STUDENTS WRITE: Latrisha Wilson’s Working Thesis

STUDENTS WRITE

Latrisha Wilson’s Working Thesis

In the Students Write section of Chapter 5, you saw how Latrisha Wilson narrowed her topic and generated ideas for her essay on surveillance. You also saw how she explored types of surveillance as they affect her privacy. After reviewing her responses to questions about her topic and her freewriting, Wilson drafted the following working thesis.

These new digital technologies have both benefits and drawbacks.

She realized that her thesis was overly general and too broad, so she did more free-writing and brainstorming to help her recall details about types of surveillance. Here’s an excerpt from her brainstorming:

After brainstorming, she decided that she should focus on the drawbacks of digital communications technology. She narrowed her thesis even further to focus on the subtle forms of surveillance new communications technology enable:

Often advertised as free services, new ways of communicating put us under more invasive but less obvious forms of surveillance.