TRANSCRIPT: Developing A Strong Thesis Statement

Speaker: Stewart Erlich

Developing A Strong Thesis Statement

Hi. My name is Stewart Erlich and I’ve been a writing teacher for 12 years, and I’d like to talk to you today about thesis statements. If there were one gift that I could give my writing students, it would be the ability to write a good thesis statement because it is something that comes up again and again and again in so many different kinds of writing assignments. Having a clear thesis statement is often the difference between having a focused piece of writing and not having a focused piece of writing.

So one way that I can try to explain the significance or the importance of writing a thesis is to tell you a little story. I moved here to Colorado from New Jersey about ten years ago, and when I moved here, my girlfriend and decided to move together, and we had two cars. So we knew one of us had to drive the front car and one of us had to drive the back car. And I could have done that trip in one of two ways. I could have said, “Okay, I’ll drive the front car, you drive the back car, and I know Colorado is west of New Jersey, so let’s start driving. So we could have started driving west, and then maybe we ended up driving, you know, northwest, and suddenly we were getting cold and it was Canada, you know.

Then I’d say, I know Canada is too far north, further north than I want to go, so let’s start going south. And maybe we go south for a while. And suddenly we discover we’re in Texas, and that’s not right. Texas is definitely south of Colorado. So we have to turn around or something. So maybe we go northwest, and then suddenly, bam, we hit the coast, we’re in California. Okay. We’ve got to turn around. We know California is too far and we have to go back.

What would happen to my girlfriend driving the other car? What would her experience be? Chances are she’d get pretty frustrated trying to follow me; right? I could also have done this trip in a different way. We could have sat down before we ever made the trip and looked at a map together and said, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” We’re in New Jersey. We have to go to Colorado. We’re going to take Interstate 80, and we’re going to fuel up, you know, because it’s going to take us a while, so we’re going to fuel up before we even start. And we’re going to take Interstate 80 and we’re stop in Ohio, stay over night, have breakfast, and then drive again, fuel up again, and then we’re going to drive all the way out to Iowa, and we’ll stay in Iowa. And then the next day we’ll drive, we’ll take Interstate 80 down to 76. We’ll go south o 76. We’ll be in Colorado in two-and-a-half days.

How does that sound? You know, how would the experience be different for the person, my girlfriend, following me in the other car? Chances are she’d do pretty good. She’d know where we were going. She’d have a sense of, you know, the direction of things, and from thereon, she’d be sort of willing to go for the ride, you know. And that’s what a thesis statement does. A thesis statement allows you to tell your reader “this is what you can expect and this is where we’re going to go.”

Parts To A Thesis

When we talk about thesis statements we’re going to look at them as having two distinct parts, a subject and a significance, and we can talk about that in a few different ways. And that’s a little bit of a reduction of what a thesis sometimes is. Sometimes a thesis statement is much more than that, but this is a really effective way to sort of get grounded on the most important elements of a thesis. And when we look at subject in significance, what we’re kind of saying is you’re mentioning your topic and you’re saying what is important about your topic or what do you want to say about you topic. So the combination of your topic or your subject and what you want to say about that topic or its significance will really build a good solid thesis statement.

Narrative Essay

So a typical writing assignment that many first-year writing classes require is a narrative essay, one essay where you’re asked to write a story or tell a story. So what we’d like to do is spend a little bit of time looking at how to build a thesis statement for a narrative essay. Let’s say that your essay assignment, the task that you’re asked to do, was to write about a significant event that happen to you in your life and tell about why it was significant. So if you’re thinking about that, you know, if I have to write a thesis statement around that idea, what might you do?

You know, when I was working on this, I decided all right -- I did some pre-writing before. I wanted to generate a lot of ideas so that I could have a lot to say when I got to this stage, and I would recommend the same; that you don’t necessarily start with a thesis, you start first deciding what you’ll write. But once you’ve decided what you you’ll right, you know, now it’s time that you can get a little bit more focused and more organized, and a thesis statement is a good way to do it.

