Reading a text can be difficult especially when the paragraph are long and the vocabulary is complex. Most academic writing follows a common format: a topic sentence (or thesis) followed by evidence and explanation. The topic sentence is the main point of the paragraph, and it is the most important information to remember after reading. The evidence and explanations are meant to help you to trust or believe in the topic sentence and understand what the topic sentence means.
Taken directly from Bob Corbett:
Identification of Thesis Statements
What is a thesis and how does one find it?
An argument [outlined in an academic essay] has two parts:
A thesis.
A set of reasons or considerations for why one thinks the thesis is true.
When we say thesis, we might also mean: belief, claim, conclusion, point, truth, [etc.]
When we say topic, we might also mean: theme, problem, interest, [etc.]
There is a good deal of discussion on the news these days about the fluctuations of the stock market. Many people are having their say. But what are they saying?
If one says: "I'm going to address the fluctuations in the stock market." That is a theme. It tells us what area the person will talk about. We don't yet know what the person believes.
But, if the person says: "I'm going to show that the market will flatten out in the next month and then grow at a 5% rate for a year." that is a THESIS. It is a specific claim, a belief. We know what the conclusion of this person's thinking is.
So the thesis tells us the central belief. The theme tells us what the area of concern the person is addressing.
Take another example. Someone says: "I believe in God." Now this is a bit curious. It looks like a thesis. It is a central claim, we know what the person holds -- it is much like the stock market claim that the market will flatten out and grow at 5%. But it isn't quite.
The first claim is a statement of (alleged) truth about the market. The second claim is a statement of (alleged) truth about the belief of the speaker.
So, we could change the second person's claim from:
"I believe in God." to "God exists."
This is, indeed, a thesis.
It doesn't tell us about the inner state of a person, it claims the universe is such that there is an existing God in it.
It is crucial to come to see and understand the difference between a thesis and a theme.
In any given work there may be quite a number of THESES. Dozens, even hundreds. Some books have many hundreds if not thousands. There is some vague sense in which every declarative sentence is a thesis.
Thus we can look at some work and try, though careful and often FREQUENT rereadings, of a piece of writing, to come to recognize some one central belief or thesis that is the organizing principle for what follows. This is the thesis.
[An Example from the author on the naming of St. Louis as "Dogtown"]
Why is "Dogtown" called Dogtown? [theme]
I believe the best reply is the watchdog theory. [PRIMARY thesis]
By watchdog theory I mean the view that the neighborhood had many dogs which were there to protect the women and children. The community was a mining community and in the day time the men were away at the Clay mines, some of them in Forest Park, others in the neighborhood, but underground. Since there was a lot of railroad traffic on Manchester at the brick making factories which lined the street, many hobos came in on the trains and walked into the neighborhood. The dogs were to protect the families of the miners. This was all in the mid and late 19th century.
[This is one "consideration" for the thesis. It consist of some clarification as to what the "watchdog theory" means, and some reason to show that there grounds for thinking the actually happened. But note, this is rather slim "evidence," it would be important to fluff it out with more detail and historical evidence given to be a really strong reason.]
Actually there is only one competing theory and I believe it is quite weak. It is the Igorot theory. [Note two things here: First, this is a second consideration for the thesis, by trying to show that there are really only two theories known and advanced in history, and that this second one is much weaker than the first.]
[SECONDARY thesis: Here is the reason why the Igorot theory is NOT a good reason. There are main theses and subsidiary theses in any complex argument.]
In the 1904 World's Fair, one of the most popular "exhibitions" was from the Philippines Islands. It was a tribe of indians called the Igorots. The Igorots ate dog and they contracted with the city of St. Louis to provide dog meat, in which the city used dogs from the dog pound. But, pressures were brought to bear on the city by residents who, hearing of this, were horrified at dogs being killed and eaten over on Wydown Blvd, where the Igorot village was. Thus a battle raged. The Igorots threatened to go home; it was the most popular "exhibit" at the Fair and the city officials compromised; but the populace complained and on and on. The Igorots never had enough dog.
But, to the east was this mining community and about 3500 people lived there. The story is that the Igorots would slip out of their village at night and raid this neighborhood and steal dogs for eating. Thus the name Dogtown.
[Note here again, {the author gives} clarification and explain{s} the reason advanced in favor of the Igorot theory.]
