EP 03 How To Write Killer Thesis Statements

EP 03 How To Write Killer Thesis Statements EP 03: How To Write Killer Thesis Statements EP 03: How To Write Killer Thesis Statements Welcome to our third episode of The Homework Help Show! In this episode, our Host and Top Writer Cath Anne discusses how to write an amazing thesis statement. Cath Anne provides a breakdown of tips and tricks to writing a great opening sentence for your essays. You wont want to miss this episode! The Homework Help Show is our brand new show where we will teach, assist, and offer valuable insights on different topics related to students academic and personal lives. Want your questions answered? Ask your questions on social media using the hashtag #askHHG TRANSCRIPT: Cath Anne: [00:00:05] Hi there! My names Cath Anne and welcome to Homework Help Globals The Homework Help Learning Studio. This week we actually already recorded. This is our second recording of the session because we had a couple of technical difficulties and we wanted to make sure that we were providing you with the best content possible. So I am recording this session again so that you can access it on YouTube and all of the other platforms that we upload this information to. So hopefully this is of value to you and if you have been a regular viewer for the past three or four episodes you will notice that I am not in my office space right at the moment. It was a little bit too sunny over there by the window so Ive moved and I am on my couch today so I hope that you are able to see me pretty clearly. It was just a little sunny and we wanted to get the best video possible so hopefully thats helpful. Cath Anne: [00:01:13] So I wanted to jump into the academic content this week because I know that you are probably getting busy with writing papers and starting to study for midterms. So we thought it would be great to provide you with some information about how to write an effective thesis statement. And in this session on Tuesday there was a lot of really good dialogue and conversation around how to write an effective thesis statement. We had some good questions. So I am going to cover that all in this session as well. So lets jump into the content. Cath Anne: [00:01:51] So first Ill give you an overview of what I would like to cover in the session. So I want to go over:. Cath Anne: [00:01:59] What specifically is a thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:02:03] How a thesis statement differs from a topic sentence when you would use a thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:02:12] How to write a thesis statement and then Ill give you some examples of different kinds of thesis statements and ideas for writing thesis statements as well as contrast a good statement with a not so great statement. Cath Anne: [00:02:29] So lets get into the good stuff. The thesis Statement is the main point of your paper. So you want to bear in mind when youre writing a paper what is the point of writing a paper. You want to look for the idea that youre either arguing something or youre giving an opinion. So youre looking at a body of research and hopefully youre relatively knowledgeable about it because youve given yourself some time to prepare to write the paper and youre not writing it last minute. But you want to form an argument or an opinion based on personal experience or based on your academic background and understanding of the content you want to develop some kind of an opinion. Youre going to put forth in your paper and essentially that is what a thesis statement is. It captures your argument or your opinion. Your thesis statement can also act as a guide for your paper. So for example sometimes in my experience when Ive been writing papers Ill get to the third or fourth paragraph and Ill kind of lose my way a little bit because Ill get kind of entrenched in the research and really absorbed and Ill say Ill think to myself ok why am I writing this paper. Cath Anne: [00:03:47] So thats why its a good idea to have a really strong thesis statement. So when you do come to that point in writing your essay if you do you can look back to your thesis statement and say OK now I remember why Im writing and what the point of my essay is. So you really want to have a strong thesis statement. Now thats not to say that when you start writing and you start learning more about your topic that your thesis statement wont change because it can change and grow and you can modify it as time goes on. But like I said it does act as an anchor for your paper so youll want to make sure that you do write one at the beginning of your paper and make sure that its kind of framing what youll be talking about. So I wanted to differentiate between the topic and the thesis statement. So the thesis statement is kind of that like I said overall argument or opinion whereas the topic is more specific to the actual information and evidence that youll be providing. Your th esis statement is not just a fact. Like I said it kind of incites a debate and youre taking a position or a stance on a topic. So the topic would be that information and evidence that you provide to back up your thesis statement. So whereas the thesis statement is kind of the overall kind overarching theme of your paper the topic is this specific information that youre providing. Cath Anne: [00:05:30] So like as I mentioned a strong thesis statement gives your paper some dimension it gives your paper some direction and people know where youre going with the paper. At the beginning of your thesis statement you can either formulate it into one sentence or you can use a couple of sentences that provide the evidence that youll be discussing with the rest of your paper. So important to note is that when youre writing a