<p>I’m sort of curious how common this practice is. </p>
<p>My English teacher teaches us a style that employs two sentences at the beginning of every body paragraph. The first is a more thematic statement, involving phrases like “the individual fails at life” or the “human soul sucks,” while the second goes into the specifics of the text, like “In particular, Lady Macbeth illustrates the dark nature of the human soul”</p>
<p>Is this a really stupid way of structuring the essay? I personally feel that its better/more concise to just use one sentence for the topic sentence…but I am not sure if the theme or the book’s specific situation should be present or both should be present.</p>
<p>This seems way too structured to me. Is this for a standardized test? AP Lit. and Lang. could care less as long as you get the point across and it written with some degree of style.</p>
<p>That syntax seems bad to me. Two short sentences one after another is way too choppy for a good essay, although I don’t necessarily feel that it is a bad way of writing.</p>
<p>Generally, our teachers tell us to have only one introductory sentence that states the main idea of the paragraph following it. I don’t see why you need two.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen that structure before. I prefer to use one short sentence, unless the topic is such that trying to make a one sentence topic sentence would really screw up the syntax.</p>