One Way to Compose A Thesis

Use this process as one way that you can narrow the focus of your essay and come up with something approaching a workable thesis statement.

Subject

The Subject of your essay will typically be part of the assignment. In your first essay (the narrative), the subject was you--the writer. With this second essay, the subject is how someone in your life is important to you.

Topic

Having chosen your subject, the next step is finding a topic that meets the requirements of the assignment. With the narrative you needed to tell a story about yourself that was interesting or important and helped make you the person you are today. Some have written about a parent's illness, mishaps with the police, an accident involving their child, and so on.

With the second assignment you are to make some point about a particular person and their importance in your life.

For the third assignment, let us look at the treatment of the nuclear power industry on the Internet. Notice how we have narrowed the topic from a social issue and its treatment on the Internet to a specific topic: the treatment of the nuclear power industry on the Internet. The next step is developing a purpose for the essay.

Purpose Statement

The essay's purpose is what was referred to as the 'rhetorical goal' in the first assignment's readings. Establishing this goal may be the most important step of composing the essay. Without this goal, it is difficult, if not impossible, to make decisions about such things as whether the chosen details are relevant, whether the essay makes the point you hope for, or whether you are done or not. This is where a purpose statement comes in handy.

Try writing a statement something like this: "The purpose of my essay is to show my classmates and teacher (your intended or assigned audience) that such and such is true." An example follows.

• The purpose of my essay is to show my classmates and teacher how my father's father is an inspiration to me because of the way he was able to overcome much of the racial prejudice he faced in his life without becoming embittered.
• The purpose of my essay is to show my classmates and teacher that the Declaration of Independence is a finely crafted document that offers insight to the social and cultural views of the writers, and not just their political views.
• The purpose of my essay is to show my classmates and teacher that the information on the Internet and World Wide Web concerning the nuclear power industry is unbalanced and those who are pro-nuclear power owe it to the public to provide relevant information in support of the nuclear power industry. To do this, I'll have to describe what the web sites that are pro-nuclear contain while making it clear that they are inadequate to the job.

Thesis

To get a thesis statement from a purpose statment, simply omit the first section of the purpose statement:

• "The purpose of my essay is to show my classmates and teacher that the information on the Internet and World Wide Web concerning the nuclear power industry is unbalanced and those who are pro-nuclear power owe it to the public to provide relevant information in support of the nuclear power industry."

This leaves us with a thesis statement:

• "The information on [some particular website found on] the Internet and World Wide Web concerning the nuclear power industry is unbalanced and those who are pro-nuclear power owe it to the public to provide relevant information in support of the nuclear power industry."

This is a statement that readers will most likely either agree or disagree with. Such a thesis statement puts the writer in the place of having to prove their point. The writer and reader can also evaluate each piece of support material in relation to the thesis to gauge its relevancy and importance to the essay and the essay's argument.