Air Pollution
Bill Gray
Don't subordinate your intro paragraph to its associated ideas. That means don't map out what you're going to tell me in your body paragraphs. Focus here on the background causes for air pollution. How long has it been with us, and how long have we known we should do something about it? Strengthen your thesis. You never want to have a negative thesis, but always a positive one. That means, try to make some point you can prove, that your body paragraphs can advance--not one that cannot be proven.
Take some time to prove this to me. By how much, exactly, would we eliminate car pollution by cutting down on car use? What's the research on that? Why are there particular days when the use of cars is more dangerous than on other days? How realistic is car-pooling in a society that loves its cars and goes thousands of different directions every day?
Give me a transition from the idea of car pollution to the idea of acid rain. Are cars significant contributors to acid rain? In what sense? What's in these airborne acids to make them so corrosive? How long does it take them to actually start showing results on people's property? In conclusion, how is this idea of acid rain important to the thesis?
What conditions are necessary to produce smog? In what way does it differ from automobile emission pollution? Is it only an industrial phenomenon? Or can small towns inherit smog from big cities? Clarify that last sentence--how so? How does this idea of smog help to support and advance your thesis?
Develop this idea on indoor pollutants--how prevalent is asbestos, anyway? Avoid second person. Your concluding sentence should show how this idea is important to the thesis. Strengthen the entire paragraph.
This idea of ozone depletion and oxygen breakdown should be stressed through each of the previous body paragraphs. It's not really an independent and separate idea. Focus here, perhaps, on another type of pollutant in order to keep all your ideas in each of these paragraphs parallel.
Ditto. This paragraph begins with an extended fragment. Clarify that. Focus here on another pollutant. Integrate the idea of global warming throughout the other body paragraphs. Develop the idea of melting icecaps and flooding small islands in your concluding paragraph on impact of the issue to society.
Develop along the lines of the impact this idea has on the thesis. Don't talk necessarily about what we should do about it, but how the problem has a large enough impact to generate community awareness. Close the paper by telling me why the thesis is important.