When I was thinking about this narrative essay topic, the idea that came to me was that I wanted to talk about a trip that I took when I went fishing, and it was a really awful experience, and I decided I’d never go fishing again. So I created a thesis statement after doing all that pre-writing and deciding that that’s what my paper was going to be. I created a thesis statement around that topic, and I’d like to share it with you so that we have an example of a thesis statement that we can look at.

Example: Thesis Statement

So here’s the thesis statement that I came up with, and we can use this as an example: “Although fishing was a major part of my childhood, after my trip to the Delaware River, I lost all interest in my former passion and acquired a new appreciation for the preciousness of life.” It’s kind of a mouthful, but when you think about the pieces of it, we can look at it as having two distinct parts, a subject and it’s significance. And all the rest is kind of window dressing.

The subject, what would be the subject of this thesis statement? Let’s look at it again. “Although fishing was a major part of my childhood, after my trip to the Delaware River, I lost all interest in my former passion and acquired a new appreciation for the preciousness of life.” Looking at that, what’s the topic? What am I going to be writing about? As I look at it, I think maybe it’s after -- it sounds like it would be right around there, my trip to Delaware River. I think I’m going to hear about that. You know, if I were the reader instead of the writer, I would say, “Oh, yeah, okay, I’m going to trip about the trip to the Delaware River.” I don’t know yet exactly what, but that’s going to be my subject.

And then let’s look at the other part, the significance. Why am I hearing about this trip to the Delaware River? If I’m the writer, why am I writing about that trip? Maybe it’s in that next part that saying “I lost all interest in my former passion and acquired a new appreciation for the preciousness of life.” So, really, the significance is I lost interest in fishing after something happened, and then the rest of the story will be explaining that, what happened, explaining that story that led me to that decision. So the thesis statement really captures my whole paper in one sentence. My trip to the Delaware made me lose interest in fishing and I’m going to show you how.

Thesis = A Promise

So the thesis really is a promise. It’s saying to the reader, I promise that I will spend time on this topic and not really veer off of it. I’ll tell you about my trip to the Delaware and I’ll tell you why I’m telling you that, because I lost interest in fishing after going. It’s sort of a contract with the reader. Here’s what you can expect from me. Here’s what you will read. And then everything else -- because I mean that trip was a long trip, there were a lot of things that happened. You know, I think my tent broke. But I’m not going to talk to you about my tent because I have to talk to you about the fishing; right? So it’s sort of a contract with the reader that I set up in my thesis statement.

It’s also an opportunity. It’s where you get to say something. You know, that’s where that significance part comes in. I’m telling the reader something that’s important to me. And the most important thing a thesis really does is it provides a lot of direction and focus for your paper, because, you know, the hardest thing to do as a reader is to follow a paper that doesn’t have a pattern. You know, it’s sort of like being in the car behind the person who doesn’t know where they’re going. So it offers the opportunity for you to have some focus in your paper.

A thesis usually ends up sitting in the introduction paragraph at the very end, and that, again, that’s a little bit simplistic, because in the real world you’ll see thesis statements everywhere. You’ll even see something called an “implied thesis,” where you don’t even know where the thesis is but you know it’s there somewhere. It’s just not really explicitly written. What I want to say is that it’s a really good habit to anchor your thesis statement right at the end of your introduction paragraph, and it’s a really good idea, if it’s possible, to make that thesis statement one sentence.

Examples

So let’s look at some examples of thesis statements to help us get our heads around how to write them. Here’s the first example. “I was as eager as any 17-year-old to get away from home and parents. But going away to college taught me that there are horrors involved with independence. What’s the topic or what’s the subject of this paper or this thesis statement? Look at it again. “I was as eager as any 17-year- old to get away from home and parents, but going away to college taught me that there are horrors Involved with independence.” So if I had to guess what this writer was going to write about, what the story was, I would say that it was going away to college; that would be the story.

If I had to think about the next piece of a thesis, which is its significance, why am I hearing about that, I might think about the second piece, “Going away to college taught me that there are horrors involved with independence.” So the combination of the topic, what the story is, and its significance, why I’m hearing about it, makes a complete thesis statement.

