composition of support paragraph

Building Blocks for Support Paragraphs:

You need basically three items in each support paragraph.

1. A transition that opens the paragraph. An easy way to segue into your new paragraph is to introduce the technique under review in relation the previous one. For instance, you might write:

• (If the previous paragaph was on technique X, and the new one you are starting is on technique Y): "In addition to X, A spends considerable time relating Y."
• Or you might write something that weighs the technique under review in comparison to others: "However, A's strongest examples come by way of Y." For instance, Team 2 might write something like "Chapter two of Fame Junkies, "Mobs of Fame-Starved Children," includes Halpern's most effective uses of X."
• Here's one from the "Making Ends Meet" example: "Her own personal experience, which serves as an appeal to her ethos, is another major rhetorical technique the author uses in her book."

2. You need sentences that provide examples of the technique under review in the paragraph. Effective use of quotations from, or paraphrases of, the text being analyzed will be valuable in this section. Here's the "examples" section of a paragraph from "Making Ends Meet" on the author's use of personal experience as a rhetorical technique:

• Over the course of her experiences, she takes on various jobs in three different cities across the United States. Each of these is uniquely different from the others, and provides her with a greater understanding as she goes through jobs as a waitress, hotel maid, cleaning woman, nursing home aide and sales clerk at Wal-mart. Additionally, as she continues the project, Ehrenreich occasionally goes into a description of her feelings towards the end of each endeavor: the strain on her motivation and her perspective. In the first chapter which describes her first job as a waitress and hotel maid, she ends her ordeal by writing, “I had gone into this venture in the spirit of science, to test a mathematical proposition, but somewhere along the line…it became a test of myself, and clearly I failed…I don’t cry, but I am in a position to realize…that the tear ducts are still there and still capable of doing their job” (Ehrenreich 48). Already we see that some of her spirit has been broken, just after the waitressing part of her research. By the end of another venture – maid service – she is provoked out of frustration and has an outburst of rage at one of her coworkers. This leads to her feeling hated by those who she was to report to and that, “the only thing I know for sure is that this is as low as I can get in my life as a maid, and probably in most other lives as well” (Ehrenreich 114).

3. Finally, you need to relate the examples back to the thesis of the text being analyzed. Doing so reminds the reader of the central argument of the text and how the technique you're covering in this paragraph is, as you have stated, important to the forwarding of this argument. Here's the last two sentences of the same paragraph (on the use of personal experience as a rhetorical technique) quoted above, followed by similar "relating" sentences from the text:

• This leads to her feeling hated by those who she was to report to and that, “the only thing I know for sure is that this is as low as I can get in my life as a maid, and probably in most other lives as well” (Ehrenreich 114). The readers will recognize through Ehrenreich’s feelings, that low-wage work causes the feeling of desperation and low self-esteem and self-worth.
• This technique is effective because it forces her to keep circumstances similar to the real workers who do this on a daily basis.

• Ehrenreich does not merely come up with ideas arbitrarily, and the use of statistics proves to the reader that what she expresses has genuine evidence.

• This proves the effectiveness of the pathos created in Ehrenreich’s technique, because it stirs emotion in the reader as they place themselves in the scenarios faced by the characters of the book.

All of these concluding sentences either explain why the technique described in the sentence that preceded it were effective and/or how it forwards the central argument of the book being analyzed.

Criteria for evaluation:

• How effectively does the first ("topic") sentence of the paragraph set up the rest of the paragraph? 
• Are appropriate/effective examples drawn from the text? Do these examples fit into one of the categories/techniques identifed in the thesis?
• Does the paragraph as a whole fit together cohesively? Does the paragraph reference the central argument of Fame Junkies and how the examples provided support this argument and/or are generally effective?