Draft Thesis Statements

Morrison, J. "Easter Road" 08/25/2010 via Wikimedia. 
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.

Just like every Dora the Explorer episode started with a look at the map, so every essay must start
with a thesis statement.  Just as the map gave Dora directions to Benny’s barn, so a thesis statement will be the road map through the essay.  Here are a couple of my attempts.

1) Anders Levermann addresses an audience that has little knowledge in the field of engineering so that he can come across as an expert.  He continually belittles the argument in an unsuccessful attempt to make the decision of accepting his opinion easy.

2) Anders Levermann focuses his argument on the fallacies of someone else’s argument.  This factual approach builds his credibility and allows him to share his own opinion at the end without seeming pushy or threatening.

3) Since climate change has been such a heavy topic for many years now, Levermann attempts to connect with his audience by taking a friendly approach to his writing.  Levermann can now successfully discredit Crutzen’s idea without sounding forceful and allowing to express his own thoughts at the end.

These theses definitely touch on the main strategies of Levermann’s argument.  However, I still need to work on creating a comprehensive thesis that effectively integrates purpose of the article along with the strategies.  It will be easy to work from these theses since they all point to multiple but specific points of analysis for the text.  However, incorporating other strategies and contexts into the paper and relating them back to the thesis will be the difficult part.  I will have to make sure the thesis leaves a little room for other opportunities.

Reflection:

After examining other's blog posts on drafting thesis, I realized that without a well-developed thesis, the paper will lack thorough analysis.  When I read the other thesis drafts, I felt that my theses had more ideas that could be developed throughout a paper.  Even still, I found that my drafts need to be more arguable, so that I have plenty of ideas to backup in the body of my essay.

Michaela Webb's theses seemed to be well-developed, focusing on both the strategies used and the effects induced.  This made for a very intriguing intro but also seemed limiting to what she could talk about later on.  This showed me that I could use some more opinion in my thesis, but still keeping it open enough to discuss and argue.

Austin See's thesis drafts came across as too much summary and not enough arguable statements.  Although strategies were included, it would be difficult to continue a paper on from here for four pages.  A thesis for a rhetorical analysis should open up a discussion in which you introduce the reader to your opinions and then in the body you have room to analyze and support your claims.

I found that the same rhetorical analysis can really take on many different viewpoints and arguments that could all be supported.  The main goal is to make sure the argument is focused and is related to the outside factors of the article.