How to Write Body Paragraphs

The body will typically consist of about three paragraphs, presenting points to support your thesis statement. Without sufficient support, your essay is not convincing. It is difficult to find ideas to support your thesis statement; hence, you need to work out the ideas in the planning stage (when organizing your brainstormed idea).

Technique

To make your paragraph convincing is the matter of presenting main ideas in each body paragraph. You have known that each body paragraph needs to have good internal organization – it must have topic sentence, supporting sentences, and optional concluding sentence.
RULES: You must make…

• Each topic sentence supports the thesis statement.
• Supporting sentences support each topic sentence.

Here is the outline.

Introductory paragraph	Lead:
	Link:
	List:	Specific topic +	Main point 1 Main point 2 Main point 3
Body paragraph 1	TS =	Main point 1 +	Controlling idea
	SS =	Supporting 1A +	Supporting details 1A
		Supporting 1B +	Supporting details 1B
		Supporting 1C +	Supporting details 1C
Body paragraph 2	TS =	Main point 2 +	Controlling idea
	SS =	Supporting 2A +	Supporting details 2A
		Supporting 2B +	Supporting details 2B
		Supporting 2C +	Supporting details 2C
Body paragraph 3	TS =	Main point 3 +	Controlling idea
	SS =	Supporting 3A +	Supporting details 3A
		Supporting 3B +	Supporting details 3B
		Supporting 3C +	Supporting details 3C

The topic sentence (of the body paragraphs)

Each topic sentence directly supports the thesis statement. You must use the main point/sub-topic as the topic and add your controlling idea, i.e.
Introductory Paragraph

• Thesis statement = specific topic + {main point 1 + main point 2, main point 3}

Body Paragraphs

• Topic Sentence 1 = Main point 1+ Controlling Idea
• Topic Sentence 2 = Main point 2+ Controlling Idea
• Topic Sentence 3 = Main point 3+ Controlling Idea

For examples:

• Thesis statement: Pollution, waste, and climate change are threatening freshwater supplies.
• Topic sentence 1: Freshwater is being polluted by dirty water from several sources.
• Topic sentence 2: People are wasting fresh water.
• Topic sentence 3: Changes in global weather patterns have affected supplies of fresh water.

• Thesis statement: The main factors causing most road accidents are seen to be people, vehicle, and roads.
• Topic sentence 1: People abuse the traffic laws.
• Topic sentence 2: The vehicles are not properly checked or have technical defects.
• Topic sentence 3: The roads also cause the accidents.

The supporting sentences (of the body paragraphs) –

The supporting sentences, which include supporting ideas and details, support each topic sentence. Follow the rules for writing paragraph (See the illustration below).

Write a Topic Sentence	→	Create a Topic Question	→	Answer the Topic Question
Use the main point in the thesis statement		Convert the topic sentence to topic question.		1st level answers  are supporting ideas; 2nd level answers are supporting details.

Look at the examples.