Let’s look at another example. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn !” You grab a pad of paper and write: Lunsford, Andrea A. The St. Martin’s Handbook. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.) If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis sample website analysis essay, ask yourself the following: While both sides fought the Civil War over the issue of slavery, the North fought for moral reasons while the South fought to preserve its own institutions. A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis” that presents a basic or main idea and an argument that you think you can support with evidence. Both the argument and your thesis are likely to need adjustment along the way. Why is this thesis weak? Think about what the reader would expect from the essay that follows: most likely a general, appreciative summary of Twain’s novel. But the question did not ask you to summarize; it asked you to analyze. Your professor is probably not interested in your opinion of the novel; instead, she wants you to think about why it’s such a great novel—what do Huck’s adventures tell us about life, about America, about coming of age, about race, etc. First, the question asks you to pick an aspect of the novel that you think is important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you have a working thesis! Included in this working thesis is a reason for the war and some idea of how the two sides disagreed over this reason. As you write the essay, you will probably begin to characterize these differences more precisely, and your working thesis may start to seem too vague. Maybe you decide that both sides fought for moral reasons, and that they just focused on different moral issues. You end up revising the working thesis into a final thesis that really captures the argument in your paper: Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel. Hutner explains, "Women have traditionally acted in nurturing, supporting roles; as mothers, wives, nurses the secret book report, comforters, doers of 'menial' housekeeping tasks. Therefore these are the roles they are assigned in the workplace. In as much as women's work has always been considered less important than men's work and has often been underpaid, the market simply reflects historical attitudes" (10). Women are paid less because they have often has "menial" tasks in families and are given them in the workforce, too. Living through a war does not necessarily mean that one has "survived" it. Weine says, " Refugees. continue to grow. and their complex needs are far from over once they have been resettled" (Weine 1215). Friendships emerge broken, families are torn apart, and the individuals themselves emerge both discombobulated and, for good reason, distrustful. Until people are able to forget that family members and turned against each other in panic and fear, until authority figures can again be trusted, until new faces cease to be potential swindlers; it is absurd to imagine that Sierra Leone can become another resounding echo of the social, political and economic structure the Western world has imagined for it. One day it may happen, but there is a serious amount of individual healing to achieve first. Sample Two: Advanced Thesis Using Personal Stories Sometimes, though, the root cause is so painful or well disguised that people merely invent excuses. Blame is assigned to something simple, straightforward, and all too often completely illegitimate. In the case of Sierra Leone, this excuse has become a racial one, blame falling on skin color. A bartender Bergner met "rubbed his dark forearm and said, 'It's in the skin an example of a dissertation introduction,' blaming his race for the failures of his nation" (142). Skin color cannot be "fixed." It is something over which no one has any control and, therefore, is an easy scapegoat. As Frazier points out, overcoming racial discrimination is something that requires a "joint effort" (1). Unfortunately, no one seems to know how to go about that and, as such, race stops being a surmountable issue and instead becomes a fallback excuse that seems more credible than it should. SPECIAL NOTES: This is a well written MLA undergraduate thesis paper. The author is responding to a specific element in a book by author Daniel Bergner. She responds to Bergner's thoughts by taking a thesis position and supporting the position using research. In conclusion, Hutner sums up the issue nicely: "As more and more women enter the labor force, pay equity becomes an increasingly important question, not only to them and their families, but also to their employers, to the consumers of their services, and to their male fellow workers as well" (18). Women should receive equal pay for equal work. It is sex discrimination to pay women less, their careers and pay scale are just as important to them as they are to men, and many women are single parents and the sole breadwinner in the family. Even children suffer from the lack of respect so inherent to Sierra Leone. As Fofana points out, many "children, some of them former combatants essays that worked college, some orphans and street children dissertation reports in finance, are hired by adults to do their dirty work for them." Children, already robbed of their childhoods by the civil war, do the jobs no one else want as a means of survival. With few laws, no organization, and a lack of respect for the laws and authorities that do exist it is unspeakably difficult to create a workable infrastructure. My second language also taught me about a variety of customary festivals. Two such festivals are El Dia de LosMuertos (The Day of the Dead), which honors