When developing body paragraphs for your independent essay, avoid these problem areas: 1) serial topic listing; 2) lack of topical unity; 3) topic redundancy.
SERIAL TOPIC LISTING
Look at the following body paragraph from an actual independent essay.
A new airport in my hometown will create new jobs for young people. A new airport will also help increase taxes. In addition, a new airport will bring more people to my home town. Best of all, a new airport will help create other businesses that will support the airport, such as hotels and restaurants. Finally, a new airport will reduce unemployment. As you can see, a new airport is a good idea.
Looks pretty good, right? Let's take a closer look. First off, grammatically, this sentence is perfect. However, notice how each sentence introduces a new topic. We can actually put the topics in a list, like this:
A new airport in my hometown will:
Note how the writer has created a list of topics and put them in a series (one after another). This is called serial topic listing. Okay, so what's wrong with that? The problem is each new topic should be a new body paragraph. That means this independent essay should have five body paragraphs! The second problem is a lack of topic development. This is a serious problem. How can you fix it? Simple. Instead of making a list of topics, focus on one topic and develop it, for example:
A new airport in my hometown will create new jobs for young people. In my hometown, when young people graduate from high school and college, they leave right away and go to the big cities. In the cities, there are more jobs and a better future. However, if we had a new airport, the young people would stay because there would be new jobs. There would be jobs like construction and catering, as well other jobs connected to the airline business like hotels and restaurants. This would be good because more new jobs means the young people will have a reason to stay and develop the economy of my hometown.
Remember: A lack of topic development - especially in the body paragraphs - is the number on reason why test-takers score low on the independent essay. I know. I see this problem all the time. To get a high score, avoid serial listing. Focus on one topic per paragraph and develop it.
LACK OF TOPICAL UNITY
Look at the following paragraph. Can you identify the problem?
A new airport in my hometown will create new jobs for young people. In my hometown, when young people graduate from high school and college, they leave right away and go to the big cities. For example, my boyfriend went to America and is now living in Manhattan. He is a systems engineer and he got a good job and wants to become an American citizen. I am thinking about joining him because he has this really great apartment and I want to study English, and maybe look for a job in design or something. This happens a lot. Young people are always leaving my hometown. This is not good. But if we had jobs, maybe we would stay.
This paragraph starts off really good. The writer focuses on young people leaving her hometown because there are no jobs. Then, she gives the example of her boyfriend and develops the topic of living in America. Living in America? What happened to the airport? As you can see, living America is new topic. At the end, the writer jumps back to the topic of the airport, new jobs and young people. Confusing? Yes. This is an example of a lack of topical unity. The writer starts off saying apples, apples, apples, then suddenly says oranges, oranges, oranges, then jumps back to apples, apples, apples.
Remember: A lack of topical unity is a common problem. It will result in a lower score. To get a higher independent essay score, focus on one topic per paragraph.
TOPIC REDUNDANCY
Look at the following paragraph. Can you identify the problem?
A new airport in my hometown will create new jobs for young people. In my hometown, young people need jobs because jobs are good for young people. Jobs are good because they give work to young people who need jobs. I am young and I need a job so new jobs are good for young people like me. New jobs will help not only young people but all people. So new jobs are good for everyone, old and young. I support the airport and new jobs.
This is an example of topic redundancy in a body paragraph. Redundancy means repeating. In this case, the topic of jobs is repeated, over and over. The result is the writer is not saying anything, just filling up space.
Remember: The writing raters are trained to look for serial listing, a lack of topical unity, and topic redundancy. Avoid these problem areas and you will increase your independent essay score.
Want to know more about body paragraph strategies for speaking and for writing? Check out my TOEFL texts.