thesis statement you want to consider whether you can prove it. So hopefully youve done a good overview of your research and youll know kind of what next steps you want to be providing in your in your paper that prove your thesis statement. So youre not just going to pull something out of thin air its going to be a well researched formulated argument. So you want to be asking questions like Can I prove this. So hopefully youve done a bit of an outline and you understand where what your content of your paper is going to be and thats going to provide the basis for your thesis statement. Im going to give you a bit of an example just so we can get started off because I think examples are helpful then just rather than just kind of talking about the theoretical concept of what a thesis statement is. And I was hoping to be able to show you my screen but I tried that before and I havent quite figured that out so Im actually just going to read these to you so hopefully thats OK and that thats somewhat helpful. Cath Anne: [00:07:10] Consider that your thesis statement is this: There are several ways for college students to improve their study habits. Thats a very simple and basic thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:07:26] But then when youre considering the topic maybe some of the evidence that youre providing is the following:. Cath Anne: [00:07:35] Students can improve their study by studying in a quiet environment. Pay attention in class and manage your time. Cath Anne: [00:07:44] As you can see all of these topics could be discussed further and they all contribute to explaining the thesis statement. These pieces of information would be considered the topic or the topics whereas the thesis statement is: There are several ways for college students to improve their study habits. As you can see the thesis statement is kind of that overarching argument whereas the topics are the evidence and the information that youre providing. Cath Anne: [00:08:26] So a way to do this might be saying studying in a quiet environment helps students improve their study habits. Thats a piece of evidence that can be used to prove your thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:08:38] In the initial session we discussed, where does your thesis statement go. A good practice is to put your thesis statement in the opening paragraph and you always want to make sure that your thesis statement isnt getting bogged down within that large paragraph. You always want to put it towards the end of your introductory paragraph. Cath Anne: [00:09:08] You might preface it with some information and some background maybe some history and then put your thesis statement either in the second to last or last sentence so that it kind of frames your paper and your reader knows what to expect next. You could also use your thesis statement to introduce three points of evidence or three topics. You can have kind of two sentences which introduce your thesis and then provide evidence. This is a really clear and direct way to provide information to the reader and let them know what to expect in the rest of your paper and then hopefully that will trigger them to keep reading your paper. Cath Anne: [00:10:07] Another thing I wanted to go over is this idea of how to write properly and academically. As a beginning student I know it was tempting for me sometimes when I when I first began my degree to start the paper and say things like this paper will discuss such and such or the topic of this paper will be such and such. This is not an appropriate way to write an academic paper although it might seem a little bit more clear. Professors dont like this and it just does not show a strong level of writing skill. Youre really going to want to do your research and develop a strong thesis statement that provides information while not being too obvious like those types of statements. When youre writing your thesis statement youre going to want to ask yourself: is this statement specific? You dont want it to be too general. Because you want your reader to get a sense of what youre going to be talking about in particular. Youre going to want to avoid words such as interesting, e xciting, unusual, difficult, negative. All those words are vague. They dont really tell you much of what the topic is going to be. Cath Anne: [00:11:42] They dont really give much emphasis to what youre discussing. So for example you would want to avoid a statement like: The book by Brene Brown is interesting. That doesnt tell me anything about a book. The statement doesnt tell me anything about Brene Brown. It doesnt tell me anything about why I think that book is interesting or why the reader should think its interesting so its a very vague statement. Cath Anne: [00:12:22] You also want to avoid words like society, values, culture, because although as an undergraduate student or even a graduate student you know that its probably going to be your professor that reads your paper. You dont know how your professor is going to interpret that word or your reader is going to interpret that word. So words like society and culture unless youre in a sociology program are vague and everyone has a different understanding of what those kinds of words mean. Unless you really truly define those concepts or unless youre discussing those concepts youll want to avoid them because theyre general and you want to make sure that youre being a bit more specific in your writing. Cath Anne: [00:13:22] As mentioned youre going to want to avoid making generalizations about a topic. For example here is a vague thesis statement: Todays horror movies present serious challenges to society. Similar to the earlier example, the statement doesnt really tell me much about horror movies. It doesnt