Begin Your Paragraph with a Topic Sentence
A long time ago, when I was in the midst of working as a high-school English teacher and also working on my master’s degree, I was feeling overwhelmed by the amount of reading I was required to do. Thus, I took a speed-reading course to help alleviate the problem. I recall learning a few tricks to save time without decreasing my comprehension, but one suggestion really stood out, and this particular suggestion actually helped me more with my writing than it did with my reading.
Basically, the instructor said, “If you ever find that you have too much material to read and not enough time to read it all, just read the first sentence of each paragraph because most of the key ideas are located there.” Obviously, this instructor was referring to the topic sentence of the paragraph and to the tendency of most writers to begin their paragraphs with the topic sentence.
What is a topic sentence? While many students confuse the topic sentence with the thesis sentence, the two are not the same. The thesis sentence usually contains the main idea for the entire essay (and is usually located at the end of the first paragraph), but the topic sentence contains the main idea for a paragraph. Thus, a typical 500-word essay will have only one thesis sentence but may have as many as five to ten topic sentences.
