Developing Relationships between Ideas

Read this article about connecting sentences within a paragraph in a meaningful way. Complete the practice activities, in which you will identify the relationships between ideas in a paragraph and practice developing a paragraph that connects ideas. You will continue to develop these skills throughout the course.

Developing the Relationship Between Ideas

You now know a couple of prewriting strategies that can help you plan out a paragraph. But a paragraph is not just a list of facts or ideas about a topic; it has to present the information in a meaningful way. In order to do that, the sentences have to be related to one another. Certain words provide clues as to how sentences are related to one another. See if you can figure out the relationship in the example below.

Jamal is good at math and chemistry. However, he is not good at history.

The first sentence gives us information about the school subjects in which Jamal does well. In the second sentence, "however" is used to present us with a contrast. In this case, "however" signals that the second sentence will be about a subject in which Jamal struggles.

Here is the example again, with an additional sentence added:

Jamal is good at math and chemistry. However, he is not good at history. Yesterday some of his friends came over to help him find a job.

What is the relationship between the new sentence and the previous sentence? The new sentence is about Jamal, but it is not related to his schoolwork, unlike the first two sentences. Let's look at some more sentences:


Example 1:

Jamal is good at math and chemistry (1). However, he is not good at history (2). Yesterday some of his friends came over to help him find a job (3). They ended up filling out forms all afternoon, and Jamal did not get his homework done (4).


Example 2:

Jamal is good at math and chemistry (1). However, he is not good at history (2). Yesterday some of his friends came over to help him find a job (3). Because Jamal is good at math, Lee thought he should apply to be a cashier at a coffee shop (4).

Which of the two examples has clearer relationships between all of the sentences? In other words, which one goes more logically from one idea to the next?

Example 2 has clearer relationships between the ideas in the sentences. The final sentence establishes the relationship between sentences 3 and 4 and relates them to sentence 1. Each sentence is now building upon the sentences that came before, and the topic of the paragraph is how being good at school can help with other activities.

In Example 1, the final sentence creates a relationship between sentences 3 and 4, one of cause and effect. Because event A happened (his friends came over), event B followed (he did not get his homework done). However, it is not clear how not doing his homework relates to the first two sentences. As a result, the topic of the paragraph is unclear. 

Here are some common relationships between sentences with words used to signify those relationships:

Examples Cause/Effect Contrasts Conclusions
and, another, in addition, such as, moreover, for example, for instance, to illustrate because, as a result, consequently, therefore, thus but, yet, neither, however, although, nevertheless, though in conclusion, finally, to sum up, in the end

Source: Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, http://opencourselibrary.org/eng-9y-pre-college-english/
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