Writing Exercise 4 1) Read Writing Tip #3 on my website,
2) then see the sample paragraph below with key words highlighted, noting the repetition of various key words and closely related words throughout every sentence in the paragraph.
3) Then write a brief "body paragraph" developing the point of one of the topic sentences below. Do not write a full essay! Just develop one single main point as you would in a typical body paragraph of a hypothetical essay on why people commit adultery. Focus on repeating key words from the topic sentence, or closely related words such as synonyms, antonyms, and other related words, throughout the paragraph in virtually every sentence, as in the sample paragraph. You may copy the topic sentence you develop into a paragraph word for word (copy and paste) as the starting point of your paragraph.4) Submit to the Writing exercise 4 dropbox in D2L.
Topic sentence outline (choose one to develop as the main point in your paragraph):
Central question: Why do so many people commit adultery?
Opposing view topic sentence 1:
One theory as to why so many people commit adultery holds that human beings are not by nature monogamous, that lifelong fidelity to a single sexual partner is unnatural.OV TS2:
Another theory would have us believe that the so-called "mid-life crisis" is the reason so many people commit adultery.Author's view TS1:
It may be that many people engage in adultery from simple boredom.Author's view TS2:
People commit adultery, too, because some see cheating as method of escape or relief from problems within their marriages.Thesis:
Adultery is common mainly because people get bored with their partners or because they try to escape marital problems by turning to the arms of a lover.
Sample body paragraph, with key words and related words highlighted:
Perhaps the most pervasive underlying cause for the frequent occurrence of adultery is our society's casual attitude towards both marriage and divorce in general. Since it is almost the norm today for people to be married two or more times, the social consequences of getting caught in adultery are not so grave as they once were. Our society has such a permissive attitude towards divorce that we have made marriage a far more casual institution than it was only a few decades ago. It was only mildly inappropriate that a certain wiseacre at a wedding I recently attended commented to the happy bride and groom, “I hope you two have a good time on your honeymoon: you only get married two or three times in life.” The couple had hardly sworn their sacred vows to remain faithful to one another until death, and this joker suggested that marriage is not a serious commitment that should last forever. “There's always divorce if the marriage doesn't work out,” this smart aleck implied. As much as his comment was in poor taste, the fact is, the groom had indeed sworn the same sacred vows to a different woman five years before. This casual attitude today that seems to anticipate marriages ending in divorce even before they are underway makes adultery, the gravest of marital sins, almost acceptable in the eyes of society. If adultery is not exactly accepted today, it has certainly come to be tolerated: hence the contradictory phrase, “a casual affair.” Our society tolerates people breaking their marriage vows by cheating on their spouses because we do not value marriage as an institution based on serious commitment as our grandparents did. We almost seem to value divorce more than we do marriage.