Generating Your Thesis
Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to help you work towards a suitable thesis statement for your research essay. Thesis statements are fundamental to good academic writing: having the ability to formulate a single sentence that encapsulates the complex core of your work is a vital skill in academic and professional circles.
What is a Thesis Statement?
While you’re likely aware of this term already, it can be difficult to pin down just exactly what professors expect in a thesis. To put it simply, a thesis statement is a single sentence that encapsulates the whole of an academic paper or professional report. It is the claim that the whole of the work seeks to reinforce/prove.
A thesis statement is NOT:
A road map: Phrases like “In this essay” are inappropriate/ineffectual to introduce theses in higher level academic writing. You can include a road map as a transition into the body of your essay, but you should not use one as a thesis statement.
Simple/pithy: thesis statements should be complex, as representative of the complexity of your argument and ideas as possible. This means, at the bare minimum, gesturing towards your supporting reasons for making your central claim, if not finding a way to state them outright.
Easy to write: if there is one sentence you spend a considerate amount of time rewriting and revising, it is your thesis statement.
Locked in once you start writing your essay: you can absolutely change your thesis/argument as you continue refining your ideas. This is actually sometimes a better move than sticking to your original argument.
Requirements
The requirements for this relatively informal assignment are simple: I need at least 500 words from you on your topic, your research, and how you’re feeling about the issue you’ve been exploring now that you’ve completed the annotated bibliography. Think about where your opinions intersect with those of the scholars you’ve been reading: are your ideas different? Why is that? Think also about the information you’ve been gathering: has it changed your mind on anything, and if so, what? What did you learn that you didn’t know before, and how has that changed the way you think about this issue?
Try to generate one main claim and three sub-claims that support your ideas or opinions: are these claims supported by the evidence you’ve gathered? Why/why not?
Once you have a main claim and three sub-claims, try to condense them into a single statement that will serve as your working thesis statement as you continue to develop your argument.
You will know you’ve completed the assignment when you have more than 500 words on your topic and a working thesis statement.
