Grab the reader’s attention with an opening “hook”

Your introduction paragraph should be approximately 150-200 words. It should:

1. Grab the reader’s attention with an opening “hook” – this may be an interesting example, a quotation, an anecdote, or a question related to your topic
2. Include your thesis statement as the last sentence of the introduction and underline it to make it clear to your reader. It’s expected that your thesis statement has changed and improved since you last submitted it in Milestone 3 based on your instructor’s feedback.
3. Since you are drafting content that will become part of your final project, which is a formal academic writing assignment, you should avoid informal language (i.e. slang) and first-person pronouns (i.e. “I”, “me”, “my”)

Once you have drafted your introduction paragraph, below it in the same document you will compose an outline of the body paragraphs and conclusion of your paper. First, review the following resource on outlines: Excelsior OWL–Traditional Outlining (Links to an external site.).

Your outline should include at least 3 body paragraphs supporting your thesis statement, 1 body paragraph to refute opposing perspectives, and a conclusion that reiterates your thesis statement. Each body paragraph should include 1-2 supporting details with the source or sources you plan to use as evidence for that detail. This way you will determine if you have enough evidence for your points, which will make it much easier to draft your full paper in the coming weeks or find additional sources if necessary.

Follow the format in the Milestone 5 Template 

Step 3: Reference List

Since you are including source information in your outline, you need to include a list of references at the end for all of your sources. This should be formatted in APA style, just as you did last week for Milestone 4.