Colleagues,
I for one am heartened to see this discussion.  I don't mean to digress
from the original question, but I think it unfortunate that it's too
difficult to find recent articles and research on the paragraph.    

As Dick and others point out, paragraphs are over-rated in many
ways--such as how they are too often seen as micro-versions of an entire
text.  But they warrant continued study if for no other reason than
they're still an important unity of discourse that students and teachers
ask about.   I often have graduate students want to know more about how
to teach and understand paragraphs, esp in regards to research on the
topic.  The vast majority of research was of course done decades ago,
and I don't think Braddock and the other fine scholars said all that
there is to be said about the subject.  But with very few exceptions, I
continually have to send students to research done in the late 70s and
early 80s if they want to understand the 'state of the art' in
composition in this area.  I know there is a good deal of research that
in one way or another is relevant to paragraph unity and structure
that's been published in recent years, but very little dares to focus
directly on these issues. 

As Bob Connors similarly lamented years ago in terms of comp research
on stylistics, I'm sure one reason the meager paragraph suffers as a
research or publication topic is that it has the stigma of seeming to be
a simple mechanical issue that doesn't seem suitably scholarly, esp from
the perspective of other members of the academe, esp other members of
the English department. I get that, but I hope our research and
publications can still give an important topic the attention it still
deserves, stigma or not.

Sorry for the digression, but I hope this sort of thread will remind us
all that the notion of paragraphs--esp in terms of publications--is
still worthy  of serious study and discussion.  

I also apologize if I'm repeating what somebody else has already
addressed.  My internet has been out for a couple of days and I'm
playing catch up on emails and haven't read everything on this thread.

Larry 


____________________________
Larry Beason, Associate Professor
Director of Composition
University of South Alabama
Mobile, AL 36688-0002
Office: 251-460-7861
FAX: 251-461-1517


>>> "Paul E. Doniger" <[log in to unmask]> 3/10/2013 5:20 PM >>>
Craig is so right about the discovery process of writing. Leslie Marmon
Silko 
said once in an interview that she writes to find out what she knows. I
love 
that idea. As a writer, I find this aspect of writing the most
enjoyable 
andintresting. However, as important a lesson as this is, we can rarely
get 
it across to our student, who have lots of additional pressuresin their
lives 
beyond getting their English assignments done well. 


Most of the time, high school students write too quickly, and often at
the last 
minute - for numerous reason (not just laziness, as some might assume).
They 
rarely revise or edit unless forced to do so (which means in class, in
front of 
their teachers, which takes up a good deal of class time). Few of them

understand the beautiful irony of Mark Twain's message: “I didn't
have time to 
write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” A great many of
the papers 
we get from our students are those "ZERO drafts" Craig references. How
do we 
ease the pressure to produce enough so that students will spend quality
time to 
produce those "short letters?" There is also pressure on us teachers to
have 
enough "product" (a.k.a."artifacts") to justify grades, etc. Time is
often the 
enemy of good writing and good teaching.

Thanks,

Paul
 "If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an
improbable 
fiction" (_Twelfth Night_ 3.4.127-128). 





________________________________
From: "Hancock, Craig G" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Sun, March 10, 2013 5:12:19 PM
Subject: Re: Off-topic: paragraph unity and relationships between
paragraphs


