Showing posts with label topic sentences. Show all posts
Showing posts with label topic sentences. Show all posts

Sunday, November 3, 2019

Thesis, topic sentences, and essay example


Planning a Successful Tent Camping Trip

Each year, thousands of people throughout the United States choose to spend their vacations camping in the great outdoors.  With the great diversity of environments available, campers are not limited to woods, but can experience the challenges of deserts, mountains, and high latitude wilderness.  Depending on an individual’s sense of adventure, choices also include types of camping too:  log cabin, tent, recreational vehicle, and open-air sleeping bag.  Of these, tent camping involves the most opportunities for “roughing it”, and with proper planning, the experience can be satisfying and memorable.  However, even with the best planning, tent camping can be an extremely frustrating effort due to uncontrolled factors such as bad weather, wildlife encounters, equipment failures—and a camper’s life and well-being. Failing to plan properly for tent camping can prove uncomfortable as well as deadly. (instructor note: that’s the thesis.)
(Topic sentence #1) Nothing can dampen the excitement and anticipation of tent camping more than a dark, rainy day. Even the most adventurous campers can lose some of their enthusiasm on the drive or hike to a planned campsite if the skies are dreary and damp.  After reaching the destination, campers must then “set up” in wet conditions that may make for poor decisions and results.  It is vital to keep the inside of the tent dry and free from mud or rock- slides, keeping sleeping bags safe, and protecting any food from exposure.  If sleeping bags happen to get wet, the cold also becomes a major factor and difficulty: a dry sleeping bag provides warmth and protection; a wet bag means chills and no sleep.  Combining wind and rain can cause frigid temperatures that cause outside activities to be delayed or cancelled.  Even inside the tent, problems may arise from heavy winds.  More than a few campers have had tents blown down because of wind, leaving them exposed to the elements and struggling to reestablish a safe and secure tent.  Therefore, it is wise to check the weather forecast before embarking on a camping trip: Mother Nature is unpredictable and a compromised tent and its security cannot be overlooked.
(Topic Sentence #2) Another unexpected problem likely to be faced during a camping trip: run-ins with wildlife, ranging from mildly annoying to extremely dangerous.  Minor inconveniences include mosquitoes, chiggers, biting flies, and ants.  The swarms of mosquitoes can literally drive annoyed campers indoors.  If an effective repellent is not used, an unprepared camper can spend an unpleasant long night scratching and not sleeping.  In the northern-most states near the Canadian border, tiny black flies can inflict painful bites that torment animals as well as humans.  Ants normally do not attack campers, but keeping them out of food can be quite an effort.  Extreme care must be taken not to leave food out before or after meals—and that includes cleaning up afterward.  Food should optimally be stored off the ground (suspended from a tree limb away from the tent).  In addition to swarming the food, ants inside a tent can crawl into sleeping bags, shoes, and clothing.  Although these creatures (especially insects) can cause various levels of discomfort, just as dangerous are spiders, snakes, scorpions, and centipedes.  There are many poisonous snakes in the U.S., such as rattlers, copperheads, water moccasins, and coral.  However, the large animals in a camping area should be the main concern for anyone in a tent—especially with food storage. Animal behavior in the wild can be deadly, especially from a bear, mountain lion, or moose.  An angry moose cow can stand 9 feet tall and weigh 1200 pounds, moving incredibly fast and furious if she defends a calf.  Her hooves and heavy antlers can kill a bear, let alone a human.  Bear sows too will chase down and attack humans who stray near cubs—and many foolish campers who wander upon “a cute little thing” are foolish to assume the mother is only silently observing—and not timing an attack.
(Topic Sentence #3) Perhaps the least serious camping troubles are equipment failures; these often plague inexperienced families camping for the first time.  Picture this: a family of five arrives at the campsite for the night and set up their large tent.  They then settle down for a peaceful night’s rest.  Then sometime during the night, a huge crash awakens them: a tree limb has come down during a downpour and collapsed one side of the tent.  Luckily, no one is hurt—but in the morning, everyone slowly emerges, stiff and wet—except for two, whose sleeping bag zippers are stuck.  They are freed after 15 minutes of struggling, only to realize that each of their bags has been directly against the tent walls.  A tent is waterproof only if the sides are not touched.  Now their clothes and sleeping bags are wet.  Totally disillusioned with the “vacation,” the frustrated family packs up immediately and goes home. 
What options are there? Regardless of animals, weather, or equipment, poor planning and decisions can be the ruin of any camping endeavor, especially in a tent.  A sense of humor can actually be a needed tool.  The bugs will still outnumber us, the animals naturally live outdoors, and anyone who can control the weather will have an Olympic-sized job.  So, pack that gear and keep an eye out for whatever comes your way, fellow campers—and may your socks be dry and the path safe.

