What is a thesis statement
in a critical paper?
A thesis statement is a claim or
assertion. It is a conclusion which you have derived and
which you will use as the basis of your paper. You may think of it as
"the conclusion I have drawn about the subject after doing my reading."
- It should be arguable but provable.
- It should be debatable
- It may (and should) not cover all of the information
you have dealt with in your reading, but rather only focus on one portion
of that reading.
- It should deal with the material covered and
not "feelings" you have after having read the material.
In other words, you may come to feel after reading Nutting, that your
education up to this time has been inadequate and so you choose to write
a paper about your education or education in general which does not follow
Nutting's precepts. This will not work as a thesis paper for this academic
assignment because it removes the the paper from the role of synthesizing
and analyzing what we have read, to the world outside of these readings.
This is not the purpose of these critical papers which are to focus on
the author's and the connections between them.
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