tell me anything about what society Im talking about and what the challenges are that these movies present. More specifically you might write something like: Modern cinematic techniques have provided filmmakers with the opportunity to create more graphic films, therefore horror movies have desensitized Canadian youths. Let me read that again: Modern cinematic techniques have provided filmmakers with the opportunity to create more graphic films, therefore horror movies have desensitized Canadian youth. That is an example of a specific thesis statement. It tells me that there are different techniques that are used now to create more graphic films. Horror movies are clearly more g raphic as well. And then it makes an argument that because of this Canadian youth has become desensitized to violence. So that makes me want to keep reading because I want to hear what this person has to say about Canadian youth being desensitized by horror movies. So theres a lot more detail a lot more specificity in this statement as compared to the one that I read before which was: Todays horror movies present serious challenges to society. Cath Anne: [00:15:28] You also want to make sure that your thesis statement is clear. One example of not so great thesis statement is: Eating fast food is bad for human health. Its a very general statement. Its more of a statement and it doesnt really give us any proof about anything. Maybe theres a little bit of an argument but not really. So an alternative to that would be: Regular consumption of fast foods can lead to preventable and chronic health conditions such as diabetes obesity and heart disease, therefore Canadians should limit their intake. As you can see it gives you some evidence of chronic health conditions. You are aware that the writer is probably going to discuss some of these health conditions a little bit more in-depth. Its an argument that Canadians should limit their intake of these items because of the alleged health conditions. So that is very specific and thorough thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:17:02] Another topic that came up during our first Livestream session was the notion that when someone is reading your essay and they ask so what you have an answer for that question. So when youre writing a thesis statement or when youre writing an essay ask yourself so what. Why should the reader care about what youre writing? And I think thats a strong way of being able to understand why youre writing an essay and what the point of your essay is and that will really strengthen your essay. I think you know if you take anything away from this remember the words: So what. Because its such a simple thing to recall but I think it offers such a strength to your ability to write an essay. If its too vague or to general it is just a statement your reader isnt going to care about what youre writing. But if youre being more specific if youre triggering some interest then maybe the right reader will say oh OK this person has something to say and continue reading. Cath Anne: [00:19:10] Another important point to bear in mind when writing a thesis statement is to make sure is that you are not being wishy washy. You want to take a stance when youre writing an essay. So instead of saying something like: Secondhand smoking is bad and can cause heart disease and cancer, therefore smoking should be outlawed in public places, but as long as smoking is unfair to smokers so maybe nonsmokers can just hold their breath or wear asks around smokers instead. Cath Anne: [00:19:42] Ok. I know that is a funny statement but I think it gets across the point that the person who is writing this doesnt really have an opinion on the matter. Theyre kind of going back and forth. When youre writing an essay you want to take a stand on something and you want to make an argument. As an alternative this could be a very strong thesis statement: Second hand smoke is just as harmful as smoking and leads to higher prevalence of heart disease and cancer. Whats worse, people who inhale secondhand smoke are doing so without consent. Therefore smoking in public places should be banned. You can see how that is much stronger thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:20:32] It alludes to potential health concerns that are caused by cancer or caused by smoking. It suggests that people who inhale smoke are doing so with their consent and therefore it argues that smoking in public places should be banned. So that is a stronger thesis statement than the first one because it takes a stance on the issue and it makes an argument. Cath Anne: [00:21:26] Here are some tips to writing these statements. 1. Make sure you know your topic. Like I mentioned youre going to want to make sure that you do a thorough job of research. You want to know your topic inside and out before you start writing. So write down notes make an outline and gather your information and as such give yourself lots of time to work on the essay. Because if youre doing it last minute and youre not going to have the time that it takes to do a full overview of full literature review into the topics you want to give yourself time to process and to form an opinion about way youre going to be writing about. And thats going to get you the best grade and help you to do the best work. Youll also want to consider your personal experience or any other research that youve done that informs your opinion because as you continue to learn and explore as a student you will develop a stronger opinion about different things especially if youre focused on a certai n discipline. So youre going to eventually develop an opinion. Cath Anne: [00:22:37] The more that you gather information so give yourself the time to explore that. You also dont