How to Write a Strong Thesis Statement in 5 Minutes
Thesis statement is a centre of your text, so it should be prefect. For this reason, professors ask students to pay special attention to its preparation, usually checking several versions and rejecting them. This is because readers love to know whether the text is related to their interests or aim from the very beginning. In addition, after formulating your thesis statement correctly and precisely, you will have fewer chances to write irrelevant information in the text itself. Learn how to write a perfect thesis statement with myeasypaper.com
Necessary Elements in a Thesis Statement
Of course, all thesis statements are different. There is no specific format to follow. In high school, you will need only one short sentence with main idea, while college papers require several elements. Below we will check the most common elements of thesis statement. They are not obligatory. However, including them, you will make the process of creating your thesis statement much easier.
- Controlling idea
There should a major point in your text which is central to both your thesis statement and your essay in general. Hence, it is the fundamental background of the essay.
- Validation
In other words, you should explain why your controlling idea is valid and correct. You should add arguments that you will develop throughout your paper. In case of a regular 5-paragraph essay, you can enumerate three major arguments that you will develop further: one paragraph per each argument.
- Major details
If your thesis statement is not detailed enough or your paper is rather complicated, you can also add important details that will show peculiarity of your topic. Here you can mention background, historical setting, other views, or reasoning.
- Counter-argument (optional)
This part of a thesis statement is necessary for argumentative papers only. You can briefly mention an opposing view and explain why it’s not correct. However, even for argumentative papers, it is not necessary to mention counter-arguments as you will have a separate paragraph for it.
Some Questions to Consider While Writing a Thesis Statement
It’s not easy to write a good thesis statement if you are looking on its elements only. That’s why we have developed a set of questions that you may consider while working on your thesis statement. Here are they:
- Why do you think so?
- What should be done?
- What can we expect in the future?
- What are the arguments?
- So what?
- Who said that?
- Why does it matter?
- What can be said contrary to it?
- Are there any other crucial details to mention?
How to write a thesis statement: step-by-step instruction
Step 1. Start by asking a question
Ask the major question of your essay. In other words, what are you going to write about? Make your question rather detailed: it will help you to avoid generalization.
Step 2. Write a reply to your question
Now that you have a question, make sure to provide a clear reply — preferably, in one sentence.
Step 3. Add validation.
Check the questions above to write argumentation to your thesis statement. At this point, you can write several words in a form of bullet points or separate sentences. We will combine them later.
Step 4. Add other important details
This step is optional. You may add context here, explain why your topic or claim is important, to address possible counter-arguments.
Step 5. Combine everything into one sentence.
Now it’s a high time to combine all your points into one sentence. It may sound clumsy at this point, but we will change that in the next step.
Step 6. Revise your sentence and delete unnecessary parts
Make sure to avoid complicated constructions but don’t delete valid and important details. Make sure your thesis statement has a nice flow and correct grammar.
Congratulations! Now you have your thesis statement ready.
Check if Your Thesis Statement is Strong
We have also developed a set of questions that will help you to define whether a thesis statement you have written is correct. After formulating your thesis statement, you should check whether the result is actually correct. Questions below are a good idea for a quick check.
- Does my thesis statement have a controlling idea?
- Is there argumentation for it?
- Is my claim debatable? Can people oppose it?
- Does it say something meaningful? Can I apply “so what?” question to it?
- Is there only one major claim in my thesis statement? Is it specific enough?
- Is it readable? Isn’t it overloaded with unnecessary terms and details?
- Have I chosen the best words for it?
- Is it a complete grammatically correct sentence?
- Isn’t it a question or a well-known fact?
- Can I write an extensive essay about it?
- Are there credible sources that can help me in discussing my statement?
- Can your thesis statement catch or maintain attention of the audience?
You can create your own set of questions depending on what you want to see in your essay. However, even after formulating your thesis statement, you should double-check and revise it once again after you complete an essay. It’s crucial to see if your thesis statement is connected with your paper as it’s the main idea of your essay. In case some parts are not coherent, you should change either a thesis statement, or paragraphs in the paper itself.
