The Body Paragraph — Essay Writing 6 (C1)

ESSAY WRITING · LESSON 6

The Body Paragraph

C1–C2 · IELTS Writing Task 2 · 90 minutes

The myth: more ideas, higher score

Task Alone: score the statement on the 1–5 scale and note your number. In pairs: compare, and each give the strongest reason for your number.

1

strongly agree

2

mostly agree

3

on the fence

4

mostly disagree

5

strongly disagree

"An essay with more ideas will score higher than one with fewer."

Why people believe it

Four ideas look like four pieces of evidence. Listing feels safe: if one idea is weak, the others might carry it. And a list fills the word count fast, which is a relief under a 40-minute clock.

Rebuild: a paragraph in pieces

Task In pairs: write the six letters in the order that makes the best paragraph. For each sentence after the first, name the word or phrase that tells you it must follow the one before. Then: which sentence is the claim, and which part of the thesis does it serve?

PARAGRAPH R, SHUFFLED · 109 words

PROMPT

Translation apps are now accurate enough that learning a foreign language is no longer worth the effort. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

WRITER'S THESIS

Translation apps are useful, but learning a language is still worth the effort, because it builds relationships that no app can.

A. Over time, that difference decides who hears about problems early and who wins the next contract.

B. Trust grows from small signs of effort: a greeting in the right register, a joke that lands, a sincere apology.

C. Accurate translation, in other words, solves the easier half of communication and leaves the harder half untouched.

D. The strongest reason to keep learning languages is that translation apps carry words between people, but not trust.

E. An engineer from Brazil who makes small talk in Japanese with a supplier in Osaka is remembered as a partner; one who talks through an app, as a customer.

F. An app between two speakers removes exactly these signs.

The paragraph rebuilt

PARAGRAPH R, IN ORDER · 109 words

The strongest reason to keep learning languages is that translation apps carry words between people, but not trust. Trust grows from small signs of effort: a greeting in the right register, a joke that lands, a sincere apology. An app between two speakers removes exactly these signs. An engineer from Brazil who makes small talk in Japanese with a supplier in Osaka is remembered as a partner; one who talks through an app, as a customer. Over time, that difference decides who hears about problems early and who wins the next contract. Accurate translation, in other words, solves the easier half of communication and leaves the harder half untouched.

The paragraph rebuilt (2)

Thesis

Claim

Explain

Example

Consequence

The topic sentence: one arguable point, tied to the thesis.

Why it is true: what trust is made of, and why an app removes it.

One specific, plausible case: the engineer and the supplier in Osaka.

Why it matters, then a last line that ties it back to the thesis.

One idea

What the criteria reward

TR

Task Response

CC

Coherence and Cohesion

LR

Lexical Resource

GRA

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

Task Response

"Did it answer the question?"

Coherence and Cohesion

"Can I follow it?"

The public band descriptors describe main ideas that are "extended and supported" at band 7, "well extended and supported" at band 8 and "fully extended and well supported" at band 9. At band 6, some main ideas "may be insufficiently developed". The descriptors never count ideas. They ask how far each one is taken.

At band 7, "the sequencing of ideas within a paragraph is generally logical". At band 6, "the central topic may not always be clear". A paragraph with one claim has an obvious central topic. A paragraph with four has none.

Before / after: four ideas or one?

Social media has made people less well informed about the world around them. To what extent do you agree or disagree?

VERSION 1 · 79 words

VERSION 2 · 95 words

Social media has made people less well informed in several ways. Firstly, false stories spread quickly online and are often shared before anyone checks them. Secondly, algorithms show users mainly opinions they already agree with. Moreover, many local newspapers have closed because advertisers have moved to social platforms. Finally, people spend hours scrolling, so they have less time for serious journalism. For all these reasons, social media has clearly had a negative effect on how well informed people are.

The clearest way in which social media has left people less informed is by draining money from local journalism. As advertisers have followed readers onto social platforms, many regional newspapers have lost the income that paid reporters to sit through council meetings. When a town's paper closes, nobody takes over that routine work: a viral post can share an opinion about a new road, but not what the contract cost or who approved it. The result is a public that sees more commentary than ever but knows less about the decisions shaping its own streets.

