Paragraph completion

What Is a Concluding Sentence? A concluding sentence indicates that you are bringing closure to a paragraph. Identifying a concluding sentence may not come as easily as you may think. Many people fail to realize that it closes out the final thoughts about the topic. This is why it is important for you to be able to recognize effective concluding sentences. For each paragraph, the reader should be able to identify what your key points are, based on the concluding sentence. Remember, it does not include any information that was not discussed in the paragraph. Examples of concluding sentence starters include: In conclusion Therefore As expressed Overall As a result Thus Finally Lastly For this reason In general Characteristics of Effective Concluding Sentences It is important for  students to know how to identify effective concluding sentences in order to drive home the final point. Some characteristics include: Reviewing main points mentioned in a paragraph Restating the topic sentence You should keep in mind that concluding sentences may look different for various types of writing. Examples of these types of writing include narratives, descriptions, compare and contrast, and argument. The concluding sentence of a narrative paragraph should emphasize the moral lesson to the audience. With descriptive paragraphs, the concluding sentence helps to tie everything together by emphasizing details from the topic sentence, using different wording and summing up supporting facts. A concluding sentence for the compare and contrast paragraph will restate both topics by pointing out the various similarities and differences that were discussed. The concluding sentence in an argument paragraph will summarize the argument being made. It may reaffirm why the argument is correct and the consequences that may occur if the argument is not heeded.   Let’s take a ‘Paragraph Completion’ question from CAT 2007: Instructions: The question has a paragraph from which the last sentence has been deleted. From the given options, choose the one that completes the paragraph in the most appropriate way. Nevertheless, photographs still retain some of the magical allure that the earliest daguerreotypes inspired. As objects, our photographs have changed; they have become physically flimsier as they have become more technologically sophisticated. Daguerre produced pictures on copper plates; today many of our photographs never become tangible thins, but instead remain filed away on computers and cameras, part of the digital ether that envelops the modern world. At the same time, our patience for the creation of images has also eroded. Children today are used to being tracked from birth by digital cameras and video recorders and they expect to see the results of their poses and performances instantly. The space between life as it is being lived and life as it is being displayed shrinks to a mere second. (1) Yet, despite these technical developments, photographs still remain powerful because they are reminders of the people and things we care about. (2) Images, after all, are surrogates carried into battle by a soldier or by a traveller on holiday. (3) Photographs, be they digital or traditional, exist to remind us of the absent, the beloved, and the dead. (4) In the new era of the digital image, the images also have a greater potential for fostering falsehood and trickery, perpetuating fictions that seem so real we cannot tell the difference. (5) Anyway, human nature being what it is, little time has passed after photography’s inventions became means of living life through images. Solution: The essence of the paragraph is Photographs still have some allure, in spite of going digital. The key word is ‘Nevertheless ‘at the beginning of the paragraph. This resonates with ‘yet’ at the beginning of option 1 and completes the paragraph logically. The paragraph starts with the core idea, moves on to state how the technology behind creating photographs has evolved, and concludes by coming back to the core idea. Let’s evaluate the other 4 other options. Option 2 adds new data with ‘soldier’ and ‘traveller’, and option 3 with ‘beloved’ and ‘dead’ They merely extend the paragraph without completing it. Option 4 could be a good option, except that it does not accommodate ‘nevertheless’ given at the start of the paragraph. Option 5 too adds a new (tangential) idea which extends the paragraph instead of concluding it. Option 1 is the reason why the paragraph is written — to communicate that ‘photographs are still powerful’. Hence, the correct answer is option 1. paragraph completion questions with answers paragraph completion cat pdf paragraph completion exercises paragraph completion tips para completion cat practice paragraph completion test paragraph completion worksheets paragraph completion exercises pdf