 Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Assalamu alaikum dear faculty. I welcome all of you to VU001F. Today we will be talking about what our topics and tense is. Before starting that, I would like to tell you little bit about paragraph. Whenever we are writing, either we are doing academic writing or we are doing creative writing, we give our information in the form of a paragraph. So, there are basically three components of a paragraph. The first one is topic sentence, supporting sentence and a concluding sentence. A topic sentence is the main sentence of the paragraph. It gives the main idea. A supporting sentence is a sentence that gives the information that sports the main idea by giving evidence and facts. Lastly, the concluding sentence summarizes the main point and it also restates the thesis statement in different wording. Let's get back to what a topic sentence is. It is the most important sentence in the paragraph and it is also known as a focus sentence. It helps the writer to organize the information and summarizes the information that comes in the paragraph, which means when the reader reads the topic sentence, he will get the idea that what the whole paragraph is going to be about. It tells the reader that what the paragraph is about and it gives the main idea. It should always has a one controlling idea, which means it must have a specific direction. A thesis statement or a topic sentence is always about one major point. The purpose of the topic sentence is to develop the main idea in one direction. So, we can say that topic sentence is mainly found at the beginning of the paragraph. Okay, let's talk about what is the purpose of a topic sentence. Topic sentence is essentially telling the readers that what is the paragraph is going to about. All the sentences that comes after the topic sentence are in support of the main idea. For example, if you are talking about the indigent species in the ocean, then the sporting ideas and the sporting sentences should be related to that one main idea. As you can see, the first sentence gives the main idea, which is about the poor public transportation system in the city. All the sentences that comes after it are actually in support of this idea and it gives the factual information that how the public transportation is in poor condition. And the last sentence is the concluding sentence where the writer has summarized his point of view by restating the thesis statement. There is another example for your understanding in this particular example. As you can see, the first sentence is talking about that his father is in good health. All the other sentences that comes after that are the factual evidence that how his father is in a better health. So, while reading this paragraph, we can see that the first sentence is the topic sentence because it has the main idea, which is about the good health conditions of the father. And all the other sentences are actually supporting this point of view by giving evidence. Let's talk about what are the essentials of a topic sentence. It has two components, the topic and the controlling idea. The topic is the subject of the paragraph and the controlling idea actually puts limit to one aspect. As you can see the example, the first example is about bread that it is an important part of our food. So, bread is the topic which is the main subject and the rest of the sentence is the controlling idea. So, the purpose of a controlling idea is to put limitation to the subject because a subject can be dealt in various ways. But we have to set a certain limit to it that but we are going to state about that particular subject. I have planned an activity for all of you guys. If you can spare some moments and see that I have given few sentences over here and what you are supposed to do is that you need to bold the topic and underline the controlling idea in the following sentences. As you can see in the third sentence that it starts from effective time management basically has four stages. So, the time management is the topic and the controlling idea is that it has four stages if you want to do better time management. Just spare some time and do this activity. I have given few topics over here and you are supposed to write topic sentences for these particular topics. I hope you are done with the activity. Now, I would like to give you few tips for writing a good topic sentence. Whenever you are writing a topic sentence try to make a complex or a compound sentence because a simple sentence cannot give more information. You can use a topic sentence later in the paragraph. Try to state your main idea clearly and explicitly. Try to balance the topic sentence by giving sporting ideas and factual information. Use such kind of a language that hooks your reader. Okay, now we are going to talk about main idea. Main idea and topic sentence are more or less similar because the purpose of the topic sentence is to give the main idea. Main idea is a central or the controlling idea of the whole paragraph. It sets the direction of the paragraph and the main idea of the paragraph sometimes it can be stated directly or it can be implied. The main idea is mainly found in the first sentence of the paragraph and all the sentences that follows it are the sporting sentences that gives the information which relates to the main idea. Sometimes the main idea can be split which means the information is divided into two parts. The first sentence of the paragraph presents the point of view while the last sentence of the paragraph gives the contrasting or the opposite viewpoint. When you are writing the main idea there are few tips that you can follow. You can start with the first sentence of the paragraph which sets the stage for the main idea. You can use textual evidence or quotes to support your main idea. You are supposed to make your topic sentence and the main idea unified and concise and it should be organized in short sentences. Use contrast language to show different viewpoints or perspectives on the main idea.