27 What is a Thesis and How do you Make One?
Greg Hartley
Let’s review the major components of the unified essay (first examined in the Introduction). In a unified essay, the Thesis statement appears in the Introduction of your paper.
Basic Structure of an Essay
The Unified Essay
- Introduction
- Thesis Statement
- Main Point 1
- Supporting paragraphs
- Main Point 2
- Support paragraphs
- Main Point 3, etc.
- Supporting paragraphs
- Conclusion
- Works Cited
The master claim of an essay
Thesis statements make a major claim that you must support.
A Thesis makes a claim that your entire paper seeks to prove. In other words, once your audience has finished reading, your goal is for them to believe your thesis to be true.
- Claim = “A statement your paper treats a true and attempts to prove using evidence/support.”
The statement provides a rationale.
Your statement should begin to express the “why” embedded in every claim. Since the rest of the paper can be expected to prove your claim, the thesis can start getting some of this work done.
The best thesis statements also organize.
Your thesis can also express the main points, or sub-claims, of the paper. Consider the following model thesis statement:
Example Thesis
“Hank Aaron was more important to baseball than Babe Ruth because Aaron held more records, struggled through racial barriers, and served as an ideal role model.”
If we examine the thesis, we can clearly see that it has two parts: the claim, and the supporting main points that also provide a rationale for the claim:
Example Thesis breakdown
- Master Claim: Hank Aaron was more important to baseball than Babe Ruth because . . .
- Main Point #1: Aaron held more records,
- Main Point #2: struggled through racial barriers,
- Main Point #3: and served as an ideal role model.
So to summarize, your thesis statement should attempt toThe thesis statement will:
- Make a claim
- Provide a rationale for the claim.
- Organize the paper
Now you can organize the rest of the essay.
A unified essay nests its claims within a series of subclaims and supporting evidence. Once you declare your main points, you can plan the subclaims found in each topic sentence. These should support the claim made by the main point, which in turn supports the claim made by the Thesis itself.
The levels of claim and support:
Each level supports the previous level
Thesis
- “Hank Aaron was more important to baseball than Babe Ruth.”
- Main Point #1
- “Hank Aaron struggled to overcome racial barriers.”
- Topic Sentence #1
- “Aaron’s career took off at a time when black athletes were not accepted.”
- Topic Sentence #1
- “Hank Aaron struggled to overcome racial barriers.”
- Main Point #1