want to consider limiting your topic so youre probably if youre an undergraduate degree or even in a graduate degree youre going to mostly be limited to five to 10 page papers so you dont want to take on a huge broad topic and not be able to do it justice. Youre going to want to narrow it down very specifically and in turn then your thesis statement will be specific as well and you want to make sure that youre giving yourself enough content to work with but also not going so broad that you cant be very specific. Cath Anne: [00:23:27] Another tip is to do some brainstorming. While youre doing your research you know write down some ideas, keep some notes and then go back to them and see if you start to see any patterns emerge. As you do that you will evidently develop an opinion about the topic that youre thinking of covering. Cath Anne: [00:23:54] Finally, if there is anything I want to put forth in this session is that question of so what. Why is the person reading this and why should they care about what theyre reading when youre writing your statement? What is the reader gaining from this? You are wanting to provide the reader some value and some information. Think about why you care about writing about this and that should help you to frame your thesis statement. What do you want your audience to walk away with? What kind of information do you want to provide to your audience that they will come away and say Im glad you read that paper and that should help you to formulate a thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:24:41] In sum a thesis statement should have three main components. You must introduce your argument. You want to take a stand. Dont let your argument be wishy washy and you dont want to just regurgitate information you want to make sure that youre taking a stance and forming an opinion. It should provide evidence and it should show that you have some kind of interest in the topic at hand so that the reader wants to keep reading. Cath Anne: [00:25:21] I hope that was helpful. Im glad that I was able to tape this again because unfortunately we did have some technical difficulties the first time around but Im hoping this was helpful. And please next week join us on Tuesday. Im not sure if its going to be during the day or in the evening. But keep tuned into Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and we will keep you posted for the next Livestream with The Homework Help Learning Studio. Cath Anne: [00:25:54] Next week we will be covering the topic of effective research methods. So well be going over some things like Boolean searches how to do research on Google Scholar and different databases and how to maximize your return on the research that youre doing. So good luck out there on all your papers and on your midterms. I know its probably starting to get busy. All the best and I cant wait to see you next week. Thanks for joining me and take care! EP 03 How To Write Killer Thesis Statements EP 03: How To Write Killer Thesis Statements EP 03: How To Write Killer Thesis Statements Welcome to our third episode of The Homework Help Show! In this episode, our Host and Top Writer Cath Anne discusses how to write an amazing thesis statement. Cath Anne provides a breakdown of tips and tricks to writing a great opening sentence for your essays. You wont want to miss this episode! The Homework Help Show is our brand new show where we will teach, assist, and offer valuable insights on different topics related to students academic and personal lives. Want your questions answered? Ask your questions on social media using the hashtag #askHHG TRANSCRIPT: Cath Anne: [00:00:05] Hi there! My names Cath Anne and welcome to Homework Help Globals The Homework Help Learning Studio. This week we actually already recorded. This is our second recording of the session because we had a couple of technical difficulties and we wanted to make sure that we were providing you with the best content possible. So I am recording this session again so that you can access it on YouTube and all of the other platforms that we upload this information to. So hopefully this is of value to you and if you have been a regular viewer for the past three or four episodes you will notice that I am not in my office space right at the moment. It was a little bit too sunny over there by the window so Ive moved and I am on my couch today so I hope that you are able to see me pretty clearly. It was just a little sunny and we wanted to get the best video possible so hopefully thats helpful. Cath Anne: [00:01:13] So I wanted to jump into the academic content this week because I know that you are probably getting busy with writing papers and starting to study for midterms. So we thought it would be great to provide you with some information about how to write an effective thesis statement. And in this session on Tuesday there was a lot of really good dialogue and conversation around how to write an effective thesis statement. We had some good questions. So I am going to cover that all in this session as well. So lets jump into the content. Cath Anne: [00:01:51] So first Ill give you an overview of what I would like to cover in the session. So I want to go over:. Cath Anne: [00:01:59] What specifically is a thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:02:03] How a thesis statement differs from a topic sentence when you would use a thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:02:12] How to write a thesis statement and then Ill give you some examples of different kinds of thesis statements and ideas for writing thesis statements as well as contrast a good statement with a not so great statement. Cath Anne: [00:02:29] So lets get into the good stuff. The thesis Statement is the main point of your