I think this theory is a bad one. There are three main reasons for this. [minor thesis -- the thesis that the Igorot theory is not to be believed.]
First of all there are no actual surviving accounts of this actually happening. There isn't any evidence of when this theory emerged, but it seems to have been in rather recent times, about the last 25-30 years.
Secondly, virtually none of the "old-timers" in Dogtown had ever heard of this theory as children and all had versions of the watchdog theory.
Lastly, and this I take most seriously: there were no incidents of harmed or dead Igorots. Consider what we must believe to hold the Igorot theory. We must believe that a few scantily clad black men slipped out of their village at night and went into a notoriously tough neighborhood filled with Irish miners. These minors were poor, protected their property vigorously, were filled with the standard racism of the time, and were quite suspicious of foreigners. We are expected to believe the Igorots went this tremendous distance from Wydown to Tamm Ave, about 3-4 miles, and stole dogs REGULARLY from these miners and not one single Igorot was ever hurt and no retaliatory raid was made on the Igorot village? From my experience of growing up in this fight infested neighborhood in the 1940s (it finally civilized in the 1960s!!), this theory is just so far fetched as to be ludicrous. The streets of Dogtown would have been littered with dead and beaten Igorots after the first five dogs disappeared.
[Here I give reasons NOT for the thesis -- The name Dogtown comes from the watchdog theory -- but this is a set of reasons to defend the minor thesis, the notion that the Igorot theory is NOT the grounds of the name -- which is itself a reason for the main thesis.]
The point of that lesson in Dogtown history was to make the point that finding a thesis means going for the HIGHEST level of abstraction that the piece of writing will offer. The question: what is the thesis of this essay, really means: what is the ultimate central thesis of the essay. Along the way there may be dozens of "lesser" theses, supporting somewhat more important theses in the logic of the whole piece.
One must read carefully, internalize the argument and figure it out. [Begin] with the THEME, not the thesis. It is usually easier to recognize. Then ask: what is the author's MAJOR belief about this theme? You are reading this work (an article, a book, whatever) and a good friend comes by and sees it and says: "This looks interesting. But, I can't visit, I'm in a great rush. In 15 words or less, what is the main belief the author is defending in this work?"
The answer to that question is the thesis.
Identification of Topic Sentences
Below are 5 examples of paragraphs where the topic sentence has been highlighted. Take a look at the examples and see if you can identify topic sentences in your textbook or on educational websites.
Taken directly from Loraine Flemming:
Example 1
Alfred A. Tomatis (1920-2001) was one of the first educational researchers to be interested in the "Mozart effect." Tomatis used the phrase to describe the increase in intellectual ability that supposedly occurs when children listen to the music of eighteenth-century composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Although for a while now, the media has celebrated the Mozart Effect as if it were proven fact, there is little hard evidence it exists. The idea that there really was such a thing as a Mozart Effect originated with physicist Gordon Shaw and learning researcher Frances Rauscher. Working with students from the University of California at Irvine, Rauscher and Shaw played Mozart to a few dozen subjects. Then they administered intelligence tests. The tests suggested a temporary increase in I.Q., which was attributed to the music listened to before testing. As a result of their work, Shaw and Rauscher have become famous. They are so well-known that they have founded their own institute, the Music Intelligence Neural Development Institute. The media, never quick to examine the scientific evidence for sensational claims, has made it seem as if belief in the Mozart Effect is widely shared by the scientific community. It isn’t. That’s because no one has ever been able to repeat Shaw and Rauscher’s results. (Source of information: Robert Todd Carroll. The Skeptic's Dictionary. New Jersey: Wiley, 2003, p.233)
Example 2
