Ok so this is my first college paper (in English) and the assignment is to choose a few of the concepts brought up in the book and basically judge/react to them with personal opinions and experiences. So I was wondering what the format of these things are in terms of introduction and conclusion. In high school, my introduction and conclusion basically summarized everything I was gonna say plus a thesis statement. Is that what I should be doing here? And what kind of thesis statement could I have if I am just reacting to various different things in the book?
The prof offered us to bring a first draft to him to look at so I have an appointment on Monday, but I’m not really sure how to go about writing the first draft (or at least the intro and conclusion part). Also it’s not a long paper, like 4 pages.
For relatively short papers, the standard intro-body-conclusion should be fine - at least in most papers I’ve read recently, the concluding section typically summarizes everything said previously, but also poses additional questions or potential areas of interest (not sure how you would do this on your paper). An example of a thesis statement could be along the lines of “This Book evokes feelings of X, Y, and Z to the reader” or something like that.
How did the paper not in English go?
For a reaction paper, intro and conclusion woukd be similar to what you learned in high school - perhaps a bit more elaborate in that beside the thesis statement you may want to ask two nuancing questions that you’ll solve .
@MYOS1634 I got an A I was so happy. Can you explain what you mean by “2 nuancing questions?” I don’t really know how to do the thesis because he said we can be reacting to different concepts in the book so what if I agree with some and disagree with others? How do I capture that all in one sentence?
You don’t. You indicate what you agree with then ask two questions about two things you don’t agree with.
“I’ll explain how … At the same time, can’t we also say that…? What about…?”
@MYOS1634 But I mean the thesis statement. In high school, there was always a one sentence thesis at the end of the intro paragraph, and that sentence had to sum up the “argument”
I assign shorter reaction papers but the first paragraph is expected to be a summary of the paper. Since this is a longer paper, perhaps you could introduce the couple of points you intend to make in the intro as well.
I was so happy. Can you explain what you mean by “2 nuancing questions?” I don’t really know how to do the thesis because he said we can be reacting to different concepts in the book so what if I agree with some and disagree with others? How do I capture that all in one sentence?