WRITE PURPOSEFUL PARAGRAPHS
Instructions: Read the paragraphs below. Then answer the questions that follow them.
Record your answer to each question in the space to the right.
(1) I went to college to improve my career chances, and now I am a college graduate who is yet to find a job and who is collecting unemployment checks. (2) I got married to share my life with someone. (3) However, my wife’s job requires that she travel all over the country most of the year. (4) I am the embodiment of the
French aphorism "the more things change, the more they stay the same.” (5) I studied hard, chose a wonderful mate, and am now living alone and jobless in Chicago.
1. What is the topic sentence of this paragraph?
______
2.
Which of the paragraphs five sentences might be removed?
______
EXERCISE 2
CORRESPONDS TO 8D, WRITE PURPOSEFUL PARAGRAPHS, IN A WRITER’S RESOURCE

(2) The drama of real life equals anything a movie director like
Francis Ford Coppola can put on film. (2) The assassination of
Anwar Sadat of Egypt on worldwide television surpassed the brutality of the execution segment of The Godfather . (3) The bombing of Iraq and burning of Kuwaiti oil fields were as hellish as scenes from Coppola's Apocalypse Now . (4) We had the chance to witness both parties to Sadat's murder, both the victim and his killers. (5) Wiretap scenes in The Conversation pale in comparison to watching the real thing: FBI videotapes of Mayor
Marion Barry smoking crack in a Washington hotel room.
3. What is the topic sentence of this paragraph?
______
4. Which sentence does not relate to the topic sentence?
______
(3) Readers interested in the American Civil War will be satisfied with the wealth of available literature. (2) Bruce Catton, Shelby
Foote, and James McPherson, among many other scholars, have written extensively on this great conflict. (3) At stake were both the concept of union and the abolition of slavery in this country.
(4) Battlefields have been preserved as national historic sites. (5)
Ken Burns's study of this period was the highest rated public television documentary in broadcast history.
5. What is the topic sentence of this paragraph?
______
6. Which sentence does not relate to the topic sentence?
______
EXERCISE 2
CORRESPONDS TO 8D, WRITE PURPOSEFUL PARAGRAPHS, IN A WRITER’S RESOURCE

(4) Big Sur, on the sparkling Pacific Coast, and the expansive
Mojave Desert, where few living things can survive, are worth seeing. (2) The bottomless Grand Canyon is visited by over a million people each year. (3) Indeed, a tour of the United States offers the vacationer countless startling images to last a lifetime. (4) The man-made canyons of New York City are startling and have been the setting of many a motion picture.
(5) New York also offers many fine restaurants. (6) The architecture of Washington D.C. is majestic. (7) It is a delight to visit this city even though its crime rate is among the highest in the nation.
7. What is the topic sentence of this paragraph?
______
8. Which two sentences do not relate to the topic sentence?
______
EXERCISE 2
CORRESPONDS TO 8D, WRITE PURPOSEFUL PARAGRAPHS, IN A WRITER’S RESOURCE

(5) In 1543, Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish astronomer and mathematician, published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly
Bodies . (2) In this work, Copernicus argued that the sun was the center of our solar system. (3) Copernicus’s theory revolutionized astronomy and cosmology, the study of the structure of the universe. (4) His arguments contradicted the age-old belief postulated by the Greek thinker Ptolemy, who, in the Almagest, claimed that the sun, the stars, and the other planets revolved around the earth. (5) There were several Egyptian rulers called
Ptolemy, but Ptolemy the astronomer never ruled Egypt. (6)
Galileo, an Italian scientist, proved Copernicus right and Ptolemy wrong. (7) He developed the telescope, which helped him observe several phenomena that show that the planets revolve around the sun and that heavenly bodies don't move in perfect circles as was once thought. (8) Galileo also discovered sun spots.
9. What is the topic sentence of this paragraph?
______
10. Which two sentences do not relate to the topic sentence?
______
EXERCISE 2
CORRESPONDS TO 8D, WRITE PURPOSEFUL PARAGRAPHS, IN A WRITER’S RESOURCE