paper. So you want to bear in mind when youre writing a paper what is the point of writing a paper. You want to look for the idea that youre either arguing something or youre giving an opinion. So youre looking at a body of research and hopefully youre relatively knowledgeable about it because youve given yourself some time to prepare to write the paper and youre not writing it last minute. But you want to form an argument or an opinion based on personal experience or based on your academic background and understanding of the content you want to develop some kind of an opinion. Youre going to put forth in your paper and essentially that is what a thesis statement is. It captures your argument or your opinion. Your thesis statement can also act as a guide for your paper. So for example sometimes in my experience when Ive been writing papers Ill get to the third or fourth paragraph and Ill kind of lose my way a little bit because Ill get kind of entrenched in the research and really absorbed and Ill say Ill think to myself ok why am I writing this paper. Cath Anne: [00:03:47] So thats why its a good idea to have a really strong thesis statement. So when you do come to that point in writing your essay if you do you can look back to your thesis statement and say OK now I remember why Im writing and what the point of my essay is. So you really want to have a strong thesis statement. Now thats not to say that when you start writing and you start learning more about your topic that your thesis statement wont change because it can change and grow and you can modify it as time goes on. But like I said it does act as an anchor for your paper so youll want to make sure that you do write one at the beginning of your paper and make sure that its kind of framing what youll be talking about. So I wanted to differentiate between the topic and the thesis statement. So the thesis statement is kind of that like I said overall argument or opinion whereas the topic is more specific to the actual information and evidence that youll be providing. Your th esis statement is not just a fact. Like I said it kind of incites a debate and youre taking a position or a stance on a topic. So the topic would be that information and evidence that you provide to back up your thesis statement. So whereas the thesis statement is kind of the overall kind overarching theme of your paper the topic is this specific information that youre providing. Cath Anne: [00:05:30] So like as I mentioned a strong thesis statement gives your paper some dimension it gives your paper some direction and people know where youre going with the paper. At the beginning of your thesis statement you can either formulate it into one sentence or you can use a couple of sentences that provide the evidence that youll be discussing with the rest of your paper. So important to note is that when youre writing a thesis statement you want to consider whether you can prove it. So hopefully youve done a good overview of your research and youll know kind of what next steps you want to be providing in your in your paper that prove your thesis statement. So youre not just going to pull something out of thin air its going to be a well researched formulated argument. So you want to be asking questions like Can I prove this. So hopefully youve done a bit of an outline and you understand where what your content of your paper is going to be and thats going to provide the basis for your thesis statement. Im going to give you a bit of an example just so we can get started off because I think examples are helpful then just rather than just kind of talking about the theoretical concept of what a thesis statement is. And I was hoping to be able to show you my screen but I tried that before and I havent quite figured that out so Im actually just going to read these to you so hopefully thats OK and that thats somewhat helpful. Cath Anne: [00:07:10] Consider that your thesis statement is this: There are several ways for college students to improve their study habits. Thats a very simple and basic thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:07:26] But then when youre considering the topic maybe some of the evidence that youre providing is the following:. Cath Anne: [00:07:35] Students can improve their study by studying in a quiet environment. Pay attention in class and manage your time. Cath Anne: [00:07:44] As you can see all of these topics could be discussed further and they all contribute to explaining the thesis statement. These pieces of information would be considered the topic or the topics whereas the thesis statement is: There are several ways for college students to improve their study habits. As you can see the thesis statement is kind of that overarching argument whereas the topics are the evidence and the information that youre providing. Cath Anne: [00:08:26] So a way to do this might be saying studying in a quiet environment helps students improve their study habits. Thats a piece of evidence that can be used to prove your thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:08:38] In the initial session we discussed, where does your thesis statement go. A good practice is to put your thesis statement in the opening paragraph and you always want to make sure that your thesis statement isnt getting bogged down within that large paragraph. You always want to put it towards the end of your introductory paragraph. Cath Anne: [00:09:08] You might preface it with some information and some background maybe some history and then put your thesis statement either in the second to last or last sentence so that it kind of frames your paper and your reader knows what to expect next. You could also use your thesis statement to introduce three points of evidence or three