Transition Strategies: Provide Summary and Contrast Sentences
Description
The author builds an argument in the first paragraph and summarizes this argument at the beginning of the second paragraph. In the next sentence, he introduces a contrasting point of view. This then becomes the main idea of the second paragraph.
Published Example
From Swinburne's Once a Wolf:
The first serious research on wolves was done by a Minnesota naturalist named Sigurd Olson, who was a biology instructor at Ely Junior College in northern Minnesota. In 1920 he began fieldwork in Superior National Forest.... Olson discovered that “the great majority of the [wolf] killings are of old, diseased or crippled animals. Such purely salvage killings are assuredly not detrimental to either deer or moose, for without the constant elimination of the unfit, the breeding stock would suffer.”
This new view suggested that predators were a valuable part of the ecosystem. It was a radical departure from the view held by most people that wolves were useless and vicious creatures.... (p. 14).
Discussion
In the first paragraph, the author explains why wolves are invaluable in keeping the deer and moose population in balance. He begins the second paragraph by summarizing this position. In the next sentence he provides a contrasting view of wolves as useless predators.