Academic Paragraphing

Basic paragraph structure

• Topic sentence
• support
• examples (evidence, data, reason, research, a study)
• concluding sentence

Example of Academic Paragraph

Topic sentence / Synthesising authors / support/ examples / contrasting authors / comments

It is not easy to deal with the mature market consisting of the heterogeneous consumers who have significantly different personal values, financial status and health conditions, and there being no consensuses of the segmentations and common theories of their behaviour (Ahmad 2002; Pak & Kambil 2006; Sudbury & Simcock 2009). Concerning just the definition of elderly, there are several views from academics. Whereas elderly people are defined age 65 and over that most people retire in general (Reisenwitz et al. 2007; Yoon et al. 2009), some academics regard the people who range from the age 50 and over or over 55 year-old as older people (Morris et al. 2006; Pak and Kambil 2006; Myers and Lumbers 2008). For example, Ahmad (2002) introduces three types of cohort classification of older people. ‘Young Old’ are 55-64 in age range and they tend to be powerful and active, and then ‘Old old’ are aged 75 and over, and they are less likely to be active. Finally, ‘Mature’ are belong to 65-74 age group and they are in transition between ‘Young Old’ and ‘Old old’. In contrary, Baron (2008) criticizes the segmentation itself by chronological age as meaningless, because many older people tend to feel younger than their actual age and behave according. Therefore, defining a clear segmentation of older people seems to be considerably difficult.

Academic Paragraphing with parts highlighted

Topic sentence / Synthesising authors / support / examples / contrasting authors / comment

It is not easy to deal with the mature market consisting of the heterogeneous consumers who have significantly different personal values, financial status and health conditions, and there being no consensuses of the segmentations and common theories of their behaviour (Ahmad 2002; Pak & Kambil 2006; Sudbury & Simcock 2009). Concerning just the definition of elderly, there are several views from academics. Whereas elderly people are defined age 65 and over that most people retire in general (Reisenwitz et al. 2007; Yoon et al. 2009), some academics regard the people who range from the age 50 and over or over 55 year-old as older people (Morris et al. 2006; Pak and Kambil 2006; Myers and Lumbers 2008). For example, Ahmad (2002) introduces three types of cohort classification of older people. ‘Young Old’ are 55-64 in age range and they tend to be powerful and active, and then ‘Old old’ are aged 75 and over, and they are less likely to be active. Finally, ‘Mature’ are belong to 65-74 age group and they are in transition between ‘Young Old’ and ‘Old old’. In contrary, Baron (2008) criticizes the segmentation itself by chronological age as meaningless, because many older people tend to feel younger than their actual age and behave according. Therefore, defining a clear segmentation of older people seems to be considerably difficult.