topics. You can have kind of two sentences which introduce your thesis and then provide evidence. This is a really clear and direct way to provide information to the reader and let them know what to expect in the rest of your paper and then hopefully that will trigger them to keep reading your paper. Cath Anne: [00:10:07] Another thing I wanted to go over is this idea of how to write properly and academically. As a beginning student I know it was tempting for me sometimes when I when I first began my degree to start the paper and say things like this paper will discuss such and such or the topic of this paper will be such and such. This is not an appropriate way to write an academic paper although it might seem a little bit more clear. Professors dont like this and it just does not show a strong level of writing skill. Youre really going to want to do your research and develop a strong thesis statement that provides information while not being too obvious like those types of statements. When youre writing your thesis statement youre going to want to ask yourself: is this statement specific? You dont want it to be too general. Because you want your reader to get a sense of what youre going to be talking about in particular. Youre going to want to avoid words such as interesting, e xciting, unusual, difficult, negative. All those words are vague. They dont really tell you much of what the topic is going to be. Cath Anne: [00:11:42] They dont really give much emphasis to what youre discussing. So for example you would want to avoid a statement like: The book by Brene Brown is interesting. That doesnt tell me anything about a book. The statement doesnt tell me anything about Brene Brown. It doesnt tell me anything about why I think that book is interesting or why the reader should think its interesting so its a very vague statement. Cath Anne: [00:12:22] You also want to avoid words like society, values, culture, because although as an undergraduate student or even a graduate student you know that its probably going to be your professor that reads your paper. You dont know how your professor is going to interpret that word or your reader is going to interpret that word. So words like society and culture unless youre in a sociology program are vague and everyone has a different understanding of what those kinds of words mean. Unless you really truly define those concepts or unless youre discussing those concepts youll want to avoid them because theyre general and you want to make sure that youre being a bit more specific in your writing. Cath Anne: [00:13:22] As mentioned youre going to want to avoid making generalizations about a topic. For example here is a vague thesis statement: Todays horror movies present serious challenges to society. Similar to the earlier example, the statement doesnt really tell me much about horror movies. It doesnt tell me anything about what society Im talking about and what the challenges are that these movies present. More specifically you might write something like: Modern cinematic techniques have provided filmmakers with the opportunity to create more graphic films, therefore horror movies have desensitized Canadian youths. Let me read that again: Modern cinematic techniques have provided filmmakers with the opportunity to create more graphic films, therefore horror movies have desensitized Canadian youth. That is an example of a specific thesis statement. It tells me that there are different techniques that are used now to create more graphic films. Horror movies are clearly more g raphic as well. And then it makes an argument that because of this Canadian youth has become desensitized to violence. So that makes me want to keep reading because I want to hear what this person has to say about Canadian youth being desensitized by horror movies. So theres a lot more detail a lot more specificity in this statement as compared to the one that I read before which was: Todays horror movies present serious challenges to society. Cath Anne: [00:15:28] You also want to make sure that your thesis statement is clear. One example of not so great thesis statement is: Eating fast food is bad for human health. Its a very general statement. Its more of a statement and it doesnt really give us any proof about anything. Maybe theres a little bit of an argument but not really. So an alternative to that would be: Regular consumption of fast foods can lead to preventable and chronic health conditions such as diabetes obesity and heart disease, therefore Canadians should limit their intake. As you can see it gives you some evidence of chronic health conditions. You are aware that the writer is probably going to discuss some of these health conditions a little bit more in-depth. Its an argument that Canadians should limit their intake of these items because of the alleged health conditions. So that is very specific and thorough thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:17:02] Another topic that came up during our first Livestream session was the notion that when someone is reading your essay and they ask so what you have an answer for that question. So when youre writing a thesis statement or when youre writing an essay ask yourself so what. Why should the reader care about what youre writing? And I think thats a strong way of being able to understand why youre writing an essay and what the point of your essay is and that will really strengthen your essay. I think you know if you take anything away from this remember the words: So what. Because its such a simple thing to recall but I think it offers such a strength to your ability to write an essay. If its too vague or to general it is just a statement your reader isnt going to care about what youre writing. But if youre being