How to Write a Thesis

It is common for students new to college to receive criticism about their writing that focuses on the thesis.  A thesis is a sentence or group of sentences that asserts the main idea of any piece of writing.  All documents should have a thesis; frequently, however, students do not really know how to write an argument, or at least how to write a strong thesis.  Learning how to write theses is one of the most important skills a college writer will acquire, and one that will enhance not only his or her writing ability, but also his or her critical analysis and reading skills.

Students learning how to write a thesis will benefit from first learning how to identify a document in others' writing.  Once a student is comfortable recognizing an argument, she will better know how to write a thesis herself.  To this end, it may be helpful for students to read a variety of student and professional texts to determine if they can identify the thesis statements of these documents.  Typically, a thesis will be in the first 1/4 of the document, and will encapsulate in a few sentences the entire point of the piece.  A good way to begin identifying thesis statements is to read a document and then write down in a sentence what the main idea of the entire document is.  When going back to the first 1/4 of the document, some variation of that sentence should be clearly presented in the text.  This is the thesis.  Students may also find it helpful to look at writing composition books and online resources that underline or highlight thesis statements so that they can double-check their article-finding abilities.

After students are comfortable recognizing an argument, they can learn how to write theses themselves by imitating these theses.  This does not mean that the student should copy the thesis of another writer, but that he or she should use other student compositions as models.  For instance, a student may find the following thesis in an essay on the American Revolution: "The American Revolution arose in part from an emerging sense of separate national identity on the part of New World inhabitants.  This identity can be seen by examining the ways in which distance from England allowed for the development of a separate culture among colonists."  When examining this thesis in detail, the student may note that the thesis is two fully-developed sentences.  The first sentence clearly identifies the topic of the thesis and the following sentence presents evidence for the defense of that topic.  The student may also notice that the thesis is written in very strong and specific language—there is no question about exactly what the sentences mean, and no words that have vague connotations.  In fact, the student may even notice that every single word contributes directly to the clear understanding of each sentence.  After observing these elements, the pupil can model his own thesis on this form using an entirely different topic.  

Once a student has modeled a few theses, he will learn how to write theses on his own.  A thesis will always include an assertion of an opinion or interpretation and then reasons supporting the validity of that opinion or interpretation.  Typically, the thesis will need to undergo several stages of revision until the student refines it to the clearest and most precise statement it can be.

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