Argument Body Paragraphs (Topic Sentence and Commentary Templates Included)

Summary

The video, hosted by Tim Freitas from the Garden of English, delves into the art of crafting topic sentences and body paragraphs for argument essays. Freitas emphasizes the significance of topic sentences in guiding paragraph content and maintaining a coherent argument. He explains the components of an effective topic sentence, highlighting the importance of transitional phrases, specific references, and argumentative points. By using color-coded examples, Freitas illustrates how to create cohesive paragraphs that align with a thesis. Additionally, he provides a detailed commentary template to support claims with evidence, enhancing the depth of writing.

Highlights

• Tim Freitas shares insights on crafting compelling topic sentences. 🤓
• Topic sentences require transitional language, specific examples, and arguments. 🎨
• Color coding helps in understanding paragraph flow and connection to thesis. 🌈
• Advice on providing commentary to reinforce evidence and argument. 💪
• Practical templates make essay writing approachable and structured. 📚

Key Takeaways

• Topic sentences act as guides for structuring body paragraphs efficiently. 📝
• Transitional language is crucial in maintaining a coherent argument and line of reasoning. 💬
• Specific examples in topic sentences help in anchoring the paragraph's argument. 🎯
• A structured approach to commentary can significantly enhance argument clarity. 🚀
• Interactive templates and color-coded guides can simplify writing complex essays. 🎨

Overview

Tim Freitas from the Garden of English is transforming how we perceive body paragraphs in argument essays. By breaking down the components of effective topic sentences, he takes us on a detailed journey into maintaining clarity and coherence throughout an essay. And don't worry, if you're the type who loves colors, Tim's got you covered with his color-coded approach!

Ever struggled with commentary? Tim's video provides an in-depth look at structuring your commentary using templates that tie your evidence back to your thesis flawlessly. He's all about making our lives easier and essays stronger! So, if you're constantly battling with the logic and flow of your arguments, these insights are about to become your new best friends.

Ultimately, this video isn't just about preparing for your AP Lang exam—it's about becoming a sharper writer and thinker overall. Tim emphasizes that mastering these skills will serve you well in college and beyond. Plus, his relaxed teaching style makes these concepts digestible, ensuring that learning how to write strong paragraphs becomes both educational and enjoyable.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction In the chapter titled "Introduction," Tim Freitas from the "Garden of English" series discusses how to create topic sentences and write body paragraphs specifically for argument essays. He introduces the series focused on argument essays and emphasizes the importance of structuring topic sentences and body paragraphs effectively within these essays.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Unit Overview and Importance of Writing Skills This chapter focuses on the overview and the importance of writing skills, especially in constructing arguments. It highlights that the insights shared in this unit are primarily targeted at preparing students for the AP Language exam, but they also enhance overall writing and critical thinking abilities.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Thesis and Topic Sentence Templates The chapter titled 'Thesis and Topic Sentence Templates' focuses on improving writing and thinking skills, particularly in a college setting. It involves discussing strategies for outlining a paper, creating commentary, and understanding the components involved in writing. The transcript starts with the speaker resuming a topic they have previously discussed, indicating a focus on reinforcing and building upon an argument or thesis statement. This suggests a recurring educational approach to advancing writing skills.
• 02:00 - 03:30: Planning Topic Sentences and Body Paragraphs The chapter focuses on planning topic sentences and body paragraphs in the context of writing tasks. It begins with a prompt about warning labels on troublesome content, suggesting readers pause and read it closely. The material mentioned is derived from a book co-authored by the speaker, with templates and examples available through a document link, emphasizing its educational purpose and availability via Perfection Learning.
• 03:30 - 05:30: Examples and Explanation of Topic Sentences The chapter discusses the creation of thesis statements, introducing five templates to aid in their construction. An update was made to include a fifth template, which ensures that it begins with the word 'since'. This modification was prompted by the realization that one of the initial templates was not as foolproof as initially thought. Examples for each template are provided, particularly emphasizing the fifth template to ensure clarity and effectiveness in crafting topic sentences.
• 05:30 - 07:00: Commentary and Reasoning in Paragraphs The chapter discusses methods and tips for enhancing the complexity of thesis writing, emphasizing the use of specific words and correct punctuation to avoid run-on sentences. The author mentions using a previous thesis (number three) as an example to demonstrate the planning of topic sentences and the generation of body paragraphs.
• 07:00 - 07:30: Conclusion and Next Steps The chapter outlines the process of writing a conclusion and next steps after presenting topic sentences and providing guidance on forming body paragraphs.

