Supporting Details
Supporting Details
Supporting details provide the information that supports the topic sentence. You can create supporting details with descriptions, examples, reasons, explanations and comparisons.
The details you use to support your topic sentences depends somewhat on the development strategy (persuasive, compare/contrast, narrative, expository, etc.) that you're using. Are you writing a narrative or descriptive essay? Make your paragraphs come alive with details. An argumentation essay? Use plenty of facts and evidence. You may end up combining several types of supporting details.
Description & Examples
Descriptive details will expand on the main idea in your topic sentence. Describe the colors, smells, textures and size of things. If your topic sentence claims that a fire was particularly damaging, you would include the color and size of the flames, the smoke, the smell of burning materials, etc. Description can include emotional details as well. Describe your feelings or the feelings others described.
Examples support topic sentences like evidence supports an argument. If you say that your car is in disrepair, give some examples. Is the engine barely running? Does it burn oil? Or, are you referring to the interior with exposed springs? Examples can also be shown with an anecdote, which are brief stories that illustrate the main idea in your topic sentence.
Compare/Contrast
Let's say you're writing a compare/contrast essay about two brands of e-book readers. If your topic sentence says that one has an easy-to-read home page, you might discuss the font sizes and screen colors and follow with what's lacking on the other brand's home page. If your topic sentence states that they're similar in many ways, show the many ways and not just one or two.
Reasons & Explanations
Use reasons to support your opinions. If your main idea is about places to do homework, and you have a topic sentence stating that you feel comfortable in a particular coffee shop, include the reasons. Is it the lighting? The music? Also, if you dislike something, be prepared to include the reasons if you want your claim to be effective.
Explanations focus on clarifying an idea for readers who are unfamiliar with the topic. For example, if your topic is about taxes, and your topic sentence is about tax increment financing, you would include an explanation of what that is.
Supporting sentences are developed by either one or all of the following techniques.
1. Examples
2. Illustrations
3. Statistics
4. Quotations
1. Examples
Ia. Although we all posses the same physical organs for perceiving the world, eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, noses for smelling, skin for feeling, and mouths for testing, our perception of the world depends to a great extent on the language we speak. In other words, we can not perceive things that we have not named. Each language is like a pair of sunglasses through which we see the world. A classic example of the relationship between language and perception is the world snow. In the English language, there is only that one word to describe all of the possible kinds of snow. In Eskimo language, however, there are many thirty two different word for snow. For instance, the Eskimos have different words for falling snow, snow on the ground, snow packed as hard as ice, slushy snow, wind – driven snow, and what we might call corn meal snow. In contrast, cultures that rarely experience cold weather and snow may have only one word to express several concepts that are differentiated in English. For example, the ancients Aztec languages of Mexico used only one word mean snow, cold and ice.
Ib. The difference among the world’s seas and oceans is that the salinity varies in different climate zones. For example, The Baltic Sea in Northeen Europe is only one-forth as saline as the Red Sea in the Middle East. There are two main reasons for this. First of all, in warm climate zones water evavorates rapidly; therefore the concentration of salt is greater. Second, the surrounding is dry and consequenly does not contribute much fresh water to dilute the salty sea water. In cold climate zones, on the other hand, water evavorates slowly. Furthermore, the runn off created by melting snow adds a considerable amount of fresh water to dilute the saline sea water.
2 Illustrative Incident
Non verbal communications or body language is communication by facial expression,head or eye movements, hand signals, and body postures. It can jjust as important to understanding as words are. Misunderstanding often amusing but sometimes serius can arise between people from different cultures if they are misinterpret non-verbal signals. Take for example, the differences in meaning of gestures very common in the United States : a circle made with thumb and index finger. To an American it means that everything is ok. To Japanese, it means that you are talking about money. In France it means that something is worthless, and in Greece it is an obscene (indecent ) gesture. Therefore, an American could unknowingly offend a Greek by using that particular signal.
The following true incident illustrates how conflicting non verbal signals can cause serious misunderstandings . While lecturing to his poetry class at Ain Shams University in Cairo, a British professor became so relaxed that he leaned back in his chair and revealed the bottom of his foot to the astonished class. Making such a gestures in Moeslem society is the worst kind of insult. The next day the Cairo newspaper carried headlines about the student demontration that resulted, and they denounced British arrogance and demanded that the professor be sent home.
3. Figures and Statistics
The world’s population is growing at geometric rate. It doubled from 1750 to 1900, a period of 150 years. It doubled again from 1965, a period of only65 years. At the current rate of increase, it is expected to double again by the year 2000, a period of only30 years, according to a recent report published by the world Health Organization of the United Nations. The world’s population in 1978 had reached 4.3 billion and increasing at the rate of 70 million each year. By the end of this century, there will be 7 billion people on Earth.
4. Quotation
According to a Census Bureau Report “ America is becoming a society of loners.” Since the number of Americans living alone has been increasing. The number of men living alone has more than doubled in the last several years and the numbr of women living by themselves is up 35 percent. Among peole people under the age of 25, the number of men living alone has neraly tripled since 1970, from 274,000 to 752,000, and the number women has risen from 282,000 to 588,000. According to the Census Bureau there were 15.5 million people living alone in 1977. Although the number of men living by themselves has increased rapidly since 1970, most of those are still women 64 percent of the total.