Dick, 
     I think it's a little dangerous to overgeneralize from one's own
writing 
processes, though very useful to examine them. I say that as someone
who, for 
example, almost never outlines, but has learned that many very good
writers 
(John McPhee, for example) almost never write without one. 
    The one constant in the modern view of the writing process is that
it is 
heuristic: writing isn't simply a process of expressing meaning, but
very much a 
process of discovery. Some of us are more comfortable doing our
thinking on 
paper. (How do I know what I think until I see what I say?) Don Murray,
the 
writing teacher who influenced me the most, used to call his earliest
draft his 
ZERO draft because it was never intended for a reader. I draft the same
way, 
sometimes producing a huge number of words in a very short time. If I
get 
anything usable out of that, I am happy.
    One pattern I often find with student writing is that it gets
better as it 
goes. By the time they get to the end, the paper is much more
confident, much 
clearer. What that means often, though, is that the original first
paragraphs 
are now obsolete, perhaps even misleading or in contradiction with how
the piece 
ends. If you believe that elements of an ideal text work in harmony
with each 
other, then another draft is called for. It's not so much a matter of 
"composing" by way of the paragraph, but a way of thinking, top down,
about ways 
in which the purposes of the writing can be carried out. What should be
cut? 
What should be added? what's a suitavble shape? 
    I like to tell students they should be able to give the fifty word
version, 
the 100 word version, the two page version, and so on, which is really
a matter 
of discovering/settling on the heart of the paper and thinking about
the most 
effective ways to expand that out. the ability to summarize (practice
with 
summary) is at the top of effective interventions. (See Writing Next,
the Graham 
and Perrin meta-research study).
    A word is effective if it contributes to the purpose of the
sentence. A 
sentence is effective if it helps carry out the work of the paragraph.
The 
paragraph is effective if it helps carry out the purposes of that
section of the 
text. Ultimately, it's the whole text that matters most. A text is
coherent if 
all the parts work together toward a common purpose. This is certainly
helped by 
explicit statement of that purpose, often by stating it where it can do
most 
good, in the opening and closing.
    I think you have to disconnect the idea of composition from the
notion of a 
paragraph. We can certainly compose in paragraph chunks, but the
clearer the 
text becomes IN OUR OWN MIND, as we compose, the better the decisions
about 
overall shape.  
    What you find, too, is that paragraphs are very different for
different 
kinds of texts. News writing, for example, requires very short
paragraphs with 
very little explicit connection between them. Narrative paragraph
breaks often 
seem particularly arbitrary when coherence is being created by the
unfolding 
elements of a plot. (AND THEN). 
    A successful academic writer will often use meta discourse,
explicit 
attention to the text as a text. Most people on this list probably know
the 
importance of an introduction or preface, but our students tend to
ignore them. 
We realize that an academic writer will often summarize perspectives
that they 
disagree with, but our students miss that and cite very misleadingly as
a 
result.
   My apologies for loading so much into a quick response. the heart of
it might 
be that sentences are not fully understood if we isolate them from
discourse. 
They represent the world, interact with readers, and participate in the

construction of text.  

Craig

    

   


________________________________

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[[log in to unmask]] on 
behalf of Dick Veit [[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Sunday, March 10, 2013 3:14 PM
To: [log in to unmask] 
Subject: Re: Off-topic: paragraph unity and relationships between
paragraphs


It is sometimes said (not by me) that paragraphs are "building blocks
of an 
essay." Compose a unified, coherent paragraph, then another, and
another--guided 
by a master plan, of course--and the eventual result is an essay.

The big problem for me is that this doesn't capture the way I write or,
I 
believe, the way most authors write. I've written long books and short
emails, 
but almost never have I consciously "composed a paragraph." 


In analyzing my writing process, I'm not aware of thinking much about
paragraphs 
as I compose. I do, however, think about paragraph breaks, which are to
me a 
form of punctuation. Like all punctuation marks, their purpose is to
provide a 
reading signal to make the reader's job easier. A paragraph break
alerts the 
reader to expect a change: you are about to encounter a different
point, a new 
example, a shift in direction.

Like you, Scott, I have given students passages with the paragraph
breaks 
removed and asked them to decide where the breaks should go and why.
Usually 
there is agreement about break placement, but not always. Sometimes a
perfectly 
good longer paragraph can be divided into two perfectly good shorter
paragraphs. 
It is also worth noting the psychological role of paragraphs. Readers
don't 
generally like very long paragraphs. Eye appeal is a real consideration
in 
editorial decisions. An essay printed in a book is likely to have fewer

paragraph breaks than that same essay would have if it were to appear
in the 
narrow columns of a newspaper. 


This is not to say that paragraphs are not coherent or without shape.
Nor is it 
to say that analyzing well crafted paragraphs is not a worthwhile
exercise; I 
have certainly done that in writing classes I've taught and in books on
writing 
that I've written. Nor is it to say that paragraphs take shape by
second nature 
for novice writers as they do for experienced writers. We should not
ignore 
paragraphs by any means.

What is important is that we don't teach a writing process that doesn't
conform 
to real-world processes.

Dick


On Sun, Mar 10, 2013 at 11:31 AM, Scott Woods <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

Dear List,
>
>
>I'm doing some work with teaching students to understand paragraph
unity, the 
>relationships between paragraphs, and the relationship of paragraphs
to the 
>whole work. This seems to me to be a profoundly powerful set of skills
to 
>develop, and one which is often neglected. 
>
>
>My basic approach is to provide lots of examples of analysis of
paragraph unity 
>and the relationship between paragraphs, model how I derived these,
then have 
>students walk through the same steps with a partner. I also provide
passages 
>with the paragraph breaks removed and have students identify where the
breaks 
>should be.
>
>
>I'm looking for recommendations for background reading on paragraph
unity and 
>the relationships between paragraphs, research and recommendations for
teaching 
>these, and any advice available in the community on this topic.
>
>
>Thanks,
>
>
>Scott Woods
>To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web
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