By Dr Augustine Tirivangana

SO far we have looked at skills of interpretation with particular focus on understanding ‘instruction words’, ‘content words’ and ‘special conditions’.
It is also now clear that ‘interpretation’ is pivotal in designing the essay outline.
The latter is nonetheless only, but the initial process of mind-mapping which itself is central to the actual business of essay writing.
You will recall, too, from previous instalments that we stated that the standard structure of any essay comprises the ‘introduction’, the ‘body’ and the ‘conclusion’.
I’m sure this sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Notwithstanding, however, is the fact that what may be easy to state may not necessarily be easy to implement.
In this instalment we focus on essay organisation in terms of the actual execution.
Particular attention is given to paragraphing skills and skills of bringing about both cohesion and coherence.
Good paragraph
A paragraph is a group of connected sentences that develop a single point, argument or idea.
A good paragraph has three main elements: the ‘topic sentence’, ‘developers’ and ‘terminative’.
The topic sentence carries the main idea.
It can come at the beginning or at the end depending on whether your approach is inductive or deductive.
Inductive logic presents facts from specific pointing towards a general assumption (main idea) while deductive logic begins with general idea and proceeds to present specific facts to support the main idea. These illustrative facts are what we call developers.
They develop the point to clarity.
They include paraphrases, sub-issues, illustrations and examples.
And the terminative (which may not always be there) serves to emphasise the point the entire paragraph makes.
In a nutshell, good paragraphs divide up your assignment according to topics or major points and each new paragraph should indicate a change of focus.
Quite often students tend to demonstrate poor paragraphing when they are unclear about what they are trying to say.
If you feel like this, revisit your assignment plan and try to clarify your thinking about the progression of your argument.
A common mistake that students make when writing paragraphs is to be unclear about when to begin paragraphing.
As a result all their ideas are jumbled in together leading to a lack of logical progression in the argument.
Some make every sentence into a paragraph, making it a ‘bullet point’ essay.
This can indicate that the ideas have not been linked together in a coherent argument.
A well-structured assignment with good paragraphs will be obvious to the eye.
Types of paragraphs
Essays differ from discipline although the structuring of the paragraph is essentially the same.
In the Arts in general, there are four main types of paragraphing based on the nature of content dealt with.
These are ‘expository’, ‘narrative’, ‘descriptive’ and ‘discursive’.
An expository paragraph is one in which the writer develops his topic sentence.
For example, the writer’s topic sentence could be, All Zimbabweans citizens should exercise their right to vote in a harmonised election.
In this case, the paragraph must present evidence to show why all citizens should exercise their right to vote.
This kind of paragraph would follow the following structure: topic sentence (thesis statement), evidence (details, statistics, definitions, comparison or contrast, quotes, examples, or a combination), and concluding sentence (terminative).
A narrative paragraph, on the other hand, presents a sequence of events in the order in which they happened.
The paragraphing structure is the same as above except that the developing content may be punctuated by vivid descriptions to aid the perceptive imagination of the reader.
Nonetheless, the descriptive should not overshadow the sequence of the actual events.
Descriptive prominence is a feature of the descriptive paragraph.
This is one in which the writer describes something, such as a scene, a building, or a person.
The writer will use vivid details to describe the object under review. The description should be so detailed that the readers will be able to recreate that image in their minds.
Expert deployment of adjectives and adverbs should be a hallmark of any descriptive paragraph.
Then we have the discursive or argumentative paragraphs.
These characterise discursive essays.
A discursive paragraph is unique in the sense that it addresses two sides of an argument, pro-argument and counter-argument.
A pro-argument paragraph contains one major point of the argument, stating your reason for agreeing with one of the sides implied in the question.
This must be captured in the signpost (topic) sentence which states the direction of the argument.
This should be linked to the paragraph that comes before it, often with a suitable conjunction or link words such as ‘in addition’, ‘nevertheless’, ‘despite this’, ‘however’.
This is followed by evidence of the argument as shown by available statistics or expert opinion.
Contrast
The counter argument paragraph, on the other hand, should open with discourse markers of contrast such as ‘Contrary to this…’ ‘In contrast there are those who…’; ‘On the other hand…’ etc.; and proceeds to provide reasons for the counter-argument.
Use phrases like: ‘some critics claim…, ‘There are those who say…’ The rest of the paragraph should proceed as any other standard paragraph.
In the final analysis, a paragraph (whether, expository, narrative, discursive or descriptive) must have unity and coherence to be effective; and this brings us to the use of discourse markers.
For all the three parts of the paragraph to achieve unity there is need to connect sentences using cohesive devices and markers of coherence.
These create unity throughout the paragraph by making them relate to the topic sentence.
Coherence
A paragraph has coherence if all the sentences run smoothly together. That is, the idea in one sentence should be linked to the idea in the second sentence so that the ideas flow together.
By following these points the writer should be able to create an effective paragraph.
There are a number of transitional devices you can use to create coherence in a sentence.
In the box below are lists of relationships paired against the discourse markers that you can use to achieve the thematic unity your desire.
Let us conclude by saying that discourse markers are determined by the content of the essay which in turn is precluded by the type of paragraph.
You will observe that generally, argumentative essays call for comparison and contrast discourse markers.
Clear sensitivity to the structure of paragraphs will certainly improve not only the organisation of the essay, but also the overall effectiveness of communicative impact of the essay.