Argument Body Paragraphs (Topic Sentence and Commentary Templates Included) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 this is the garden of english i'm tim freitas and today we're going to talk about creating topic sentences and writing body paragraphs for the argument essay check it out okay we are continuing our series with the argument essay and like i mentioned earlier we're going to talk about topic sentences and body paragraphing as a whole if you haven't already checked out
• 00:30 - 01:00 the other videos that we've done in this kind of i don't know unit for the lack of a better term about writing arguments you want to check those out right up here uh in the corner i also want to just as i'm shrinking myself up remind you that you'll want to subscribe now so that you can continue to get you know tips and tricks for helping out with preparing you for your ap lang exam but these tips and tricks aren't just for preparing you for your ap ling exam they are actually meant to help you with your writing and thought overall so that you will indeed actually
• 01:00 - 01:30 become a better writer a better thinker um and it will help you in college so anyway i'm going to shrink myself up right up here like i normally do and we're gonna get right into things here today as how do we you know look at um outlining our paper how do we know what to do for commentary uh how do we know all of these things so uh nonetheless here i want to remind you of the prompt that we're using i've read it in every other argument piece i'm going to assume that you have indeed actually
• 01:30 - 02:00 been paying attention to that so it's still the same prompt about warning labels on troublesome content if you haven't read this yet then you're going to want to press pause right now and read the prompt it's right on your screen here i also want to just point out that this is indeed from a book that i co-authored in the document that you can access down below with all the templates and examples there is a link if you click right here in the document it'll bring you to the page where you can actually purchase that it's a book put out by perfection learning uh anyway uh please note here that in
• 02:00 - 02:30 the last kind of video that i did we talked about generating a thesis and i gave you four templates believe it or not i actually changed it to five so i've kind of updated that here particularly because i noticed that one of my templates was not was not as foolproof as i thought so please note i added a fourth and then i also included an example with a fifth just to kind of uh make it so that template five always starts with the word since so anyway uh that's beside the point what's actually gonna know what we have
• 02:30 - 03:00 to get into for today if you also don't wanna use a thesis template you can always increase complexity by just making sure that your thesis has at least one of these words in it and make sure you punctuate correctly though that's important we don't want run-on sentences anyway i'm going to actually use my thesis from thesis number three in order to present how do we actually plan for topic sentences and also how do we um then generate body paragraphs because of it i'm also going to
• 03:00 - 03:30 just present two topic sentences and i would toss a conclusion on at the end we'll do a conclusion video next by the way i'm not going to write both body paragraphs i'm only going to show you what one looks like and i'll talk about how that would then influence the writing of the second um and i'm not here to suggest that the best papers are five paragraphs long or four paragraphs long but in 40 minutes i don't know how you can write many more than four paragraphs i tell my kids thesis three body paragraphs conclusion or thesis two really awesome body paragraphs and
• 03:30 - 04:00 conclusion that is my typical expectation in terms of length if you have an average handwriting size you're looking at two and a half pages that's one side another side and then half of the next that's a pretty common uh length for a high scoring paper length does not mean you'll score higher but that's typically um where you kind of see those higher score papers higher scoring papers being because they actually develop ideas a little bit better anyway so here's my thesis and you're going to notice i've got some color coding going
• 04:00 - 04:30 on i'll explain that as i go through today here okay so my thesis which is based on template 3 found right above here in the document is this i'm responding to to what extent should we be using warning labels and whatnot here it is although many individuals can find just about any situation offensive and it's incredibly unrealistic to apply warning labels to everything placing cautionary labels and ratings on commonly agreed upon troubling content is appropriate so i've made an argument here i have a little concession at the
• 04:30 - 05:00 beginning of my argument but then i say but please know we should be doing this here and you're going to notice okay then i have color-coded this and the reason why is because the green here when you look at my topic sentences is going to actually be what i put in my topic sentences and clarify as my examples so i've got them in a very general sense in my thesis i'm going to get a little more specific in my topic sentences and then those examples are going to be extremely
