TASK 5 – TOPIC SENTENCE EXAMPLES
NOW TRY THIS…
You’re going to see again the five essay tasks you examined a few pages
ago. After the tasks you’ll see a list of sentences. Each one is a topic
sentence from one of the five essays. Can you decide which essay each
topic sentence belongs to?
Here are the essay topics:
1 Choose a novel or a short story in which you feel great sympathy for, or
intense dislike of, one of the characters.
Briefly outline the situation in which the character finds himself for
herself and show by what means you are made to feel sympathy or dislike.
2 Choose a prose work of fiction or non-fiction which deals with an
important human issue: for example injustice, or poverty, or scientific
discovery, or religious belief, or any other issue which you regard as
important.
Identify and explain what the issue is and go on to describe the ways in
which the writer has made the prose work thought provoking.
3 Choose a poem in which a particular mood such as joy, anger or sorrow
is created.
State what the mood is and show how the poet has created it effectively
for you.
4 Choose a poem in which a character or an incident or an experience is
vividly described.
Briefly state what the poem is about and go on to say what techniques are
used in the poem to catch and maintain your interest.
5 Choose a poem which makes you feel pity or sympathy for a person or an
animal.
Show how both the content and the style of the poem create pity or
sympathy.
Here are the topic sentences. Can you match each one to the right essay
topic?
A The mood of anger is effectively created through the writer’s use of
the colour red.
B One way the author makes me feel intense dislike for Stern is by
showing how critical he is about things that really matter to his daughter.
C An aspect of the writer’s style is his use of similes.
D The writer makes the issue of loneliness thought-provoking by showing
me that lonely people would sometimes rather be with other people who
make them feel uncomfortable than be alone.
E A technique which allows the writer to describe the woman is the use
of word choice connected to jewels and valuables.