First-Year Writing Paragraph Model:
Introductory Paragraph
1
Write a sentence or two that gets your readers’ attention. Use a relevant personal
anecdote, a quotation, or a startling fact; link your discussion to an ongoing conversation
about culture or get your readers’ attention in some other way. Be creative! 2Then, write a
sentence that makes a transition between the discussion you began in the first few
sentences and the topic to which you will soon orient your readers. For example, if you
discuss an ongoing political debate, show how that debate relates to your discussion.
3
After your transition, write a few sentences that orient your reader to your topic. What
topic will you be discussing in your essay? What are the parameters of that discussion?
What is unique about your perspective? 4Then, write a sentence that makes a transition
from orienting readers to your topic to introducing your first source; how does your
source make a contribution to the topic you have undertaken? 5Next, provide a brief
summary of the author’s essay. Do not forget to consider the author’s intentions. 6Then,
write a sentence that makes a transition between your first source and your second
source; this sentence should introduce your second source and demonstrate a relationship
between the two sources. 7Next, provide a brief summary of the source. 8After that, write
a sentence or two that demonstrates how your topic rises out of your interaction with the
texts you have just introduced and 9makes a transition to your thesis. 10Finally, pose your
thesis as a complex sentence that demonstrates relationships between ideas.
10 Steps:
Getting Readers’ Attention
1. Personal anecdote, quotation, framing a political discussion, or
something else
Orienting Readers to Topic
2. Transition
3. Orienting readers to topic
Introducing Sources/Authors
4. Transition that includes author/title of first source
5. Summary
6. Transition that includes author/title of second source
7. Summary
8. Demonstrate how your ideas interact with your sources
Posing Thesis
9. Transition
10. Thesis