3.5 SAT Essay - All Paragraphs and Sentences for the Greater Good

All Paragraphs and Sentences for the Greater Good: There is nothing more distracting and annoying then unwanted sentences and paragraphs.  Let’s remember our audience.  The SAT grader wants to read and grade your essay as quickly and accurately as he/she can since he/she has incentives for doing so.  In paragraph writing, English instructors characterize well-written paragraphs using two main terms: unity and coherence.  I will illustrate these ideas.  Each topic sentence that you create sets parameters and boundaries for your discussion.  Every sentence that you write must develop and add muscle to the initial idea.  Any time a sentence strays or is loosely connected to the topic sentence the momentum of the discussion is compromised.  These derailed ideas cost you major points since the grader must rewind, sometimes 3 or 4 times, to comprehend the idea.  If he wishes to avoid the idea all together, then he will likely conclude that the essay was generally off topic.  Evaluate the College Board’s rubric.  Scores of 5 or better are scores that stick to the development.  Students often feel compelled to say so much at once that they let their ideas fly without concern for placement.  Some students are so concerned about making insightful statements that they forget how to group them into a common neighborhood.  Though one sentence may be distracting, imagine an entire paragraph out of place- this happens much more frequently than the sore-thumb sentence.

Students seem to believe the myth that the more examples they use the better.  This is just not true!  It is the selection of which example and how it is developed that scores big points.  Playing too many ideas at once is the wrong move since the author should have chosen his strongest examples and developed them with the most strength possible.  A jack-of-all-trades-and master-of-none approach leaves an essay shallow, committed to generalizations and summary rather than strong critical thinking and digging deep, reaffirming the importance and necessity of the example. Every move that you make on the essay is crucial.  You do not want to make moves that are unnecessary and merely ornamental.  If you have extra time, spend it on editing rather than fluffing.

A paragraph with unity and coherence is a paragraph whereby all sentence support the topic sentence and the sentences follow a logical order that   accentuates the power of the topic.  Additionally, all paragraphs essentially serve the same role as your supporting sentences for your topic sentence- only think of your thesis as the topic sentence and all successive paragraphs as your development.  With every sentence and every paragraph playing such an important role, you cannot waste time by adding anything that distracts or repeats.  If at any move you fail to contribute fibers for building muscle, leave it out! 

The illustration above marks a paragraph that illustrates both unity and coherence. Following the topic sentence, let each letter represent a new sentence.  In this case the entire paragraph is six sentences long, one topic sentence and five supporting sentences.  Each supporting sentence not only follows a logical sequence as the sequential order represents (coherence), but also each supporting sentence builds off the other since the alphabetical sequence represents togetherness (unity).  All sentences belong since they work in a unified sequence.  A paragraph without unity and coherence might follow the sequence A-1-B-E-2-C-F.  As you can see the aforementioned sequence not only is out of order “B-E-F,” but there are ideas that do not belong, represented by the numerals 1 and 2.  These would be sentences that either do not have any connection to the topic sentence or are merely loosely related.  Ensuring unity and coherence stems from asking yourself basic questions about the role each sentence plays.  If the sentence seems forced, redundant, or rootless, avoid it like the plague.