Studies of written English (III)

The central idea of a paragraph is built up with the help of larger units than key-words, that is with the help of socalled topic sentences.

Topic sentence is a summarizing sentence of a paragraph. Topic sentences can also be used to tie up a group of paragraphs together holding the unity of a passage.

Generally the topic sentence comes first in a paragraph. It helps to understand the text and begin writing, е.g. "Numerous artificial languages have been carefully constructed and some of them are still in limited use. In 1887, an artificial language, Esperanto, was created. Esperanto has little grammar and drew its vocabulary from all the European languages..." (From "One Language for the World" by M. Pei). The writer proceeds from a general statement to particulars.

Occasionally the topic sentence comes last, when the writer wishes first to prepare his reader for the general idea or a conclusion, е.g. "You're like two friends who want to take their holiday together, but one of them wants to climb Greenland's snowy mountains while the other wants to fish off India's coral strand. Obviously it's not going to work" (From "The Razor's Edge" by W. S. Maugham).

Assignments:

1. Read the passage "Introducing London" and mark paragraphs with topic sentences. What central idea do they summarize? Where are they placed within the paragraph?

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