Paragraph Basics Practice

Topic Sentences Activity 1

The activities below give you the opportunity to find out how well you understand the basic parts of a paragraph. If you have a difficult time recognizing these elements, you may return to review the information in the Let's Study section and then try these practice activities again.

Topic Sentences Activity 1: The sentences below are all topic sentences taken from different paragraphs. Highlight the topic and underline the main idea in each one.

1. Global warming is one of the most serious problems facing society today.
2. Of all the academic skills, one of the most important to practice daily is reading.
3. For most people, changing dietary and exercise habits can be very challenging.
4. American students have more educational debt than ever before.

Source: LibreTexts, https://human.libretexts.org/Courses/Prince_George's_Community_College/ESL_Academic_Writing/
01%3A_Paragraph_Review_and_Sentence_Types/1.02%3A_Topic_Sentences
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Answer Key

1. Global warming is one of the most serious problems facing society today.
2. Of all the academic skills, one of the most important to practice daily is reading.
3. For most people, changing dietary and exercise habits can be very challenging.
4. American students have more educational debt than ever before.

Topic Sentences Activity 2

Choose the best topic sentence for this paragraph from the sentences below.

As a dog owner, the child must take care of the animal's daily needs. The dog must be fed and exercised every day. A dog is completely dependent on its owner for all its needs, including the need for good health and a safe environment. Therefore, being responsible for a dog also means taking care of the dog so that it stays healthy. Furthermore, the owner must take responsibility for the safety of the dog and the safety of the people it comes into contact with. If the child forgets any of these duties, or ignores any of the dog's needs, the dog will suffer. This teaches the child that their responsibility to the dog is more important than their desire to play with toys, talk on the phone, or watch TV. This is true not only for the care of a dog, but also for the care of oneself, another person, or one's job. Learning how to look after the health and welfare of a dog leads to learning how to take responsibility for oneself.

Activity 3

Steps for Writing the Narrative Paragraph

1. As you know, your writing should begin with some brainstorming. Think about your topic - what do you want to say about it? Use a mind map to start to collect some ideas.
2. Make a plan for your paragraph. Make sure you are presenting your ideas in the order in which they occurred.
3. Write your first draft. Don't worry about getting everything perfect at this stage; just get your ideas on paper. Make sure you answer the Wh− questions: Who, What, When, Where, and Why.
4. Revise your draft. Make sure that you have used time expressions to make it clear when the events in the story happen. For example, "in 2021," "after a couple of hours," "a short time later," and "a year or so later".
5. Edit your paragraph and write your final draft. Now that your ideas are in place, you can focus on grammar, spelling, word choice, and punctuation.
   
   

It is important to use the correct part of speech.

• Noun: The things, people, ideas, etc. that we talk and write about
• Verb: The action or condition (states) of the nouns
• Pronoun: The words that replace nouns (I, you, he, she, it, they, me, him, her, them, etc.)
• Adjective: A word to describe nouns
• Adverbs: A word to describe a verb or an adjective. Most of these end in -ly

Source: LibreTexts
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License.