Hello, my name is John Barton and I am an instructor and EAP instructor at a university. In this video, I am going to talk to you about paragraph structure and paragraph format. If you are an EAP student or even any student in the university, you need to know how to write well. You need to know how to structure and format your writing, and the basis for that is certainly a paragraph. Okay, first paragraph structure. Your paragraph starts with something called a topic sentence. A topic sentence signals or lets the reader know what you're going to talk about in that paragraph. It's the map for what you're going to say. And so, that's the topic sentence. It is the most important sentence in your paragraph. Now, every supporting detail should follow the map. That means everything else should be relevant and meaningful to the topic sentence. Each supporting detail should be somewhat unique. You shouldn't simply be saying the same thing in different words. Each one has to be a somewhat unique idea. They can support each other too, but you don't want to be repeating yourself. So, we've got the topic sentence, which is the most important sentence in your paragraph, followed by supporting details. Supporting details can be evidence, facts, opinions of experts, examples, descriptions, and more. Each supporting detail should be relevant to the topic sentence. There should be no sentences that are not relevant to your topic. Sometimes, students have trouble staying on topic in their writing. They go off on a tangent and talk about something unrelated. This is not good. You have to stay in a straight line and stick to the relevant information. Going off topic can confuse the reader and make your writing less effective. Now, let's talk about the format. Paragraphs...