So let’s look at another example. Here we go. “My overly emotional and sentimental parents were an embarrassment to me before I learned to appreciate my heritage on an enlightening trip to Italy.” So, again, what’s the story? What’s the subject of this one? Looking at it again, it sounds like this writer is going to be talking about an enlightening trip to Italy. So it sounds like the story is going to be about the trip. Now why are we hearing about the story? What’s the significance?

Let’s read it again and see if we can figure that out. “My overly emotional and sentimental parent were an embarrassment to me before I learned to appreciate my heritage on an enlightening trip to Italy.” Well maybe it’s everything else. Maybe it has to do with the change of heart, right, that is person experienced after the trip. So this person learned to appreciate their heritage on an enlightening trip to Italy. So the combination of the topic and what the person wants to say about the topic, again, makes a complete thesis statement.

Let’s look at one more example. “Whenever I get the desire to do something daring, I remember my ride down the Grand Canyon and my adventurousness is stifled.” So, again, what’s the subject? Sounds to me that this author is going to be riding about a ride down the Grand Canyon. And what’s the significance? Well it sounds like this person used to be daring, and then after this trip, this person’s adventurousness was stifled. So, again, the combination of the topic and why we’re hearing about it, it’s significance, creates a complete thesis statement. Hopefully those examples help to make a thesis statement and its two pieces make a little more sense.

Inside Introductions

So now what I’d like to do is spend some time looking at thesis statements that are actually inside introductions, because as we said before, a thesis statement is really the last sentence, typically, of an introduction. So it’s good to get some context and sort of see how the whole package of that paragraph works together. So we’ll spend some time looking at whole introductions, and we’ll also spend some time looking at thesis statements.

But what I would like for you to do is be a little bit of an evaluator. And now that we’ve had some discussion about thesis statements needing a clear subject, a clear topic, and also a clear significance, what the author is trying to say about that topic, let’s evaluate whether these authors are actually meeting those requirements, whether they’re actually hitting the target of having a clear thesis statement.

Example 1

Let’s look at the first example of an introduction that has a thesis statement as well, and let’s evaluate it. “My first two-wheel bike was something I always wanted. When I first got that bike I never let it out of my sight. My bike and I were inseparable. Never did I think anything would happen to my bike and me that I would remember for life. One event changed my whole view on how I saw that bike.”

Okay. So we have an introduction here, and the first thing we have to do is see if we can find anything that looks like a thesis statement. So looking at something that maybe says the subject of the paper and looking at something that maybe says what the significance of that subject is is kind of what we’re up to now. So “My first two-wheel bike was something I always wanted.” All right. Well that’s a statement.

We’ll see if there’s any more information that helps us figure out what this story is really going to be about. “When I first got that bike I never let out of my sight. “ Okay. Well that still sounds kind of introductory. “My bike and I were inseparable. Never did I think anything would happen to my bike and I that I would remember for life.” Okay. So we’re sort of getting teased here that something might be on the way. And then we have that last sentence that says, “One event changed my whole view on how I saw that bike.” Okay. So there’s a good chance that that is meant be the thesis statement, so that’s good. It’s in the right place. But let’s evaluate it.

How is it as a thesis statement? You know, if I were looking at this, I would say, “Okay, so I’m looking for a subject. The subject is an event, one event.” How specific is one event? I don’t know how specific that is. I still don’t really know what the event is. So I might want to work on that subject. You know, and I’ve had students -- I should say that too. I’ve had students say to me like, “Well I don’t want to tell you what it is. I want to show it to you later. I want to surprise you with what the event is.”

But I want to say that the more explicit you can be in your thesis statement the better off your thesis statement will be. And really, all you’re doing is, you know, giving a preview of coming attractions. The real art in your story will be what you really show or how you tell that story. It’s not bad to give it away. If you tell us, you know, what the event was, it actually helps us anchor in, and it actually might even get us more interested in reading, rather than the opposite.

