MS. PEER EDITOR: What's up, everyone? I'm Ms. Peer Editor, and today, I'm showing you how to write effective transitions between ideas and paragraphs for any kind of essay. Let's get started. First off, I wanted to give you some examples of transition words and phrases that you can use in your essays. 

I advise you to use these sparingly because if you use too many, these words can make your transition sentences seem forced. I really only use these phrases if they are critical in helping the reader understand the relationship between two or more ideas. 

So here are those words and phrases that you can use to transition if you are providing an example, comparing or contrasting several ideas, adding information, describing a cause and effect relationship, and if you're providing a conclusion or a wrap-up of your thoughts. 

We're going to write transitions using a sample essay prompt. Our prompt is, "Develop a position on the role, if any, that public libraries should serve in the future." This is actually the AP English language and composition synthesis essay, or Q1, prompt from the 2017 exam. 

So here's our thesis statement. In the future, libraries can promote civic engagement, offer interactive educational resources, and enhance the public's technological skills. In the body paragraph, we are writing transitions for has the specific topic of interactive educational resources that libraries offer. 

When we are transitioning between ideas within the paragraph, we we'll follow these steps. So first, we're going to identify the relationship between the two ideas that we want to connect, then create a structure that embodies the relationship, and lastly, add transition words and phrases if necessary. 

So the first idea in our body paragraph that we are discussing is that libraries offer book clubs, yoga, and volunteering opportunities, which allow patrons to gain new skills. In the second idea, which we want to connect smoothly to idea one, is that librarians are experts in finding helpful sources on academic databases. So they can teach library patrons how to properly research. 

So let's develop some sort of relationship between these two ideas so that we can write our transition sentence. Idea one explains an educational benefit of libraries, and idea two expands upon that benefit with a more specific skill that patrons can gain. 

So let's create a structure that embodies this relationship. The first part of our transition sentence will acknowledge idea one. We'll now introduce idea two as a point that is expanding upon idea one. 

And here are a couple of examples of transition words or phrases that we could use in this sentence. So here is our example of our transition sentence to connect these two ideas. Providing a space for community events, libraries empower patrons to learn new skills, including academic research. 

So this yellow underlined portion is that first part we showed earlier. And this underlined green portion is the second part. Highlighted in red is a transition word, which is the word including. And that signals that we are discussing a specific example in the second part of this sentence. 

Now let's write a transition sentence to connect two body paragraphs. The first body paragraph discusses civic engagement, whereas the second body paragraph discusses interactive educational resources that libraries offer. So we want to connect these two paragraphs very smoothly. 

We're going to follow those same steps that I showed earlier in order to write our transition. So our first idea, which is what we ended our first body paragraph with, is that libraries promote civic engagement in many ways, for example, open forums and voter registration guides. 

Our second idea, which is the idea we're starting our second body paragraph with, is that libraries offer interactive educational resources. This is very simple. It's just the overall topic of our second body paragraph. 

The relationship between these two ideas is that idea two explains how libraries can help people become informed or educated, making idea one possible, or making civic engagement as a whole in a community possible. 

Now let's create our structure. The first part of our sentence will affirm libraries' crucial role in any democracy. The second part will explain how idea two makes idea one possible. And the third part will acknowledge idea one. 

Notice how these last two parts are kind of interchangeable. So they don't necessarily have to go in this order. You can switch them around, especially because idea two and idea one are very closely linked. One makes the other possible. So we don't necessarily have to keep an entirely rigid structure. And here are some examples of transition words and phrases that we can use if we choose to do so. 

Let's take a look at two examples of transitions that you could write to connect these two ideas. If we were to include our transition in the first body paragraph or the body paragraph that primarily discusses idea one, we could write this. Essential to the democratic process, libraries encourage people to vote and engage in civil discourse. When participating in this discourse, people can use libraries' educational resources to develop an informed perspective. 

Underlined here is the first part of our transition. And the second underlined portion is the second part. And highlighted in red is our connecting phrase. And that third purple underlined portion is our third part of the transition. 

And if we were to include our transition in the second body paragraph or the body paragraph that primarily discusses idea two, we could write this transition, which actually also functions as a topic sentence. A functioning democracy needs a way to educate and inform the public, in addition to a space where people can discuss community concerns. 

So underlined here in yellow is the first part. Underlined in green is the second. And underlined in purple is the third part. And we also have a connecting phrase in the middle, which is in addition to. 

Thanks so much for watching. In the comments, please write down some transition words and phrases that I may not have included in this video. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe and tap the bell to receive notifications whenever I make a new video. I will see you next time.