Writing a Body Paragraph

In essay assignments, every body paragraph should have three parts:

• Beginning: The paragraph starts with a topic sentence (TS). The TS states the one claim (= die Behauptung) of the paragraph clearly.

  A TS is (part of) the answer to the question that you try to answer with your essay.

  Keep your TS concise. Do not include supporting information such as examples or statistics.

• Middle: The supporting sentences should support the TS with explanation and one or more examples. Every supporting sentence should clearly relate to the TS and should not introduce a new idea.

• End: The paragraph ends with a concluding sentence (CS). The CS summarizes the main idea of the paragraph. In its simplest form, the CS is just a paraphrase of your topic sentence.

After every paragraph, skip two more lines!

Further reading

For level B1 and above, I recommend the following podcast episode from the Grammar Girl podcast: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/articles/how-to-write-a-strong-topic-sentence-for-clear-organized-writing/