Have you ever received the below feedback in your academic work?

• Some of your paragraphs are too long or too short.
• You should analyse and evaluate the evidence rather than simply describing it.
• The focus of your paragraph needs to be clearer.
• You should connect the evidence to your claim.
• You need to provide more in-depth analysis.

If these comments sound familiar, you’re not alone!

Steps to improve your writing

One important step is to structure your body paragraphs appropriately. In academic writing, you’re encouraged to use the PEEL structure, which means Point, Evidence, Evaluation, and Link:

• Point: This is usually the topic sentence which comes first in a body paragraph and clearly gives the point of the paragraph. For example, in the topic sentence “Personalised feedback plays an important role in boosting students’ performance,” the reader expects the paragraph to provide evidence supporting this claim. In addition, remember to discuss only one main point in each paragraph.

• Evidence: Use different types of evidence, such as data, examples, and case studies, to substantiate your claim in the topic sentence.

• Evaluation: Show your own voice and judgment, which is usually your commentary on the evidence. You can do so, for example, by interpreting the evidence, discussing relevance and significance, and explaining its implications.

• Link: This can be a sentence that wraps up your paragraph or shows how it connects to the next one, or to the thesis/central argument of your paper.

Find out more about paragraph structure here.

Going Beyond the Basics

Based on the above, a body paragraph should contain at least four sentences. However, in order to make your claim strong and compelling, you need to go beyond the basics. Here are some suggestions:

Use topic sentences as argumentative pivots

This is especially useful when writing body paragraphs in a literature review or discussion section, where you need to provide evaluation, not just description. First, check whether your topic sentence sounds factual. If it does, you’re probably just stating information rather than making a point or argument. To introduce the main idea or argument of a paragraph, use verbs or phrases that indicate judgment, evaluation, or contrast. For example, you can use argumentative verbs like challenges, extends, highlights, or suggests.

Integrate synthesis when citing evidence

Synthesis refers to combining information from multiple sources to create a new, original argument or interpretation. You can demonstrate synthesis by showing similarities, differences, causal relationships, and more. Therefore, it’s important to use more than one source in each body paragraph and show how the sources are connected. Find out more about synthesis here.

To prepare for synthesis, you’re recommended to create research matrices when reading your sources. Find out more about research matrices here.

Include various textual features to highlight your evaluation

There are different ways to show nuances in your evaluation, or voice, and one of them is using hedges (e.g. could, would, likely, possibility, and appear to) or boosters (e.g. must, absolutely, definite, and certainty) to indicate your level of confidence. You can also use attitude markers, such as surprisingly, significant, critical, and desirable, to convey your evaluation or stance. In addition, by using a range of signposting language, such as however, therefore, and as a result, you’ll show how your ideas are linked.

Find out more about ways to show nuances in your evaluation here.

Demonstrate more critical voice

To show your critical voice, examine the evidence and ask yourself questions that start with why and how, as well as “so what” questions that push you to consider significance and implications. For example, when you write:

Smith (2025) found that students who engaged in one-to-one writing support sessions scored, on average, 15% higher than their peers who did not engage in such sessions.

You can ask: Why did one-to-one support lead to higher scores? How were the sessions structured to result in such a difference? Why is this result important for writing pedagogy research?

Find out more about showing critical voice here.

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If you would like more support with paragraph structure, you can book a 1:1 meeting with Bess Chan, your English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Tutor, via email or the booking form