International Journal of Language and Linguistics

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Investigating Paragraph Writing Skills among Polytechnic Students: The Case of Kumasi Polytechnic

Received: 25 March 2015    Accepted: 25 April 2015    Published: 12 May 2015
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Abstract

Paragraphs are the building blocks of essays. A sound knowledge of paragraph structuring leads to well-written and readable essays. On the contrary, a lack of paragraph writing skills culminates into a farrago of ideas scattered haphazardly in the essay, thereby affecting paragraph unity and coherence, which in turn impacts negatively on the packaging of ideas in the essay. This study has been prompted by my observation over the years of paragraph construction difficulties polytechnic students face in their academic writing, and also the paucity of research in polytechnic writing. As a result, this paper set to investigate how students structure their paragraphs in terms of topic sentence use and support sentences. A corpus of 120 essays was collected from four departments in Kumasi Polytechnic, Kumasi, Ghana and using Bain’s paragraph principles as a benchmark to analyse them, the results revealed that 66% of the essays employed definite paragraph format. The study also found numerous one-sentence paragraphs leading to the creation of indentations, with reckless abandon. The results of the study have implications for the teaching of writing skills in polytechnics.

DOI 10.11648/j.ijll.20150303.16
Published in International Journal of Language and Linguistics (Volume 3, Issue 3, May 2015)
Page(s) 145-153
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Paragraph, Topic Sentence, Support Sentence, Indentation, Controlling Idea

References
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Author Information
  • Department of Liberal Studies, Kumasi Polytechnic, Kumasi, Ghana

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    Kwasi Sarfo-Adu. (2015). Investigating Paragraph Writing Skills among Polytechnic Students: The Case of Kumasi Polytechnic. International Journal of Language and Linguistics, 3(3), 145-153. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20150303.16

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    Kwasi Sarfo-Adu. Investigating Paragraph Writing Skills among Polytechnic Students: The Case of Kumasi Polytechnic. Int. J. Lang. Linguist. 2015, 3(3), 145-153. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20150303.16

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    Kwasi Sarfo-Adu. Investigating Paragraph Writing Skills among Polytechnic Students: The Case of Kumasi Polytechnic. Int J Lang Linguist. 2015;3(3):145-153. doi: 10.11648/j.ijll.20150303.16

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijll.20150303.16,
      author = {Kwasi Sarfo-Adu},
      title = {Investigating Paragraph Writing Skills among Polytechnic Students: The Case of Kumasi Polytechnic},
      journal = {International Journal of Language and Linguistics},
      volume = {3},
      number = {3},
      pages = {145-153},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijll.20150303.16},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijll.20150303.16},
      eprint = {https://download.sciencepg.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijll.20150303.16},
      abstract = {Paragraphs are the building blocks of essays. A sound knowledge of paragraph structuring leads to well-written and readable essays. On the contrary, a lack of paragraph writing skills culminates into a farrago of ideas scattered haphazardly in the essay, thereby affecting paragraph unity and coherence, which in turn impacts negatively on the packaging of ideas in the essay. This study has been prompted by my observation over the years of paragraph construction difficulties polytechnic students face in their academic writing, and also the paucity of research in polytechnic writing. As a result, this paper set to investigate how students structure their paragraphs in terms of topic sentence use and support sentences. A corpus of 120 essays was collected from four departments in Kumasi Polytechnic, Kumasi, Ghana and using Bain’s paragraph principles as a benchmark to analyse them, the results revealed that 66% of the essays employed definite paragraph format. The study also found numerous one-sentence paragraphs leading to the creation of indentations, with reckless abandon. The results of the study have implications for the teaching of writing skills in polytechnics.},
     year = {2015}
    }
    

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    Y1  - 2015/05/12
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    JO  - International Journal of Language and Linguistics
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    AB  - Paragraphs are the building blocks of essays. A sound knowledge of paragraph structuring leads to well-written and readable essays. On the contrary, a lack of paragraph writing skills culminates into a farrago of ideas scattered haphazardly in the essay, thereby affecting paragraph unity and coherence, which in turn impacts negatively on the packaging of ideas in the essay. This study has been prompted by my observation over the years of paragraph construction difficulties polytechnic students face in their academic writing, and also the paucity of research in polytechnic writing. As a result, this paper set to investigate how students structure their paragraphs in terms of topic sentence use and support sentences. A corpus of 120 essays was collected from four departments in Kumasi Polytechnic, Kumasi, Ghana and using Bain’s paragraph principles as a benchmark to analyse them, the results revealed that 66% of the essays employed definite paragraph format. The study also found numerous one-sentence paragraphs leading to the creation of indentations, with reckless abandon. The results of the study have implications for the teaching of writing skills in polytechnics.
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