DEVELOPING YOUR THESIS STATEMENT

Keep the following guidelines in mind as you develop your thesis statement.

Figure 6.1: FIGURE 6.1 An Overview of the Writing Process

Your learning style can influence how you develop a thesis statement. Pragmatic and concrete learners find it helpful to generate facts and details about a narrow topic and then write a thesis statement that reveals a large idea that is demonstrated by the details. Creative and abstract learners find it easier to begin with a broad idea, focus it in a thesis statement, and then generate details to support the thesis.

Learning Style Options

SYNTHESIZING IDEAS TO GENERATE A WORKING THESIS STATEMENT

Coming up with a working thesis statement involves reviewing your prewriting to determine how some or all of the ideas you discovered fit together. It is a process of looking for similarities among ideas and grouping them in related categories. Use the following steps, adapting the process to your learning style.

  1. Reread your prewriting, identify details that relate to the same subtopic, and cut and paste them so they appear together; then write a word or phrase that describes each of the two groups of related ideas.

    A student working on the topic of intelligence in dogs noticed in her brainstormed list that the details could be grouped into two general categories: (1) details about learning and (2) details about instinct. Here is how she arranged her ideas.

    Learning

    follow commands

    read human emotions

    get housebroken

    serve as guide dogs for blind people

    Instinct

    females deliver and care for puppies

    avoid danger and predators

    seek shelter

    automatically raise hair on back in response to aggression

  2. Decide which group(s) of ideas best represents the focus your paper should take. Sometimes, one group of details will be enough to develop a working thesis. Other times, you’ll need to use the details in two or three groups. The student working on a thesis for the topic of intelligence in dogs evaluated her grouped details and decided that learning provided enough material to write about.
  3. Consider whether you have enough relevant details. If your list of details is thin, you may not have enough details to come up with a good working thesis. Delete any details that do not work, and use prewriting to generate more ideas, trying a different prewriting strategy from the one you used previously. A new strategy may help you see your narrowed topic from a different perspective. If your second prewriting does not produce better results, consider refocusing or changing your topic.

Essay in Progress 1

If you used a prewriting strategy to generate details about your topic in response to Essay in Progress 3 in Chapter 5, review your prewriting, highlight useful ideas, and identify several sets of related details among those you have highlighted.

WRITING AN EFFECTIVE THESIS STATEMENT

Use the following guidelines to write an effective thesis statement or to evaluate and revise your working thesis.

  1. An effective thesis makes an assertion. Rather than stating a fact, a thesis should take a position, express a viewpoint, or suggest your approach toward the topic.
    LACKS AN ASSERTION Hollywood movies, like 127 Hours and Jersey Boys, are frequently based on true stories.
    REVISED ASSERTIVE Hollywood movies, like 127 Hours and Jersey Boys, manipulate true stories to cater to the tastes of the audience.
  2. An effective thesis is specific. Provide as much information as possible about your main point.
    3. TOO GENERAL I learned a great deal from my experiences as a teenage parent.
    REVISED From my experiences as a teenage parent, I learned to accept responsibility for my own life and for that of my son.
  3. Focus on one central point. Limit your essay to one major idea.
    FOCUSES ON SEVERAL POINTS This college should improve its tutoring services, sponsor more activities of interest to Latino students, and speed up the registration process for students.
    REVISED To better represent the student population it serves, this college should sponsor more activities of interest to Latino students.
  4. Offer an original perspective on your topic. If your thesis seems dull or ordinary, it probably needs revision. Search your prewriting for an interesting angle on your topic.
    TOO ORDINARY Many traffic accidents are a result of carelessness.
    REVISED: MORE INTERESTING An automobile accident can change a driver’s entire approach to driving.
  5. Avoid making an announcement. Don’t use phrases such as “This essay will discuss” or “The subject of my paper is.” Instead, state your main point directly.
    MAKES AN ANNOUNCEMENT The point I am trying to make is that people should not be allowed to smoke on campus.
    REVISED: MAIN POINT STATED DIRECTLY The college should prohibit smoking on campus
  6. Use your thesis to preview the organization of the essay. Consider using your thesis to mention the two or three key concepts on which your essay will focus, in the order in which you will discuss them.

Essay in Progress 2

Keeping your audience in mind, select one or more of the groups of ideas you identified in Essay in Progress 1. Write a working thesis statement based on these ideas.

PLACING THE THESIS STATEMENT

Your thesis statement can appear anywhere in your essay, but it is usually best to place it in the first paragraph as part of your introduction. When your thesis appears at the beginning of the essay, your readers will know what to pay attention to and what to expect in the rest of the essay. If you place your thesis later in the essay, you need to build up to it gradually in order to prepare readers for it.

USING AN IMPLIED THESIS

In some professional writing, especially in narrative or descriptive essays, the writer may not state the thesis directly. Instead, the thesis may be strongly implied by the details the writer chose and the way he or she organized them. Although some professional writers use an implied thesis, academic writers, including professors and students, generally state their thesis. You should always include a clear statement of your thesis in your college papers.