Exercise for Lesson 3: Types of Paragraphs

1. Write a short descriptive paragraph about a brand of perfume that your company manufactures; it’s called Surprising Strawberry. The scent is fruity with undertones of vanilla and the brand is geared toward the target market of young women aged 9-12. The paragraph that you’re going to write will appear on their website as the product description. The product costs $3.50 for a 300 mL bottle.

2. Write a few narrative paragraphs about your experience at the Sunday Fun Theme Park. Let’s suppose that you’ve been commissioned by them to review their facilities and that you were given a day pass which entitled you to go on all the rides. Write about your experience: how did your day go? Which rides did you try? How did you like them?

3. Write a persuasive paragraph which encourages people to give up eating meat and start eating more vegetables. Let’s suppose that you run an organic produce farm and that this is part of your website’s marketing campaign—a blog post that discusses the advantages of vegetarianism. Make sure to cite different health benefits like lowered risks of hypertension and diabetes, decreased chances of getting cancer and the occurrence of a stronger immune system.

Below is an example to help you better understand the instructions:

Write a few short comparative paragraphs which contrast the experiences of using earphones to listen to music and using a loudspeaker to listen to music. Make sure to describe the differences of each experience and their corresponding benefits and drawbacks. Suppose that you are writing this for a company that manufactures audio equipment and that this is paragraph is going to appear in their internal report which details changes that need to be made for the next batch of their products. The report is going to be addressed to the product development team.

There are two main ways in which our clients listen to music: by using earphones or by blasting their tunes on loud speakers. Both of these experiences have the same goal but there are nuances to each of them that the other doesn’t have. These are also addressed by our two current main products. Below, we’ll outline a comparison of these experiences in the hopes of improving our customers’ experience through developing better products.

The earphones are a very personal device—our clients use our earphones when they want to listen to music in transit, or when they crave a more personal experience with the music. The one advantage of listening to music using earphones is that no one else can hear you: you can listen to whatever you want, whenever and wherever you want. However, the biggest complaints with regard to earphone use are premature hearing debilitation and the inability to share music with one’s companions. The first complaint can be resolved by perhaps altering the volume node on our devices so that they reach a smaller level of loudness. The second can be addressed perhaps by adding a splitter or a device that resembles or functions like a loudspeaker to our line of earphones.

On the other hand, loudspeakers seem to make for more convenient listening in a group setting. They also allow you to listen to music in a more relaxed manner in the sense that one doesn’t have to worry about wires or about restricting movement. The biggest complaint that we’ve received about this is that speakers aren’t handy—they can’t be easily transported, which is usually a problem in the case of customers who buy speakers to bring to different parties and gatherings. To remedy this, maybe the material used to make the speakers can be altered so that the products are overall lighter and easier to carry around.