Paragraph structure — example solutions

Example solutions to the exercises on Paragraph structure

Exercise 1

Consider the following paragraph from an Introduction section. Does it follow the hamburger structure? If not: what is the problem? Can you fix it?

Any search or foraging act represents a balance between exploration and exploitation: One the one hand, one must search or explore the environment in order to find and learn about desired resources; on the other hand, one must exploit those resources in order to accumulate gains. Consequently, striking a balance between exploration and exploitation is the key to successful foraging. But does aging impact the control of exploration-exploitation trade-offs?From Mata et al. (2013): Foraging across the life span: is there a reduction in exploration with aging?

Example solution

• The first sentence works well as the topic sentence: it presents the main claim that foraging is a “balance between exploration and exploitation”.
• The second sentence explains about the exploration & exploitation — that’s the body of the paragraph.
• The third sentence (“Consquently, …”) provides a conclusion, so it would make for a good closing sentence.
• Indeed, the fourth & last sentence “But does aging impact the control of exploration-exploitation trade-offs?” suddenly introduces a new topic — the influence of aging on foraging. The topic of aging comes completely out of the blue, which leaves the reader confused. This sentence could be adapted to serve as the topic sentence of the next paragraph.
• Then we are left with the first paragraph consisting of three sentences, where the topic and closing sentence say almost the same thing. This feels unnecessary redundant as the paragraph is short & quite simple to understand. However, we can make a few minor changes to the topic & closing sentences, such that the topic sentence sounds more like the introduction of the topic, and the closing sentence provides the main message, as a conclusion to the paragraph:

Any search or foraging act represents a trade-off between exploration and exploitation: One the one hand, one must search or explore the environment in order to find and learn about desired resources; on the other hand, one must exploit those resources in order to accumulate gains. Consequently, striking an optimal balance between exploration and exploitation is the key to successful foraging.

But how is the exploration-exploitation trade-off influced by aging? … From Mata et al. (2013): Foraging across the life span: is there a reduction in exploration with aging?

• The last sentence is now the topic sentence of a new paragraph. The concept of aging is still not properly introduced — there is no connection to the content of the previous paragraph — but this can be done in the body of the second paragraph.
• However, what we already have is a connection to the topic sentence of the first paragraph, through the phrase “exploration-exploitation trade-off”.
• Moreover, “aging” is now located at the end of the sentence, which is a good place to introduce new information.

 

Exercise 2: Your paragraph

Do you have a paragraph that is not working, and you are not sure how you could fix it? Share it in the comments & maybe we can help! It’s a great practice 😉