RUNNING HEAD: Chapter 1.

Paragraph Structure 1

Chapter 1. Paragraph Structure

The author in Chapter 1 from the book, Writing Academic English, expresses ideas of

how to write an academic paragraph regarding its structure and supporting details. First of all,

Oshima states that “A paragraph is a group of related sentences that discuss one main

idea.”(Oshima, 2006), therefore the author describes the purpose of these sentences and brings

examples of its functions to shape the paragraph structure. Afterwards, Oshima explains the

structure of a paragraph, emphasizing on the topic sentence, its position within the paragraph and

its parts. Besides, the reader can find the definitions of supporting sentences and concluding

sentence, providing examples and practice exercises to have a better understanding of what is

mentioned before.

Having examined the steps to write a paragraph correctly, it is evident the relevance of

this information which I found compelling, regarding that outlining, writing and concluding a

paragraph is a challenge where most of the unexperienced writers struggle and eventually fail,

hence, the importance of knowing and applying those concepts while writing.

On the other hand, there is necessary information to enhance our writing skills like to be

aware of which tense is used to reporting verbs that may cause changes in some verbs, pronouns,

and time expressions in an indirect quotation, also, the correct use of punctuation of direct

quotations and their exceptions. I am conscious about my writing process and how challenging

this can be, at least in the beginning, however, it is necessary to start following the reviewed

concepts and rules in order to improve my writing ability. To sum up, I found this chapter

valuable, useful and understandable. I hope to get some time to and practice with the proposed

exercises.