PARAGRAPH DEVELOPMENT

Main methods, with brief examples

THE METHODS
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Narration and description Definition Elaboration Comparison/contrast Summarization Analysis

Classification (break down by parts) y Process (break down by steps) y Causation (break down by causes and/or effects)
y

NARRATION AND DESCRIPTION

Narrate the story of anything that unfolds in time Eras Events Experiments Universes Romance

NARRATION & DESCRIPTION IN SEEING IS NOT BELIEVING

Lance Corporal Ted Joey Boudreaux Jr. was bored. It was the summer of 2003 in Iraq [] and you can joyride around the desert in a dusty Humvee only so often. Loitering at the back gate of his base, mingling with locals, Boudreaux says he scribbled Welcome marines on a piece of cardboard and gave it to some kids, who then posed with him, smiling, for a snapshot. He emailed the picture to his mom, a cousin and a few friends[.] That wasnt the last of the photo, though. Steve Casimiro

SUMMARIZATION
More general, less character- and setting-based than narration

FOR EXAMPLE, FROM WHOSE LIFE WOULD YOU SAVE

Greene argues that our emotions play a powerful role in our moral judgments, triggering instinctive responses that are the product of millions of years of evolution. A lot of our deeply felt moral convictions may be quirks of our evolutionary theory, he says. The puzzle of moral judgments grabbed Greene when he was . Most theories were shaped, he learned, by Kant and John Stuart Mill. Kant believed that pure reason. Mill, by contrast, argued that

THE (SURPRISING) HISTORY OF LOBSTER

Up until sometime in the 1800s, though, lobster was literally low-class food, eaten only by the poor and institutionalized. Even in the harsh penal environment of early America, some colonies had laws against feeding lobsters to inmates more than once a week because it was thought to be cruel and unusual, like making people eat rats. One reason for their low status was how plentiful lobsters were in old New England. Unbelievable abundance is how one source describes the situation, including accounts of Plymouth pilgrims wading out and capturing all they wanted by hand, and of early Bostons seashore being littered with lobsters after hard stormsthese latter were treated as a smelly nuisance and ground up for fertilizer. There is also the fact that premodern lobster was often cooked dead and then preserved, usually packed in salt or crude hermetic containers. Maines earliest lobster industry was based around a dozen such seaside canneries in the 1840s, from which lobster was shipped as far away as California, in demand only because it was cheap and high in protein, basically chewable fuel.

Late 14c., "setting of boundaries," from O.Fr. definicion , from L. definitionem , noun of action from definire . In logic, meaning "a statement of the essential nature of something" is from late 14c.; http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/definition

DEFINITION
1. 2.

The act of defining or making definite, distinct, or clear. Optics. Sharpness of the image formed by an optical system.

DEFINITION WITH DRIVE

Skill is the connection between life and tools, or life and machines. Once, skill was defined in qualitative terms: How well did a person work. But as machines grow larger and more complex [] we tend to define skill quantitatively: How speedily and cheaply can a person work? And the more quantifiable skills become, the easier they are to replace with machines. Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America

STEREOTYPE
THREAT Every heard of it? Its defined in The Art of Failure paragraph 20

ELABORATION
Describing the indescribable

WHAT IS DUENDE?

Duende is a difficult-to-define word used in Spanish arts. From the original meaning (a fairy- or goblin-like creature). "Tener duende" (having duende) is loosely translated as having soul, a heightened state of emotion, expression and authenticity, often connected with flamenco. Wikipedia The duende is a power and not a construct, a struggle and not a concept. I heard an old guitarist, a virtuoso, remark, The duende is not in the throat, the duende comes from inside up, up from the very solves of the feet. That is to say, its not a question of aptitude, but of a true and variable styleof blood, in other words. Federico Garcia Lorca

WHAT IS A LOBSTER: ELABORATION VIA

NICELY ORDERED FACTS

For practical purposes, everyone knows what a lobster is. As usual, though, theres much more to know than most of us care aboutits all a matter of what your interests are. Taxonomically speaking, a lobster is a marine crustacean of the family Homaridae, characterized by five pairs of jointed legs, the first pair terminating in large pincerish claws used for subduing prey. Like many other species of benthic carnivore, lobsters are both hunters and scavengers. They have stalked eyes, gills on their legs, and antennae. There are dozens of different kinds worldwide, of which the relevant species here is the Maine lobster, Homarus americanus. The name lobster comes from the Old English loppestre, which is thought to be a corrupt form of the Latin word for locust combined with the Old English loppe, which meant spider.

NEED ANOTHER EXAMPLE TOO

Define or elaborate with negatives

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death

Enrique Chagoya

COMPARISON/CONTRAST
Beyond separating facts, use for conflict and relationship

COMPARE
 

& CONTRAST IN ORDER TO

Elaborate on A by negative comparison to B Reveal unseen qualities/efficacy of A by analogy to more familiar B Show knowledge/technology leaps Compare in blocks, in order: xyzA then xyzB or point by point: xA xB yA yB zA zB

AND ANALYZE A PHENOMENON BY

CONTRASTING RELATED PARTS OF IT

What happened to Kennedy that night illustrates a second major difference between panicking and choking [narrative & description of his story and then contrasting story of tennis star who choked at 5 sets up.] Panicking is conventional failure, choking is paradoxical failure. Oh. Very different causes and, therefore, cures.

ANALYSIS
Classification parts & their relationships Process mechanism and sequence Causation causes and/or effects

ANALYZING
BY

CLASSIFYING

ANALYZING PROCESSES

Consider what happens when you double the size of an image in Photoshop. You start with a 100by-200-pixel image and enlarge it to 200 by 200. Photoshop must create new pixels to make the image bigger [.] Photoshop will look at a whole pixel and an adjoining black pixel and decide that the best option for the new pixel being inserted is gray. [a digital watermark]


With Narration assisting

ANALYZING CAUSATION
(CAUSES OR EFFECTS)

It wont take longif it hasnt happened already before every image becomes potentially suspect. So? [A]s fakes proliferate, real evidence, such as the photos of abuse at Abu Grab prison in Iraq, could be discounted as unreliable. Doesnt affect me And then theres the judicial system, in which altered photos could harm the innocent, free the guilty, or simply cause havoc.

A GROUP WRITE


Pick one of the development methods

Narration and description Definition Elaboration Comparison/contrast Summarization Analysis Classification (break down by parts) Process (break down by steps) Causation (break down by causes and/or effects

Write a paragraph at groupwrite1 googledoc on our chosen topic, which is ___________________