journal

I’m Kelly M., your composition tutor for the Writing Center. I have reviewed your submission and have several suggestions that will help you revise. Please feel free to contact us through a live chat session with any follow-up questions or for any clarification. Below, you will find a revision plan along with margin comments within your paper. Use my suggestions as a starting point for the revision process. Also, please note that I have not edited or proofread the entire draft for minor errors, but rather, focused on overall concerns such as idea development. For a complete look at your grammar and punctuation, please use the Grammarly software available under “Writing Center” in your classroom. You have done a nice job of beginning your paper! You did a good job of citing your sources in your paper. For your revisions, I suggest focusing on:

1. Remember your thesis should tell your readers what your paper will prove. If you already know what your support paragraphs will discuss, take the topics from these paragraphs to create a thesis statement. For help revising a thesis, click here: http://writingcenter.bridgepointeducation.com/writing-a-thesis

2. You'll need to add a few more support paragraphs to your paper before you write a conclusion paragraph. As you revise, I suggest working on your overall paragraph development. A good rule of thumb for college papers is that paragraphs should be about 7-11 sentences long. Many of your paragraphs are underdeveloped and many of your points are not thoroughly explained. Here is a rough outline to help you revise your paragraphs, and explain yourself a bit more: a. Topic sentence that states the topic or point of the paragraph b. Give a Fact/Detail/Reason/Quote/Statistics that supports your point c. Explain this fact d. Give more Explanation & Analysis of this fact e. Give another Fact/Detail/Reason/Quote/Stat to support your topic sentence f. Explain this fact g. Give more Explanation & Analysis. h. Closing Sentence For more help with paragraph development, click here: http://writingcenter.bridgepointeducation.com/body-paragraphs

3. Your reference page looked to be missing a few details. Keep in mind titles need to be properly formatted as well. For help formatting your references page, click here: http://writingcenter.bridgepointeducation.com/format-your-reference-list Good luck in the course, and I hope we can help you with your next assignment. Kelly

4. When you use a quote or a piece of evidence from the text, it is best to explain to your reader why the quote or paraphrase is important to the claim you are making in your paper. Remember you are explaining why the evidence you have chosen fits your argument

5. Be sure you are properly formatting your titles during in-text citations and on your reference pages. Larger works (and their volume numbers) are required to be written in italics while shorter works should be written in normal font. Both have typical capitalization within the paper, but on the reference page only the first word of a title and the first word after punctuation (subtitle) should be capitalized. Examples of larger works are: books (including anthologies), films, long or epic poems, music albums, periodicals (including databases), television series, websites, etc. Examples of smaller works are: chapter or section title, a short story or poem title, a song title, article title, episode title, etc.