AXES -- Paragraph Development
AXES (Assertion, eXample, Explanation, Significance) is a useful tool, both for generating ideas and for revising your papers. The key to using AXES successfully rests in the fact that it should apply to topic segments, not paragraphs. A paragraph is a typographical block on a page signaled by an indentation at its beginning. A topic segment, however, is a unit of prose in which a writer states and develops a limited topic. A topic segment may be a paragraph, but it may also be two or more paragraphs which are all dedicated to one controlling idea.
In other words, not every paragraph will contain every element listed below. Using AXES as a formula will result in formulaic writing – and that will weaken your papers. Instead, make sure that your treatment of a single controlling idea (each topic segment, which may span over two or more paragraphs) contains each of these components. Remember, formulas work best in science and math classes, not writing classes.
A – Assertion – What is this paragraph about? Also known as topic sentences, assertion statements contain an implicit argument and can also link arguments to each other as well as to your central concern (or thesis statement). An assertion should frame ideas for the topic segment which follows it. You may find it helpful to think of this as a “mini-thesis”.
X – eXample – What evidence is there to support your assertion? The more specific the example, the more precise the analysis. Consider what concrete details or facts that you can provide from your readings or from your pre-existing knowledge or the world. Without examples, your readers will constantly wonder where and how you derived your assertions and will be less likely to accept your assertions.
E – Explanation – What does your example say about your assertion? Does it prove it? Does it make it more complicated than the reader might have first assumed? Without any explanations, the reader won’t be clear as to how you see the evidence, and will be forced to guess as to why you’ve included your example(s).
S – Significance – This is an often overlooked but exceptionally important part of any analysis. Why is your assertion + example + explanation important? How does the idea or object under scrutiny relate to your main idea? What is important about your topic segment, and what connections can you draw between it and the world at large? By including this element, you prevent your readers from dismissively asking “so what?” and you provide reasons for the reader to think about your ideas.
In the following paragraph, the student has blended abstract examples and general assertions, resulting in repetitive description:
In City Lights, Charlie Chaplin, the greatest director of all time, has created a masterpiece which brings up many issues that were relevant then and are relevant now. For example, at one point he meets a blind flower girl who wouldn’t have noticed him is she could see, thus showing us that love is blind. I can relate to this and would recommend the movie for everyone.
The above paragraph contains an example but merely throws it on the page without analysis; the example has significance but the writer states it in general terms that everyone already knows. By “sharpening” our AXES, we can turn this paragraph into a more precise analysis. Can you find each AXES element in the new version?
Chaplin’s setup of the initial meeting between the blind flower girl and the tramp in City Lights provides a literal representation of how “blindness” may make love possible, especially when society possesses misplaced values. The tramp, crossing a busy intersection, avoids a policeman by moving through a parked limousine. Hearing a car door slam, the flower girl assumes the passenger to be wealthy, and asks him to buy a flower. Since she is blind to first appearances, she does not simply dismiss the tramp as someone lacking the wealth or dignity for such an extravagance. Once the tramp realizes this, he has hope that his actions may bring him love, something that he probably felt was less attainable than a flower (especially given his shabby treatment by others up to this point in the film).
The blindness sets up both the hope and the tragedy of the flower girl and tramp’s relationship and, to various degrees, all relationships. Often, people fall in love with an image, “blind” to the qualities in the other person that might complicate that image. However, in a fuller light, that image does become complicated when we are forced to see the other person’s shortcomings. So we all have to choose which qualities and which shortcomings should hold the most importance. I can only hope that, when the flower girl eventually “sees” the tramp in his fullness, she will remember that the more respectably dressed people simple passed her by, while the poor tramp took it upon himself to buy one of her flowers with his last coin.
This exercise is used with kind permission from Kimberly Robinson Neary.
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