Posts Tagged ‘thesis’

Reverse Psychology

Monday, July 12th, 2010

I occasionally teach creative writing; last week’s class involved an exercise where we took the “World’s Worst Poem” (according to Google) and fixed it.  One of the people noted that she was able to see many faux pas in the author’s style of which she, herself, was guilty.  We all had a look at the poem and, regretfully, each one of us could find at least one problem which was evident in our own writing.

This made me think: have you ever checked out some really bad academic writing?  If you do a quick search for “world’s worst essay”, you’ll get some prime examples.  (Caveat: the first link Google comes up with is an essay which has an extraordinary amount of inappropriate language, so don’t click on it if that sort of thing bothers you… no, I’m not giving you the link to it. )

This essay comes up in several places on the internet.  It looks like it was written by a 7-year-old who drank too much Red Bull.  It’s a good essay to read if you’re at all inclined to rambling, though; you’ll never want to ramble again.

Here is a college admission essay which is the epitome of pretentiousness and inappropriate vocabulary.  You’ll have to scroll down and click on “read more of this essay”.

It would be a good exercise to print out these two paragraphs and mark them up with a big red pen, as they break just about every rule of academic writing.

Have a look at some of these.  You may find some things which strike you as disturbingly familiar.

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I Don’t Think I Need A Thesis

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Of late, I’m seeing a lot of assignments from educators who don’t want full essays.  They are asking their students to write just the outline of the essay, or perhaps only one body paragraph.  One local science professor wants to see all the experiment results in point form, for now (and the students will have to write up 5 of the experiments at the end of the semester).

As a teacher, I can see the purpose to these assignments: it’s a matter of breaking the writing down into small parts to ensure the student understands the basics.  It’s like those hockey drills where the players skate back and forth across the rink, spraying snow as they stop; by the end of the drill, it’s automatic and they don’t even need to think about how to stop.  If you’ve written a body paragraph a hundred times, you’re not likely to mess up the body paragraphs on your final exam.

Sometimes, these exercises backfire.  Yesterday, I had a student tell me that he didn’t think he needed a thesis because he was only working on an outline.

Aie, aie… aie. You always need a thesis.  The minute you pick up a writing implement and begin looking for a piece of paper, you need a thesis.  If you’re writing a grocery list, you need a thesis (I need to buy these things at the grocery store).  If you’re writing a thank you letter to your grandmother, you need a thesis (The lovely fuchsia sweater with the fluffy kittens on it is beautiful).

A thesis is a subject, the matter about which you are writing.  If you don’t have a thesis, you don’t know what you’re writing about.  Perhaps you won’t need to write your thesis down for a particular assignment, but you will always need to have one.  It’s best to write it down somewhere, so you remember what you’re writing about  (put it on a sticky note and stick it to your forehead, or write it on the back of your hand in glittery green ink).

It’s not necessary to come up with the perfect thesis before you actually begin writing.  Particularly when taking on a subjective argument, it may be easier to find your supporting points first.  I will often scribble over several pieces of paper, looking at a topic from several view points, before I choose the ones I want to write about.  Once I have three or four points which work well together, I can write a thesis which connects them.

Should you need a refresher course on the parts of writing, check out this website on how to write a thesis statement.

Remember that the individual parts are as important as the whole: the forest could not exist without the trees.

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Supporting Your Thesis

Monday, July 27th, 2009

Prove it.

Isn’t that always the response to a statement?

Shakespeare is the best author ever.
Yeah, right. Prove it.

Academic writing exists only to prove it. Once a thesis (the declarative statement) is given, the paper you’re writing has only just begun. But… how do you prove it?

In English, we ask questions with 6 small words: who, what, when, where, why and how. That’s it; if you have answered all those words, you have proven it.

No, of course it’s not quite that simple. In academic writing, all 6 question words must be satisfactorily answered, but how and why carry more weight than the others.

Let’s look at tooth-brushing, for instance. If our thesis is, Tooth-brushing is good for your health, we need to prove it. Academic writing requires at least three supporting points, so let’s use these:

· Tooth-brushing removes plaque and prevents cavities
· Tooth-brushing freshens breath
· Tooth-brushing whitens teeth

For each of these three supporting points, we need to explain how and why, in detail. So, let’s ask ourselves, How and why does tooth-brushing remove plaque and prevent cavities?

How: the brush scrapes off the plaque, especially from nooks and crannies, and the toothpaste aids in the removal of plaque, food and other unwanted substances.
Why: plaque and rotting food contain bacteria which causes cavities. The cavities will weaken the teeth (which causes pain, which causes difficulties when eating, therefore affecting nutritional intake), and the bacteria may travel to different parts of the body and cause infections. Pain, lack of nutrition and infections all have a detrimental effect on the body; therefore tooth-brushing is good for your health.

Remember to answer all the hows and whys. The second supporting point, tooth-brushing freshens breath, has a couple of hows (removes rotting food and bacteria from the mouth, adds a minty scent from the toothpaste). The whys might refer to the social stigma of halitosis. The third supporting point, tooth-brushing whitens teeth, might also refer to social stigma. Therefore, tooth-brushing is good for psychological health because it helps avoid the negative social ramifications of imperfect oral hygiene.

Ensuring you have proven your thesis is equally important to proofreading for mistakes. You may have impeccable spelling and grammar, but you won’t convince your reader of your thesis if you don’t prove it.

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