Formal Essay
Your essay should include an introduction, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Introduction: Your introduction should make all of the moves that weve practiced and executed the entire semestera hook, background information, and a thesis statement. You might also use one of the templates for introducing conventional ideas in TS/IS (pg. 23-4). Body Paragraphs: You should have one body paragraph that evaluates your introduction, one that evaluates your body paragraphs, and one that evaluates your conclusion. Your body paragraphs should also make all of the moves that weve practiced and executed the entire semester. They should contain a clear topic sentence that states your claim. They should provide textual evidence from your diagnostic essay to support your claim. In other words, you want to either paraphrase or quote yourself. (Your parenthetical citations would be your last name and the page number.) Once you have provided the evidence to support your claim, you should explain how the evidence proves your claim. For example, if one of your claims is that you did a poor job with your introduction (topic sentence), you should provide evidence from your paper and then you should explain what you did wrong and how you would correct it. Similarly, if one of your claims is that you wrote an effective thesis statement, you would quote the thesis statement and explain why it is effective. Conclusion: By now, you should be a conclusion-writing machine! This is your last chance to hone your skills before you head off to English 102. Remember to make the three moves that weve learned and practiced this semesterrestate your thesis, add something new (explain broader implications, propose a solution, or predict the future), and bookend your hook. This essay will be shorter than the formal essays that you composed this semester. It will probably be between 500-700 words, though keep in mind that the quality of your thinking and the quality of your writing is more important than the number of words it takes to get your message across.
