and thusly, the importance of understanding lived experiences of women in accessing water.

Personally I found Sarkar's writing beautiful and compelling. I also found this paragraph rich with ideas, concepts and analytical power. These types of articles are the kind of papers that I really need a long time not to understand, but to absorb the richness of ideas.

THESE types of articles that require very, very deep engagement and thought are the ones that I not only highlight, scribble on, and digitally capture in my Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED) but I also write notes in my Everything Notebook raulpacheco.org/2020/01/what-k…

Personally, I find writing a paragraph a good "work packet". Instead of worrying about writing 2,000 words a day, or write for 3 hours in a row, my simple target is: FINISH ONE PARAGRAPH.

I try to design my paragraphs in a way that there is ONE IDEA.

raulpacheco.org/2015/04/my-acw…

With my students, I tell them to create paper outlines by using either Triggering Questions (questions that trigger their memory/or make them want to answer them) or "Topic Sentences" raulpacheco.org/2018/03/two-me…

Each paragraph usually starts with a Topic Sentence or a Triggering Question raulpacheco.org/2018/10/writin…

Once we have the outline with Topic Sentences and/or Triggering Questions, we can start filling up those paragraphs one by one, sentence by sentence.

I find that using small goals for my writing sessions (125 words, 15 minutes, 3 sentences, 2 paragraphs) helps me feel less stressed about the overall writing project. I am finishing up 4 book manuscripts, you can imagine how stressed I feel.

raulpacheco.org/2018/04/125-25…

I am going to now suggest blog posts by several scholars who also write about academic writing and whom I respect enormously.

1) @rachaelcayley suggests writing ideas in continuous flow, and THEN use Breaking Points to break up paragraphs explorationsofstyle.com/2014/02/21/bre…

2) @ThomsonPat offers the MEAL approach to writing paragraphs

- Main Idea
- Evidence
- Analysis
- Link back - link forward

patthomson.net/2018/11/05/get…

3) @PJDunleavy on his @write4research website offers another structured method to write paragraphs

- Topic sentence
- Argument/body
- Token sentences (evidence)
- Wrap sentence ("end of paragraph" marker)

medium.com/advice-and-hel…

I find some of the rules of paragraph writing that you get in classes somewhat idiosyncratic. For example, I do apply some of these to my writing and that of my students:

- say no to 2-sentences' paragraphs (3-7 is readable, >9 becomes almost impossible to clearly comprehend )

4) @thesiswhisperer likes Hayot's strategy to analyse and write paragraphs thesiswhisperer.com/2019/05/22/how…

If I have to be 100% honest with you all y'all, I really DO NOT LIKE Hayot's paragraph inverted U structure.

I have, in fact, read Hayot's Elements of Academic Style raulpacheco.org/2019/09/the-el…

But I found different insights, and to be quite frank, I am not sold on the inverted U.

Now, which other models do we have to help us craft paragraphs? I think this is where the whole "rhetorical moves" elements of academic writing is useful.

We need to consider two components:

1) the STRUCTURE of the paragraph

and

2) the CONTENT of the paragraph.

You can use any of the models I have mentioned before (Cayley, Pacheco-Vega, Hayot, Dunleavy) to structure your paragraph. And THEN to fill up the paragraph you need to provide content organized in a sequence that provides evidence, argument, etc. That is, "argumentative".

For example, you can use the CREW model to write your paragraph.

Booth, Coulomb and Williams' original CREW model (claim, reasoning, evidence, warrant) has evolved, but it is very helpful. raulpacheco.org/2019/07/the-cr…

Or you can use the Toulmin style of argumentation owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_wr….

Or you can use the Graf & Birkenstein "They Say/I Say" set of templates to develop your argument raulpacheco.org/2017/05/they-s…

In the end, my writing target goal is A PARAGRAPH.

In this thread, I've provided a few different strategies to STRUCTURE and develop the argument that will form the CONTENT of your paragraph.

Hopefully this approach will be useful.

END OF THREAD.

NEW BLOG POST: A few structured strategies that we can use to craft paragraphs raulpacheco.org/2020/08/a-few-…

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