more specific if youre triggering some interest then maybe the right reader will say oh OK this person has something to say and continue reading. Cath Anne: [00:19:10] Another important point to bear in mind when writing a thesis statement is to make sure is that you are not being wishy washy. You want to take a stance when youre writing an essay. So instead of saying something like: Secondhand smoking is bad and can cause heart disease and cancer, therefore smoking should be outlawed in public places, but as long as smoking is unfair to smokers so maybe nonsmokers can just hold their breath or wear asks around smokers instead. Cath Anne: [00:19:42] Ok. I know that is a funny statement but I think it gets across the point that the person who is writing this doesnt really have an opinion on the matter. Theyre kind of going back and forth. When youre writing an essay you want to take a stand on something and you want to make an argument. As an alternative this could be a very strong thesis statement: Second hand smoke is just as harmful as smoking and leads to higher prevalence of heart disease and cancer. Whats worse, people who inhale secondhand smoke are doing so without consent. Therefore smoking in public places should be banned. You can see how that is much stronger thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:20:32] It alludes to potential health concerns that are caused by cancer or caused by smoking. It suggests that people who inhale smoke are doing so with their consent and therefore it argues that smoking in public places should be banned. So that is a stronger thesis statement than the first one because it takes a stance on the issue and it makes an argument. Cath Anne: [00:21:26] Here are some tips to writing these statements. 1. Make sure you know your topic. Like I mentioned youre going to want to make sure that you do a thorough job of research. You want to know your topic inside and out before you start writing. So write down notes make an outline and gather your information and as such give yourself lots of time to work on the essay. Because if youre doing it last minute and youre not going to have the time that it takes to do a full overview of full literature review into the topics you want to give yourself time to process and to form an opinion about way youre going to be writing about. And thats going to get you the best grade and help you to do the best work. Youll also want to consider your personal experience or any other research that youve done that informs your opinion because as you continue to learn and explore as a student you will develop a stronger opinion about different things especially if youre focused on a certai n discipline. So youre going to eventually develop an opinion. Cath Anne: [00:22:37] The more that you gather information so give yourself the time to explore that. You also dont want to consider limiting your topic so youre probably if youre an undergraduate degree or even in a graduate degree youre going to mostly be limited to five to 10 page papers so you dont want to take on a huge broad topic and not be able to do it justice. Youre going to want to narrow it down very specifically and in turn then your thesis statement will be specific as well and you want to make sure that youre giving yourself enough content to work with but also not going so broad that you cant be very specific. Cath Anne: [00:23:27] Another tip is to do some brainstorming. While youre doing your research you know write down some ideas, keep some notes and then go back to them and see if you start to see any patterns emerge. As you do that you will evidently develop an opinion about the topic that youre thinking of covering. Cath Anne: [00:23:54] Finally, if there is anything I want to put forth in this session is that question of so what. Why is the person reading this and why should they care about what theyre reading when youre writing your statement? What is the reader gaining from this? You are wanting to provide the reader some value and some information. Think about why you care about writing about this and that should help you to frame your thesis statement. What do you want your audience to walk away with? What kind of information do you want to provide to your audience that they will come away and say Im glad you read that paper and that should help you to formulate a thesis statement. Cath Anne: [00:24:41] In sum a thesis statement should have three main components. You must introduce your argument. You want to take a stand. Dont let your argument be wishy washy and you dont want to just regurgitate information you want to make sure that youre taking a stance and forming an opinion. It should provide evidence and it should show that you have some kind of interest in the topic at hand so that the reader wants to keep reading. Cath Anne: [00:25:21] I hope that was helpful. Im glad that I was able to tape this again because unfortunately we did have some technical difficulties the first time around but Im hoping this was helpful. And please next week join us on Tuesday. Im not sure if its going to be during the day or in the evening. But keep tuned into Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and we will keep you posted for the next Livestream with The Homework Help Learning Studio. Cath Anne: [00:25:54] Next week we will be covering the topic of effective research methods. So well be going over some things like Boolean searches how to do research on Google Scholar and different databases and how to maximize your return on the research that youre doing. So good luck out there on all your papers and on your midterms. I know its probably starting to get busy. All the best and I cant wait to see you next week. Thanks for joining me and take care!