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Home : Thesis statements : Topic + assertion

How to write a thesis fast:
Use formula: thesis = topic + assertion

Students can learn how to write a thesis statement before they understand the meaning of the term. In fact, if you want students to understand the concept, you must have them use it in their writing.

The definition of thesis is a summary of the main idea of an entire essay, article, or book.

Writing a thesis statement is not hard, as you'll see in a few moments. However, knowing how to write a thesis within the process of writing an essay can be difficult even for bright students.

In fact, I sometimes feel the bright kids struggle more than the average kids who just go through the motions. To a large extent, going through the motions enough times is what learning writing is about.

A thesis is a whole idea

One of my students once posted a message to a class forum pleading, “Can somebody please give me an idea? There’s no way I can write an essay without an idea.”

The poor girl didn’t know how right she was.

Most students don’t have whole ideas. If you ask them to jot down things they could write about, they’ll give you fragments of sentences, usually nouns and noun phrases.

No one can write a unified, coherent essay about an idea fragment.

Thesis = topic + assertion

To create something that can serve as the main idea of a paper, writers have to expand the topic from a fragment to a complete idea.

They do that by adding an assertion about the topic, and combining the two into a single declarative sentence that I call a working thesis. The topic becomes the subject of the statement, the assertion becomes the predicate.

The assertion is usually the writer's opinion or perspective on the topic. The assertion doesn’t need to be earth-shaking or original. Great writing can be developed even from platitudes.

Writers’ initial statements are usually rather ungainly, but that awkwardness doesn't matter. The purpose of the working thesis is to help writers gather and sort ideas. For that reason, you need to teach students to begin the writing process by developing a thesis statement.

Knowing how to write a thesis is no use unless students use that knowledge to help them write efficiently.

Later, if the thesis statements pan out, writers polish them. Polishing transforms initial statements into formal thesis statements that look and sound good and fit smoothly into the finished essays.

Use what is given you

Nearly every real-world writing assignment, both in school and on the job, gives writers a topic to write about. In a great many cases, assignments even limit writers to a few potential assertions. Initially writers might not know which assertion is best, but they rarely are in doubt about what their options are.

Many classroom writing assignments allow students to write a thesis without having to come up with either a topic or an assertion. They don't even have to know which part is the topic and which part the assertion.

Sometimes students can simply copy the thesis statement given in the writing prompt. They need to know nothing — zero, nada, zip — about how to write a thesis. I call these no-brainer theses. They often are the work of very brainy teachers.

Other assignments give students a topic plus a choice of assertions about that topic. Typically, such prompts give students a choice of two assertions about a topic.

By far, the most common type of writing prompt is one that gives students a topic while restricting the range of potential assertions they can use. Having to come up with an assertion presents a greater challenge than using one that's given, especially for beginning writers. It takes more time, more creativity, and more self-confidence.

You can help beginning writers develop confidence by using prompts that allow them to learn how to write a thesis without having to come up with their own assertions.

created 11-Feb-2008; updated: 12-Sep-2008

 

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If you want to see some formal writing prompts and the thesis statements developed from them, I suggest you start with either my page of middle school prompts or my page of high school prompts. Both include links to thesis statements developed from them. Also those prompts and the thesis statments are available for download, free.


 

When you broke the Thesis statement into a Working Thesis = Topic + Assertion, that simple math sentence turned on the light bulb. It illuminated what had for so long eluded me. ... Then the illustration of the thesis being a subject and verb really helped me out. [I realized] it was as simple as making a rational statement in grammar."
~ Yvonne

 

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