Tutorial 5 - Writing Topic Sentences

Tutorial 5 - Writing Topic Sentences

With the ideas that you have thought of (make sure they support your thesis statement) and selected (you may need to omit some of them for whatever reason), you can now proceed to write your body paragraphs.

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The structure of a body paragraph is as such:

Topic Sentence:

Supporting Sentences (at least 4 sentences):



Concluding Sentence:

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Let's start by writing the topic sentence. The topic sentence is very similar to a thesis statement, with one important difference. The thesis statement tells your reader what your entire essay is about whereas a topic sentence tells your reader what a specific paragraph is about.

So, if your thesis statement is - "Watching television can benefit children in several ways", your three body paragraphs could start with the following topic sentences:

Firstly, some television programmes are very informative and can impart a great variety of knowledge to children.

Secondly, children pick up language a lot faster when they are watching progammes that they enjoy rather than sitting down in front of a boring whiteboard in the classroom.

Thirdly, it is important for children to keep up with current affairs and a good way to do that is to watch the news on television.

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In addition, a topic sentence should have a transition. Here are some sample transitions you could use:

Fisrt Paragraph - Firstly, To start, To begin with, First of all, First and foremost

Secondly Paragraph - Secondly, Moreover, Besides, Furthermore, In addition, Additionally, Equally important, Similarly, In the same way, Likewise, Next, Also

Third Paragraph - Thirdly, Finally, Last but not least

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N. B. Like a good thesis statement, a good topic sentence also has two parts - a topic and a controlling idea. If you have forgotten what these are, please refer to Tutorial 1 again.


Homework 5a

For the thesis statements given in Homework 4a, please write 3 topic sentences for each of them, as shown above.