As mentioned in our last post, TEEL stands for: Topic Sentence, Evidence, Explain, Link.
Link to where?
The Link is the final section of TEEL, and it is often very hard for our students to get right!
We give our students a few principles when it comes to link:
- The link connects the body paragraph to their contention in their introduction
- The Link should explain the relationship between the idea of this paragraph and the overall argument of the essay (ie. the contention)
- The Link could connect to the next paragraph, but this is optional, not mandatory
A weak Link will just repeat the topic sentence without any consideration of the contention:
Therefore Malouf suggests through Priam and Achilles that leadership comes with many pressures that could crush individuality.
This Link reveals little about how this idea connects to the contention. The student could write a higher-scoring Link by referring to contention as well:
Malouf suggests through Priam and Achilles that leadership comes with many pressures that could crush individuality, contributing to his overall stance that leadership is achieved at the expense of the individual.
In the Link above, there is now a connection to the contention, but it still sheds little light on how it fits into the overall essay. To achieve this, our student could add even more:
Malouf suggests through Priam and Achilles that leadership comes with many pressures that could crush individuality, supporting his overall stance that leadership is achieved at the expense of the individual, regardless of the self-awareness it can bring.
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