Before / after: four ideas or one? (2)

Task In pairs: answer the four questions about the two versions. Write your answers in your own document, a line each.

1. How many ideas does each version contain?

2. Which of Version 1's ideas did Version 2 keep? Where could the others go?

3. Name three things Version 2 does that Version 1 does not.

4. Compare the last sentences. What does each one add?

What changed

One claim, not four.

A topic sentence that says how.

Version 1 names four ideas; Version 2 takes one of them, money draining from local journalism, and follows it all the way.

"In several ways" announces a list. "By draining money from local journalism" makes a claim the reader can test.

Each sentence grows from the one before.

An ending that adds something.

Cause (advertisers move), effect (papers lose income), example (the new road), consequence (more commentary, less knowledge).

Version 1's last sentence repeats its first. Version 2's last sentence says why the point matters.

Model essay: navigation apps

Prompt More and more people rely on navigation apps instead of their own knowledge of the places where they live and travel. Do the advantages of this development outweigh the disadvantages?

ESSAY N · 294 words

For most city dwellers, finding the way now means following a blue line on a phone, not remembering a route. Critics warn that the habit wears away a basic skill. The loss is real, but in my view the advantages clearly outweigh it.

The main advantage of navigation apps is that local knowledge no longer decides who can move confidently through a city. Learning a place used to take years, so newcomers depended on others for directions or simply avoided journeys they could not picture. An app removes that barrier. A nurse who has just moved from Manila to Toronto can reach a night shift at an unfamiliar hospital in her first week, by bus and on foot, without asking anyone. Repeated across a whole city, this means that jobs, services and friendships become open to people according to their needs, not to how long they have lived there.

MODEL ESSAY: NAVIGATION APPS · CONTINUED

Prompt More and more people rely on navigation apps instead of their own knowledge of the places where they live and travel. Do the advantages of this development outweigh the disadvantages?

ESSAY N · CONTINUED · 294 words

The disadvantage is that people who always follow directions may never build a mental map of their surroundings. A route followed one instruction at a time is completed rather than learned, so the knowledge disappears with the screen. A student in Hanoi who has used an app for every journey for two years may be unable to walk home when her battery dies. However, this cost arises mainly in situations that are rare and recoverable, and it can be reduced by choice: anyone can switch the app off on familiar routes. It is therefore a reason to use these apps with care, not a reason to regret them.

Navigation apps do weaken a skill that people once took for granted. Yet by making cities readable to newcomers, they have widened access to work and public life, and that gain is far larger than the loss.

Reverse outline: does the skeleton hold?

Task Alone: in your own document, write one line for each paragraph of Essay N (on "Model essay: navigation apps"): what it claims, in 12 words or fewer. In pairs: compare your four lines, then answer questions 1–4.

1. Does each body paragraph's line support the position you wrote for the introduction?

2. Did any paragraph need two lines? What does that tell you?

3. Read only your four lines. Is the argument complete without the prose?

4. Check the lengths against the word budget: 43 · 106 · 108 · 37 words.

Write: body paragraph 1

Task In your own document, write body paragraph 1 of your portfolio essay: 100–110 words, 15 minutes, plus 3 minutes to check.

100–110

15

WORDS

MINUTES

1. Start from the first body point in your Lesson 4 plan.

2. Write the topic sentence as a claim that serves your thesis, and underline it.

3. Develop that one claim: explain it, give one specific example, say what follows from it.

4. Count your words. Then write a one-line reverse outline under the paragraph.

Write: body paragraph 1 (2)

Finished early? Read your paragraph as a stranger would. Is any sentence there only to add another idea? Cut it, and spend the words on the example.

Introduction

Body 1

Body 2

Conclusion

40–50

100–110

100–110

30–40

0

100

250 minimum

200

~320 ceiling

~300 target

Peer review: one claim, taken far

Task In pairs: swap paragraphs. Answer questions 1–4 about your partner's paragraph in your own document. Then tell your partner one strength and one change.