Thursday, August 15, 2013

"Sex, society, marketing, and psychology"

“Sex, society, and psychology is the assignment,” he proclaimed. 















Mmmph. 
That got everyone’s attention. You DID notice that first picture was a pair of feet, right?  You thought what?  

I guess now when I say, “Read the assignment," it’ll get done! Okay, today’s guest speaker is Havelock Ellis, and we’re going to use his Studies in the Psychology of Sex as our platform. We’ll peruse a short sample from a biographical essay and look for a thesis statement wrapped inside of an assertion, as well as topic sentences, transitional phrases, action or signal verbs, and a summarizing conclusion.
Yes, those were feet!
No, that's your own fault for having a vivid imagination.
And no: the man in the tub didn't have twisted legs.  

 
No, you may not go back and look!
Now pay attention!!
  
     When, as a young man in Australia, Havelock Ellis resolved to become a physician and devote himself to a lifetime study of sexual phenomena, the subject was surrounded by social taboos. Ellis became the first notable English writer to discuss sex openly and with detachment. Starting with Ellis and Sigmund Freud, late in the 19th century, human physiology began to be seriously investigated and sex to be studied not as if it were a disgraceful function, but as something normally common to the human race. That everything related to sex could be freely discussed in the mid-20th century is owing largely to the work of these two trail-blazing scientists.
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(Got that? You either say Yes right now and get a chance to help keep the human race going, or just say No and stop here. Literally.)
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(Ok. Continue)
  
     While Ellis undertook a certain amount of original investigation for Studies in the Psychology of Sex, his writings are based chiefly upon already published work scattered through hundreds of learned journals and innumerable books, many of them exceedingly obscure. To the study of sex, Ellis proposed to apply the same objective research methods followed by other scholars in anthropology, politics, and the social sciences. His seven-volume work was directed primarily at the education of normal people--the general public--to persuade them that a rational attitude toward sex is essential to human happiness. Only incidentally was Ellis concerned with the problems of medical practitioners and with sexual abnormalities.
   
(Key points here:)

Summing up Ellis's achievements, the American psychiatrist Karl Menninger concludes: Substantially, he did three things. In the first place, he made a careful, thorough, and honest collection of data relating to a phase of biology which the hypocrisy and prudery of medical science had, until Ellis, caused to be ignored for the most part. In the second place, he evolved and advocated a hedonistic philosophy of life tempered if not determined by the sane, scientific attitude toward sex which his studies engendered. 

In the third place, he presented his scientific findings and philosophical beliefs to the world with that artistic combination of directness and delicacy which made them acceptable to non-scientific readers.  


    H. L. Mencken described Ellis as "undoubtedly the most civilized Englishman of his generation," a judgment that has won wide concurrence. Ellis has been more responsible than any other man for lifting the Puritan taboo upon sex, for bringing the subject into the clear light of science, and for preparing public opinion for objective research in the field of sex and marriage. He paved the way for the reception of Freud and Jung in psychological theory, for such literary figures as Joyce and Proust, and for such further investigation in his own chosen field as those of Alfred Kinsey.
   
Okay.
What is the heart (and thesis) of this paper? Why does the subject being "pitched" have an impact, or WHY was this person's life significant?

Havelock’s importance as a leading pioneer in the study of human sexuality and its impact on our social values.  His contributions regarding the dynamics of humanity’s primal drive to perpetuate are profound for their ground-breaking avenues of thought and research methods. His impact on the intellectual-philosophical dimensions of sexual research (breaking away from narrow-minded restrictive attitudes and values) broke open a logjam of ideas about human behavior (women are humans and not second-class creatures), and also likely influenced the Suffragette movement in America

(Easy answer: he made us learn about our bodies and how we function as a species.) Why does he (it) matter? Oh, THAT 3-letter word. It also has a sense of power unto itself, yes? Mighty important part of our lives; we devote a considerable amount of our economy on sex, yes?
Marketing, advertising, and movies? Clothes? Music? Automobiles? Vacations and travel? Medicine, including pediatrics and the process of being born right and unto death? Our housing boom trends and real estate? Toys, games, and entertainment?   
 
I’ll stop there.
You’d better know the rest of the details or else you’re gonna be extinct. And college won't matter.