As you explore your topic, you will begin to see possible ways to focus your material. At this point, try to settle on a tentative central idea, or working thesis statement. The more complex your topic, the more your focus may change. As your ideas develop, you’ll need to revisit your working thesis to see if it represents the position you want to take or if it can be supported by the sources of evidence you have accumulated.

You’ll find that the process of answering a question you have posed, resolving a problem you have identified, or taking a position on a debatable topic will focus your thinking and lead you to develop a working thesis. Here, for example, are one student’s efforts to pose a question and draft a working thesis for an essay in his ethics course.

QUESTION

Should athletes who enhance their performance through biotechnology be banned from athletic competition?

WORKING THESIS

Athletes who boost their performance through biotechnology should be banned from athletic competition.

The working thesis offers a useful place to start writing—a way to limit the topic and focus a first draft—but it doesn’t take into consideration the expectations of readers who will ask “Why?” and “So what?” The student has taken a position—athletes who boost their performance through biotechnology should be banned from athletic competition—but he hasn’t answered why these athletes should be banned. To fully answer his own question and to claim something specific in his thesis, he might push his own thinking with the word because.

STRONGER WORKING THESIS

Athletes who boost their performance through biotechnology should be banned from athletic competition because biotechnology gives athletes an unfair advantage and disrupts the sense of fair play.

Effective thesis statements