mean in thesis statement

Purdue Online Writing Lab College of Liberal Arts

Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements

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Tips for Writing Your Thesis Statement

1. Determine what kind of paper you are writing:

An analytical paper breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea, and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience.
An expository (explanatory) paper explains something to the audience.
An argumentative paper makes a claim about a topic and justifies this claim with specific evidence. The claim could be an opinion, a policy proposal, an evaluation, a cause-and-effect statement, or an interpretation. The goal of the argumentative paper is to convince the audience that the claim is true based on the evidence provided.

If you are writing a text that does not fall under these three categories (e.g., a narrative), a thesis statement somewhere in the first paragraph could still be helpful to your reader.

2. Your thesis statement should be specific—it should cover only what you will discuss in your paper and should be supported with specific evidence.

3. The thesis statement usually appears at the end of the first paragraph of a paper.

4. Your topic may change as you write, so you may need to revise your thesis statement to reflect exactly what you have discussed in the paper.

Thesis Statement Examples

Example of an analytical thesis statement:

The paper that follows should:

Explain the analysis of the college admission process
Explain the challenge facing admissions counselors

Example of an expository (explanatory) thesis statement:

Explain how students spend their time studying, attending class, and socializing with peers

Example of an argumentative thesis statement:

Present an argument and give evidence to support the claim that students should pursue community projects before entering college

Effective Writing Practices Tutorial
Organization
Thesis Statement

A thesis statement expresses the central idea of your written assignment. In essays, a thesis statement is usually included in the introduction. In longer pieces of writing, it may appear further along, but still near the beginning part.

A thesis statement is "your answer to the central question or problem you have raised" (Gibaldi, MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers , 50). As you develop your essay or research paper, your thesis may change. Revise it to reflect the scope and the central idea of your writing.

Consider the paragraph below (also discussed in this tutorial's Introduction section):

The University of Illinois envisions an increase in its enrollment to more than 70,000 in under a decade by setting up the Global Campus, a new online education program. While an enrollment of 70,000 students might sound impressive, it is only about half of the current enrollment of the University of Phoenix, a pioneer in online education (Foster, The Chronicle of Higher Education ). The Internet, which has been transforming the landscape of traditional pedagogy in the last few years, is argued to be the most significant development in educational technology in our lifetime. In the last decade, the growth of the Internet has caused various educational institutions and businesses to rethink how they deliver knowledge and information to their learners and to adopt new ways of implementing instruction that takes into consideration recent developments in educational technology. However, in their rush to stay on the cutting edge of technology, some educators look only at the positive features the Internet has to offer and often forget to consider its limitations. The Internet can be extremely valuable for education, but online instruction is not appropriate for all classes in all situations; its implementation needs to be based on the instructor's learning objective, the need for technology, and the availability of resources .

From a student research paper on Advantages and Limitations of Web-Based Instruction :

The central idea or the thesis statement of this student paper is expressed in the last sentence of the introduction.

From the previous example we can observe the following:

It is hard to argue the positive effect of the Internet on teaching and learning, but is all online instruction advantageous?

While, we cannot deny that online instruction is very valuable in education, it may not be suited for all learning situations. The decision to use online instruction should be based the learning objectives, the need for it, and the availability of resources.

Rule To Remember

A thesis statement expresses the central idea of your written assignment.

The rest of the paper then needs to focus on developing the suggested answer to the problem and provide sufficient evidence to support the writer's view.

Writing evolves in stages; sometimes, you may not know what your thesis will be until you start to write. The concept of a working thesis is important here.

A working thesis "should have two parts: a topic part, which states the topic, and a comment part, which makes an important point about the topic" (Lunsford, The Everyday Writer , 36).

When we consider the example from page one again, we can easily point out the topic and the comment components of the working thesis:

Online instruction is not appropriate for all classes in all situations.

Its implementation needs to be based on the instructor's learning objective, the need for it, and the availability of resources.