Developing a Thesis
An essay must be focused on,
controlled by, and related to one main idea. The central idea is called the
thesis. It contains your view of your topic, your reason for writing, your
goal. Your thesis does more than merely name the topic; it asserts something
about it. An essay's thesis is often expressed in a single sentence, called the
thesis sentence.
Constructing a Thesis Sentence
The thesis is the sentence that
contains the foundation, the premise, the argument you are presenting to your
readers; it is the core of what you want to say.
A thesis sentence:
· 1) must be open to debate
2) should contain an active verb,
3) should have a concrete subject and verb, and
4) must have correct focus; that is, it must zero in on the topic
precisely, covering neither too much nor too little ground.
EXAMPLES:
TOPIC: Write an essay on the
effects of strip-mining.
THESIS SENTENCE: Strip-mining
should be tightly controlled in this region to reduce its pollution of water
resources, its permanent destruction of the land, and its devastating effects
on people's lives.
TOPIC: Write an essay about the
dynamics of single parent families.
THESIS SENTENCE: In families
consisting of a single parent and a single child, the boundaries between parent
and child often disappear so that the two interact as siblings or as a married
couple.
TOPIC: Write a literary analysis
of Katherine Anne Porter's short story, The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.
THESIS SENTENCE: Although
Granny's jilting robbed her of some of the joy her life could have provided,
she did not allow her sorrow to completely dominate her life.
TOPIC: Write a literary analysis
of Shirley Jackson's short story 'The Lottery.'
THESIS SENTENCE: The villagers
in "The Lottery' represent the dangers of blindly following accepted
traditions without questioning their basis.
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