Writing a Thesis Statement

If the paper assignment asks a question, your thesis statement should lay out your answer to the question and how you are going to support your answer.

If the paper assignment asks for consideration or exploration of a topic, your thesis statement should limit the scope, the range, of your exploration, and explain the approach or direction you will take. As you work on your paper, you may find yourself taking a stance on some aspect of the topic. If you start to take a stance, you can go back and sharpen your thesis statement so that it makes clear your position and gives a preview of how you are going to argue for your position.

People who give writing advice about thesis statements tend to break them into two types:

1. Argumentative: The writer takes a stance or answers a question—or even makes an assertion. In a sense, the writer makes a promise to try to convince the reader that the writer’s stance or answer is credible.
2. Analytical: The writer puts forth a purpose, an intention to explore and evaluate. The thesis statement specifies the purpose of the exploration, the direction it will take, and how far it will go (the scope).

In the best case, you can determine from the paper assignment whether the thesis should be argumentative or analytical. However, sometimes this may not be clear. When you start writing, you may not know where your paper will go or what its thesis will be. However, as you work on your paper, these may become clear.

Writing the Introduction

You may be saying to yourself “OK, I get the part about the thesis statement, but how does the paper start?” You are right: your final paper should not start with an abrupt shouting of your thesis statement. However, your working draft may well start with your working thesis statement. It will help to keep you focused.

Some writers get stalled on the first sentence. They try to write the perfect first sentence. They try over and over again, and don’t actually get started on the paper.

It is better to start writing, outlining, or jotting down thoughts—whatever approach works best for you. You can write the introduction later, after you have a clear idea of what your paper does. After all, at the beginning you may not know whether your paper will turn out to be an argument or an exploration.

When you have a good draft of your paper and have come to writing the introduction, here are some things to consider in writing an introduction.

Your readers. Yes, the most important reader is your instructor. But your instructor will be reading your paper as someone who is interested in and knowledgeable about the subject. You want to lead up to your thesis statement in a way that develops its relation to and importance to the broader subject area of your paper—and, of course, shows its connection to the paper assignment.

In an online course, your fellow students may have the opportunity to read your paper and perhaps comment on it. You need to keep these readers in mind, too. Again, your introduction should show the relevance of your thesis to the subject matter of the course and lead to your thesis in a way that gets the readers’ attention.

Your opposition. If your paper is an exploration or an analysis, it may not have “opposition.” On the other hand, if your paper is an argument or assertion, you assume that some people will be opposed to or made uncomfortable by your thesis.

You should remain very aware of the opposition as you develop your argument in the paper. Even in the beginning, an introduction that gently and respectfully acknowledges the opposing argument or arguments may be a good way to start and move into your thesis. This strategy will show that you are aware of the significance of your topic and that you start with an open mind, considering the value of other perspectives as you support your own perspective.

Research—Not Rehash

A research paper assignment may take you into areas of knowledge that you are not yet very familiar with. You may feel like throwing up you hands, saying, “People have already written about this much better than I ever could.” Soon you could find yourself summarizing what others have said, or—worse—perhaps patching together many direct quotations from others in a framework of words that you provide.

Yes, a research paper requires that you do research. You are not supposed merely to present your own opinion. You are supposed to do research on the topic or question. Then on the basis of what you have found, you develop a perspective—your own perspective.

To present your perspective, you do use what others have said. There are several ways you may do this.

Present the information or arguments you found in your research that are close to your perspective. However, you should go beyond quoting and then “rubber-stamping” the quotations. Bring out and emphasize the parts of others’ arguments that you think are the strongest.

This doesn’t mean that you ignore what you don’t find useful. You should acknowledge the other parts of the selected arguments that you find less useful, explain why you think that those parts are less useful, and maybe even explore how they could be improved.

Present the information or arguments of others that from your perspective are flawed or wrong. In the course of reviewing the opposition, you need to show the reader why this information or these arguments are flawed or wrong.

Discover areas that existing analysis or arguments have ignored or didn’t see. Then find information and/or develop arguments on your own to fill these gaps.

A good research paper will do a little of all three things. What is should not do is simply summarize. To put it bluntly and crudely, you are not writing a “book report.”

Doing Research

While doing your research, keep your purpose, your thesis, in mind. There are lots of books in the library and lots of resources on the Web. You don’t want to get sidetracked.

When you find several resources that make the same point or support the same step in your argument, evaluate them to determine the one or two that do the best job. In your notes, write for each one that you select the reasons why you think that it is a good source. This information probably won’t go in your paper, but it may help when you review your research and decide which resources to use.

Know in advance what reference style you are going to use for citations. The style may be specified in the paper assignment. Nowadays, many instructors prefer APA style. Unless the course instructions or paper assignment says otherwise, you are probably safe using APA style.

Knowing the reference style in advance is important so that you know what information about each source to keep track of: author(s), article title, journal title, book title, publisher, volume number, publication date, page numbers—or for a Web source also URL, date that you looked at it.

APA Style

Below are links to some online resources for APA style:

http://www.apastyle.org/

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/

http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/DocAPA.html

Writing the Conclusion

Naturally, your conclusion should bring your paper to a clear and satisfying end. It should not be abrupt. It should do more than merely summarize the points that your paper has made. Starting from a review of your main points, the conclusion could expand to show how your points are relevant to the larger subject area.

If your paper is an answer to a question, your conclusion could restate the question and summarize how you have answered it—and perhaps take into account how you have headed off other possible answers. If you can show the importance of your answer in relation to larger issues, this is a good place to do that.

