General

2. General Specific (Thesis statement)

3. Specific (restatement of thesis idea) General

4. Catch your readers’ attention!

5. Hook your reader by invoking interest (1-3 sentences) • Introduce the issue you are going to talk about (1-3 sentences) • Make a specific application (1-3 sentences) • Thesis statement (what’s your argument or main idea?)

6. Benjamin Franklin was a vegetarian who only slept four hours a night. He was also a genius who did much more than just discover the power of electricity. The facts about Franklin’s personal habits are startling to many because our doctors tell us we need at least eight hours of sleep and a “balanced diet.” How, then, did one of our nation’s most famous founding fathers accomplish so much? The American lifestyle has changed greatly in the last 100 years, and Americans of the 1700s would be ashamed to find us so slovenly and unproductive. To understand the difference between us and them, it is important to examine changes in American culture. If Americans of the new millennium want to achieve greatness, we need to make serious changes in our lifestyles.

7. Reinforce the main idea • Explore the significance of this idea • Figure out an exit strategy (preferably one that relates to your hook)

8. Refer to the Hook technique in the conclusion to make your reader feel like the whole paper works together and is a complete piece.

9. It’s time for Americans to cut out the artificial lights (including the television and computer), lose the processed foods, wake up with the birds, and go to sleep when the owl cries. A loss of connection with the natural cycles of our bodies has created a nation of depressed, unproductive, lazy individuals with no creativity. We have amazing technological innovations at our fingertips with the potential to create a nation of Ben Franklins; we need to learn to wisely use them to our advantage. In the words of our favorite founding father, “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

10. There was a sudden lurch, a roar, and then the small Japanese car became airborne. I woke up in the backseat to find myself flying in a Toyota. I glanced at Nicky, who was strapped into the seat beside me and saw terror in her eyes. Someone screamed just before we hit the bottom of the ravine and began to roll. The most terrifying night of my life was the night I almost died in a car accident.

11. The secret to diving under a moving freight train and rolling out on the other side with all your parts attached lies in picking the right spot between the tracks to hit with your back. Ideally, you want soft dirt or pea gravel, clear of glass shards and railroad spikes that could cause you instinctively, and fatally, to sit up. Today, at thirty-eight, I couldn’t be threatened or baited enough to attempt that dive. But as a seventh grader struggling to make the cut in a tough Atlanta grammar school, all it took was a dare.

12. Here’s a recipe. Take two thousand pounds of plastic, rubber, and steel, pour in ten gallons of gas, and start the engine. Next take one human being of 190 pounds of flesh, blood, and bones, pour in a six-pack of beer in an hour, and put him or her behind the wheel. Mix the two together, and the result will be a drunken driver ready to cause death and destruction. This problem of drunk driving can and should be controlled by federal legislation with strong provisions.

13. Almost in jest, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.” What Franklin didn’t say was that if there is no one to do the writing and no one to do the reading, you will still be forgotten “as soon as you are dead and rotten.” Our civilization depends upon writers and readers to keep its records. Schools must move the teaching of reading and writing to the top of their priority list.

14. A personal experience • A factual or fictional story • A startling fact or statistic • A joke, saying, or famous quote • A hypothetical situation • A striking example • A literary reference or analogy • Describe the reader who is likely to find value in reading your paper • Explain how you became interested in the topic • Review what readers already know about the topic & then explain how your paper presents a different perspective • Show how your topic is misunderstood because of prejudice, confusion, or bad information • Show how or why the topic has been overlooked • Quote a typical comment people make when discussing your topic • Forecast what might happen if we fail to solve a problem as you advise in your thesis statement • Acknowledge a shared value with your reader in order to establish common ground • Begin the paper with “I remember…”