TOPIC SENTENCES

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TOPIC SENTENCES

• How to Identify them
• How to Write them

Judy Kahalas, Coordinator Writing Center Roxbury
Community College
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What is a Topic?

• It is the general idea to which other ideas
  relate.
• In the words below, find the topic
• theocracy- democracy socialism- communism
  monarchy
• oncology- psychiatry-gynecology-cardiology-radiolo
  gy

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Did you get the idea?

• Try to find a common topic for these words
• recession, recovery, fiscal policies,
  unemployment
• And these
• Yeats, Shelly, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Whitman

A topic sentence unites the specific thoughts in
a paragraph by making a general statement that
would cover them all. Think of it as an umbrella
that covers everything in the paragraph.
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Now, can you state the topic?

• Clinton Ford Nixon Carter Reagan
  Johnson
• Drama, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, technical
• History, government, psychology, political
  science, Black studies
• McKinley Aconsgua Everest Elbrus
  Kilimanjaro

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What can you write about with these topics?
global warming values religions industries

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Now create a topic sentence for these

• Congress
• House
• Senate
• Judiciary
• Executive offices

• Tuberculosis
• Malaria
• Scarlet fever
• Diphtheria
• Measles

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Is this a paragraph?

• Education is the key to success. I think that
  learning is often a waste of time. Some of the
  best lessons I learned were from living, not from
  school. But I think that schools should
  definitely have an open campus so students dont
  have to feel locked in all day.

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Or this one?

• One of the reasons why students dont learn is
  that teachers often fail to vary their
  methodology in the classroom. For example, some
  students learn best when they can see. Making a
  concept visual helps them. Using film, diagrams,
  posters, etc. can help these students. Other
  students need to hear, and that can be
  accomplished by dialogue, lecture, audiotapes,
  film and other methods. But in any case, teachers
  should plan lessons that encourage learning in
  different modalities

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What would be the best topic?

• Advertising companies have changed the way
  they portray family life to reflect a more
  engaged father. Women now work outside the home,
  and this has led to shared responsibility in
  parenting as well as housework. Fathers are often
  seen doing household chores formerly relegated to
  women laundry, childcare, buying groceries, etc.
  This new image, an outgrowth of the womens
  movement, has been widely accepted as reality,
  particularly as the economy has changed.
• What is the topic sentence?
• Does every sentence in this paragraph support it,
  expand on it, or clarify it in some way?
• If you developed this as an essay, what would you
  write about in the next paragraph?
• What would you use as a title for your essay?

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Lets Summarize

• Sentences in a paragraph must relate to a topic.
• This topic should be clearly stated.
• The sentences should support, define, or expand
  on the topic.
• Many (but not all) paragraphs have a topic
  sentence.

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From general to specific
A topic sentence gives us a general idea of what
the paragraph is about. All the other sentences
in the paragraph should either support, expand,
or define the topic sentence.