Drafting (Activity 1.13) - Seriously, start writing. You have done all of the thinking during the planning stage. You need to get some words on the page or it will be impossible to help you.

Included in your thesis statement or the rough outline you should have three to four ideas to expand on to support your thesis.

"To be an American is to embody the ideals of liberty, diversity, and opportunity, as well as to contribute to the ongoing narrative of a nation forged by the pursuit of individual and collective dreams." (ChatGPT)

1. Liberty - Give examples, stories, statistics, facts that explain and support Liberty.

2. Diversity

3. Opportunity

4. Maybe American Dream (this may be in the Opportunity paragraph)

A body paragraph should have a Transition, Topic sentence (or claim), specific Evidence and analysis, and a Brief wrap-up sentence (also known as a warrant). We will work on transitions during the revision phase. Remember paragraphs begin with an indented line. (Hit "tab" once.)

Intros, Transitions, and Conclusions

Intro- The good news is that the thesis statement that you have already written is the most important part of your intro. However, it would be a good idea to grab the attention of your reader. You can do this in several ways. You can start with a surprising statement, funny anecdote,  reference to a historical event or work of art, quotation from a famous person, or if you have to a rhetorical question.

Conclusions - Absolutely do not begin with "In conclusion." Alright fine. Start with it, but delete it after you have written the conclusion. Your conclusion usually ties back to your attention grabber in the intro and explain what the reader should do with this new information. IT IS NOT A SUMMARY OF WHAT YOU WROTE!

Transitions - Transitions are the road signs for the reader. On the simplest level they are words that connect ideas together. For example, if you are organizing chronologically you would use words like first, second, next, after. If it was organized in order of importance you may say finally, lastly,  or most important. Here is list the may be helpful. 

You can rely on the transition words to connect you paragraphs, but there is a better way. In fact I just used it between these two paragraphs. Repeat a key word or concept from the last sentence of the previous paragaph in the first sentence of the next paragraph.  In this case, the last sentence was listing transition words, so I started the next paragaph with the phrase "transition words."

Revising (Activity 1.14) - This is when you access other minds. The writer's mind will auto-correct by adding and subtracting information for fluency when it reads its own writing. One way around this is to read it out loud, but this method is not perfect. You also need to have outside readers such as family, friends and teachers.

Editing (Activity 1.14) 

• At the very least (you should never do the least) get rid of the red and blue squiggly lines in your document.

• Definitely use computers to do this. Google has some built in tools, but you can also use TurnItIn, Paperrater, Quillbot or other online editors. Just Google "free online essay editor" to find more.