Put It Together

Aim:	to give students practise in recognising paragraph structure; to help students distinguish main ideas from detail by familiarising them with paragraph structure
Target Audience:	students
Relevance to IELTS:	Academic Reading
Organisation:	pairs or threes
Materials needed:	simple paragraphs (not more than 5 or 6 sentences) cut into separate sentences (1 set of each paragraph for each pair or three); paragraphs from textbooks etc will need to be retyped or written out onto slips of paper

1. Introduce the concept of topic and supporting sentences; discuss the purpose of each, and their relation to each other (one topic sentence per paragraph to introduce the main idea; supporting sentences to add more detail, give examples, develop the argument, give supporting evidence etc).
   
   
2. Give a cut-up paragraph to each pair or three and ask them to find the slip with the topic sentence.
   
   
3. Pairs or groups to check with others and reach agreement.
   
   
4. Pairs or groups then continue to reassemble paragraphs.
   
   
5. Final check (in some cases more than one order of supporting sentences may be possible).
   
   
6. Feedback on clues which helped students to decide which was the topic sentence.