disgust
I actually just received the following email from my professor of an upper division literature class. Read it if you actually care.
Winter, 2006
Writing Tips
The Importance of Your Thesis Statement:
You can usually blame a bad essay on a bad beginning. If your essay falls apart, it probably has no primary idea, no thesis, to hold it together.
“What is the big idea?” The phrase will serve as a reminder that you must find the “big idea” behind your several small thoughts and drafts before you can start to shape your final essay.
Suppose you want to write about a high-speed ride. If you have not focused your big idea on a thesis, you might begin something like this:
“All people think they are good drivers. There are more accidents caused by young drivers than any other groups. Driver education is a good beginning, but further practice is very necessary. People who object to driver education do not realize that modern society, with its suburban pattern of growth, is built around the automobile. The car becomes a way of life and a status symbol. When teenagers go too fast, they are probably only copying their own parents.”
A little consideration, aimed at a good thesis sentence, could turn this into a reasonably good beginning paragraph, with your big thesis, your big idea, asserted at the end to focus your reader’s attention:
“Modern Society is built on the automobile. Children play with tiny cars; teenagers long to take out the car alone. Soon they are testing their skills at higher and higher speeds, especially with a group of friends along. One final test at extreme speeds usually suffices. It is usually a sobering experience, if survived, and can open one’s eye to the deadly dynamics of the group.”
Your thesis statement is your essay’s life and spirit. If it is sufficiently firm, it may tell you immediately how to organize your supporting material.
Find Your Thesis:
What is the big idea? No one will be interested to hear something like “The cat is your our best friend.” Everyone knows that already. The more unpopular the viewpoint and the stronger the push against convention, the stronger the thesis and the more energetic the essay. Compared to the energy in “Democracy is good” with that in “Socialism is good,” for instance
Sharpen Your Thesis:
Come out with your subject pointed. Take a stand. Mark a judgment of value; make a thesis. Be reasonable, but don’t be timid. Make your thesis a debating question, such as “Welfare payments must go, because-.” Fill in the blank, and you put your whole argument into one sentence.
Your full thesis could be this: “Despite their immediate benefits, welfare payments may actually be eroding personal initiative and depriving society of needed worker.”
If it becomes increasingly untrue as you write it out, turn it around and use the other end:
“Although welfare payments may offend the rugged individualist, they relieve much want to anxiety, and they enable many a family to maintain its integrity.”
You will now have a beautiful command of the major objectives to your new position, and you will have learned something about human fallibility and the nature of truth. You simply add enough evidence to persuade your reader that what you say is probably true, finding arguments that will stand up in the market place-public reasons for your private convictions.
A Good Paper May Have the Following:
1.Title
2.Opposing view
3.Thesis
4.Generalized support
5.Personal experience
6.Other evidences, if needed
7.Thesis restated
This is an UPPER DIVISION CLASS, for god's sake. You should not have to give college students an email on what a thesis statement is by their third year of college! What the hell is my education worth if this is what the professors think of the students?!
Winter, 2006
Writing Tips
The Importance of Your Thesis Statement:
You can usually blame a bad essay on a bad beginning. If your essay falls apart, it probably has no primary idea, no thesis, to hold it together.
“What is the big idea?” The phrase will serve as a reminder that you must find the “big idea” behind your several small thoughts and drafts before you can start to shape your final essay.
Suppose you want to write about a high-speed ride. If you have not focused your big idea on a thesis, you might begin something like this:
“All people think they are good drivers. There are more accidents caused by young drivers than any other groups. Driver education is a good beginning, but further practice is very necessary. People who object to driver education do not realize that modern society, with its suburban pattern of growth, is built around the automobile. The car becomes a way of life and a status symbol. When teenagers go too fast, they are probably only copying their own parents.”
A little consideration, aimed at a good thesis sentence, could turn this into a reasonably good beginning paragraph, with your big thesis, your big idea, asserted at the end to focus your reader’s attention:
“Modern Society is built on the automobile. Children play with tiny cars; teenagers long to take out the car alone. Soon they are testing their skills at higher and higher speeds, especially with a group of friends along. One final test at extreme speeds usually suffices. It is usually a sobering experience, if survived, and can open one’s eye to the deadly dynamics of the group.”
Your thesis statement is your essay’s life and spirit. If it is sufficiently firm, it may tell you immediately how to organize your supporting material.
Find Your Thesis:
What is the big idea? No one will be interested to hear something like “The cat is your our best friend.” Everyone knows that already. The more unpopular the viewpoint and the stronger the push against convention, the stronger the thesis and the more energetic the essay. Compared to the energy in “Democracy is good” with that in “Socialism is good,” for instance
Sharpen Your Thesis:
Come out with your subject pointed. Take a stand. Mark a judgment of value; make a thesis. Be reasonable, but don’t be timid. Make your thesis a debating question, such as “Welfare payments must go, because-.” Fill in the blank, and you put your whole argument into one sentence.
Your full thesis could be this: “Despite their immediate benefits, welfare payments may actually be eroding personal initiative and depriving society of needed worker.”
If it becomes increasingly untrue as you write it out, turn it around and use the other end:
“Although welfare payments may offend the rugged individualist, they relieve much want to anxiety, and they enable many a family to maintain its integrity.”
You will now have a beautiful command of the major objectives to your new position, and you will have learned something about human fallibility and the nature of truth. You simply add enough evidence to persuade your reader that what you say is probably true, finding arguments that will stand up in the market place-public reasons for your private convictions.
A Good Paper May Have the Following:
1.Title
2.Opposing view
3.Thesis
4.Generalized support
5.Personal experience
6.Other evidences, if needed
7.Thesis restated
This is an UPPER DIVISION CLASS, for god's sake. You should not have to give college students an email on what a thesis statement is by their third year of college! What the hell is my education worth if this is what the professors think of the students?!