• 05:00 - 05:30 specific when i write about them i've got a really good friend named mike van walde who's an english teacher and he always says be specific not pacific and he me what he means by that is the pacific ocean is huge and it covers a lot being specific is being extremely precise in a small area and so in our thesis we can be on the pacific side but when we write about our examples in our body paragraphs we need to be as specific as possible but anyway so that's what the green stands for the orange is my argument okay so you're going to notice that i'm combining here
• 05:30 - 06:00 i'm giving an indication of what i'm going to talk about with examples and argument so my first examples are going to be individuals kind of finding any situation offensive and i'm going to talk about how that makes it very hard to apply warning labels to like everything but then i'm going to shift my paper and actually say but you know these cautionary ratings when they're for commonly agreed upon content are indeed appropriate for different reasons and because of that i now know exactly what i need to do in my paper movement one
• 06:00 - 06:30 is prove that it's hard to kind of get this to deal with every issue that we have but then i'm going to shift to but there are times when this is extremely appropriate and it's actually on the easier side to do so let's actually look at how this influences my topic sentences now you're going to notice right here i've got a topic sentence template okay i'll actually highlight this for you all here so we'll highlight that in yellow the topic sentence template now this template just so you know does not have to go in this order what this means is that your topic
• 06:30 - 07:00 sentences need to have these parts and if they have these parts they're really going to direct your body paragraph so you need to know what a topic sentence is meant to do so what i have here is this i have in blue it says transitional language now transitions for rhetorical analysis essays and literary essays are easy and the author begins by the author then moves to transitions are not as easy like that when you write your own argument you might transition in many different ways it might be to contrast something before it might be to augment something that comes before
• 07:00 - 07:30 it might just be hey i'm beginning here do i say to begin with do i say there are many different ways you can transition okay do i admit a concession at first so is that my transition like okay anybody can concede that kind of a thing but you do want your topic sentence to have some sort of transitional language because that tells us where we are in our argument that also helps us with the line of reasoning because it shows a connection between your paragraphs and your understanding next in the green you'll notice here
• 07:30 - 08:00 that we are looking for a somewhat specific reference to your example and actually this is an adjectival so we need to hyphenate that we need a somewhat specific reference to your example you're not going to definitely tell me all about your example yet but you're going to give me something that's going to tell me where your example is going to come from and then we're going to add in a part in our topic sentence that is our argument so what is your example and how does it connect to your argument sometimes you can pull this straight down from your thesis sometimes you can reword it
• 08:00 - 08:30 and once again it does not have to always go in this exact order you will see that in uh in my second topic sentence i actually put my example second and i put my argument first okay so there's no science to this per se besides the fact that every good topic sentence is going to guide a paragraph by doing it this way so how let's check this out with my first topic sentence so don't forget my thesis says i have to start by talking about my concession why because that's first in
• 08:30 - 09:00 my thesis so i need to concede at the first part of my body paragraph i mean in my first body paragraph here i'm not refuting i'm not taking the kind of argument and destroying it i actually admit that this is true hey anybody can find anything offensive and because of that this is going to be hard that's not my actual position though my position is that we should use warning labels but i need to concede it's hard in some circumstances so watch what i do here i start with my transition that sets us up right just about anybody can admit i could have very
• 09:00 - 09:30 easily said it's probably most appropriate to begin with the concession that i could have worded it that way i didn't do it though because that's not how i talk uh and that's not how i write so my transitional language here for topic sentence one if i'm going from my thesis into my topic sentence is gonna be just about anybody can admit that and now i have recent controversies surrounding the holiday market practices of private businesses so this right here in the green is now going to tell you all right so he's going to talk about marketing
• 09:30 - 10:00 practices of private business okay now i said this doesn't make sense because i haven't read it in full but i'm going to continue here just about anybody can admit that recent controversies surrounding the holiday marketing practices of private businesses highlight the incredibly temperamental nature of the human psyche making it quite hard to entirely monitor the troublesome content that's out there and you'll notice what i've done here is i have taken the argument it's
• 10:00 - 10:30 incredibly unrealistic to apply warning labels to everything and i've made that argument a little bit more specific here but it fits right under this orange umbrella because why what makes it so hard and unrealistic because humans are temperamental and it's you can't deal with all of the troublesome content that's out there and so because of that right i actually have all really strong parts of my topic sentence now i'm going to change it up in my example to a little later i think just to kind of pare it down a little bit but even if i
