Body Paragraph Workshop
Today you are writing one or two body paragraphs on your research topic. You are not writing an introduction. Do not start with broad context, a hook, or a thesis statement. You are jumping straight into the work of making and supporting a specific point.
Before you write, decide on the single claim you want your paragraph to make. This should be narrower than your research question. Your research question is the territory; your paragraph claim is one path through it. If your research question is about how algorithmic feeds shape political discourse, a paragraph claim might be that the loss of major advertisers on X opened the platform to a flood of low-quality promoted content that blurred the line between advertising and incoherent personal broadcasting. That is specific enough to support with evidence in one paragraph.
Once you have your claim, write a sentence that states it directly. This is your topic sentence. It goes at the top of the paragraph. It should not be a question, and it should not be a statement so broad that the rest of the paragraph cannot actually demonstrate it.
After the topic sentence, bring in evidence from your sources. This means quoting or paraphrasing a specific passage and citing it in MLA format. Do not drop a quotation into the paragraph without first setting it up: tell the reader who is speaking or what text you are drawing from, then present the evidence.
After each piece of evidence, analyze it. Analysis means explaining how the evidence supports your claim. Do not assume that the connection is obvious. The evidence is not the argument; your interpretation of the evidence is the argument. If you find yourself summarizing what the source says without explaining why it matters to your point, you are not yet analyzing.
If you write a second paragraph, it should make a different claim, not restate the first one. The two paragraphs do not need a transition between them today, but each one should be able to stand on its own as a complete unit of reasoning: claim, evidence, analysis.
A few practical notes. Aim for roughly 150 to 250 words per paragraph. Use your free write as raw material, not as a draft to be copied. The free write helped you think; the paragraph is where you make that thinking legible to a reader. Cite all sources in MLA format, including page or paragraph numbers where available.
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