Painless Paragraphs: The NO TEARS Plan for Composing Academic Prose
Strong paragraph
organization is the key to effective synthesis and logical flow of ideas in
academic writing. If you’ve heard us talk about paragraphing before, you’ve
likely heard of the MEAL plan. A new mnemonic device for paragraphing, called
the NO TEARS plan, can also help guide you as you craft an argument paragraph
by paragraph. Read on to learn more.
The Walden Writing Center teaches
a paragraphing tool called the MEAL Plan, developed by Duke University’s
Thompson Writing Program. The MEAL plan is a mnemonic
device designed to help writers support their opinions and arguments with clear
reasoning and cited evidence – and to both acknowledge and discuss
alternate points of view and conflicting evidence. It divides paragraph
elements into four parts:
Main Idea
Evidence
Analysis
Lead Out
To learn more about the MEAL Plan, check out the Writing Center's MEAL Plan webpage and our blog series called Breaking Down the Meal Plan.
Main Idea
Evidence
Analysis
Lead Out
To learn more about the MEAL Plan, check out the Writing Center's MEAL Plan webpage and our blog series called Breaking Down the Meal Plan.
The
MEAL acronym is useful in its simplicity. However, the short acronym doesn’t
make it clear that Evidence and Analysis can and should alternate and
repeat as needed. For longer assignments, logical organization and effective
synthesis become more difficult, especially as students incorporate a wider
variety of scholarly perspectives into their work. The NO TEARS plan is a
paragraphing tool that I developed that emphasizes this repetition and
complexity more overtly, though both MEAL and NO TEARS can be used to guide academic
body paragraphs. Like the MEAL acronym, the NO TEARS plan serves as a checklist
for the elements of a paragraph:
Nothing Omitted:
Nothing Omitted:
- Topic
Sentence
- Evidence
- Analysis
- Repeat
as necessary
- Synthesis
Here's how it works. When reviewing a scholarly paper, I
expect each paragraph to start with a clear topic sentence that states what the
paragraph is about. The topic sentence (T) contains a claim that is
supported by one or more following sentences presenting evidence (E) to
support that claim.
Rather than simply presenting the evidence and being done with it, however, the writer must also analyze (A) the evidence to answer questions like "How is this known?" and "What details of how this information was found, collected, or otherwise arrived at influence its reading, interpretation, or application?"
So far, NO TEARS matches the MEAL plan: Topic Sentence/Main
Idea, Evidence, Analysis. However, what the MEAL acronym doesn’t make clear is
that some evidence may require more extensive analysis and discussion (e.g.,
controversial claims), or may warrant further articulation of how it aligns/agrees
with or doesn’t align/agree with other sources. While an instructor can teach
the MEAL plan emphasizing the repetition of evidence and analysis as needed,
the NO TEARS acronym makes this explicit: repeat as necessary (R).
Once you have finished presenting and analyzing the evidence, it’s time to synthesize (S) the findings and explain to the reader what these things mean when put together – and, more specifically, the ramifications of all the things that you’ve discussed to your paragraph’s topic, section, or paper as a whole. The S of NO TEARS aligns with the L of the MEAL plan model: Synthesis implies a sentence that wraps up the content of the current paragraph, while lead out encompasses concluding the ideas, thus preparing readers to transition to the next paragraph.
Once you have finished presenting and analyzing the evidence, it’s time to synthesize (S) the findings and explain to the reader what these things mean when put together – and, more specifically, the ramifications of all the things that you’ve discussed to your paragraph’s topic, section, or paper as a whole. The S of NO TEARS aligns with the L of the MEAL plan model: Synthesis implies a sentence that wraps up the content of the current paragraph, while lead out encompasses concluding the ideas, thus preparing readers to transition to the next paragraph.
Here’s another way of understanding the sentence-by-sentence
breakdown of the NO TEARS plan:
Paragraph:
1. Topic
Sentence: State what you’re writing about in this paragraph.
2. Evidence/Argumentation:
Support the claim you’ve made in your topic sentence.
3. Analysis:
Discuss the evidence and how it connects to your topic, explaining this as
necessary.
4. Repeat
steps 2-3 as necessary.
5. Synthesis:
Discuss what all of these things mean when put together and conclude the
paragraph.
If you follow these steps, it’s very easy to write papers
that are convincing, grounded in the literature, and easy to follow. Sometimes
this follows strict sentence-by-sentence divisions, and sometimes the elements
are mixed into the same sentence (this is increasingly expected at the doctoral
level, as part of making more complex arguments). Here’s an example of what
this looks like:
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts’s economy was strongly affected by the Great Recession of 2006-2010 (Topic Sentence). The estimated total value of commercial real estate in the City of Boston dropped by $2 billion from January 2006 to December 2006 (Graves, 2010; Evidence). Residential real estate prices in Boston dropped by 53% in this same period (Nidaye, 2012; Evidence and Analysis comparing it to the previous sentence). This significant change in property values over a short period of time had significant ramifications for area businesses (Synthesized new claim requiring additional evidence to support). For example, short-term interest rates increased by 15%, (Evidence) a record increase that made it difficult for businesses to borrow money (Nehru, 2006; Ren, 2015; Evidence and Analysis). These increased borrowing costs were a contributing factor in construction industry layoffs in Greater Boston, with 15,432 sector jobs lost in 2007 (Baluta, 2007; Evidence and Synthesis). Several sectors of the state’s economy negatively felt the Great Recession’s impact (Synthesis).
*References Page available upon
request
The NO TEARS plan, along with other systems like the MEAL Plan, are simply methods of paragraphing. In the end, these acronyms are tools to help you achieve the purpose of academic writing. How you get there is up to you.
Now it's your turn. Practice using the NO TEARS plan for paragraphs in your next paper. Let us know how it goes in the comments section below.
Basil K. Considine is a Dissertation Editor and Contributing Faculty in the Walden University Academic Skills Center. Outside of Walden, Basil is the artistic director of Really Spicy Opera, a chamber opera company specializing in new musical works for the theatrical stage.
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I LOVE the alliteration of the title! As a strong supporter of the MEAL plan, this graduate level NO TEARS approach is a wonderful addition to our writing arsenal. I particularly like the R = repeat as necessary. I like this because it reminds us of the flexibility we need to have in how we craft our arguments. Sometimes the A/analysis will come right after each piece of E/evidence, and other times the analysis can come at the end after all the evidence is given. Thanks for this great writing reminder! ~Dr. Harland
ReplyDeleteSo glad you like the NO TEARS plan, Darci! Thanks so much for your comments.
DeleteFinally, proper paragraphing making sense to me! The NO TEARS plan will be incorporated into my daily writing.Thanks so much!
ReplyDeleteChris Tatayon
Chris Tatayon, thank YOU for reading and using this model. Along with our resources on MEAL Plan and our PEAS Method, the NO TEARS method for composing paragraphs is one method for writing clear, organized, research-based paragraphs.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck on your scholarly writing journey!
Great information.
ReplyDeleteSo glad you found it helpful!
Delete