Lab Assignment for ENGL 0306

Organizing Paragraphs

Lab Purpose:

To practice organizing paragraphs

When I finish this, I should be able to:

Reorganize my own paragraphs so they read better and sentences move well from one to the next.

 

 

Part I: Organizing

 

Organize the following sentences in a paragraph that moves logically. You may be able to organize this in several ways that make sense, but find one way that you think follows from one sentence to the next in the best way possible. Don’t change any sentences; just rearrange them. Use the margin on the right to take notes as you go to help you organize your thoughts.

 

1)      First number the sentences to figure out where you will put them

2)      Then rewrite the entire paragraph out the way you think it should look.

 

One of these was for the poor, the other to buy back the Land of Israel.

 

The walls were a fiercely stippled whitewash, so often rewhitened by my father in slack seasons that the paint looked as if it had been squeezed and cracked into the walls.

 

In the corner next to the toilet was the sink at which we washed, and the square tub in which my mother did our clothes. 

 

The kitchen held our lives together.

 

On the wall just over the table hung a long horizontal mirror that sloped to a ship’s prow at each end and was lined in cherry wood. It took up the whole wall, and drew every object in the kitchen to itself.

 

My mother worked in it all day long, we ate in it almost all meals except the Passover seder, I did my homework and first writing at the kitchen table, and in winter I often had a bed made up for me on three kitchen chairs near the stove.

 

A large electric light bulb hung down the center of the kitchen at the end of a chain that had been hooked into the ceiling; the old gas ring and key still jutted out of the wall like antlers.

 

Above it, tacked to the shelf on which were pleasantly arranged square, blue-boardered white sugar and spice jars, hung calendars from the Public National Bank on Pitkin Avenue and the Minsker Progressive Branch of the Workmen’s Circle; receipts for the payment of insurance premiums, and household bills on a spindle; two little boxes engraved with Hebrew letters.

 

 

 

Part II: Reflecting on Your Organization

1)   Why did you organize this paragraph above the way you did? In general, how does this paragraph move from point to point? Try to explain the type of organization you gave to this paragraph.

 

2)   Talk about why you put each sentence where you did. For each sentence, explain why you put one before and after another sentence. Think about the clues you used to figure out where this sentence went in the paragraph? There are 8 sentences above, and so this answer will have 8 explanations.

 

3)   What do you now know about organizing a paragraph? Write for a few minutes to explain what you mean.

 

4)   Take out a paragraph you have already written for another assignment. Re-look at this paragraph and re-organize it to move better from point to point, sentence to sentence. You may need to add to your sentences and even cut parts of other sentences. Feel free to change anything you’d like to make it work better as a paragraph. Write the finished product out here.

 

5)   What did you do to your own paragraph (in #4 above) to make it work better? Why did you do what you did?