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| | Comparison Topic Sentences

"Comparison" topic sentences
Should focus on supporting the thesis

Body paragraphs of comparison essays require topic sentences that:

  1. Sum up the content of the paragraph, and
  2. Indicate the paragraph content supports the essay's thesis statement.

Without instruction in how to plan a comparison essay, students typically mess up.

On this page, we'll look at what how students' misunderstanding of what comparisons should do leads them to mess up. Then we'll look at how we brilliant teachers can clear up the confusion with a wave of our magic pencils and have our darlings writing brilliant comparisons by nightfall.

Show support for thesis

Left on their own, students come up with sentences that are simply facts, such as these:

  • Community colleges offer associate degrees; four-year colleges offer bachelors' degrees.

  • Community colleges and four-year colleges offer different types of degrees.

Such sentences may be accurate summaries of the paragraph content, but they do not reveal how the content supports their thesis.

Topic-thesis sentence relationship

I teach students to assemble a writing skeleton™ from using a few graphic organizers that function as data collection units with built-in user directions.

For compare-contrast writing, the graphic organizer I use as the basis for building a thesis statement is:

thesis statement graphic organizer for comparison essay

You can compare that to the graphic organizer for the thesis of a single-topic expository essay.

Using that C&C graphic organizer helps students come up with a thesis statement like this:

Community colleges are a better choice for average students than four-year colleges.

Students build on their thesis statements in exactly the same way they do for single-topic essays:

topic sentence graphic organizer for compare contrast essays

Substituting their content for the items shown produces topic sentences for the expository body paragraphs. Click to see the sample writing skeleton™ on this thesis.

Best practice: activate knowledge

If you want students to write comparison essays that actually analyze a relationship between two items, you need to begin with what students already know.

Students are already familiar with the comparison process. They just need someone to point out how they can use the same procedures with a compare and contrast topic that they use outside class.

Linda Aragoni writes about teaching writing

My students asked for it

My students asked for help to continue developing their ability to correct their own grammar errors after our course together ended. The material I wrote for them is now available for other adult and mature teens.

Grammar Abusers Anonymous is an ebook in pdf format.

Linda

Linda Aragoni

SBI! Course

Published 22-Mar-2010; updated 30-Apr-2013
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