Multimodal Formal Draft

Using a source to back up your argument in a paper is always something that will make your essay stronger as a whole. The use of evidence in essays, however, comes with the responsibility of making sure that you’ve picked a quote that makes sense with what you are saying, while also being able to analyze and explain why it’s relevant. Before plopping a quote into your essay, you must first introduce the argument you’re making, then the author. Once you have successfully completed this, you can move on to placing your quote in the paper. Although, once you have completed this once for one of your sources, you do not need to continue to introduce who the author is throughout the paper. In my multimodal project, for example, I use one of my sources, Julie Beck, later on in my paper and because I had mentioned her importance before, I do not do it a second time. This can be seen in the section from my paper below:

“In fact, it is often those strongest connections between stories that create our strongest relationships. Beck also mentions that is it extremely important to share our stories with someone else due to, ‘the enrichment that comes with a back-and-forth conversation.’ If you are too scared to share your story, you won’t be given anything to ponder on if faced with a difficulty that needs another perspective. This ultimately leads to a missed chance where growth could have occurred. I personally 100% agree with this statement because sometimes people, including myself, are too scared to let our emotions out when really we are only making things worse by keeping them in.”

After I cite my source, which is done at the beginning of the sentence when I mention Beck, I then place the quote I have chosen to use and back it up with reasoning as to why it’s important. Explaining your quote is something that is extremely important and if done right can have a significant impact on your paper. By being able to explain your quote, you show that you understand what it is saying and it’s importance to your argument, whether it accepts or rejects it. This technique where you introduce a topic, place a quote, analyze the quote, and end your paragraph with a conclusion is known as the TRIAC paragraph. Learning this technique of how to integrate quotes into an essay has increased my ability to form an argument, using a quote that will benefit my paper and help my readers to understand the points I am attempting to make.