Practice 2: Organising Paragraphs

PRACTICE A.

A. Analyse the paragraph by completing the left hand column in the table below with the following types of sentence: Supporting point 1, Supporting point 2, Supporting point 3, Example, Reason, Topic. 

TOPIC	Despite this, many countries encourage the growth of home ownership.
EXAMPLE	Ireland and Spain, for example, allow mortgage payers to offset payments against income tax.
REASON	It is widely believed that owning your own home has social as well as economic benefits.
SUPPORTING POINT 1.	Compared to renters, homeowners are thought to be more stable members of the community who contribute more to local affairs.
SUPPORTING POINT 2.	In addition, neighbourhoods of owner occupiers are considered to have less crime and better schools.
SUPPORTING POINT 3.	But above all, ownership encourages saving and allows families to build wealth.

B. Underline the words and phrases used to link the sentences together. 

C. Which phrase is used to link this paragraph to the one before? 

Despite this, many countries encourage the growth of home ownership.

DEVELOPMENT OF IDEAS.

A. The sentences below form the third paragraph of the same essay, but they have been mixed up. Use the table below to put them in the correct order. 

TOPIC	All these claims were challenged by the economic crash of 2008, which was in large part caused by defaults on American sub-prime mortgages.
DEFINITION	These had been developed to allow higher-risk poorer families to buy their own homes, but contributed to a property price bubble.
RESULT 1.	When this burst, millions of people lost their homes, which for many had contained their savings.
RESULT 2.	Others were trapped in their houses by negative equity, in other words their houses were worth less than they had paid for them.
RESULT 3.	Even households that had positive equity still felt poorer and reduced their spending.
CONCLUSION	Many economists now argue that there is a maximum level of home ownership that should not be exceeded.

B. Underline the phrase used to link the paragraph to the previous one. 

All these claims were challenged by the economic crash of 2008, which was in large part caused by defaults on American sub-prime mortgages. 

C. Underline the words and phrases used to link the paragraph together. 

PRACTICE B.

A. Use the notes below and the table on p. 82 to complete a paragraph of an essay titled: 

TOPIC	It has been argued that rises in the rate of home ownership can increase the rate of unemployment.
REASON.	This might be because home ownership appears to make people more reluctant to move to find work.
EXAMPLE.	For example, in Spain unemployment and ownership rates are both very high, while in Switzerland there is not many owners and the unemployment rate is low.
ARGUMENT.	Although this could be attributed to others factors, such as the liquidity of housing markets, you can’t move for a job if it takes a long time to sell your house.
CONCLUSION.	Nevertheless, this theory is still very controversial, so it is difficult to reach a clear conclusion.

B. Use the notes below to write the next paragraph of the essay, including a phrase linking it to the previous paragraph. 

1	Nevertheless, the recession of 2008/9 gave support to the theory that relates ownership to unemployment, specially in places such as California, Michigan and Florida.
2	Those states had a major housing boom in the 1990s, the ownership rate grew and people moved often. Even so, after recession, the rate of house moving fell sharply, the house market was slower than ever before.
3	It might have become a bigger problem due to the big number of households in negative equity. They could not sell their houses at a good price and they ended up losing money.
4	It could be argued that, if those people hadn’t been home owners, they would have been able to move without a problem in order to find a job.