Thesis Statements

1. Thesis Statements Huuh? Whaaat? This is hard… Get out your notes and prepare to write!

2. Thesis Statement • Writing a thesis statement is the most important task in completing a successful essay assignment. • Without a good thesis statement, you will not have a way to organize tour thoughts! (You will make it much harder on yourself than it needs to be) • Everything in your essay should stem from and refer back to the thesis statement;it is the essay's anchor.

3. 1. Understand what a thesis statement in general needs to accomplish. • Narrows your subject to a main idea • Makes a specific claim • Previews the arrangement of ideas • Must be presented as fact • Answers the question the prompt asks

4. 1. Understand what a thesis statement in general needs to accomplish. • A thesis statement is a conversation starter with important information. • A thesis statement needs to be presented as a fact to be disputed.

5. 2. Define your point of view. • Once given your prompt, free write/take notes in order to sort out your thoughts on the issue at hand. (No longer than 5 minutes.) • create a list of ideas you want to discuss before you make your final decision on what to focus on

6. 3. Write your thesis statement in the form of an organized and clear complex sentence. • Consider the following sentences: • I hate Tennessee weather. • While Tennessee is considered to have a mild climate, the fluctuation between hot and cold in the winter, the abundance of humidity in the summer, and the short Springs and Falls make living in Tennessee almost unbearable. • Which one is a better thesis. Why?

7. Basic Tips • Be specific—it should cover only what you will discuss in your paper and should be supported with specific evidence. • It usually appears at the end of the first paragraph of a paper. • You may need to revise your thesis statement to reflect exactly what you have discussed in the paper.

8. Example: 1 • An analysis of the college admission process reveals two principal problems facing counselors: accepting students with high test scores or students with strong extracurricular backgrounds. • What specifically will the paper that follows this thesis discuss?

9. Example: 1 • The paper that follows should: • explain the analysis of the college admission process • explain the two problems facing admissions counselors

10. Example: 2 • The life of the typical college student is characterized by time spent studying, attending class, and socializing with peers. • What specifically will the paper that follows this thesis discuss?

11. Example 2: • The paper that follows should: • explain how students spend their time studying, attending class, and socializing with peers

12. Example 3: • High school graduates should be required to take a year off to pursue community service projects before entering college in order to increase their maturity and global awareness. • What specifically will the paper that follows this thesis discuss?

13. Example 3: • The paper that follows should: • present an argument and give evidence to support the claim that students should pursue community projects before entering college

14. Now write your own thesis statement! • Please read “Stonehenge” by John Hudson Tiner and “Stonehenge” by Marjorie Frank. • You have now read two texts about Stonehenge. Write an opinion essay about which of the two authors best uses reasons and evidence to support ideas about the mystery of Stonehenge. Be sure to develop your point of view with reasons that are supported by facts and details from both texts. Follow the conventions of standard written English. Write your essay in the space provided on the next pages.

15. Revise your Thesis statement! • Did I name the subject at hand and make a claim about it? • Did I CLEARLY communicate my subject and claim to my audience? • Does the reader have to ask “So what?” (If so, revise!)

16. Essay Introductions • Essay introductions serve a particular purpose • All introductions should draw the readers from their world into your world.

17. Essay Introductions A good opening paragraph has several important tasks: • It focuses the reader’s attention on your topic and gets them interested in what you have to say. • It specifies what your topic is and implies your attitude. • It is concise and sincere.

18. Essay Introductions Strategies for “hooking” the reader’s attention: • Use a vivid quotation • Offer a surprising fact or statistic • Create a visual image • Ask a provocative opinion or question • Define a word central to your subject • Make a historical comparison or contrast

19. Quotation example: • “It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London,” wrote Henry James in 1881. “It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent.” Were he alive today, James, a connoisseur of cities might easily say the same thing about New York or Paris or Tokyo, for a large city is one of the paradoxes of history. In countless different ways, it has almost always been unpleasant, disagreeable, cheerless, uneasy, and reproachful; in the end it can only be described a magnificent.

20. Intriguing fact example: • The peregrine falcon was brought back from the brink of extinction by a ban on DDT, but also by a peregrine falcon mating hat invented by an ornithologist at Cornell University. If you cannot buy this, Google it. Female falcons had grown dangerously scarce. A few wistful males nevertheless maintained a sort of sexual loitering ground. The hat was imagined, constructed, and then forthrightly worn by the ornithologist as he patrolled this loitering ground, singing, Chee-up! Chee-up! and bowing like an overpolite Japanese Buddhist trying to tell somebody goodbye. . . .(David James Duncan, "Cherish This Ecstasy." The Sun, July 2008)

21. A vivid description example: • Canada is pink. I knew that from the map I owned when I was six. On it, New York was green and brown, which was true as far as I could see, so there was no reason to distrust the mapmaker’s portrayal of Canada. When my parents took me across the border and we entered the immigration booth, I looked excitedly for the pink earth. Slowly it dawned on me: this foreign “different” place was not so different. I discovered that the world in my head and the world at my feet were not the same.

22. A provocative opinion example for real this time: • I've finally figured out the difference between neat people and sloppy people. The distinction is, as always, moral. Neat people are lazier and meaner than sloppy people.

23. Openings to avoid!!! • A flat announcement: DO NOT start your essay with “the purpose of this essay is…” or In this essay I will…” • An apology: Such as “I’m not sure if I’m right but…” or “I don’t know much about this, but…” Write with confidence!