the annual return of relatives that have passed away, and La Posadas (The Inn-Seekers), a pre-Christmas event that observes the wanderings of Mary and Joseph before the birth of Jesus. A year ago [when] at work, [where] Victoria Mercado [who] gave me a first-hand account [what] of migrant farm work. She wanted to educate me [why] about inequalities that continue to be maintained today. She said what is the outline of an essay, "My parents worked in the fields picking crops. We were given a dank, [smell] one-room house to stay in during the harvest. The tractors would rattle [sound] the shack as they rolled by outside. At sunrise, [sight] we would start picking the vegetables, separating out those that were soft, [touch] or overripe. We would work through the day until the dirt and sweat clung to our lips." [taste] This story of courage would have been impossible if I did not speak a second language. The ability to speak a second language has a variety of benefits. It can help bridge cultural gaps, be advantageous in the workplace, and also give us a better understanding of not only our native language but language in general. jewel001/CollegeWriting/home.htm University of Minnesota Luckily enough, we had a friend, the driver, who was sober, and watched our backs. If it had not been for her ability to make a clear decision, I would hate to think about what would have happened, and the emotional consequences. Alcohol: Emotionally Life Altering Sample One: Basic Thesis with Three Examples Kennedy points out, "The greatest change in women's employment over the last thirty years involves working wives. In most families in the United States today, working wives are the rule and not the exception" (61). Women are moving up in the work force and value their careers. They oftentimes have worked hard to gain the position they hold. The next thing I knew, my mom was shaking me awake. I discovered I had passed out in the bathtubso much for making it past Mom and Dad. I got in a lot of trouble. I definitely learned from the experience. Bergner, Daniel. In the Land of Magic Soldiers. New York: Picador, 2004. Print. Second write an essay about my birthday, women's careers and pay scales are just as important to them as such things are to men. With the majority of women now in the work force, they have established careers for themselves. Robert E. Kennedy Jr. author of Life Choices says, "In 1950, for example, three-quarters of wives living with their husbands were not in the labor force. Social expectation in the 1950s assumed a division of labor between husband and wife. The husband was responsible for being the breadwinner and for financially supporting the family, while the wife was responsible for home and family life" (60). However, we now are in a time of change. Drinking alcohol at any age impairs a persons judgment. There is a sound reason that our government, our parents, and the adults in our life have made the decision to have a drinking age and to have that age be twenty-one. Drinking changes peoples lives emotionally, both while they are under the influence and by the decisions of those around them who are drinking. People may make some decisions the same whether under the influence or not. However, some decisions can be changed in an instant when peopleourselves or othersare intoxicated and do not have full control. Holly Peterson Last Thanksgiving, [when] my family [who] was gathered [what] in the living [300 w.] room [where] after a rich meal. We were letting our stomachs [touch] settle [why] before succumbing to my mothers mouth-watering [taste] array of pies, whose aromas were slowly wafting [smell] into the room. Their golden crusts and fillings [sight] were practically calling [sound] to us through the room, but we were just too full to tackle them. SPECIAL NOTES: The assignment for this thesis paper required descriptions of the author's personal experiences as examples supporting her basic argument. She uses the first-person "I," preceded by phrases such as "for example," which is allowed when an author uses her own personal examples. Lack of Respect When terrible atrocities occur, people need explanations free online essay topics, and if none are readily available, it is easiest to fall back on excuses. If one can discover why something awful happened, perhaps he or she will be able to stave off the horrors the next time. It is hard to see children, once "good students [now] having bad dreams at night and difficulty in school by day" (Gordon 19). It is important, however, to find the root of the problems, rather than to assign petty blame. The second law is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Bennett Amendment. Title VII is a much broader law than the Equal Pay Act. It prohibits not only discrimination in compensation, but also all types of discrimination in the terms of employment. It includes discrimination based on race, color, religion, and national origin, as well as sex discrimination. At one point, [when] my [who] store [where] conducted surveys [what] to gauge customer satisfaction [why]. However, there were Spanish-speaking customers unable to participate. I approached a woman with a shock [sight] of smoky-smelling [smell] hair, and asked if she would like to participate. She replied with a shrill, [sound] toothless [sight] giggle and nodded her head. She continued grinning while answering my questions, tickled [touch] with the attention. When I finished, she held my forearm and told me she had never taken a survey before. Then she patted my hand and planted a salty kiss on it. [taste] Communicating with people from different cultures gives us the opportunity to touch the