• 10:30 - 11:00 don't it's okay this is strong because now what i'm going to do is i'm going to describe these controversies of private businesses actually changing their marketing practices in the holiday and i'm going to explain how does that show the temperamental nature of people and if we deal with everybody and try to say hey you know what's going to offend every single person this becomes impossible to deal with okay and that's going to be my reasoning there now because of that i will have taken care of this part of my argument
• 11:00 - 11:30 in my first body paragraph so we're going to shift to my second body paragraph which now is going to say cautionary labels on commonly agreed upon things and why that's appropriate so look at what i have in this next one luckily though so notice how that language transitions to what i'm trying to actually argue it says luckily though amidst the aforementioned astronomical turmoil which is humans being temperamental there are some areas where most people agree about what constitutes offensive content especially when it comes to shielding
• 11:30 - 12:00 children and this typically shows up in common media ratings and look at that right now if you looked at my last video that talked about picking out evidence you'll see that i had this in my evidence boxes and that's going to be the marketing practices of starbucks in 2015 and common media ratings that you would see on netflix and movies and things like that and video games so now what's really nice here is that i shift my argument to talk about hey here's when this is appropriate and can be done
• 12:00 - 12:30 media ratings are things that people agree upon for the most part and the reason why it's so appropriate is specifically to shield children and now we see this argument coming together when i put a conclusion on there i'm going to really focus in on my position of how it's appropriate and that's going to make my paper holistically very much in favor of supporting um in supporting media warning labels and media okay so these two topic sentences follow this or should i say include the
• 12:30 - 13:00 parts that come from this particular template right here and they will guide my paper to a t because what i have to do now for topic for body paragraph number two is talk about common media ratings that are accepted and explain why that's appropriate for shielding children and maybe even appropriate for other people if people don't want to experience a lot of crude and foul language that's just not their style if it's listed even on an adult program crude crude and follow language then sure enough it they don't have to watch it and they don't have a free
• 13:00 - 13:30 choice to not do so um so i can get in there but i'm not showing you that body paragraph today so anyway that right there is thesis uh sorry topic sentence templates and how you can actually get those into your topic sentences now i could include more topic sentences for my example i'm just not for the sake of providing you with an example when i have my students write long papers all of their topic sentences have to include transitional language the argument and a reference to the example to come and if they don't then we go back and we
• 13:30 - 14:00 re-outline again okay but this is a great way to outline too if you write your thesis and just your topic sentences first because then you have your entire paper set up and you can rearrange your topic sentences and see if you can clarify your transitions to really make sure that your reasoning and how you transition works throughout your paper to argue what you've said in your thesis and don't forget you always want to make sure that you follow the direction of your thesis and that's what this little red line says here so that means that i'm starting with my concession right here and then i'm going to support and confirm what i'm doing here okay now i'm gonna actually uh
• 14:00 - 14:30 let's see if we can just drop this down we'll create a new page right here for you all uh in the midst of this and once again this document is right down below i do have an evidenced commentary guide this looks extremely similar to what i showed you in my last video once again you can check it out right up there but i've added a right hand column because this is a commentary column so really what i've done here is i have taken the same exact
• 14:30 - 15:00 organizer and added a commentary column and what i've done here is i've explained what reasoning and commentary is right this is explaining how your evidence proves your claim in your topic sentence that also is related to your claim and your thesis okay and that's what you need to do but i can say that until i'm blue in the face that doesn't mean that i've actually showed you how to do it well this right here is a simplified uh reasoning template however you're going to notice that i'm going to provide reasoning for my topic sentences with
• 15:00 - 15:30 this template and it's still pretty solid so this is something that you could fall back on that works out really well and in your favor you're going to notice that where it says somewhat specific this is what's going to go my topic sentence the idea of changing year-end holiday titles and materials okay and then i've got i really went into my specific evidence here and you want your specific evidence you want to describe your evidence in three to five sentences okay but please note whatever however long your evidence is your commentary should be just as long