When Kentucky Derby winner, Barbaro, shattered his leg at the start of the Preakness Stakes in 2006, everyone in horse racing appeared stunned. Barbaro, a two-year-old racing wonder, had been expected to win. Instead he suffered irreparable injuries and had to withdraw. Yet when one considers the damage racing inflicts on young horses, it’s hard to imagine why everyone, from the owners to the fans, seemed so shocked. Horse racing is a dangerous and deadly sport for the horses, no matter how eager and spirited the animals might look at the starting gate. According to Susan Stover, a horse veterinarian at the University of California at Davis, horses sustain fatal injuries in 1.5 of every 1000 starts. The only wonder is that they do not suffer more injuries. These are young horses, whose bodies undergo almost unimaginable stress. As Jim Orsini, who treated Barbaro pointed out, "...at high speed, a horse’s leg bones can actually deform, and keep deforming until they or the ligaments or tendons eventually fail." Orsini ought to know. He is a professional horse surgeon. He works at Pennsylvania’s New Bolton Center, where Barbaro was sent to recover. Add to the stress of regular racing the fact that race horses are bred to be thin-boned—the thin bones help them break out from the starting gate more quickly—and you have a recipe for disaster. No wonder, Elliot Katz, a former veterinarian and president of In Defense of Animals, a San-Francisco-based animal-rights group, calls horse racing a "killer sport." (Source of information: Alfred Lubrano. "Horse Racing is Still Saddled by Cruelty Issue." Philadelphia Inquirer, May 27, 2006, p.10)
Example 3
Mount Everest, the towering mountain located between the two countries of Tibet and Nepal, is Earth’s highest point above sea level. The mountain’s challenging and awe-inspiring height is one reason why so many people have been obsessed by the desire to climb it and died trying. In 1924, British explorers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine cheerily set off to climb Everest’s heights, disappeared from view, and were never seen again. Mallory’s body was discovered in 1999, but there was no indication of whether or not he had made it to the top. Since that time, it’s estimated that around 2,000 climbs have been attempted with 180 people dying as a result. The worse year for deaths was 1996, when twelve people lost their lives while trying to summit. The next year was not much better. Eight people died trying to reach Everest’s icy peak. Most recently, in May of 2006, a New Zealander named David Sharp made it to the top in his third summit attempt, but he died of cold and oxygen deprivation around 1,000 feet into his descent. (Source of information:www.factmonster.com/spot/everest2.html)
Example 4
In 1974, Congress passed the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Also known as the Buckley amendment, the new legislation specified who was allowed to view student records. The Buckley amendment also defined the conditions under which the records might be seen. Not surprisingly, parents of school-age children were the biggest winners from the passage of the amendment, which gave them access to their children’s records and evaluations. Previously they had been kept from seeing the official judgments that so powerfully affected their children’s lives. For example, prior to the new legislation, parents had not been allowed to see paperwork justifying why children were held back or placed in a special education class. After the legislation was passed, any school denying parents the right to review their children’s records could lose federal funding.
Example 5
Web logs, or as they are more commonly known, "blogs" regularly record in cyberspace the personal and political views of the people who post them. To hear diehard bloggers tell it, their regular, sometimes daily, postings have brought about a cultural revolution. Whether the blogger is conservative or progressive, the message seems to be the same: Traditional news sources are no longer of interest. People are getting their news from blogs instead. While there is some small truth to that claim, it’s still pretty obvious that newspapers continue to sell and that many Americans still watch the nightly news. However, that’s not to say that bloggers haven’t had a powerful impact. On the contrary, blogs have enormously enlarged public access to information about key current events. For instance, in 2004, it was a blogger who proclaimed, correctly as it turned out, that a news story about George W. Bush’s national guard record was based on doctored evidence. In another incident that showed blogger ingenuity, book editor Russ Kick beat out experienced journalists after he read that the U.S. military was clamping down on press photos of coffins arriving in the states from Iraq. Outraged by what he saw as censorship, Kick immediately filed a Freedom of Information Act request. As a result of his request, Kick got a CD from the air force showing photos of the coffins coming home. He then posted the photos on his web log to the embarrassment of members of the national press, who were forced to beat a path to his door. No one among conventional news journalists had thought to ask whether the military had pictures. It took a blogger to do it. (Source of information: http://www.federalrepublic.net/?p=21; http://www.time.com/time/personoftheyear/2004/poymoments.html)
Corbett, Bob. "IDENTIFYING THE THESIS." Critical Thinking Course: Corbett Essay: Finding a Thesis. Webster University, 5 June 2000. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. <http://www2.webster.edu/~corbetre/philosophy/critical/thesis.html>.
Flemming, Loraine. "Reading Keys - Online PracticeIdentifying the Topic Sentence." Identifying the Topic Sentence. Loraine Flemming, 2006. Web. 23 Apr. 2015. <http://www.laflemm.com/dynamic/online_practice.php?practice_id=19>.