[Film text]

[Slide 1]

An essential tool in organizing information is paragraphing. Sentences that build on the same line of thought have to be grouped into one visual unit. Readers of academic English often expect to find a sentence at the beginning which tells them what the paragraph is about. The sentence states the topic and what is going to be said about that topic. In this example, the topic is 'These results'. The topic sentence tells the reader to expect various interpretations of those results.

[Slide 2]

While paragraphs are units of text in themselves, they are also part of a larger text, and need to be linked together. Linking words often perform a particular function. For example, if the new paragraph is meant as a contrast to the previous one, you might begin the new paragraph with a word such as ’however’ or an expression such as ’on the other hand’.