lives of others, and share their knowledge and experience. Many people appreciate that learning a second language has a variety of benefits. They understand that it can bridge cultural gaps, be advantageous in the workplace, and give us a better understanding of our native language. Third, other peoples lives can change emotionally forever by someone of any age who gets drunk. The type of change depends on how everyone affected makes his or her decisions. However, whether in a good or a bad way, the change may influence peoples lives forever. Araceli Gomez told a similar story and then added, "Whenever I had a stomachache, my mother would have me lie down on the kitchen table. Then she would press down on my stomach and move my tripas (guts) around a bit. She told me that one of my organs had moved from where it should be, and that I had a stomach ache because it needed to be moved back where it belonged." Bergner tells the story of the children who put a string across the road and would not let anyone pass without giving them something first, even if that something was a mere "four dusty tissues" (151). Getting something for nothing more than the rather pathetic courtesy of asking for it is taken for granted. Again this makes it difficult to build a self-sufficient nation. A country made of dependent people will have trouble being independent. Gordon free writing papers for students, James S. "Healing the Wounds of War: Gaza Diary." Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 12.1 (2006): 18-21. EBSCO Academic Search Premiere. Web. 20 Mar. 2010. Hutner also shows one negative result of "women's low earnings": "poverty for women and for their families. The Monthly Labor Review reports that in 1979, 'persons in families maintained by women with no husband present, had a poverty rate of 30 percent, compared with persons in families maintained by men, which had a poverty rate of only 6 percent" (7). Women need equal wages to support their families better. SPECIAL NOTES: This is a standard beginning-level college thesis paper requiring some research. Note that the bibliography at the end would, in a normal manuscript, start on a separate page. As in most formal research papers--both academic and professional--it avoids the personal pronoun "I," instead using the third-person forms "he/she" and "they." Venter, Al J. War Dog: Fighter Other People's Wars. Havertown: Casemate, 2006. Print. Think of yourself as a member of a jury, listening to a lawyer who is presenting an opening argument. You'll want to know very soon whether the lawyer believes the accused to be guilty or not guilty, and how the lawyer plans to convince you. Readers of academic essays are like jury members: before they have read too far, they want to know what the essay argues as well as how the writer plans to make the argument. After reading your thesis statement, the reader should think, "This essay is going to try to convince me of something. I'm not convinced yet, but I'm interested to see how I might be." Anticipate the counterarguments. Once you have a working thesis, you should think about what might be said against it. This will help you to refine your thesis history help for college students, and it will also make you think of the arguments that you'll need to refute later on in your essay. (Every argument has a counterargument. If yours doesn't, then it's not an argument—it may be a fact, or an opinion, but it is not an argument.) Once you have a working thesis, write it down. There is nothing as frustrating as hitting on a great idea for a thesis, then forgetting it when you lose concentration. And by writing down your thesis you will be forced to think of it clearly, logically don't want do my homework, and concisely. You probably will not be able to write out a final-draft version of your thesis the first time you try, but you'll get yourself on the right track by writing down what you have. Keep your thesis prominent in your introduction. A good, standard place for your thesis statement is at the end of an introductory paragraph, especially in shorter (5-15 page) essays. Readers are used to finding theses there, so they automatically pay more attention when they read the last sentence of your introduction. Although this is not required in all academic essays, it is a good rule of thumb. An effective thesis cannot be answered with a simple "yes" or "no." A thesis is not a topic; nor is it a fact; nor is it an opinion. "Reasons for the fall of communism" is a topic. "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe" is a fact known by educated people. "The fall of communism is the best thing that ever happened in Europe" is an opinion. (Superlatives like "the best" almost always lead to trouble. It's impossible to weigh every "thing" that ever happened in Europe. And what about the fall of Hitler? Couldn't that be "the best thing"?) A brand new kind of a custom writing service Almost every assignment you complete for a history course will ask you to make an argument. Your instructors will often call this your "thesis" -- your position on a subject. Assignment: How did domestic labor change between 1820 and 1860? Why were the changes in their work important for the growth of the United States? Your reader’s blueprint for reading: Idea 1. If your paper assignment asks you to answer a specific question, turn the question into an assertion and give reasons for your opinion. An argument takes a stand on an issue. It seeks to persuade an audience of a point of view in much the same way that a lawyer argues a case in a court of law. It is NOT a description or a summary.
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