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What can be included in a context paragraph about daily surroundings in an essay?

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A context paragraph about daily surroundings in an essay should provide detailed descriptions that appeal to the five senses, offering insight into daily life. This can include sensory details like sights, sounds, and smells, and should aim to "show, not tell" by using present tense. Additionally, context can set the tone for the essay's deeper themes, much like how classic literature uses environmental descriptions to establish mood.

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If this assignment is a personal essay, your reader is looking for key details that give insight into what the progression of your daily life is like. If that is the case, you are simply thinking through your day and explaining what happens around you. Some ways in which to start doing this could include making a list of common things that your senses encounter during the day (common sights, smells, etc.) or making a list of positive and negative details from the day. In the actual writing of the paragraph, it is worth trying to include as many specific descriptions as possible. It might be effective to keep your descriptions in present tense in order to "show, not tell" your reader what is happening.

Another thing to keep in mind is that context in writing can be used to symbolize a deeper meaning later in the text. Many...

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classic short works do this to establish the tone of the following plot. For instance, Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" and Lucy Maud Montgomery's "The Schoolmaster's Letters" both describe the type of weather in detail to establish the tone of the overall piece. If this paragraph falls toward the beginning of your final essay, it may be worth thinking about how you could use the descriptions in this way to establish a sense of tone in the piece.

Happy writing!

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In a traditional essay, context is an important link between what you believe is interesting to the reader (hook) and your thesis statement (your argument/claim). Context in an introduction should be brief and give the background information needed to support the thesis.

However, it seems like your teacher is asking for an entire paragraph devoted to the context of your daily surroundings that is separate from the introduction. Most likely, the assignment is asking for a description of the most important parts of your daily surroundings. In other words, you should provide the reader a sense of what it is like to live within your daily surroundings. A nice technique in writing to establish context is to check to make sure your writing appeals to the five senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste). For example, you can enhance a description of your classroom by describing the sterile odor of whiteboard markers or describing the sound a chair makes on a floor when everyone is working on a stressful test. 

Good luck on the assignment!

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