outlines for writing a thesis

Summary: This resource provides tips for creating a thesis statement and examples of different types of thesis statements. Contributors:Elyssa Tardiff, Allen BrizeeLast Edited: 2014-02-10 10:44:43 Tips for Writing Your Thesis Statement 1. Determine what kind of paper you are writing: An analytical paper breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea, and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience. An expository (explanatory) paper explains something to the audience. An argumentative paper makes a claim about a topic and justifies this claim with specific evidence. The claim could be an opinion, a policy proposal, an evaluation, a cause-and-effect statement, or an interpretation. The goal of the argumentative paper is to convince the audience that the claim is true based on the evidence provided. If you are writing a text that does not fall under these three categories (e.g., a narrative), a thesis statement somewhere in the first paragraph could still be helpful to your reader. 2. Your thesis statement should be specific—it should cover only what you will discuss in your paper and should be supported with specific evidence. 3. The thesis statement usually appears at the end of the first paragraph of a paper. 4. Your topic may change as you write, so you may need to revise your thesis statement to reflect exactly what you have discussed in the paper. Thesis Statement Examples Example of an analytical thesis statement: An analysis of the college admission process reveals one challenge facing counselors: accepting students with high test scores or students with strong extracurricular backgrounds. The paper that follows should: Explain the analysis of the college admission process Explain the challenge facing admissions counselors Example of an expository (explanatory) thesis statement: The life of the typical college.
“Writing a book is an adventure: to begin with it is a toy and amusement; then it becomes a master, and than it becomes a tyrant; and the last phase is just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude – you kill the monster and fling him to the public.” Winston Churchill Last year I took a vacation for a month to write my dissertation thesis. And it took me that one month to come up with the first draft, which made it into the final version with only minor alterations (but a lot of error checking). While the lack of major alterations might be in part due to my academic advisers (and my) wish to finish the work as soon as possible, I think the major part of this is due to the way it was written, or rather structured. Doing a dissertation thesis is a major project, the writing itself is a different but not less complicated animal. I think it is a mistake to start writing in sentences unless you know the structure and the content. Once you write sentences, they stick together and are hard to change. And I think it is nearly impossible to write a 200+ pages work if you do not structure it beforehand, and there is a great way to do so: Outlines. Most people know outlines from school. Many teachers try to give this valuable hint for exams. Plan what you write before you start writing. An outline for a dissertation is similar, but not quite the same. For one thing, it is much more detailed. How detailed? Well, everything you want to write later should be included in it, without the actual sentences. Metaphorically it should contain the bones of the text, the whole skeleton, and hints for everything else. This means the order you want to write the different pieces of information that make your theory the notes you made about your studies, the design, the participants, the instruments, the procedure the results of any statistical analysis you made the ideas for and.
THESIS GENERATOR Follow the steps below to formulate a thesis statement. All cells must contain text. 1. State your topic. 2. State your opinion/main idea about this topic. This will form the heart of your thesis. An effective statement will express one major idea. name the topic and assert something specific about it. be a more specific statement than the topic statement above. take a stance on an issue about which reasonable people might disagree. state your position on or opinion about the issue. 3. Give the strongest reason or assertion that supports your opinion/main idea. 4. Give another strong reason or assertion that supports your opinion/main idea. 5. Give one more strong reason or assertion that supports your opinion/main idea. 6. Include an opposing viewpoint to your opinion/main idea, if applicable. This should be an argument for the opposing view that you admit has some merit, even if you do not agree with the overall viewpoint. 7. Provide a possible title for your essay. Parents should regulate the amount of television their children watch. Notice that this model makes a concession by addressing an argument from the opposing viewpoint first, and then uses the phrase even though and states the writer's opinion/main idea as a rebuttal. Even though television can be educational, parents should regulate the amount of television their children watch. Here, the use of because reveals the reasons behind the writer's opinion/main idea. parents should regulate the amount of television their children watch because it shortens children's attention spans, it inhibits social interaction, and it isn't always intellectually stimulating. This model both makes a concession to opposing viewpoint and states the reasons/arguments for the writer's main idea. While television can be educational, parents should regulate the amount of television their children watch because it.