Paragraph Editing Practice

Rule 1 - Unity

A paragraph is about only one topic.

Every sentence in the paragraph must be related to the topic and the controlling idea.

If a sentence doesn’t support the topic sentence, it is an irrelevant sentence.

Multiple Choice

Which sentence is irrelevant?

Clean Eating

(1) My favourite type of diet is clean eating. (2) First of all, clean eating recipes are all new and it is exciting to try them. To make it clear, these recipes need different types of ingredients and it is fun to go shopping to find them. (3) Secondly, clean food is really healthy. (4) You can also eat fried food. (5) For example, if you try to cook some clean food, you can see that all your ingredients will be healthy ones such as broccoli, olive oil, spinach and others. All in all, I really love clean eating.

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Multiple Choice

Which sentence is irrelevant?

My favourite activity to do at home is growing plants. (1) To begin with, I love their look. Wherever you put plants, they are pleasant to look at, so you can decorate the rooms with them. (2) For example, if you have a room with brown furniture, it is a good idea to decorate that room with green plants or white flowers. They always make the room look more beautiful and stylish. (3) Secondly, growing plants makes me feel good. Watering them every day and watching them grow are a big pleasure for me. (4) I always feel nervous when I think about them. (5) It gives me a sense of responsibility to take care of them and I love this feeling. In short, growing plants at home is a great activity for me.

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Rule 2 - Coherence

​order of the ideas

Ideas are generally written in order of importance or in some other order that makes sense to the reader.

Rule 3 - Cohesion

Your sentences should be well-connected and refer to each other.

We use the following devices for this:

*transitions

*the definite article (the)

*pronouns

Transitions

​make your sentences & ideas well-connected

first(ly)

next

finally

Open Ended

What other transitions do you know?

the

helps readers know that you are talking about the same thing you have previously talked about

​example: My favourite book is Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. First of all, the book is really funny.

"​the" means?

pronouns

connect your sentence to a previous sentence

Examples:

*For example, there is a character named Tyrion and he is really intelligent. He always gives clever answers to questions.

*First, speaking classes are fun. We usually play games and do entertaining activities. These are very enjoyable.

*he & these