Okay. So we know that we have to clean up the subject a little bit. It’s a little bit vague. And let’s look at the rest of it. “It changed my whole view on how I saw that bike.” All right. So we know that the person’s view has changed. But, again, maybe that’s a little bit vague. How has the person’s view changed? Is it a negative change? Is it a positive change? Now maybe from the sentence before we can maybe guess that it was negative, but I’m still not sure if that’s right.

So if I were the one evaluating this, I might say, “Well, we have a vague subject and we also have vague significance.” I don’t really know what the event was and I don’t really know why it was important to this person. So how might you revise that? How might you make that look different so that it were clearer?

You know, if you were the writer of this paper, and this were your thesis statement, and, you know, presuming that you could do whatever you wanted with this and you didn’t have to necessarily keep the same story that this author had in mind, what would you write?

Example 2

Let’s look at another example. So, again, we have an introduction and somewhere in this introduction is a thesis statement, and we can evaluate whether this thesis statement is really working. “The anticipation of surgery and spending a night in the hospital was the worst night of my life. Then to find out it was all for nothing was just the icing on the cake. The whole experience was something I will never forget.”

Okay. So we’re looking for a subject again. So we know that the last sentence is meant to be the thesis. Let’s look at that last sentence. “The whole experience was something I will never forget. Okay. So we kind of have the same issue as the one before, where the whole experience is pretty vague. And again, “something I will never forget” feels pretty vague as a significance too. So maybe that part is not working so well.

But maybe we have something else we can do. Is there anything else in this paragraph that seems more specific and might be able to be used as a thesis statement? As I look at this, I look at that first sentence, the anticipation of surgery and spending a night in the hospital, wow, now there’s a clear subject. And then the next part, “was the worst night of my life,” well I certainly know how that person feels; right?

There’s the clear significance. So the combination of a clear subject and clear significance is there in that first sentence. Maybe it’s just not in the right place, so maybe what we want to do is move that sentence to the placement of where we want the thesis statement to live, and then it’s just a matter of deciding how to rewrite the introduction.

Example 3

So let’s go through one more example together, and, again, we’re looking at a whole introduction and we’re looking for the thesis statement and evaluating how well it’s doing its job. “Everyone goes through an experience that they will never forget. Nine years ago I went through an experience that I will never forget. It was when my grandmother passed away and my mother and I had to go the Columbia. That was the first time I had traveled outside of the country. Although this experience started out as a scary one, it came to be a wonderful one, since I got to meet my family.”

All right. So we’re looking for the thesis statement, and, again, we can look -- you know, the first place that I like to look is in that last sentence. And it looks like that might be a thesis statement there. “Although this experience started out as a scary one, it came to be a wonderful one, since I got to meet my family.” So how is the subject, “this experience?” That might still need some work. “This experience” is still a little bit vague. What might we do to that? Let’s see if there is anything that we can use.

Earlier in the paragraph it says something about going to Columbia, so maybe what we can do is add that to our thesis statement. “Although going to Columbia started out as a scary,” and maybe we change it to “experience,” “it came to be a wonderful one, since I got to meet my family.” So we might be able to play with that a little bit. And what about the significance, “It started out as a scary one and it came to be a wonderful one since I got to meet my family”? Well that’s pretty specific. So I think that part of the thesis statement is working pretty well. So maybe in this case we just have to get that bit about going to Columbia somehow in that last sentence, and then we have a clear thesis.

Subject + Significance = Clear Thesis

So presuming you’ve done some of the initial work, thinking about this question for this narrative essay about writing about a significant event that happened in your life and what happened, you know, if you’ve done some pre-writing already and you have an idea about what you’re writing about and you want to try writing a thesis statement, hopefully now you have a sense about what a thesis statement needs to be.

And, again, it’s not rocket science. It’s stating your subject or your topic and then saying why you’re writing about it and what its significance is. And the clearer you can be in that statement the more your reader will want to read on, because they won’t feel as confused and they will be with you, and then you can continue and the magic really happens in the story, you know.

So if you feel like you’re giving away too much in that thesis, rest assured that if you write the story well, then that will take care of itself, and the details will make the story come alive. All the thesis does is give the reader some security that they know where you’re headed and they know how you’re going to get there. Thank you so much.