In English creative writing, paragraphs are one of the most fundamental structures that are taught to learners. Paragraph writing, sentence construction, and habitual practices of phrases are necessary steps to cover. Before one becomes well acquainted with the English language and vocabulary, one must improve their writing skills. Writing in paragraphs gives a proper structure to the content one is writing. A paragraph is a method by which necessary points can be kept track of. Paragraph writing helps in creating concise content. Understanding a paragraph will improve writing skills and doing passages. Paragraphs and passages are, however, not the same.
Paragraph and Passage Completion
An English paragraph is one short unit of write-up which is written as a group of sentences on a given topic or theme. While writing essays, short stories, novels, biographies, letters, or even emails, breaking the content into distinct clusters representing one or similar thoughts is done through paragraphs. A passage on the other hand is not a topic or a theme represented in clusters. A passage is a part of something bigger. It is an extract of some existing poem, story, novel, or essay. Those have been discussed in the following sections.
Paragraph Kinds | Examples |
Narrative | Write a paragraph narrative of an interesting event that happened to you. |
Expository | Write a paragraph on for or against the importance of student loans. |
Descriptive | Write a paragraph describing the most exciting day in your life. |
Persuasive | Write a paragraph on the necessity to conserve water. |
Table 1 shows different kinds of the paragraph along with some examples
Kinds of Paragraph
There are 4 kinds of paragraph in paragraph writing:
- Narrative- This type of paragraph narrates a tale, a situation, or an event.
- Persuasive- These types of a paragraph are informative and argumentative. These are written to persuade the audience about a certain viewpoint or an opinion.
- Expository- This type of paragraph instructs or provides factual information about a topic or a thing. It is researched based.
- Descriptive- It is a style of paragraph in which the writer makes use of all the five senses to describe their surroundings, an event, or an incident. A descriptive paragraph is the most commonly used paragraph after the narrative style.
Paragraph Writing
A paragraph can be written on any topic and theme. It can be written on any subject. There is certain universality about paragraphs. It is a complete unit in itself. Paragraph writing has to be done keeping in mind the following things:
- There must be an introduction to a paragraph
- There must be a part which provides supplementary details about the topic
- There must be a conclusion to the paragraph
Descriptive Paragraph
A descriptive paragraph is the most commonly written form of writing in English paragraph. It is also the easiest form of writing. Descriptive paragraphs are usually lengthier. They range from 5-8 sentences or 60-80 words in general. A descriptive paragraph describes the surrounding, the topic in detail by using the five senses. A descriptive paragraph has the following points:
- Information should be concentrated
- It must be a detailed account
- Should not be less than 50 words
- Must have a clear introduction, conclusion, and body
Differences between Paragraph and Passage
Paragraph | Passages |
Groups of sentences denoting an idea or thought or a topic | Groups of sentences belonging to a bigger story, novel, or essay |
Must be coherent and is interlinked | Must be coherent but not necessarily interlinked |
Must be lengthy (5-8 sentences) | Length varies |
Helps in writing concisely and in an informative way | It can be used as a reference or citation |
Table 2 shows the differences between passage and paragraph.
Conclusion
Paragraphs and passages are fundamental to English writing. A paragraph provides the necessary structure to one’s thoughts and ideas and helps them to be articulated coherently. Passage is a piece taken from another text. Comprehesions on paragraph and passage are easy to attempt in an exam as they ask answers to questions based on the topic related in the text. Most of the time the answers are required to be written in one’s own words.