Martin Luther King Jr.'s Key Argument in His "I Have a Dream" Speech

Crystal's feedback:

"Excellent job with establishing a clear focus/purpose in the opening lines to make it clear you’re addressing how King’s argument is supported by his words. You also nicely integrate the quotations contextually and engage well with them to show why they're significant and support King's argument. However, there are a few ways you can improve the organization, formatting, and writing conventions. First, with organization, you clearly establish an introductory element, key quotes that support your focus, and a clear concluding statement, but it would be ideal to instead have multiple paragraphs. Specifically, having a short intro that ends with an additional sentence that serves as a thesis statement would provide a better road map to show the reader what areas you’re specifically going to focus on (it doesn’t have to be super specific, just enough to frame the elements that you break down). For instance, you could add a short sentence that highlights/establishes how two passages especially support the argument. Then, you could create two body paragraphs, one for each of the passages. And then finally, adding a sentence at the start of a separate conclusion paragraph would better synthesize/summarize your main points before leaving the reader with your final takeaway. Your current closing sentence rocks--you especially nicely highlight why the passages matter to King's argument, so bringing things together a bit more before you end with that would strengthen the cohesion of your essay as a whole. With formatting, there’s a few errors in the formatting for the quotes (e.g., you need single quotes around phrases that have quotes inside of double quotation marks, and your second quote would need to be in block quote formatting, per MLA, given that it exceeds 4 lines--or you could shorten the length of the quote a bit to avoid that). In addition, there are some punctuation errors throughout your essay, mostly missing commas after introductory elements (e.g., a comma is missing after the introductory element “Instead of whites opening up to new possibilities to better the future”), and some spots with awkward phrasing. Doing a thorough edit for punctuation and flow would improve the writing mechanics of your essay. Finally, while you do a lovely job of engaging with the two direct quotes, the added detail about what King elaborates on after the second quote would also be enriched by you stating why that detail is significant. Addressing these aspects of your essay will further build on the excellent job you’ve done with the focus and content."

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