A Short History of the Vandals, an East Germanic Tribe in Early Western Civilization

Crystal's feedback:

"While you nicely provide a comprehensive narrative about the Vandals tribe in a short essay, the structure is a bit unclear. You seem to be either presenting a chronological account that details the tribe’s movements and struggles/battles through specific time periods or an account of how certain events affected the tribe. To make that focus clearer, your intro would benefit from having a clear and very specific thesis statement that identifies the focus/purpose and provides a road map to show the reader what (and how) you’re going to cover the Vandals in the essay. In addition, the intro would start off a bit stronger if you give a little more detail to explain who the Vandals are right away; currently, it doesn’t become apparent until a bit further into the intro. Similarly, each paragraph could be strengthened with a clear topic sentence that connects to the thesis statement and frames the period or scope of the information you discuss in the paragraph—you’re tying together a lot of good bits of information to show the Vandals movements, etc., so making the focus of each paragraph clear right away will help you lead the reader through your intended presentation. Crafting a clear and short conclusion at the end of the essay would also strengthen the overall essay structure and bring more finality to your piece. The last sentence does address a bigger takeaway, but that would be better placed at the end of a conclusion that synthesizes and summarizes the details you work through in the body of the paper. Additional areas that could be strengthened are using more transitional words/phrases throughout the essay to better connect the details; avoiding colloquialisms (e.g., “bring home the bacon” would be better replaced with more something more formal); and proofreading to fix sentence-structure issues, comma errors, and capitalization/spelling mistakes. Finally, your Works Cited entries were pretty close to being perfect but need to omit the publisher name when it’s the same as the source name; using in-text citations in the body of your paper would also help ensure you fully comply with MLA guidelines. Addressing the elements above will help you connect all the good depth of detail and scope of your essay into a more solid, well-focused, and well-structured essay."

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