1. Read the underlined topic sentence. Does it make a claim, and can you see which part of the thesis it serves?

2. Write the paragraph's reverse outline in one line. If it needs two, mark where the second idea starts.

3. Find the sentence that explains, the sentence that gives the example and the sentence that says why it matters. Is any of them missing?

4. Is it 100–110 words?

Back to the myth

Task Score the statement again on the 1–5 scale. Has your number moved? What moved it?

1

strongly agree

2

mostly agree

3

on the fence

4

mostly disagree

5

strongly disagree

"An essay with more ideas will score higher than one with fewer."

The verdict

Partly true, mostly false. You need enough ideas to answer every part of the question. After that, the criteria ask whether main ideas are "extended and supported", and two developed ideas fill the body's budget better than four named ones.

Before Lesson 7

One claim per paragraph, taken all the way: explained, shown and followed to its consequence.

Claim

Explain

If you can sum a paragraph up in one line, it has unity. If it needs a list, it holds several paragraphs' worth of ideas with none of them developed.

Example

Next lesson: Making an Argument Stick. Support without sources, examples a reader believes, and how to concede a point and still win the argument, in body paragraph 2.

Consequence

Homework

Task Revise your portfolio body paragraph 1 using the one change your partner suggested. Keep it at 100–110 words and keep the topic sentence underlined. Then place it between the introduction and conclusion you wrote after Lesson 5, and write a reverse outline of all three paragraphs, one line each. Does your body paragraph's line support your thesis line? If not, revise the paragraph or the thesis. About 30 minutes: 20 revising, 10 outlining. Bring the paragraph to Lesson 7, which adds body paragraph 2.

100–110

WORDS

30

MINUTES

TEACHER'S REFERENCE · SKIP OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key (1)

REBUILD: A PARAGRAPH IN PIECES order D, B, F, E, A, C

• D first. It is the only sentence that makes a claim and can stand alone. It picks up the thesis ("relationships" becomes "trust"), and every other sentence depends on it.

• B second. It begins with "Trust", the last word of D, and says what trust is made of.

• F third. "These signs" points back to B's list (greeting, joke, apology), so F cannot come before B.

• E fourth. The engineer is the example of F's point: the same meeting, with and without the signs.

• A fifth. "That difference" needs E's contrast between partner and customer.

• C last. "In other words" marks a restatement. It sums up the claim at a higher level and ties back to the thesis.

• Pairs sometimes put E straight after D. Then "these signs" in F has nothing to point back to. Ask them to read it aloud.

BEFORE / AFTER: FOUR IDEAS OR ONE?

1 Version 1: four (false stories, algorithms, local newspapers closing, time spent scrolling). Version 2: one (money draining from local journalism).

2 It kept the local newspapers. False stories or algorithms could each be developed in body paragraph 2. The rest are cut: the budget has room for two developed ideas, not four.

TEACHER'S REFERENCE · SKIP OR DELETE BEFORE CLASS

Answer key (2)

3 Any three of: a topic sentence that says how, not "in several ways"; a cause and effect chain (advertisers leave, income goes, reporters go); a specific example (the council meeting, the new road's contract); a consequence that says why it matters; sentences linked by their logic instead of "Firstly", "Moreover", "Finally".

4 Version 1's last sentence repeats its first and adds nothing. Version 2's last sentence adds the consequence: more commentary, less knowledge.

REVERSE OUTLINE: DOES THE SKELETON HOLD? sample lines; wording will vary

• Introduction: apps cost a skill, but the gain is bigger.

• Body 1: apps let newcomers move freely, whatever their local knowledge.

• Body 2: apps can stop people learning places, but the cost is small.

• Conclusion: access gained outweighs the skill lost.

• Verdict: it holds. Body 1 brings in the main advantage, which the introduction deliberately left unnamed, so its topic sentence repeats nothing; Body 2 takes the cost the introduction admits ("The loss is real") and shows why it is outweighed; the conclusion answers the question. Each paragraph needs only one line. The lengths (43 · 106 · 108 · 37 = 294) sit inside the budget. Body 2 weighs its own disadvantage, but that is one idea assessed, not a second idea.