• 15:30 - 16:00 if not longer so if you describe your evidence in five sentences you better be ready to provide that much volume of commentary too uh one sentence of commentary doesn't typically cut okay but i have all right i'm gonna talk about a private business changing their marketing at the year-end i now have a really detailed description of this happening in 2015 when starbucks did this and how it coincided with other kind of social trends for making things less christmas and more holiday
• 16:00 - 16:30 okay and now i'm going to use this particular template to actually to actually provide my commentary and i'm going to say this evidence so we're pointing back to all of the evidence that i just described and then you choose one based on your topic sentence does this evidence prove your claim from your topic sentence does it support your claim from your topic sentence does it confirm your claim from your topic sentence does it refute it does it disprove it does it show the limitations of you get to pick your verb here okay then it says insert unifying idea
• 16:30 - 17:00 based on the claim whether that be from the topic sentence or the thesis and then say because honestly folks if you're looking to better your commentary the best word that you can put in it is because or any variant since because due to so so that consequently that language oh and the word thus that language is extremely important in getting you to articulate your commentary and explain how your evidence proves your claim
• 17:00 - 17:30 so let's actually see this in action now you can see it here and it's color coded but i'm going to actually scroll down and oh here's a blank version for you to actually print out and use on your own by the way but i'm going to scroll down here just so that you can see how this actually matches up when you put this into paragraph form i'm going to scroll out just a little bit and i'll highlight some things so here we have our topic sentence once again i'm going to read it and then i'm going to go right into our example and i'll explain what's going on in there and then i'll explain our commentary and we'll be done for today
• 17:30 - 18:00 so the topic set it says once again right for body paragraph one which is our concession we start off as just about anyone can admit that recent controversies surrounding the holiday marketing practices of private businesses highlight the incredibly temperamental nature of the human psyche making it quite hard to entirely monitor the troublesome content that's out there okay strong beginning to a body paragraph next i say for example now
• 18:00 - 18:30 note this is in blue because this is going to help maintain a line of reasoning that's going to showcase the transition we're transitioning to an example you don't have to say this but you can as a nice discourse marker for your reader anyway now i'm going to get into the nitty nitty-gritty about that recent controversy for marketing for example a few years ago in order to signify their transition to the winter holiday season starbucks decided to replace their ornamental christmas cups with ones that were merely colored red in response to this change many
• 18:30 - 19:00 individuals posted protested it by calling it the newest manifestation of the war on christmas of course this figurative conflict was magnified since in about 2010 around the same season there had been consistent reports of schools and municipalities re-labeling their christmas concerts pageants and decorations as holiday events and adornments also important to note here is so notice i'm trying to add a little bit more evidence on
• 19:00 - 19:30 and i use a transition in blue to do that also important to note here is that since the early 21st century the public has been encouraged by the media to greet others with happy holidays instead of the more traditional merry christmas so notice what i did here i took the the starbucks marketing as my example and then i tied in kind of you know common um municipal uh practices and community practices and kind of what the media has been added since i don't know like 2008 to 2010.
• 19:30 - 20:00 so this is great evidence here now what we're going to do is we're going to say this proves and highlights that people are temperamental and therefore it makes it almost impossible to put warning labels on everything so here we go let's look at how this fits in the commentary so i have this evidence and notice that's green so that means i'm referring back to all of the evidence if i wanted to i could break the evidence in parts if i wanted to but we're not doing that right now we're going to use the simplified template so that you can see that it still functions really strong okay we have
• 20:00 - 20:30 this evidence confirms and now we're going to pull the idea down from the topic sentence what idea does this evidence confirm the easily offended nature of human beings that is the same exact thing as incredible temperamental nature of the human psyche i am honestly saying the same thing here so i just pull it straight down this evidence confirms the easily offended nature of human beings because and now my red is all of my reasoning all of my commentary because many took something as simple as the coloring of a
• 20:30 - 21:00 cup and turned it into a figurative war on an ideology which technically is impossible right you can't actually have war with an ideology you can have war between two parties and two people but with an ideology that doesn't even think doesn't work interestingly enough notice a transitional phrase there the change to the red cup that's green because that goes back to some evidence still showcases actual christmas colors i'm now providing some commentary
