3.2: Introduction to Thesis Statements and Topic Sentences
- Page ID
- 58259
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What you’ll learn to do: identify, analyze, and create effective thesis statements
Being able to identify the purpose and thesis of a text while you’re reading it takes practice, but it is an essential skill to successful writing. Powerful thesis statements are an effective and important element of almost every writing assignment in college.
Before we begin crafting our own thesis statements, we’ll begin by practicing finding thesis statements. When trying to isolate the thesis in a piece of text, consider these questions:
- What is the primary subject of this text?
- Is the author trying to inform me, or persuade me?
- What does the author think I need to know about this subject?
- Why does the author think I need to know about this subject?
Sometimes the answer to these questions will be very clearly stated in the text itself. Sometimes it is less obvious, and in those cases, the techniques on the following pages will be useful.
Contributors and Attributions
CC licensed content, Original
- Outcome: Thesis. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution
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- Image of cat with book. Authored by: TheGiantVermin. Located at: https://flic.kr/p/dQ32kH. License: CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives