Paragraph Development

Paragraph development selects and orders enough material to complete one controlling move for the reader.

段落展开是围绕一个核心任务,选择并排列足够材料,使读者看见这一段如何完成它的工作。

Organizing Principles

  • narrative -> time;
  • description -> space or selected features;
  • data commentary -> trend, comparison, exception, significance;
  • process -> stages or causal sequence;
  • definition -> class, features, boundaries;
  • exemplification -> claim, evidence, interpretation.

Paragraph types may overlap. The real test is whether the order serves the paragraph’s purpose and answers the reader’s active question.

Development Audit

  1. State the paragraph’s job in one sentence.
  2. Choose the order best suited to that job.
  3. Select details that advance the controlling move.
  4. Make sentence relationships visible.
  5. End after the move is complete, not merely after the evidence appears.

Search and Source Mentions

Connections