Similarly, if your paper is an argument supporting a position, your conclusion should review your position and how you have supported it. In addition, it could briefly and tactfully touch on how you dealt with the opposition.

Rereading and Revising

This is going to sound strange: Knowing exactly what you want to say may harm your paper. Especially after you have worked for a long time on a paper, knowing what you want to say can result in your seeing what you want to say when you reread your paper—even though all of what you want to say might not actually be there. That is because your mind plugs into the paper missing points, smooth logical transitions, helpful definitions of terms, and so on, that you have not actually put in the paper. How can you avoid this?

Start your assignment early enough so that you can let it sit. Pace your work so that you have at least a day to set your paper aside before you make your final revisions for submission. Having this distance will enable you to read the paper not as the writer, but as a fresh reader. You may be able to spot gaps in the argument or analysis, unclear terms, clumsy transitions—even errors in basic mechanics.

Read a draft of your paper aloud. This works very well with another person (friend, family member) as listener. You and your listener may hear lapses or missteps that you don’t see while reading silently. If you can’t find a listener, reading the paper out loud to yourself will help.

Print it. This is very old fashioned, but reading a draft on paper can be very helpful. First, getting it off your computer screen, where you may have spent a long time looking at it, will give you a new perspective. On a more detailed level, some people see mechanical errors on paper that they miss on a screen. And finally, you can take a pencil in your hand, and mark up your paper for changes and corrections, and write in the margins notes about points that you want to add, or points that you want to clarify.

Writing a Literature Review

Usually a literature review appears at the beginning of an academic research paper. In the review, the writer surveys research that has already been done on the topic that he or she will address in his or her paper. Ideally the literature review will set up the context for the writer’s approach to the topic, summarizing what has already been said, and identifying trends and perhaps gaps or even mistakes in the published research.

Your instructor may assign a review of the literature on a particular topic as a way to get you thinking about and familiar with what has been said about that topic. The literature review may be an independent assignment, or it may be preparation for an upcoming course assignment such as a research paper.

Either way, the important thing to remember about a literature review is that it is not merely a list of references—or a list of references with a sentence or two attached to each reference to describe it.

A literature review should be organized in a way that relates to the topic.

For example, a large topic might be broken into subtopics, and then the literature review can group and survey research articles and books under the subtopics that they deal with.

If a large topic involves problems or unresolved issues, the literature review can connect each article or book with a problem or issue, and assesses how it addresses the problem or issue. If there is little or no research dealing with a particular problem or issue, this shortfall can be pointed out as a gap in the published research on the topic.

Perhaps there is a clear trend in thinking about the topic. In that case, the literature review can be organized to show the development of thinking about the topic.

The introduction to your literature review should explain or delineate your topic, and alert the reader to your plan for surveying the research on the topic.

The conclusion for your literature review should highlight the subtopics or issues that you identified, the trend that you followed, or the gap(s) in research that you found.

Finally, of course, you will need to provide a reference list with author and publication information for the works that you review.

Examples

Click the link below to see a brief example highlighting the organizational strategy and phrases used in part of a literature review.

http://guides.library.vcu.edu/ld.php?content_id=1720469

The link below will take you to two examples of literature reviews that are part of published research articles. The instructor who posted these examples introduces them with a good discussion of how literature reviews work.

http://gsteinbe.intrasun.tcnj.edu/tcnj/rhetoric2/litreviews.htm

Common Mechanical Errors

Listed here are some common mechanical errors.

Two Sentences Put Together with Just a Comma (Comma Splice) 

When a sequence of words has a clear subject (doer of an action) and a verb (the action), it is a sentence:

A dog bit me.

Sentences can stand separately:

I went to the doctor. She told me not to worry about the bite.

These two sentences can be put together with a comma and a word (a conjunction):

I went to the doctor, and she told me not to worry about the bite.

However, two sentences that can stand separately and independently should not be put together with just a comma:

I went to the doctor, she told me not to worry about the bite.

This error is usually called a comma splice.

Sentence without a Verb, or Sentence without a Subject (Sentence Fragment)

A sentence must have a verb that says what the subject does, or did, or will do—or a verb that says what the subject was, is, or will be. This is not a sentence:

Not a dangerous dog.

We can make it a sentence by giving “dog” a verb. We will also have to rearrange the words a bit. All these are sentences:

The dog was not dangerous.

The dog is not dangerous.

The dog will not be dangerous.

If a sequence of words has a verb (an action), but no subject, it is not a sentence:

Barks loudly.

From the nature of the action, we know what is probably doing the action. However, to make this a sentence, we need a subject:

The dog barks loudly.

A sequence of words that is not a sentence is called a fragment.

Word Confused with Sound-Alike Word

This error is one that even experienced writers sometimes make.

Some words in English sound exactly alike but are written differently.

The pair its/it’s is a good example:

The animal ate its food.

We associate possessive forms with apostrophes, but for “it” the possessive is formed without an apostrophe. The sentence above is correct.

With “it” the apostrophe is used for the contraction of “it is.”

Be careful with an animal when it’s hungry.

There/their/they’re—we’ve got three going here.

“There” deals with place. This place could be a real location, or it could be a figurative place (meaning that something exits):

There is a place for us. That place is here.

There are many kinds of burritos.

“Their” is possessive:

They forgot their coats.

“They’re” is the contraction for “they are”:

I bet they’re going to be very cold.

Your/you’re confusion is similar to their/they’re confusion.

Possessive:

Be sure to check your email.

Contraction for “you are”:

Please say that you’re going to be home for Thanksgiving!