• 21:00 - 21:30 especially when combined with the green starbucks logo so notice there's some cause and effect language there to help with my reasoning most individuals who knew just about any element of christmas tradition should have been able to clearly see that the company wasn't necessarily neglecting christmas at all so notice i'm bringing my commentary in and i'm bringing in some assumptions if you know anything about christmas you would know that red and green is just as christmassy as a christmas tree and yet
• 21:30 - 22:00 notice i have a transition here the lack of ornamentation somehow became a firestorm of controversy when in reality a color of a cup change now notice that's in green all i'm doing is recounting some of my evidence here now another transition even if the cup were made less ornamental like it mentions in my evidence less ornamental to be more inclusive much like the language the municipa the municipalities and schools have begun to embrace so i'm commenting back on my evidence
• 22:00 - 22:30 this is ironically polarizing since commentary language there that helps us provide logic and reasoning this is ironically polarizing since it further highlights the fickle nature of humanity goes right back to that topic sentence idea the social divide is not however due to the fact that or reasoning language here the colors or language are off-putting but rather because
• 22:30 - 23:00 individuals make bigger deals about petty things than they should there it is how are we connecting this back to the idea humans are so temperamental because they make bigger deals out of things than they should in fact it doesn't make sense that someone who's part of a larger community wouldn't want to be more inclusive in their public lives especially during during a season that is meant to highlight charity towards others quite often people are taught to respect
• 23:00 - 23:30 other people and be sensitive toward personal differences so notice that this right here deals with stereotypes um and common assumptions about and connotations about language and seasons at this point right so there's our cause and effect language this deep-seated defense in becoming more communally inclusive is actually quite puzzling and even borderline nonsensical standing in dark and stark contrast to the accepted morals particularly for the season
• 23:30 - 24:00 the silliness of this controversy as evidence that's why this is in green further promotes the point that trying to anticipate let alone label what may offend others is quite a murky science since cause and effect language that helps with commentary offense can be quite an unreasonable free-for-all for any individual now multiply the opportunity for the individual insult by seven billion individuals that make up the global population
• 24:00 - 24:30 yikes and this right here this last part connects all of what we were talking about back to why it's unrealistic to apply warning labels to everything and notice that my commentary down here in this last sentence is actually a little bit more implied than explicitly stated but that's okay because it works out perfectly but now look at how i transition after my commentary and how it goes with my next topic sentence to then now say but we should do this anyway we should focus on running labels
• 24:30 - 25:00 luckily though amidst the aforementioned astronomical turmoil there are some areas where most people agree about what constitutes offensive content especially when it comes to shielding children and this typically shows up in common media ratings and then sure enough i would go into for example here are some common media ratings and categories here's how this helps with shielding children here's why that's appropriate and then i move into my conclusion about why we should continue to do this universally my paper is done but notice that my example of commentary here
• 25:00 - 25:30 follows this little template to a t to a t it relates everything in my topic sentence with commentary and evidence and it attaches it to my thesis and because of that we've got a clear line of reasoning and that folks is how you want to do it now would i expect anybody to actually or any student who's just learning how to do this to actually produce commentary uh as thoroughly as i did here absolutely not right if you can make it halfway through what i've done here that's perfectly fine and
• 25:30 - 26:00 acceptable as we practice this but these are just ways that you can actually provide commentary there's a template for it there's a formula for topic sentences and if you know how topic sentences guide your body paragraphs then you can actually write a really strong body paragraph really well so if that video was helpful i'm going to ask that you support the garden of english by liking and subscribing right you can also find other ways to support the garden of english you can purchase some of our merch there are some links down below um you can actually check out our
• 26:00 - 26:30 instagram to see what some of that merch even looks like if you don't click on the links down below you can follow us on instagram in fact i encourage you to do so um and i also encourage you to follow us on facebook as well and we're going to come back with how to write conclusions for argument in our next video probably by the end of the week if not we'll do it early next week but until then i hope you all have a great one [Music]
• 26:30 - 27:00 you