Putting It All Together

At the end of his travel book The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain wrote the following:

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

Imagine that you have been asked to write a paper in response to the Twain quotation and that you have developed the thesis, "Travel makes us more tolerant."

You also have a lot of ideas—both explanations
of how this could be true and examples of situations where
travel has the effect that Twain describes.

Remember the guidelines for structuring an essay:

Let the structure show.
Restate after initial statements.
Put similar elements together.
Put most important items last.
Save objections for last.

Now it’s time to open a graphic organizer that you will use to help you restructure the paper. It includes instructions and you can save, download, and print it. Graphic Organizer Instructions

You will find the introduction, body, and conclusion already labeled because you are tasked with structuring the body paragraphs of the paper. The introduction might include a statement of the thesis, the quotation from Mark Twain, and a paraphrase of the quote. The conclusion might include a statement about the importance of the paper’s main claim in today’s world and a restatement of the thesis.

You know that there will be reasons given for agreeing with the thesis. Look for the reasons. Check for clues about most and least important reasons. The objection to the thesis and the answer to that objection should go after the discussion of the three reasons.

Then you will be left with the restatements of the reasons and with the examples. You should be able to figure out where each restatement and example goes go by looking for key words and other structure clues.